Leftovers

• Logikal Solutions ☛ Beware Abusix – Logikal Blog

  What stuns me about most anti-spam software is they never bulk filter out gmail. That certainly where the bulk of my spam comes from. You just have to sprinkle in a few unsecured .edu domains for seasoning.

• James Brown ☛ cool companies don't invalidate links

  Your employees give you their 401 hours a week because they get paid for it. If you want them to put in the extra effort and write blog posts or write open-source software that boosts your standing in the community? You'd better not goddamn delete it with no notice a couple of years later. If you really can't afford the $0/repo it costs to host something on Github, then reach out to the original authors and let them take it over. This isn't just bad stewardship, it's the worst kind of shortsightedness. The implied social contract is that when employees produce extracurricular public content for you, you keep it around to be part of their portfolio.

• Meduza ☛ ‘I tried to help them, but my strength gave out’. For half a century, Nina Litvinova stood with Soviet and then Russian political prisoners. In May, at 80, she took her own life.

  Ivy Low was born in London to an English mother and a father of Hungarian Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Among her relatives were well-known journalists and psychoanalysts; she herself wrote books, was friends with H. G. Wells, and was acquainted with James Joyce.

• Rust Mindset/Politics

  • The Register UK ☛ Secure Unix ancestor KSOS did type safety before Rust made it cool

    For the first time, the source code of KSOS, backed by the US Department of Defense in the late 1970s and 1980s, is available to the public in the archives of The Unix Heritage Society (TUHS).

    TUHS volunteers preserve the historical source code and documentation of the original UNIX – or as much of it as is left. A few days ago, in an email to its mailing list, TUHS founder Warren Toomey announced the addition of KSOS to the collection.

    "KSOS was the US Department of Defense (DoD) Kernelized Secure Operating System (KSOS, formerly called Secure UNIX). KSOS is intended to provide a provably secure operating system for larger minicomputers," he wrote.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Maury ☛ Stephan's Quintet

    However, looking at redshift data, the blue spiral on the left is ten times closer than all the other objects: at z=0.0026 instead of z=0.022. This means it's not actually a member of the group, even though it's in the same part of of the sky.

    The dim barred spiral below the cluster (NGC 7320C) is at a redshift of z=0.022, making it a proper member of the group. This interloper takes the total back to five, so there's no need to rename the cluster.

• Career/Education

  • Max Bernstein ☛ Travel notes: PLDI Boulder

    This post is more about the conference than the town of Boulder (unlike the last PLDI post about Seoul) because I didn’t do much Boulder exploring.

• Hardware

  • Jim Grey ☛ Outings with the Canon PowerShot A495

    This little Canon PowerShot A495 had been my dad’s. I find myself unsentimental about that. When I got it out recently, I had a clear mission in mind: determine whether this camera is good enough to keep. My camera cabinet is overfull, and I keep to a strict rule that my entire collection must fit into it.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • MinnPost ☛ Too few workers, too many calls, take toll on EMS providers

    Union concerns came to a head this spring when 140 out of 147 members of Hennepin County Association of Paramedics and EMTs, or HCAPE, voted “no confidence” in Hennepin EMS Department Chief Martin Scheerer. The vote came amid ongoing contract negotiations between the union and Hennepin Healthcare, following the expiration of a three-year contract at the end of 2025.

  • Christian Cleberg ☛ The Night Feeling - cleberg.net

    Night feels peaceful because the world becomes empty and stops demanding a performance.

  • Hackaday ☛ Hackaday Europe 2026: Is Your Blood Pressure Monitor Lying To You?

    Blood pressure is one of the so-called “vital signs” that medical practitioners use to determine the basic state of a patient in any given moment. It’s exactly what it sounds like—a measurement of the pressure of the blood flowing through the body, with some complications to account for the pulsatile nature of human blood flow.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • So-Called 'Artificial Intelligence' ('AI') / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Dan Q ☛ Exploiting Thoughtcrime in LLMs – Dan Q

      This appears to be an effort by the malware authors to reduce the ability for AI-based malware analysis tools to do their job. That’s really interesting and imaginative! I wonder how long it’ll be before we start seeing attempts at prompt injection by malware, in order to try to coerce automatic analysis tools to say, for example, that “Nah, this isn’t malware, but its shape probably triggers all kinds of false positives. I’ll turn off your antivirus software for you so you can run it.”

      The comment contains content that looks a bit like this: [...]

    • Olaf Alders ☛ The dot claude Attack Surface · olafalders.com

      If you say yes, that’s it. All of the claude hooks that the repo may or may not have shipped are enabled. There’s no per-hook request for permissions. At this point, your defenses are as good as your sandbox. If you’ve permitted network egress and execute permissions on curl, hilarity ensues.

    • TechCrunch ☛ Trump administration proposes axing brake-pedal requirement for AVs in a boost for Tesla

      The proposal, if adopted, would remove a major regulatory barrier for companies like Tesla and Zoox, which are developing vehicles intended to be fully autonomous, without a steering wheel or pedals. The public will now have 30 days to comment on the proposal before the DOT decides whether to approve the changes.

  • Social Control Media

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Chaos, vandalism in Newport Beach: Are viral social media posts to blame?

      Authorities are still trying to determine what drew so many people. The Newport Beach Police Assn. blamed a viral “TikTok takeover” on social media that attracted crowds. It’s still unclear whether a single post was the draw or how it was organized, and police said the investigation is ongoing.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Register UK ☛ EU’s latest spyware scandal prompts calls for urgent action

      Stelios Kouloglou, a former investigative journalist, served as a Greek MEP between 2014 and 2023 and was a substitute member of the inquiry into the use of Pegasus and other spyware (PEGA Committee). After Citizen Lab forensically analyzed his device, the research organization revealed on Friday that his iPhone was infected with Pegasus in October 2022 and again in March 2023, when key hearings about the committee's formal recommendations were taking place.

    • Adnan Siddiqi ☛ Implementing Browser and Server Side Tracking on Shopify Using GTM and Meta CAPI

      Tracking is the process of capturing and measuring specific user behaviors on your website or app(e:g., button clicks, page views, or purchases). GA4 and GTM are the tools most commonly used to carry out these tasks. GTM acts as a data collector while acts as a data receiver and reporting engine. There are two types of tracking when it comes to the implementation of website tracking: client-side or browser-side and server-side.

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ Procedural Trick Before Summer Recess Pushes EU Parliament Towards Capitulation on “Chat Control”

      On Tuesday, the European Parliament will vote on a request for urgent procedure aimed at reviving the previously rejected, indiscriminate mass surveillance of private communications (“Chat Control 1.0”). This move, pushed by the EPP group and EU Member States, is not only an unprecedented parliamentary ploy, but also threatens to torpedo negotiations on a modern, permanent child protection framework online. Cybersecurity researchers are sounding the alarm in an urgent letter. Even the responsible rapporteur warns of an “unfair maneuver”, while diplomats describe the procedure as “unprecedented”.

  • Confidentiality

    • DJ Bernstein ☛ cr.yp.to: 2026.07.06: NSA and IETF, part 8

      Secret NSA documents showed that NSA pushed DES in the 1970s to "drive out competitors" while knowing that DES was "weak enough" to break; meanwhile NSA publicly claimed that it would use DES. NSA used export-law exceptions in the 1990s to entrench RC4 and RSA-512, causing security problems for decades. NSA in the 2000s sabotaged RNG standards and paid companies to deploy those. NSA by the 2010s had a quarter-billion-dollar-a-year budget to "covertly influence and/or overtly leverage" standards and other systems to make them "exploitable" while "the consumer and other adversaries" think that "the systems' security remains intact".

      The current vote in the IETF TLS WG, labeled in IETF doublespeak as a "last call", is regarding an overtly NSA-driven push for an IETF RFC on solo ML-KEM in TLS. Issuing an RFC means issuing IETF endorsement of solo ML-KEM in TLS. Presumably the next step after RFCs on solo ML-KEM and solo ML-DSA in TLS is that NSA will keep spending money to encourage broader deployment of solo ML-KEM and solo ML-DSA. This will be an inexcusable security disaster because of the predictable influx of ML-KEM software bugs and ML-DSA software bugs, never mind the risk of security flaws in the specifications.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ France to Stop Certifying Non-Quantum-Safe Encryption

      France is accelerating its transition to post-quantum encryption: [...]

• Defence/Aggression

  • Carole Cadwalladr ☛ You're obsessing over the wrong Peter Thiel conference

    But what if I told you there is a secret masters-of-the-universe conference that Thiel helps fund, serves as a director of, and stacks with some of his closest business partners and allies?

    A conference that, unlike Dialog, features some of the most important decision makers from the worlds of defence, intelligence, finance and politics?

  • El País ☛ 250 years of US presidents and none as destructive to the office as Trump

    At a waste-recycling facility in Croaker, a small community in Virginia about three hours from Washington, the heads of 42 U.S. presidents have lain abandoned for the past 13 years on a marshy patch of land, exposed to the elements, birds, and summer wasp nests. As the nation reaches its 250th year — deeply divided and in a sombre mood — they too invite reflection on the damage Trump’s return is inflicting on the institution of the presidency. The office traces its origins to the Founding Fathers, who approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776; this Saturday marked the 250th anniversary of that event.

  • Meduza ☛ Western insurers don’t have to cover the Nord Stream sabotage, London’s High Court rules

    Judge Clare Moulder sided with the insurers, finding that the pipeline damage was directly or indirectly connected to the Russia–Ukraine war. Nord Stream had argued that the war was merely a backdrop or pretext for the sabotage.

  • Greece ☛ Eight migrant-smugglers arrested near Turkish border

    Police said Monday that two suspected migrant-smugglers – only identified as foreign nationals – were taken into custody for carrying 11 people in two cars westwards towards Thessaloniki. The one suspect lacked a license and was driving a stolen car, while the second veered off the road to avoid police but nobody was hurt.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Ukraine says it struck Russia’s largest oil refinery for the first time

      Update. Ukraine’s General Staff soon announced that Ukrainian drones had struck the Omsk refinery, located 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles) from the Ukrainian border. The independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo, after analyzing published footage, confirmed that the videos show the Omsk refinery. The Ukrainian project Dnipro Osint claims that a primary oil processing unit was damaged in the strike.

    • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ US troops have left Estonia for an unknown period of time

      MP Kalev Stoicescu (Eesti 200), chairman of the Riigikogu's National Defense Committee, said the US has left countries on NATO's eastern flank waiting, regardless of how large a share of GDP they spend on defense.

• Environment

  • Cowboy State Daily ☛ Looming Data Center Boom Tests Wyoming’s Promise Not To ‘Piss It All Away'

    Now that data centers are finally racing toward the state’s wide-open prairies and cheap power, however, the rush is forcing a choice. How much growth is Wyoming will to accept, and at what cost to power bills, water supplies, and its wide-open spaces?

  • CS Monitor ☛ A whale hunt that turned into a saga of survival

    In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, “whaling was one of the most important industries in the colonies,” Dolin tells us. What started as “drift whaling,” when whales washed up on beaches, soon became “shore whaling,” during which mariners sought prey not too far from land. As the demand for whale oil increased and the number of whales found near land dropped off, “offshore whaling” was born – and larger ships traveled far and wide in search of the holy grail of whaling, the sperm whale.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Wisconsin residents file class-action lawsuit against Microsoft's 'world's most powerful AI data center' due to data center noise — plaintiffs also mention construction noise and extreme light pollution from $7.3 billion facility

    Controversy due to AI data center buildouts generally centers around their massive power usage and draining of local water reserves, but noise is a third torment to nearby residents, and one that is arguably much harder to correct. Residents of Sturtevant, slightly south of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft due to the excessive noise produced by the company's Fairwater facility. CEO Satya Nadella described the project as "the world's most powerful AI data center," projected to generate 865,000 tokens per second and have a final bill of $7.3 billion.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Nashville Mayor to Use Eminent Domain to Stop Data Center Near Zoo

    Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell plans to use eminent domain to stop a data center from moving in near the Nashville Zoo, reports WKRN-TV. In Tennessee, eminent domain allows the government the power to take property but under the Fifth Amendment, eminent domain must be for a “public use,” which traditionally means infrastructure projects like roads or bridges. The government must then pay the owner compensation.

  • Futurism ☛ Microsoft's $7.3 Billion AI Data Center Just Caught a Nasty Lawsuit From Furious Neighbors

    The noise being generated by “diesel generators and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, including chillers, cooling towers, air-handling units, and condenser fans,” is “consistent and pervasive,” per the lawsuit. The residents claim that Microsoft failed to mitigate the noise through “adequate acoustic barriers, shields, or walls.”

  • Gannett ☛ Microsoft sued by Sturtevant residents for noise from data center

    Residents in Sturtevant have filed a class action lawsuit against Microsoft over noise from its data center.

    The lawsuit alleges the facility generates excessive and pervasive noise from its HVAC systems and diesel generators.

  • Futurism ☛ Meta's AI Data Center Caught Infecting Town Water Supply With Deadly Bacteria

    That decision came after one bad actor, the Meta-affiliated data center company Goat Systems LLC, flooded local waste water pipes with fill-and-flush swill containing a rare and deadly bacterium known as Cupriavidus gilardii. Per Cowboy State, Goat Systems was found to be in “significant noncompliance” with Cheyenne’s industrial waste regulations after a months-long investigation traced the bacteria to Meta’s discharge.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ 'Data Centres Will Add To Summer Heat, Public Hearing Must'

    The Union ministry of environment, forests and climate change must make environmental impact assessments for data centers mandatory, Donthi Narasimha Reddy, environment and public policy expert, said. But this cannot happen as at present, data centres are screened for environmental clearance under a category meant for townships and area development projects, he said.

  • The Revelator ☛ I Will Love You to Death: A Divemaster’s View on Coral Tourism

    As she told me the story, my friend’s face was flushed with anger. It took several more minutes of persistent interference on Kaitlyn’s behalf before the diver decided to leave the octopus alone. Kaitlyn was furious; not only had the diver invaded this octopus’s space but now the reef beneath her body was left broken beyond repair.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Rooftop solar is making a difference in electricity demand curves in New York

      The effect is most prominent in the early spring, EIA noted, as solar generation can have an “outsized impact” amid relatively low demand and favorable conditions for solar. Since rooftop and residential solar systems with less than 1 MW of capacity are not usually metered by a utility, utilities are feeling less midday demand, but a “steeper increase” in demand in the late afternoons and evenings as solar systems stop generating.

    • Dan Langille ☛ During a power outage, how do the three servers in the basement react?

      Over the weekend, some branches fell on a neighbor’s power service line. They still had power, but the branches had to be removed. That removal occurred this morning. I saw the trucks at about 6:45 AM as I walked past. I suspected I might lose power, and I did. This post records the shutdown and power on times/sequences. I might find this useful should I need to reevaluate the power-outage procedures.

      My thought: Perhaps just shutdown the big servers, but keep the gateway, wireless access points, and switches running. The goal being: shutdown the heavy stuff, keep the light stuff going, perhaps for an hour or so. The actual time, I don’t know because I’ve never tried. I could judge that based on power consumption by those units… the information is all there in the PDU graphs…

      In this post: [...]

    • Hackaday ☛ How To Rebuild An 1800s Victorian Leclanché Cell

      Invented in 1866 by French scientist Georges Leclanché, the Leclanché cell features an ammonium chloride electrolyte solution, carbon cathode and zinc anode. There’s also a manganese dioxide depolarizer for preventing hydrogen build-up. Here water is the solvent for the ammonium chloride (also known as sal ammoniac).

    • Hackaday ☛ Ultra-Long Range Flights To Ease Australian Air Travel

      When travelling from Australia’s major capital cities, flights to destinations like London, the rest of Europe, or the US, all involve stopovers in intermediate airports along the way. A great many routes stop in Dubai or Qatar, while others transit through Hong Kong, Singapore, or Thailand. The need for stopovers complicates air travel for the passenger, particularly when delays cause missed connections or baggage gets lost from one flight to another. It can also just be tedious—sometimes a stopover can last 10 hours or more, which is an incredibly uncomfortable amount of time to spend in even the nicest airport. The reason behind stopovers is simple enough—the average commercial airliner just doesn’t have the fuel range to haul many hundreds of passengers from Australia to Europe in a single hop.

    • Paul Krugman ☛ Pump and Dump and Trump

      Obviously no president has enriched himself from office the way that Trump has. That’s common knowledge. One of the things that is really amazing about it, however, is the way in which he enriched himself — a lot of which has to do with [cryptocurrency].

      So the New York Times had a report just the other day on Trumpcoin, the memecoin issued on Trump’s behalf which got a lot of buyers, a lot of money came flowing into it.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Ubuntu ☛ Building an open source chain of trust: new research uncovers key blockers and ways forward

    Open source powers development toolchains and underpins cloud-native platforms. It runs across on-prem, cloud, and edge environments. While organizations formalize policies and adopt security tools, many rely on fragmented processes with significant visibility gaps in CI/CD process between development and production stages. This research shows that 90% of respondents believe their organization needs to improve cross-team collaboration regarding open source software.

  • Ubuntu ☛ The open source chain of trust 2026 [PDF]

    This research reveals how enterprises build, secure, and use open source software today, and where pressure points are emerging. Security concerns are widespread, particularly around vulnerabilities, transitive dependencies, licensing, and provenance. Yet approaches to oversight vary widely: some automate vulnerability tracking and dependency analysis, while others rely on manual review and fragmented workflows.

    Open source at scale demands alignment. A shared strategy and clear governance help teams collaborate on what is approved, how it is maintained, and who acts when issues emerge. This can help reduce the day-to-day friction that undermines security. As the OS underpins most of the stack, it can serve as the “control plane” for supply-chain hygiene. It can standardize how packages are sourced, verified, patched, and operated across environments, while also giving teams a common baseline to build on

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Governance can prevent AI from being used to undermine democracy. But only if it has teeth.

    A previous UNESCO meeting recommended governance that “bars AI systems from being used for social scoring or mass surveillance, and  requires member states to ensure that AI actors respect rights in the AI lifecycle”. As we all know, that has definitely happened. Both AI vendors and the two countries that predominantly house them, the United States and China, are famously against surveillance and social scoring, and in favor of maintaining rights. Certainly none of them have, for example, used AI with the most sensitive personal information government has access to, or worked with the private sector to create a surveillance apparatus for policing that includes the broad detainment of immigrants. Neither of them is famous for social scoring — in China by government or in the United States through private enterprise. Job done!

  • New York Times ☛ Microsoft Lays Off Thousands of Xbox Employees, Closes Game Studios

    The initial Xbox layoffs are part of 4,800 job cuts that Microsoft announced on Monday, a total that accounts for roughly 2 percent of the company’s work force. It is Microsoft’s latest employee culling as it plows tens of billions of dollars into the infrastructure for building artificial intelligence.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft 'resets' Xbox by cutting 3,200 jobs this year, divesting five game studios — firm cites 'margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses'

    Microsoft's gaming division, Xbox, will eliminate approximately 3,200 jobs over its 2027 fiscal year in an attempt to turn around its floundering business. The cuts include offloading four studios with plans to spin off another, though no announced first-party games are being canceled.

    Around 1,600 of those jobs are being eliminated today, and the rest will occur throughout the rest of the year.

  • The Verge ☛ Microsoft is selling off four Xbox studios as part of significant gaming cuts

    Today’s layoffs, which are being described as an Xbox “reset” moment, will impact around 1,600 Xbox employees, according to an internal memo from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. The cuts won’t end today, though, as Microsoft is planning to eliminate a total of around 20 percent of Xbox jobs by the end of the financial year in July 2027.

  • SQ Magazine ☛ Microsoft Cuts 4,800 Jobs, Resets Xbox Strategy

    Microsoft cut roughly 4,800 jobs globally, about 2.1% of its workforce, concentrated in its Commercial and XBOX organizations.

    Xbox alone lost about 1,600 roles in this round, with cuts reaching roughly 3,200 (about 20% of the global Xbox workforce) by the end of FY27.

  • CBC ☛ Microsoft to cut 4,800 jobs, overhaul Xbox unit

    The restructuring of the gaming division will involve 3,200 job cuts, including laying off 1,600 employees on Monday.

    Despite spending tens of billions of dollars to expand Xbox, including through its blockbuster acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft has struggled to narrow the gap with Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo, ​prompting a broader rethink of its gaming business.

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft joins AI-driven tech layoff wave with 4,800 job cuts

    The software giant earlier this year offered voluntary buyouts to about 7% of its U.S. workforce, or about 9,000 employees. Microsoft often trims jobs near the ​end of its fiscal year in June as it sets ⁠spending plans ‌for the new year.

  • [Old] MIT ☛ Eugene V. Debs, Statement to the court, June 1918. From Eugene V. Debs, Writings and Speeches (1948).

    I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Techdirt ☛ Censorship Lawsuit Against Disinformation Researchers Dismissed — After Succeeding At Actual Censorship

    The Fifth Circuit walked back nearly all of Judge Doughty’s injunction soon after, realizing how out of touch with reality it was. Eventually, after the Biden admin finally spoke up about all the false things in the lower court’s fact finding, the Supreme Court threw out the entire thing, noting that Judge Doughty appeared to push “clearly erroneous” facts into his ruling, and repeatedly finding “no evidence” of any actual censorship effort by the Biden administration.

    But that was just one case of a bunch along these lines. Another one, filed soon after the Murthy case, also in Judge Doughty’s court, was brought by two of the same plaintiffs in that case, Jill Hines and Jim Hoft, and was filed by Stephen Miller’s “America First Legal.” Rather than being filed against actual government officials, this one directly targeted a variety of academic researchers and their institutions… because they studied disinformation.

  • International Business Times ☛ NY Man Sues DHS After ICE Agents Show Up at His Home Over Email Calling Todd M. Lyons a 'Monstrous Human Being'

    David Streever filed a 27-page lawsuit in federal court in Washington, DC on Monday, arguing that Homeland Security retaliated against him for a January email to then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons calling Lyons a 'monstrous human being'. The suit, brought with help from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), names Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and several agents as defendants. It centres on a visit agents paid to Streever's Rochester home in June, months after the email, while he was travelling in Finland with his young daughter.

  • New Republic ☛ U.S. Citizen Sues After ICE Hunted Him Down Over Critical Email

    Last month, two ICE agents showed up to David Streever’s front porch in Rochester over one strongly worded email he sent to former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons. Now he’s suing the Department of Homeland Security for First Amendment violations.

  • The Verge ☛ America’s greatest idea is still under threat

    The First Amendment to the Constitution is so potent that people across the world who live in places untouched by US law often seem to think they have the same rights it establishes. The First Amendment is our day-one theory of what makes a free society. It’s literally the first cure by the framers for a project they knew would be forever imperfect and incomplete — fixable only by way of the right to free expression.

    The Verge exists today because of this great project. We believe in it deeply. The First Amendment affords us the knowledge that we’re likely free from imprisonment from expressing our freedom to speak. But journalism and speech are always under assault. It’s one of the reasons why we’ll always need lawyers despite likely having the strongest editorial ethics policy in the industry.

    Here’s what the First Amendment says: [...]

  • Wired ☛ ICE’s Internal Watchdog Is Now Investigating Online Critics

    “That office is supposed to be for internal investigations,” says Gonyea, “and now they're using their own internal departments on American civilians.”

  • The Atlantic ☛ Trump Comes for the Smithsonian's American History Museum

    With 31 pages of citations, the document represents the most extensive White House criticism of a Smithsonian museum yet, signaling that Donald Trump has not forgotten about the March 2025 executive order in which he directed his administration to scrub the museum complex of “improper ideology.” The new document reads like a precursor for the president to attempt to overhaul the institution. For example, it points to a 1997 memo by then–Deputy Assistant Attorney General Randolph D. Moss that argued that the Smithsonian is “so closely connected to the Government that the two cannot realistically be viewed as separate entities.” (A “trust instrumentality” of the United States, the Smithsonian is about 62 percent federally funded, and the White House has usually left it alone.) The Domestic Policy Council adds, “In light of its federal status and the fact that it receives over one billion dollars in federal funding from the American taxpayer every year, the President has a duty and obligation to seek reforms of the Smithsonian.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CS Monitor ☛ Local journalism’s unique niche in the US

    There is a clear desire among American citizens for reliable information that is relevant to their daily life. Eighty percent of U.S. adults see local news as important to the well-being of their community, with 34% saying it is “extremely” or “very important,” the Pew Research Center reported in April. Yet, with the proliferation of social media and online sites, a vast majority of the public do not typically pay for such news.

    That’s where nonprofit local news entities are filling a gap and shoring up an essential pillar of U.S. democracy. Information about what’s going on in and around one’s community – in the town hall, on the school board, or at the state legislature – is critical to civic participation. And evolving coalitions of philanthropic groups, businesses, and individual citizens are stepping up to meet the need.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Task And Purpose ☛ National Guard soldiers shoot and kill man in Memphis overnight

    “For reasons under investigation, the situation escalated, resulting in two National Guard soldiers firing upon Johnson, striking and killing him,” the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in its statement.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Tennessee National Guard soldiers on patrol shoot, kill civilian during armed pursuit

    According to the Memphis Police, as officers responded to a shots-fired call in the early hours of July 5 they observed an armed man carrying a handgun fleeing the scene. Tennessee National Guard soldiers on assignment as part of the Memphis Safe Task Force joined the foot pursuit.

  • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Turkey detains Azerbaijani man suspected of murdering his cousin in Tbilisi ‘honour killing’

    Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office addressed the case on Monday, noting that it had sent an official note to its Georgian counterpart agency, stating its ‘readiness to provide comprehensive legal assistance and other necessary support within the framework of international legal cooperation in order to ensure a full, thorough, and objective investigation’.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Death of Renee Good Has Yet to Be Properly Investigated

    Typically, after a contentious killing by a law-enforcement officer, the Justice Department would launch a criminal civil-rights probe. Following George Floyd’s murder, for example, DOJ conducted an investigation alongside Minnesota law enforcement, and both federal and state prosecutors brought separate charges against the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. So far, though, the federal government has succeeded in protecting immigration officers from serious consequences for the violence of what DHS termed “Operation Metro Surge.” But in promising a total shield from accountability, Miller and Vance may have been premature. Law-enforcement officials in Minnesota are—albeit haltingly—beginning to move forward with investigations and prosecutions on their own. Their efforts may become the locus of yet another clash between state and federal authority in the age of President Trump.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • RIPE ☛ When Internet Traffic Becomes a Physical Event

    Why do live sports, ticket sales, and public service launches sometimes resemble DDoS attacks? This article explores how synchronised user behaviour turns Internet traffic into a physical phenomenon that places real pressure on network infrastructure.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Working prototype of open-source printer that promises user-repairability and no subscriptions appears in first video — DRM-free 'Open Printer' inkjet still has no announced price, ship date, or print speed, nine months after it first appeared

    Working prototype of open-source printer that promises user-repairability and no subscriptions appears in first video — DRM-free 'Open Printer' inkjet still has no announced price, ship date, or print speed, nine months after it first appeared

  • Logikal Solutions ☛ Debian 13 No shim_lock protocol

    You just finished installing Debian 13 on your latest computer and at first boot the system tosses up an error message about “No shim_lock.” Yeah, it sucks. What sucks worse is all the “advice” you find online for work arounds. Other distros may have polished this particular turd. Secure boot is basically there to stop you from installing anything other than a Microsoft product. Despite all claims to the contrary this seems to be the case.

  • SQ Magazine ☛ Spotify vs Apple Music Statistics 2026: Revenue & Market Share

    Spotify reached 293 million Premium subscribers and 761 million monthly active users at the close of Q1 2026, according to Spotify’s earnings disclosure on April 28, 2026. Apple Music’s subscriber base is estimated between 94 million and 108 million for 2026 by MIDiA Research and other industry analysts, with a central estimate of approximately 100 million subscribers per Chartlex. The headline paid-subscriber gap based on the central estimate tells only part of the story; disclosure transparency, pricing strategy, and per-stream economics complete the picture.

    The data below covers paid subscribers, monthly active users, revenue, market share, pricing, audio quality, catalogue size, per-stream payouts, and country reach.

  • PC World ☛ Planned obsolescence is now a Windows PC security nightmare

    In the lead-up to this mini apocalypse, Microsoft was rolling out the newer Secure Boot certificates to PCs, but a fair number of computers were still left out. The company issued a few warnings, but didn’t otherwise change course. Then, on June 24, it unexpectedly sprang into action, announcing an expansion of the automatic upgrades.

  • Alex Russell ☛ Abject Praise - Infrequently Noted

    It's perilous to disagree with someone as wise and thoughtful as Jeremy, but for the past fortnight his post in response to Apple's iOS 27 marketing invades my quiet moments like a cricket in the attic.

    "Why", I ruminate, "should someone who understands the state of play give Apple credit for doing less than the minimum while rubbishing those who have consistently done more?"

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Trademarks

    • Right of Publicity

      • CBC ☛ AI 'actor' Tilly Norwood isn't real. But the controversial creation will star in a real movie

        SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors and other performers in the U.S., has previously criticized Particle 6 for creating the "synthetic performer." Dozens of Hollywood actors have also voiced their distaste, and van der Velden has said she received death threats.

  • Copyrights

    • Digital Music News ☛ Legal Battle Between a Punk Singer and a Photographer Heats Up

      However, despite ruling that the photographs were “artistically relevant,” the judge denied Nelson’s anti-SLAPP motion—a legal tool designed to quickly dismiss lawsuits that hinder free speech. The court also indicated potential default judgements against Nelson’s studio for procedural delays, urging both parties to resolve the matter in mediation.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Taylor Swift Beats Poetry Copyright Lawsuit from Kimberly Marasco

      A federal judge has dismissed with prejudice a copyright infringement lawsuit that accused Taylor Swift of lifting creative elements from multiple poems across several albums.

    • India Times ☛ Denmark intervenes in EU court case over publishers' rights

      The Danish government has filed a written intervention in ​the European Court of Justice's ​case pitting tech companies against Belgium's government, citing ​the potential impact of the case on the rights of Danish media houses, the Culture Ministry said on Monday.