Leftovers

• Smithsonian Magazine ☛ This 700-Year-Old English Church Nearly Closed—but Then the Vicar Discovered a Stash of Gold Coins Under the Altar

  Inside the box were nine gold coins: 1999 Britannias—bullion produced by the Royal Mint—each with a face value of £100, but their current value is based on the gold market and other factors. The box also contained a note, written on Salvation Army-branded stationary. Dated to July 16, 2022, it reads, “Hi there, I’d like to donate these nine gold Britannias to Melling church—the plastic bag identifies a bullion dealer.” Signed: “James, servant of the living God.”

• Jim Grey ☛ Help me update my giant list of film-photo blogs

  Second, check whether your blog meets my base criteria for being on the list. They’re about making sure the blogs on the list have enough film content, are easy to follow, and allow for community: [...]

• Buttondown LLC ☛ I'm still alive

  The good news is that Logic for Programmers should be done and available in print hopefully in the next couple of weeks. Here's all of the printed proofs I've made so far: [...]

• Amber Settle ☛ From start to finish

  The draw for me were several students I knew who were graduating. At the time these students entered the university, I was still teaching only the introductory programming courses, so I was the first computer science instructor at DePaul for these students. They also became my advisees, so I had talked to them periodically during the intervening years. The two that I’m thinking of in particular are also moving on to complete a Masters degree at DePaul, and I’ve helped both of them in making the transition from undergraduate to graduate student. As a result, they both commented to me that I was there at the beginning of their time as an undergraduate at DePaul and was now going to be there at the end of their time as an undergraduate at DePaul. And while that’s true for a lot of students over the years, it felt more significant in these cases since I had so much contact with them. It made cheering for them as they crossed the stage to get their diplomas so much fun and also made it impossible to fall asleep, even as sleep deprived as I was.

• Annie Mueller ☛ I have no idea who celebrities are anymore

  I’ve never been a very good fan, it’s just not my thing. But cultural knowledge always seeps in. You just know some stuff like who’s famous and why, and you even have some sort of opinion about them.

  Until you don’t.

• Armin Ronacher ☛ The Tower Keeps Rising

  I feel that some vibecoded software changes somewhat randomly and unexpectedly. That made me think about Bruegel’s “The Tower of Babel” which shows an already quite chaotic depiction of the Tower of Babel. The story is usually told as one about pride and ambition and ultimately why people no longer speak the same language. But it is also a story about the unity that makes technological progress work.

• Bill Glover ☛ Build a 'shitty' web page

  The web does not need a consistent look and feel. It never has and it never will. This quote from Adam sums it up.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • CBC ☛ Pigeons’ shifting gaze could help drones navigate more like birds: UBC study

    A University of British Columbia-led study, published in the Current Biology, fitted homing pigeons with miniature backpacks carrying a tiny computer and head-mounted cameras to track how their eyes move during flight.

  • John D Cook ☛ Posterior mean of conjugate Bayesian models

    Common sense says that what you believe after seeing new data should be some sort of compromise between what you believed before and what the new data says. You don’t want to ignore previous information or new information.

    How much should new data change your prior beliefs? When prior judgment and new information are in conflict, which one should be given the benefit of the doubt?

  • John D Cook ☛ Posterior variance in conjugate models | Poisson-gamma

    A few days ago I wrote a post entitled Does additional data always reduce posterior variance?. In a nutshell, the answer is no, not always.

  • John D Cook ☛ ICD-10 chapters and code letters

    I’ve been thinking about ICD-10 codes; they come up a lot in my work.

    The ICD-10-CM standard is divided into 21 chapters, which generally correspond to the first letter of a code. However, a chapter may contain blocks beginning with more than one letter, and codes starting with a single letter, namely D, can span two chapters.

  • Alisa Sireneva ☛ Sorted rank coding

    I need a place to describe this algorithm, since it seems to be undocumented on the 'net, so here it is.

    SRC is a replacement for MTF in BWT-based compressors. According to OpenBWT, it’s the best known MTF replacement measured by compression ratio, if you don’t want to use context modeling.

  • Bartosz Milewski ☛ Tannakian reconstruction

    Two friends, Alice and Bob, live in the same city, but on the opposite sides of a wide river. Every night, Bob looks at the lights on the other side and tries to guess, which one belongs to Alice. They come up with a clever arrangement: Alice will turn on her lights for 10 minutes every night at 10 p.m. Every night Bob will take a long-exposure photo at the pre-arranged time. At the end of the year, Bob will superimpose all the photos, and hopefully the only bright spot will be Alice’s window. This is Tannakian reconstruction in a nutshell.

    A functor produces a picture of one category inside another. It’s a potentially lossy encoding, but it always preserves the structure of the source. If there is a connection (morphism) between two objects in the source category, there will always be a connection between their images in the target category.

    In general it’s impossible to recover the structure of the source category by looking at only one such picture. But if the target category has enough resolution, and we superimpose all available pictures, we can recover the morphisms of the source category.

• Career/Education

  • Seth Godin ☛ “Is it okay if I share my screen?”

    Throwing your powerpoint into the mix transforms the dynamic. It takes your face off the screen and makes everyone else irrelevant. It forbids interaction. And it prevents you from reacting to the room as it unfolds, since it’s linear.

  • Sean Goedecke ☛ What does "playing politics" mean for software engineers?

    The castle guard are not going around poisoning people or forming coalitions between the great powers. They are largely keeping their heads down. But in order to do that, they have to stay aware of the political currents, or they’re liable to do something catastrophically stupid: for instance, making an enemy of a powerful courtier, or arresting somebody who’s on an important mission for the king.

    Given that, the basic principles of playing politics are something like this: [...]

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Teachers are worried about students cheating with AI, but my survey suggests the deeper issue is learning

    An estimated 84% of high school students surveyed said they had used generative artificial intelligence for schoolwork in 2025, according to College Board, a nonprofit that administers the SAT and AP exams.

    As an assistant professor of school psychology studying artificial intelligence in K–12 education, I think the question is not only whether students are using AI to cheat, but whether there is evidence that learning actually happened.

• Hardware

  • System76 ☛ Welcome to the gamer’s dream machine

    If you’re a serious gamer or content creator and were ordering up your ideal laptop, what would it have?

  • Fabian Sanglard ☛ Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

    Ray Arnold's desk is much tidier. It features a CCTV screen, storage devices, two computers (a Mac and a SGI), and two monitors.

  • Dave Gauer ☛ Two month calendar format for pocket notebooks

    Minor note: I originally put my calendars near the end of my notebooks on the last few pages, but I put it in the middle of this one (you can see the staples in the picture above) and I like it. I think I’ll keep doing that.

  • Hackaday ☛ Can’t Find That ISA Sound Card? No Worries!

    Many older hackers will have at some point gotten rid of an old piece of hardware that they later ended up regretting. All those ISA cards were next to useless back in 2006, but now their relative rarity plus the popularity of retrocomputing makes them sought-after. But if it’s a sound card you’re after then never fear! [Schlae] has got you covered, with the Beavis Ultrasound. It may have a name reminiscent of a ’90s cartoon series, but it’s a clone of the Gravis Ultrasound from back in the day.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Sleep disorders rising in South Korea, sharpest spike among children under 10

    Experts pointed to mounting academic pressure and increased screen time as key factors.

  • France24 ☛ WHO launches first trial of antiviral to prevent Bundibugyo strain of Ebola

    The World Health Organization launched the first clinical trial on Tuesday to test whether an antiviral drug can prevent infection in people exposed to the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as the outbreak continues to outpace response efforts and spread beyond known chains of transmission.

  • Futurism ☛ A Staggering Number of People Are Dying Because of Record Heatwaves

    "It's time we woke up to the fact that we now live in a country with dangerously hot summers."

  • Ned Batchelder ☛ A place of certainty

    My mother is 86, and she is declining. Things that used to be easy for her now seem completely foreign. She was a programmer, writing software before I could read, so it is very strange to see her like this.

  • Futurism ☛ Lawsuit Claims the Mayo Clinic's Use of AI Is Butchering Patient Care

    Tucked inside her ten separate whistleblower complaints, MPR notes, is the allegation that the team working on MAYA knew the tool had an error rate as high as 67 percent. Eto alleges that instead of flagging that horrifying number, MAYA staffers tried to hide it.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • Scoop News Group ☛ 13 nations issue warning over Russian cyber targeting

    Officials once again urged defenders to take more preventative measures to thwart attacks from the Russian Federal Security Service Center 16, which has been actively targeting critical infrastructure for more than a decade. The hackers are also tracked as Berserk Bear, Energetic Bear, Crouching Yeti, Dragonfly, Ghost Blizzard and Static Tundra.

  • NSA ☛ NSA and Partners Release Guidance on Improving Router Hygiene to Protect Against Russian State-Sponsored Targeting > National Security Agency/Central Security Service > Press Release View

    The joint CSA details how the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Center 16 continues to exploit vulnerable and poorly configured networks. This is an ongoing issue that has impacted various U.S. and foreign networks across multiple sectors, including the Defense Industrial Base, communications, energy, financial services, government facilities and healthcare sectors. NSA and co-sealing agencies emphasize the importance of basic router hygiene as a means for companies and organizations to deter state-level cyber actors.

    To proactively defend against these threats, organizations are urged to adopt these top hardening measures: [...]

  • Michael Tsai ☛ macOS 27 Public Beta

  • Dan Q ☛ I Regret To Say That GMail is Now a Spam Farm, or, Why You Should Really Get That Dedicated Email Address Now

    GMail’s been going gradually downhill for many years. It’s been a slow decline, compared to many enshittified services, but it’s still very-clearly happening. Aside from the long-established privacy/big data concerns – especially if you use any other Google services, or fail to block their Web trackers – they’ve just devolved into a service that doesn’t “wow” like it did when it was launched. It’s slow, it’s clunky, and it increasingly shovels AI down your throat, whether you want it or not.

    If you own a domain name, you should already be using that as the domain of your email address, of course. This detaches your email address from any specific provider, which makes it much easier to change your email provider whenever you like: it puts the power in your hands. You can do this whether you’re using GMail or any other provider.

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

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Book publishers sue Google for copyright infringement over Gemini AI training

      The case, filed in federal court in New York, has been brought by three publishers – Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier – and bestselling American author Scott Turow.

      The publishers argue that Google repurposed books that had been supplied for limited services such as Google Books, Google Play Books and Google Scholar. Those services allowed Google to use the works in specific ways – for example, to display searchable snippets or sell ebooks – but not, the lawsuit claims, to copy them for training commercial AI products.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Memory crisis sends smartphone market into steep decline

      Memory prices extended their climb as suppliers prioritised AI data centre customers over consumer electronics, forcing manufacturers to pass higher component costs on to consumers through price hikes, particularly for entry-level and mid-range devices.

    • India Times ☛ AI economic impact: Nobel laureates among more than 200 experts urging action on AI's economic impact

      The statement has called for deeper research ​on AI's economic impacts and ⁠to start ‌building policies and institutions required to ​ensure the ​technology benefits society and to navigate ⁠risks such as large-scale job displacement.

    • Futurism ☛ Journalist Alarmed When He's Fired, But Company Keeps Posting AI Slop Under His Name

      “The five articles were just like lazy, obviously slop, obviously there’s not a real person that is behind that,” the Stockholm-based writer fumed.

      A statement from ClickOut Media didn’t address why it was effectively impersonating a former employee with AI.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Journalist fired by Clickout Media saw robot reporter take over their byline

      The articles appeared in the days after he left ClickOut’s German operation and still remain live online, but under a different person’s byline.

    • Futurism ☛ Law School Bans Laptops and Phones as AI Cheating Scandal Grows

      An announcement from the school didn’t explicitly mention AI cheating. But the changes come amid a backdrop of significant public concern over generative AI’s impact on education, and plunging literacy and numeracy skills among students.

      “With AI disrupting higher education, our commitment to rigorous legal education also must mean openness to even rapid adaptation,” the statement said.

    • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post — Research Needs a Shared Standard for AI Disclosure

      Following the launch of ChatGPT, researchers quickly recognized the potential for using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools in their work, as well as the potential academic integrity concerns this may give rise to. In this context, the longstanding expectations that researchers acknowledge work that is not their own, and describe their methods transparently, have become more relevant than ever. Researchers should be as transparent about their use of artificial intelligence (AI) as about any other contributions to scholarly outputs — this is a matter of research integrity comparable to disclosure of funding sources, conflicts of interest, and acknowledgements.

    • Serge Zaitsev ☛ Tensor is the might

      A tensor is nothing but a flat array of numbers, plus some metadata telling you how to interpret those numbers as a multi-dimensional object. We all learned that 2D arrays can be better represented as 1D array plus a number of rows/columns - this is essentially what a tensor is.

    • Erik Kroes ☛ When are you the creator of something?

      When are you the creator of something?

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Why aren’t AI companies competing directly with their customers? (13 Jul 2026)

      As a larval hyperlexic, I just didn't understand what a bookseller could possibly buy with my money that was better than the books they already had? Of course, then I became a bookseller and discovered that Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is shit") applies to a bookstore's wares as much as it does to anything else. I also acquired a monthly rent obligation and discovered just how important money could be.

      Nevertheless, Omar Khayyám's question stuck with me, especially when I fell down a years-long rabbit-hole of learning about scams and the finance sector (but I repeat myself). Every get-rich-quick schemer will tell you that they've found the infinite money hack, which they will sell to you for a remarkably reasonable sum. Likewise, every stock picker claims they can outperform a simple low-load index fund, and all they ask of you is a few hundred basis points in exchange for multiplying your wealth beyond the dreams of Creosote. Neither one has a good answer to Khayyám's question: if you can make all the money with your amazing system, why do you need my money?

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Terrorists are using AI — and the chatbot is killing them

      The chatbot’s advice killed two-thirds of the squad! A chatbot took out 18 terrorists without firing a shot.

      Why did the bot suggest practicing with a flaming pit full of broken glass? Because Boko Haram got the AI to tell them this by asking for script ideas for an action movie. That was their jailbreak.

      They could have filled the pits with water or something for practice. But no, the bot said fire and glass, so they used fire and glass.

    • Eamon Caddigan ☛ Hating AI in 2026

      I was proposing my doctoral dissertation fifteen years ago when neural network machine learning models entered a second Renaissance. Over the ensuing decade they eclipsed other techniques for classifying and generating many kinds of digital material—including images, sound, and text. The technical details aren’t important here, but the text-generating models support a neat trick: they have become so good at picking the next words in a sequence that they can be incorporated into programs that create an illusion, for a while anyway, of understanding instructions and mimicking an actual human in conversation. We call these programs “chatbots” and they have enthralled business leaders, politicians, and most of my professional sphere.

      People have lost their minds over a neat trick. There was a period, hopefully nearing its end finally, when it was common for otherwise sensible people to think that next-word-generating machines were close to achieving human-like consciousness. Experts in cognition and language have continually explained why this won’t happen, but that’s a mania for you. People still call this whole suite of technologies “artificial intelligence,” so that’s what I’ll do here.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ AI-generated code has made security debt a governance problem

      AI-generated code is part of everyday software development. Developers use it to prototype, refactor, troubleshoot, and move from idea to implementation with less friction than ever before. The productivity gains are undeniable, which means that security leaders now face a hard question: whether their organizations can govern the risk that AI creates at that same speed.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ I can’t stop hearing “AI is inevitable” – but Instagram’s rapid removal of a controversial AI tool is proof that human voices still have power

      Meta’s quick reversal of the tagging feature inside Muse Image hints at the power of the public voice in the AI era. While many have said that AI is inevitable, the outcry following the controversial feature hints that the resistance to AI isn’t just limited to artists who make a living creating what a computer is now trying to imitate.

    • Martin Alderson ☛ Winners and losers in the coming AI margin collapse (part 2)

      As always a week is a long time in AI. In the previous article I discussed the impact of "good enough" models for many agentic workflows - focusing on GLM5.2. In the brief spell of time since I wrote that, Grok 4.5 was released with similar capabilities and is also aggressively priced, which strongly hints at a glut of similar quality models coming out.

    • Ray Myers ☛ Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

      Anthropic is actively campaigning to end software engineering. They need you to believe they can do that. Well, maybe it’s not you that they need to convince. Maybe it’s your C-Suite, various world leaders, or the manager of your retirement fund. They’ve raised $132 billion in investment, and are approaching an IPO valued over $1 trillion. Since they cannot show profitability, this depends on selling their hypothetical future impact.

      In literary terms, Anthropic is an unreliable narrator.

  • Social Control Media

    • El País ☛ Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist: ‘The possibility of AI taking over most jobs is very real’

      Haidt came to Madrid to speak about these issues at the Rafael del Pino Foundation. He took the opportunity to visit some high-ranking politicians, including Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. “Both agree that it’s necessary to raise the minimum age for access to social media,” Haidt notes. He supports not allowing its use until the age of 16.

    • European Commission ☛ Revision of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive - AVMSD

      The review of the AVMSD is part of the Commission’s commitments in the recently presented European Democracy Shield.

      As the media landscape quickly evolves, so do the viewers' preferences to access media via online platforms.

    • Manton Reece ☛ Manton Reece - Reevaluating the Twitter / X API

      If there’s a conflict in principles, we should do what helps people blog. We can’t control whether X will succeed or fail, just as the principled statement I made when I quit Twitter in 2012 made little difference. Micro.blog doesn’t “support” Elon Musk any more than we support Mark Zuckerberg. We support users who want to blog and reach an audience on other platforms.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • New Eastern Europe ☛ Eastern Europe digitized fast — it must now protect its systems - New Eastern Europe

      At the same time, Eastern Europe occupies a particularly sensitive strategic landscape at the intersection of multiple competing interests. The region is economically integrated with the European Union while parts of it are still dependent on Russia for energy. Russia’s geographic proximity has also gained newfound importance since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022. In this environment, cyber-attacks have become regularly conducted tools aimed at intelligence gathering, testing European countries’ institutional resilience, creating disruption, and undermining public trust.

    • Bitdefender ☛ The ransomware negotiator who was working for the other side

      Specialist ransomware negotiation firms handle communications with criminal gangs on a victim's behalf. They know how the ransomware gangs operate, how to buy time, and how to push back on extortionate demands. They can help manage the technical side of any payment if needed, and help a corporate victim assess whether decryptors actually work.

      What victims don't expect is that their trusted negotiator might be separately sharing details of the victim's cyber-insurance policy and negotiation strategy directly with the attackers themselves.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • ITV ☛ 'This Morning helped me catch my Catfisher!'

      Earlier this year, we met 19-year-old Sasha-Jay Davies who was trapped in a catfishing nightmare. Her image was being used by a scammer to trick unsuspecting men online, but after meeting lawyer Yair Cohen on our sofa, the duo managed to hunt and catch the person responsible. After receiving a public apology in court yesterday, the catfish catchers are back on the sofa to share how they got the happy ending Sasha-Jay was hoping for.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Estonia weighs limits on bulk communications‑data retention

      The ministry notes in the explanatory memorandum that the aim is to change Estonia's communications‑data regime so that people's fundamental rights are protected in line with EU law — meaning the current state‑mandated, large‑scale retention of communications data will be discontinued.

    • Futurism ☛ LAPD Abandons Flock Contract After Making a Horrifying Discovery

      “This contract is not being renewed because of serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights issues, particularly around privacy and the data that is being collected from these cameras,” LAPD’s chief information officer Dean Gialamas told ABC in a statement. “The LAPD had to make a difficult decision, in this case discontinuing using Flock services until we can get those data, privacy, security and sharing concerns ironed out through a contractual relationship.”

    • ABC ☛ LAPD ending agreement with surveillance company Flock Safety amid privacy concerns - ABC7 Los Angeles

      The cameras have drawn mixed reactions from residents. Some support the surveillance technology, while others argue it violates privacy rights. LAPD officials said those concerns influenced the department's decision not to renew the agreement.

    • Futurism ☛ The Backlash Is So Strong That People With "Pervert Glasses" Are Afraid to Use Them in Public

      Influencers, mostly men, have been using the glasses to inconspicuously — and non-consensually — capture footage of themselves approaching women and attempting to hit on them, interactions they’ve then posted online for content. Some wearers have even attempted to extort victims of covert recordings for cash. That’s on top of serious allegations of alleged privacy breaches by Meta itself.

    • Engadget ☛ The Meta Glasses Backlash Is Changing How (Or If) People Use Them

      On Bluesky, posts regularly suggest that people who wear "pervert glasses" be punched in the face. The criticism of eye-worn gadgets capable of surveillance isn't new, though the online discourse — "Meta Glasses" repeatedly trended on Meta's own Threads app last week, for the wrong reasons — seems to have intensified following the release of Meta's latest cheaper lineup, as well as reports about an unreleased facial recognition feature for the product. For whatever reason, this time the backlash seems to be having a real effect.

    • Futurism ☛ US Companies Are Realizing That Chinese AI Models Are Way Cheaper, Ditch American Ones

      Chinese models are “the elephant in the room,” Eugene Cheah, CEO of the AI platform Featherless AI, told the FT. “Enterprises are starting to realize, ‘Hey, we don’t need the best model, we can use the faster, cheaper models.'”

    • EDRI ☛ When the facts change, adequacy must be reviewed

      Under this Framework, personal data can be transferred from the EU to certified US organisations without additional transfer safeguards, based on the European Commission’s finding that the United States ensures a level of protection for personal data that is essentially equivalent to that guaranteed under EU law. This is not only about data protection, but also about the rule of law. The Commission relied on the existence of independent institutions capable of enforcing data protection rules. When the independence of those institutions is called into question, the Commission must reassess whether the conditions for adequacy remain fulfilled.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Joint Letter: Protect VPNs

      As organisations committed to a safe, secure, and rights-respecting internet, we are concerned by suggestions that the Government restrict virtual private networks (VPNs). VPNs are cybersecurity tools. They help people protect personal information on public Wi-Fi, enable secure remote working, allow students to access education networks safely, and help small businesses protect their systems. VPNs are essential for human rights defenders and journalists, domestic abuse survivors, the LGBTQ+ community, and others at heightened risk online.

      The evidence does not support assumptions that young people use VPNs to bypass age restrictions. Ofcom’s research found that only around 3% of children had used VPNs to access content meant for older audiences. Evidence from Australia shows children are much more likely to get around age checks by not being asked, giving false information, or even drawing on a moustache.

    • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Four awful new privacy-eroding features from Meta in a month

      The feature was so outrageous that it took the company only three days to backtrack. In an update to its press release, Meta said it “heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark” and that, as a result, “it’s no longer available.”

    • Kyle Reddoch ☛ Waze Terms Update: Privacy and Location Data Risks - CybersecKyle

      You open it because traffic is bad, the route looks smarter than whatever your car suggests, and you would rather know about the crash before you are sitting behind it. That kind of usefulness lowers our guard. The app helps right now. The privacy tradeoff sits quietly in the background.

      That is why Waze’s recent terms update deserves a sober look. Not a panic cycle, and not a hand-wave either. A navigation app is not just another free utility. It handles location history, route patterns, device signals, advertising context, and account data. When the terms and privacy policy change, the right response is to read them like they apply to something sensitive, because they do.

    • 9to5Google ☛ Samsung Health will delete your data without AI training consent

      Data included here includes step counts, sleep, medication data, cycle tracking, and even your full health records including treatments, test results, and more.

      Opting out of this consent via the Samsung Health app’s settings shows a pop-up saying that Health will delete the user’s data and not sync it going forward if they withdraw consent. This would, at bare minimum, mean that data would no longer sync across devices, but it could have impacts beyond that.

    • HowTo Geek ☛ Samsung is pushing users to train AI with their personal health data or lose it

      Samsung Health users are seeing a notice upon opening the app titled "Consent to the Use of Health Data for AI Training and Modelling." The notice clearly states that Samsung will use health data, including activity, health records, medication, and menstrual cycles, to inform its AI models, sometimes with "human review." It comes with a new toggle in the settings, and while you can opt-out, doing so pops up a warning that you will "not be able to sync health data" with your Samsung account and that it will be deleted unless the law requires otherwise.

    • PC Mag ☛ Samsung Health App May Erase Your Data If You Opt Out of AI Training

      It is unclear what user data Samsung will collect if the toggle is enabled. A support page cited by various news outlets indicates that it could have access to your body measurements, nutrition data, step count, sleep metrics, medication data, health records, and cycle tracking data.

      We’ve reached out to Samsung to confirm and will update the story if they respond.

    • Android Police ☛ Samsung is deleting your health data if you refuse to let it train its AI

      But there's a kicker here. If you turn it off, then a warning pops up, informing you that turning this option off will delete your existing Samsung Health data and stop any further syncing with Samsung's servers.

    • Neowin ☛ Samsung will delete your health data if you don't let them use it to train AI

      Apparently, the company has introduced a "Consent to the Use of Health Data for AI training and modelling" toggle deep in the settings of the Samsung Health app and is forcing people to agree to these terms if they want to back up their information. This toggle gives Samsung the right to use personal metrics for training and algorithm refinement. When you try to turn off this option, the app stops you in your tracks with a warning that reads:

      "Withdraw from this agreement?"

      "You will not be able to sync health data with your Samsung account and your health data will be deleted unless retained pursuant to applicable law. If retention is required, we will erase it as soon as the required retention period ends."

    • SlashGear ☛ Utility Companies Want To Take Control Of Your Home's Smart Thermostat

      The idea behind giving utility companies access to thermostats stems from efforts to reduce strain on power grids across the United States. Remote access allows companies to strategically tweak usage at specific points during the day and night, and when grid strain approaches critical levels. In Arizona, three different utilities have pushed for such agreements, seeking to avoid grid overload and blackouts during extreme heat events. Meanwhile, Ohio is pushing to formally authorize these voluntary demand response programs via House Bill 427. These are just two of many state-specific energy-conserving initiatives in play at this point.

      Suffice it to say, any law or agreement pertaining to the transfer of thermostat use to utility companies has sparked controversy. There are benefits to the concept, but not everyone is sold on it.

  • Confidentiality

    • The Record ☛ Hackers steal Lidl customer data from external service provider

      The retailer said the incident did not affect its online shopping platform itself but involved a separately stored customer database maintained by a third-party provider. According to notifications sent to Lidl's German, Belgian and Dutch customers on Friday, the attackers briefly accessed the file and exfiltrated part of its contents.

      The stolen information includes customers' titles, first and last names, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth and customer numbers.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Straits Times ☛ China urges Europe to stop backing 'illegal' South China Sea ruling to avoid harming ties

    China's foreign ministry on Tuesday called the European side to be cautious in its words and deeds on the South China Sea and stop endorsing the "illegal ruling" to prevent impact on China-EU ties and cooperation.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China does not seek 'sphere of influence' in ties with Pacific island nations, foreign minister says

    China "has no geopolitical intentions and does not seek a so-called 'sphere of influence'" in its dealings with Pacific island nations, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his counterpart from the Solomon Islands in Beijing on Tuesday.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Starmer to issue social media curfew for teenagers in bid to crack down on addictive late-night scrolling

    Technology secretary Liz Kendall will announce that features keeping users hooked, like endless video reels and algorithmic feeds, will be automatically disabled.

  • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ Elon Musk’s $1 Million Voter Checks Likely Illegal, Wisconsin Board Says

    Prosecutors have 40 days to report back to the commission on whether they will bring criminal charges against Musk for violating election bribery guidelines.

  • New York Times ☛ Europe Takes Step Toward Possible Social Media Ban for Children

    The report, by a child psychiatrist, Professor Jörg Fegert, and an epidemiologist, Dr. Maria Melchior, also recommended that 13- to 18-year-olds should have access only to social media platforms that have introduced safety features such as limits on infinite scrolling. It said toddlers under the age of 3 should have no screen time at all.

  • Defence Web ☛ Worldwide piracy incidents down to lowest level in 34 years

    The IMB, part of the International Chamber of Commerce Commercial Crime Services Division, warns against complacency. It said crew safety is always at risk and some resurgence of Somali piracy requires the need for continued vigilance.

    Thirty-eight incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships were recorded in the first half of the year. This is substantially down from 90 incidents for the same period last year and 60 in 2024.

  • India Times ☛ EU to limit children's access to social media gradually

    The European Union has been mulling a social media ban since a push by EU states, including Greece and France, for limiting access, with pressure intensifying for a bloc-wide ban like Australia.

    To help the EU take decisions based on evidence, von der Leyen tasked an expert panel of doctors, academics, youth representatives and parents to advise the bloc. They delivered their recommendations Monday.

  • Salon ☛ "There was never a case": Judge tosses Trump IRS settlement, accuses admin of settling with itself

    In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams accused the entire case of being a bit of play-acting between the president and an executive department entirely under his control. Williams said that Trump and the Treasury were using a sham case to lend “legitimacy” to a redirection of taxpayer funds toward Trump and his allies.

  • The Conversation ☛ Why the US-China Moon race could turn into a lunar land grab

    That’s part of the reason China is on track to catch up with the US and Russia in terms of achievements in space, despite starting decades later. As of 2021 they operate a modular, permanently crewed space station called Tiangong. While not as large as the International Space Station, there is plenty of scope for expansion.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ EU paves way for banning social media for children

    Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, cited a recent report by the child psychiatrist, Professor Jörg Fegert, and epidemiologist, Dr. Maria Melchior, which pointed to harmful features of social media such as the infinite scroll, autoplay, recommendation algorithms and persistent notifications.

    The study revealed that across Europe, the average child spends four to six hours on social media daily, with about 60% of those children experiencing what the authors wrote were “socio-emotional development and susceptibility to mental health issues.” This has resulted in widespread sleep and concentration problems, and increased rates of depression and anxiety.

  • The Record ☛ EU leaders eye social media ban for children under age 13

    Von der Leyen told the Financial Times on Monday that she is considering a “harmonised EU-wide delay to social media” for kids under age 13 who are not under the supervision of a caregiver.

  • Robert Reich ☛ The Only Way To End Trump's Endless War

    But America is still a democracy, and we’re not willing to endure a lot of pain simply to restore the status quo we had before the brainless egomaniac in the Oval Office decided to attack Iran.

    We’ll start voting in three months, and most of us can be expected to vote out the bums in Congress who have supported him. Then Congress can pass a resolution revoking Trump’s power to pursue this costly and unnecessary war, which is the only way to end it.

    Unless, of course, he converts us into a dictatorship before then.

  • The Barents Observer ☛ Satellite imagery indicates air-defence systems redeployed from Severodvinsk

    Satellite imagery analysed by the Barents Observer indicates that at least two dozen mobile S-300 and S-400 long-range surface-to-air missile systems have been withdrawn from two air-defence positions protecting Severodvinsk since 2024.

    The systems have most likely been redeployed to southern Russia, the Moscow region or occupied parts of Ukraine to strengthen air defences following repeated Ukrainian strikes.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ EU chief pledges social media ban to protect children from ‘predatory algorithms’

    Promising a draft law in the autumn, she declined to specify a minimum age, but said she found the panel’s “staged approach” to internet use – recommendations by age group - “very convincing”.

  • The Local DK ☛ EU to limit children's access to social media

    A legal proposal will come in the second half of the year, von der Leyen added, but she is expected to give an indication of what the restrictions will look like in September.

    "We need to consider a phased and gradual access for different age ranges," she said, adding children should only be allowed access to "safe" platforms from the age of 13 onwards.

  • Yle ☛ Stubb and Zelensky hold talks at gym

    Russia's objective is to undermine European societies and erode support for Ukraine, says the Finnish president.

  • Yle ☛ Supo warns companies of Russian cyber espionage campaign

    Supo said the threat is aimed primarily at corporate network infrastructure, not the home [Internet] routers previously highlighted.

  • The Record ☛ Russia's FSB blamed for Poland grid attack as UK and EU impose first joint cyber sanctions

    A cyberattack that threatened to cut heating to half a million people in Poland last winter was formally attributed Monday to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), as the United Kingdom and European Union imposed their first coordinated package of cyber sanctions against Russian hackers.

    The allies blamed Center 16, the FSB’s signals intelligence arm, for acts of attempted cyber sabotage targeting Poland’s energy sector and water treatment facilities, alongside “a wide range of malicious cyber activities with growing severity.”

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Trump Fired Pam Bondi the Day After DOJ Agreed to Share Epstein Files with New Mexico

    Perhaps most interesting, though, is a letter that New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sent to Blanche last month, reported by MS-Now here, demanding that DOJ finally turn over files relevant to his investigation of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes in the state. It laid out a timeline showing how DOJ has given him the runaround, promising cooperation but ultimately giving him none.

• Environment

  • The Independent UK ☛ UK’s water crisis could cost lives, former environment secretary warns

    He called for a number of measures to prevent “serious flooding”, including a ban on front gardens being paved over for cars, which stops water from draining properly.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Who is ‘stealing’ Bali’s water? How tourism siphoned off a prized resource

    The 52-year-old, who goes by the name Parta, is lucky because his plot sits high enough in the irrigation system so that he still gets his share of water. He fears he knows where the rest is going. “Companies take our water,” he says, “and bring it to the tourism places.” He gestures at the terraces below, a patchwork of green and brown that was once all green. “The forest is getting smaller. The springs are drying.”

  • Silicon Angle ☛ New York becomes first US state to impose a data center moratorium

    Executive Order No. 62 took effect on signing and covers hyperscale data centers that draw 50 megawatts of power or more. While it’s in force, the state Department of Environmental Conservation will not issue discretionary permits that have not already been deemed complete.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Lies Told About Data Centres

    That is one reason why we are seeing a bunch of these proposals here. And these companies benefit from a lack of transparency.

  • Science Alert ☛ Bacteria Are Thriving In a Radioactive Former Soviet Mine – Leaving Only 5% of The Uranium Behind : ScienceAlert

    "Our group's investigations had already revealed that bacteria can use uranium dissolved in water for their metabolism when they have access to glycerol as a food source," explains microbiologist Evelyn Krawczyk-Bärsch, of HZDR.

    "Our study has revealed for the first time that bacteria supplied with glycerol as a carbon source can convert toxic uranium dissolved in water into a stable chemical compound."

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Why climate scientists need to talk more about the very worst‑case scenarios

    As scientists learn more about how climate change could trigger catastrophic flooding, wholesale collapse of food supplies and millions of heat-related deaths, there is a growing realization that such risks need to be more widely understood and acted on. Too many people remain unaware of what could actually happen. Disasters like these are possible. Crucially, they are not yet inevitable.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Nearly 150 Gray Whales Have Been Found Dead Along North America's Pacific Shore This Year, Prompting Scientists to Sound the Alarm

    The population of eastern gray whales, which annually migrate along the West Coast between the Arctic and Mexico, has been declining in recent years. Conservationists say 2026 could be one of the deadliest years on record for the marine mammals

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ AI Data Centers and the Concentration of Wealth

    Opposition to AI data centers has emerged as a primary theme in US politics, one that—surprisingly—doesn’t fall along party lines. We applaud people coming together for constructive debate on any issue, and agree that communities need to evaluate whether any economic benefits these data centers bring is worth their costs. Still, we worry that a focus on data centers obscures the larger impacts of AI on people’s lives: the concentration of power of AI companies, and their widespread political and financial influence.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Sleeping robotaxi riders are triggering 911 calls and straining first responders

      As companies like Alphabet Inc. and Tesla Inc. bring self-driving taxis to more cities, the messier aspects of serving unpredictable humans are becoming harder to ignore. Passengers are falling asleep, spilling drinks, dropping food, vomiting, experiencing medical emergencies and, in at least two instances, giving birth in the cars. They stumble out of the vehicles and forget to close the doors, forcing the operators to pay nearby gig workers to do it.

    • Terence Eden ☛ I’m a USB-C Maximalist

      It has a hefty USB-C PD (Power Delivery) port for rapid charging of my phone and laptop. Two other USB-C ports for my other gadgets. And a couple of legacy USB-A ports which were redundant. The pass through was useful for using the same socket as the hotel's TV / lamp / coffee maker.

    • Associated Press ☛ Passenger partly sucked out of window soon after flight takes off from Greece

      One passenger, identified only as Christina, told Radio Thessaloniki that some passengers panicked and screamed and that one passenger was partially sucked out of the window.

      “His whole head, neck, shoulders” were pulled out of the window, she said, adding that those seated near him pulled him back in.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ Trump Cuts Two Utah National Monuments by More Than 90%

      Trump plans to cut nearly 3 million acres from Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument combined, reducing both monuments to less than 10% their original size, according to presidential proclamations signed Monday afternoon.

  • Overpopulation

    • Western Water ☛ Feds open doors on two key California water meetings

      The federal agency that delivers water to millions of farms, cities, and communities across the American West has put two important California water meetings on the calendar for late July 2026, and the public is invited to both.

• Finance

  • New York Times ☛ China’s Economy Grows at Slowest Pace in Years

    Economic growth of 4.3 percent in the second quarter, versus the same period last year, reflected a broad slump outside of the country’s export-oriented manufacturing might.

  • Futurism ☛ The Economics of Data Centers Creating Jobs Are So Bad That They Sound Like a Joke

    In theory, more tax revenue means money for schools, roads, and first responders. In practice, states and counties are waving those taxes in order to entice tech companies to set up shop — while existing campuses put major strain on local communities. One analysis found that Georgia, Virginia, and Texas each lose over $1 billion a year to state data center incentives, while at least fourteen states don’t even disclose data center tax breaks in the first place.

    The down-stream impacts don’t really materialize either. Researchers at Georgia Tech found that in rural areas, data centers typically employ fewer than 100 permanent workers and are likely to import specialized services from outside the community.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Paid $2 Million by South Korean Company Facing Trade Investigation

    The payment illustrates the minefield Mr. Convicted Felon has created by maintaining personal financial ties with foreign businesses while he is in office.

  • Salon ☛ It's time to reclaim the Luddite

    Casting Luddites as anti-technology, in other words, has slandered an historic labor uprising as a destructive tantrum thrown by fearful, hidebound cranks, and Murphy’s reference to them underscores that the term retains its power to invalidate objections to and skepticism about the weaponization of technology as a synonym for progress. As Merchant points out, the AI founders who misrepresent objections to their technology as ideological rather than material — such as concerns about environmental impact, inadequate regulation, and the theft of intellectual property — are using a similar playbook, portraying anti-AI protests as the predictable backlash of people resisting progress. The difference is that history is no longer written solely by the winners, and today’s industrialists no longer have a monopoly on shaping the narrative.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Suddenly, Hormuz is Less Crucial Than It Was

    To see what I’m talking about, start with a question: Why was oil so cheap just before this latest confrontation?

  • The New Leaf Journal ☛ Facts About the Full and Semi Centennial Presidents

    For this article, I decided to dig into some facts about the President presiding over each of these five celebrations.

  • Ken Klippenstein ☛ Trump Summons "Poltergeist" to Go After Opponents

    The summit is called the “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism.” Unlike familiar organized terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or ISIS, “political terrorism” refers to domestic opposition, here and abroad.

  • Jono Alderson ☛ Zombie companies

    Some companies fail years before they stop making money.

    They continue to grow, renew contracts, acquire competitors and announce record quarters. Their share price holds. Their market share looks reassuring. Internally, the dashboards are green, the board is pleased, and the strategy appears to be working.

  • The Next Move ☛ Lindsey Graham's Choices

    The late senator knew right from wrong and did the wrong thing anyway.

  • The Cyber Show ☛ And Deliver Us From Tech Evil

    On the Cyber Show we look carefully at technology from a humane and scientific point of view. We consider the psychological and political forces in play with as much nuance as we can, including perennial tensions around defence and preparedness versus belligerence, medical advances versus social costs and false hope, and the pressures on citizens, developers and politicians to navigate the complexities of technology, freedom, opportunity, security and dignity.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Gerontocracy’s failure mode (14 Jul 2026)

    The problem is that once the atavistic, impulsive elements of your project escape containment, the resultant turbulence sucks everyone else into their chaotic vortex. How can you plan for anything when you're buffeted by endless stunts, feints, and distractions?

    Nowhere is this failure to plan more vivid than in the age distribution of both chambers of the US legislature, its presidential candidates, and its judicial appointments. What's more, this is equally true of the Democrats and the Republicans.

  • India Times ☛ India must build resilient software and hardware systems to withstand cyber threats: MeitY Secretary

    "In this particular space, there is no other option but to build domestic capacity," he said.

  • Vox ☛ Pope Leo XIV excommunicated Catholics who ordained their own bishops.

    But David Gibson thinks the Pope’s strategy of dealing with this radical group of followers tells us something bigger about how we deal with our stateside politics. Gibson is the director of the Center on Religion and

    Culture at Fordham University.

    Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Gibson about the Catholic drama, what this schism represents, and why it might be a losing battle to go up against the pope.

  • SQ Magazine ☛ How Old Is Google? Founding Date, Age, and Company History

    Google is 27 years old, founded on September 4, 1998, which makes it younger than the World Wide Web it helped organize and older than most of the smartphones people use to search it. The company was built by two Stanford PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who started it as a research project before it became the front door to the internet. The history below covers the founding date, the founders, the original name, the IPO, and the corporate restructuring that turned Google into a subsidiary of Alphabet.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Oligarchy in Action: The Case of Corporate Tax Cuts

    Americans, then, overwhelmingly believe that corporate taxes should go up — yet they keep going down. Why?

    Part of the answer is campaign finance, which was increasingly dominated by the interests of capital even before Citizens United unleashed a tsunami of billionaire money: [...]

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Apple Sues OpenAI Over Trade Secrets

    This seems like a weak response, given that Apple says it reported its findings to OpenAI in February and never heard back. Presumably, they’ve already investigated but see the situation as serious enough that they need to say as little as possible.

    It’s not clear to me the extent to which Apple believes the behavior was limited to the named defendants. It’s hard to believe that the rest of OpenAI’s leadership—including Altman and Ive—were unaware, given the scale of their recruiting from Apple. It’s equally hard to believe that they were aware and thought they could get away with it. I guess little from Altman would surprise me at this point. I’d like to believe that Ive wasn’t part of it, but then are we to believe that his former coworkers all kept him in the dark?

  • BoingBoing ☛ Giant participation trophy appears on the National Mall for Trump’s Iran War "effort"

    Guerrilla artists Secret Handshake have installed a giant gold participation trophy for Trump on the National Mall, hoping that if the president receives enough shiny objects, he may stop trying to collect wars.

    The installation also doubles as a trophy donation center, inviting the public to drop off personal trophies, medals, and ribbons for Trump to claim as his own. The theory is simple: if the president can be made to feel enough like a winner, maybe fewer countries will need to be bombed for emotional regulation.

  • Yle ☛ FM Valtonen summons Russian ambassador

    Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen (NCP) on Monday said she had summoned Russia's ambassador to Helsinki, Pavel Kuznetsov, in response to Russian cyber activities.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New Eastern Europe ☛ "Russian disinformation is effective primarily because it exploits pre-existing divisions rather than creating them from scratch" - New Eastern Europe

      An additional factor influencing the evolution of public attitudes is the phenomenon commonly described in academic literature as “crisis fatigue” or “compassion fatigue”. For several years, the Polish society has lived in the immediate vicinity of an armed conflict that remains highly visible in political discourse and media coverage. Prolonged exposure to reports of violence, insecurity, and human suffering can lead to emotional exhaustion and a gradual decline in public engagement. This mechanism has been widely documented in psychological and sociological research on societies experiencing long-term humanitarian crises.

    • Karl Bode ☛ The Lies They're Telling Towns And Tribes About The Benefits Of AI Data Centers

      These organizations are useful to corporate power because they parrot the goals and aims of corporate power, but they do so under a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-academic veneer designed to trick news audiences into believing they're reading the scientific insights of an objective subject matter expert.

      I've run into the PPI consistently during my research on broadband. They can often be found breathlessly insisting that modest oversight of shitty telecom monopolies will stifle innovation, or that popular, community-owned and operated broadband networks are some kind of reckless socialism run amok.

      Anyway, the Institute's spokesperson, Mr. Mandel, is lying. Plunking down an AI data center in the middle of rural West Virginia will not magically draw a bunch of innovative new startups to the region. And the 5ms or so lower latency from having a server farm in your backyard offers no tangible difference to AI service quality.

      That's simply not an actual thing.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Straits Times ☛ Ex-Malaysian PM’s wife Rosmah files defamation suit against Harith Iskander over comedy show

    The alleged defamation occurred during Harith’s performance in Melaka on Jan 17.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • New York Times ☛ Expelled from China

    A New York Times correspondent was kicked out of the country after reporting on the struggles of everyday Chinese. Here’s her story.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ US creates task force to prosecute leaks to news media, Hegseth says

    The U.S. Department of Justice and the Pentagon have created a joint task force to identify and prosecute what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described as unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information to news media.

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ demands answers over reported jailing of Jordanian sports journalist

    “When cases involving journalists are shrouded in secrecy, public confidence in judicial institutions and professional accountability mechanisms is weakened,” said CPJ’s Levant Program Coordinator Joud Hasan. “The public has a legitimate interest in understanding the legal justification for proceedings against Al-Alaiwat and how they comply with Jordan’s obligations to protect press freedom and fundamental rights.”

  • CPJ ☛ Moroccan authorities arrest journalist Ali Lmrabet over alleged false information

    Lmrabet, a journalist and blogger with over 200 thousand followers on Facebook and YouTube combined, has faced harassment for more than two decades because of his reporting and criticism of the Moroccan authorities. He founded the now-defunct French-language weekly Demain and its Arabic-language sister publication Doumane.

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ calls for accountability from Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche over DOJ press freedom violations

    “The Justice Department has weaponized its authorities to silence journalists for reporting on the administration,” said José Zamora, CPJ’s regional director for the Americas. “Acting AG Blanche must answer for his role in these press freedom violations and reaffirm the Department’s commitment to uphold the rule of law and First Amendment protections.”

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Is Donald Trump winning his war against the media?

    In perhaps the most significant escalation yet of Trump’s battle against the press, on Friday the Times reported that five of its reporters received subpoenas forcing them to testify this week in front of a grand jury in New York. “This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs,” Times lawyer David McCraw said in response.

  • New York Times ☛ Times Journalists Subpoenaed as Trump Escalates Pressure on Media

    The subpoenas — which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday — were an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.

    In some cases, the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters’ homes.

    The Times denounced the administration’s actions.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • El País ☛ Colombian man killed by ICE in Maine was not the agents’ target

    The coastal city of Biddeford, Maine, was the scene on Monday of the second fatal shooting by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in less than a week. A 26-year-old Colombian, whom authorities had not identified more than 12 hours after the incident, died from shots fired by an ICE agent as he was getting ready to go to work in his car. Maine independent Senator Angus King said that, according to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the victim was not the same man for whom ICE had a warrant. The incident echoed what had happened six days earlier in Houston, when another ICE agent fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado, a 52-year-old Mexican man who had been mistaken for someone else.

  • El País ☛ How many people have been killed by immigration agents’ gunfire amid Trump’s crackdown?

    The cases have drawn attention because, in several of them, authorities claimed that the victims had used their vehicles as weapons to try to run over agents—a version of events that was later questioned by family members, witnesses, or videos released during the investigations. On Tuesday, ICE ordered a suspension of vehicle stops following the deaths of two immigrants in Texas and Maine over the past week.

    This is a tally of the people who have been shot and killed by federal agents during Trump’s second term.

  • Futurism ☛ Meta Used Its Own Flawed AI to Pick Which Employees to Lay Off, Lawsuit Claims

    As Reuters reports, 26 Meta employees filed a lawsuit accusing the company of using an internal AI platform to select targets for the thousands of jobs cut earlier this year. Per the suit, Meta used its AI to cull workers based on opaque productivity metrics and large language model (LLM) token usage, a move which disproportionately targeted people with disabilities, and those who had taken maternity or medical leave — literally adding insult to injury.

  • EDRI ☛ Digital Rights and Equality Symposium

    Oxfam Ireland is hosting the Digital Rights and Equality Symposium on 21 October 2026 at O’Reilly Hall, University College Dublin. This all-day event will bring together policymakers, regulators, civil society and private sector leaders from Ireland and internationally to address a central question: how do we ensure the digital transformation reduces—rather than deepens—inequality?

  • Techdirt ☛ ICE Camera Crews Are Labeling Themselves ‘Media,’ Filming Anti-ICE Protesters

    We already know ICE officers have gone out of their way to aim their phones at protesters and others who try to derail their masked kidnapping squads. And we know — thanks to public records and leaked documents — ICE has access to facial recognition tech that makes it much easier for officers to identify protesters and harass/intimidate them for engaging in their First Amendment rights.

    So, it’s hardly a surprise that ICE has upped the intimidation ante. What’s surprising about this is that ICE has mobilized its own propaganda/intimidation force that (just barely) attempts to disguise itself as something else. This has been noticed elsewhere — at least in terms of ICE officers wielding professional-grade video cameras to document arrests, etc. — but this is apparently the first time ICE has decided to pretend its masked camera people are members of the “media.”

  • Robert Reich ☛ Abolishing ICE is the bare minimum

    I apologize for this additional invasion of your inbox, but ICE has gone rogue and we must stop its mayhem. Organize, mobilize, demand answers. We cannot allow this violent police force to intimidate voters three months from now.

  • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ Trump Administration Finally Hands Over Evidence From Minnesota ICE Shootings

    Minnesota prosecutors say they have obtained “hard drives of previously withheld evidence” from the federal government in the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis by federal immigration officials.

  • TruthOut ☛ ICE Reportedly Killed Maine Man in Second Fatal ICE Shooting in a Week

    Two immigrant rights groups, Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine, said that the victim was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the United States, and held a Social Security number. King, citing a conversation with Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullen, identified him as “a male in his 20s” who had reportedly been ordered to leave the country. Authorities have not otherwise identified the man.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Samsung Workers’ Fight Is Just Beginning

    During that initial union drive, Myungkyo Hong was an education and propaganda activist for the Korean Metal Workers Union’s Samsung Electronics Service branch and a policy committee member at Samsung Labor Watch. Hong is also a founding member of Platform C, a social movement organization in South Korea that serves as an educational forum and aims to forge solidarity between various social justice movements including those for labor, Palestine solidarity, feminism, and more. Hong currently serves as the editor of Platform C’s East Asian Social Movement Newsletter. Jacobin spoke to Hong about the history of labor fights at Samsung and what semiconductor workers’ recent contract win means for the company’s workforce more broadly.

  • 404 Media ☛ LAPD Regularly Pulled Over Innocent People Because License Plate Readers Flagged Their Cars As Stolen

    The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) announced it will let its surveillance contract with automated license plate reader company (ALPR) Flock expire, becoming the largest police department in the country to drop its contract. Notably, the decision came after an audit of ALPR technology found that, in a two-month period, the LAPD had improperly "investigated" 161 people whose cars were flagged as stolen in the LAPD’s ALPR system but were not actually stolen.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Masked ICE agents slam an already restrained man into rocks, then threaten the cameras

    A viral video appears to show masked ICE agents slamming an already restrained young man's face into rocks, then pointing tasers at bystanders whose apparent offense was filming it.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • RIPE ☛ A Farewell to ARPs: IPv4 Service on IPv6-Only Networks

    This article grew out of a lightning talk at RIPE 91 in Bucharest, titled A Farewell to ARPs. The reaction from the room and the hallway conversations afterwards made it clear this is a problem the operator community recognises immediately.

    The Internet-Draft that followed, draft-vanmook-intarea-ipv6-resolved-gateway, is now in front of the IETF IntArea working group in its third version, with a presentation scheduled at IETF 126 in Vienna and an adoption call expected after the meeting. This article tells the story behind it - and explains why, if you operate a network, you might want to care.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • PC World ☛ Secure Boot certificate updates are broken on some PCs, Microsoft confirms

    PCWorld reports that Microsoft has confirmed Secure Boot certificate update failures on certain PCs, particularly affecting HP models after certificates expired on June 24th.

  • Hackaday ☛ The Death Of Physical Media And The Real Challenges To Software Archiving

    Along with the many displays of outrage, gnashing of teeth and other displays of profound grief at the recent news that Sony will no longer manufacture physical game discs come 2028, we have also heard some voices pipe up with a variety of statements, such as that this decision makes game archiving basically impossible. Of course, the truth of the matter is that software archiving in general has become much harder already over the past decades, while game consoles are just late to the archiving-hostile party.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Techdirt ☛ Paramount Falsely Threatens To Leave California After State Challenges Merger

    Paramount officials have been telling California that the merger will create vast untold new creative Utopias should it be approved, but few reasonable people believe them. In part because these mergers (especially involving Warner Brothers) never go well for anybody other than they highest echelons of the extraction class. And in part because of the lack of competence everyone is seeing from the likes of Bari Weiss at CBS.

  • Techdirt ☛ A Dozen States Sue To Block Paramount’s Shitty, Unpopular Merger

    The state lawsuit, led by California AG Rob Bonta and filed in the U.S. District for the Northern District of California, alleges that the merger violates Section 7 of the Clayton Act, which holds that mergers that lessen competition or endeavor to ultimately create monopoly are illegal.

  • Don Marti ☛ Enshittification is riskier than it looks

    Whether they want to hire an engineer who can design an efficient, safe power supply, or get the exact right countertop for the company’s convenient location right in Grand Central Station, Apple has more optionality than anybody. But the one place that Apple is on an equal footing with the rest of the industry is the owners. Investors want “number go up.” So enshittification comes for everyone.

  • Trademarks

    • Right of Publicity

      • Digital Music News ☛ Meta Shuts Down Controversial Instagram AI Image Feature

        Following intense backlash over privacy concerns, Meta has already pulled the plug on its new Instagram AI image feature, less than a week after launching it.

  • Copyrights

    • Techdirt ☛ How The Spread Of Local AI Models Makes Copyright Enforcement Harder

      That fragmentation is deeply ironic, because one of the main justifications for a new copyright Directive was to bring consistency across the EU. As for the even more controversial upload filters, they have proved so difficult to implement that most governments have not even tried to lay down how they should be used: [...]

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Anime Piracy Giant Animeflv Mysteriously Stopped Serving Video

      AnimeFLV, the largest Spanish-language anime piracy site on the internet, has stopped serving video to its tens of millions of monthly visitors. The site, which the MPA flagged as a notorious market in its latest USTR submission, remains online with its directory intact. However, the videos have been unavailable for weeks now, without any explanation from the operators.

    • Don Marti ☛ Oops! All oligopoly

      Oligopoly is hard-coded in—as a result of decisions made by and for the oligopoly companies. And of course it’s “pragmatic” for those who already dominate the online advertising market to design a system to keep dominating it.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Björn Ulvaeus Speaks on AI and Creators During AI Keynote

      “I think it misunderstands how these models work,” Ulvaeus said. “What comes out isn’t a copy of any one song. It is a new synthesis built from everything the model has learned.”

      “For me, tracing the output was always the wrong question. The right question is much simpler. It is about the training. Our works went in. We should be paid for what went in, not for every output that comes out the other end, but for the raw material that made the machine what it is.”

    • CopyrightLately ☛ What's Up With Copyright Lately?

      Seven cases, one vacation. I’d call it even. Let me know what you think in the comments below or @copyrightlately on social media. And if you got this far, you’re exactly the sort of person who should be getting the newsletter. You can fix that here.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ U.S. Seizes More Pirate Sports Streaming Domains, But Iranian Fallbacks Remain

      The U.S. continues to crack down on sports streaming sites, seizing well over a hundred additional domain names this weekend. While these enforcement actions sorted effect, several of the targeted domains now use fallback domains on Iran's .ir country-code TLD, which might be harder to reach for American law enforcement.

    • International Business Times ☛ Grok Build Uploaded Entire Repositories When It Only Needed Parts of the Code, Researchers Say

      The findings raised questions over how AI coding assistants handle private developer data as companies increasingly allow these tools to access internal software projects, source code and other sensitive material.

      Researchers said the tool transmitted more repository data than the model required, while a later server‑side change disabled full repository uploads. Questions remain over what information may have already been transferred and how much visibility users have into AI tools' data handling.