Leftovers

• Los Angeles Times ☛ Pea Soup Andersen's: How a California roadside icon met a sad end

  The defacement of the storied restaurant ranged from ketchup and mustard sprayed across the dining room to thieves pillaging the building for its copper wires and pipes, destroying artifacts that locals had hoped to preserve in the process.

  The vandalism became such a problem that city officials last week voted to raze a section of the building even though a new project for the site is not yet in the works. It is not clear when the demolition will begin.

• James G ☛ Adding anchor links to my category pages

  Earlier today, I wanted to link to a specific year of posts on my Coffee category page. Importantly, all of my posts in a category are listed on a single page. I do this because I like having an overview of all posts on a single page. And, by having all post tiles on one page, I can search for keywords on the page, which I do quite often.

  This gave me an idea: I could add HTML IDs to the page that let me link to the most recently published post on each day, month, and year?

• Dan Q ☛ Hashcard #2 – Dan Q

  Six years and four months ago to the day, I received my first hashcard – an achievement-earning postcard sent while out on a geohashing expedition, to another geohasher. This experience went some way to my acquisition last year of a PO Box through which anybody on the Internet is invited to send me a postcard! (I’ve collected a few!)

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] How the trend for turning front gardens into driveways is adding to night-time heat

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Why some primates have even tougher births than humans

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] What if disabled astronauts are just better suited to space?

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Composting and water cremation: how the eco credentials of alternatives to burial add up

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-07-13 [Older] Himalayan snowfall has been miscalculated for years, here’s how we found a new way to measure it

  • Science Alert ☛ Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation 'Significantly' Improves Depression in Just 10 Days, Trial Finds

    Short-term relief.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Center of Our Galaxy More Like a Raspberry Donut Than We Realized

    And it could explain how life began.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Find The First True Sugar Ever Detected in Interstellar Space

    The center of our galaxy is a little more like a raspberry donut than we realized.

  • Science Alert ☛ There Are 2 Biologicially Distinct Forms of Major Depression, Says New Study

    A new framework for diagnosing depression.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Think Bee Silk Could Be a Surprising New Supermaterial. Here's Why.

    Who knew?

  • 404 Media ☛ Ancient Princesses Were Weapon-Wielding Badasses, Scientists Discover

    “This evidence directly informs long-standing debates about the function of weapons in female burials,” the team continued. “Rather than purely symbolic objects, these items appear to have been actively used, as reflected in skeletal adaptations such as asymmetry, muscle hypertrophy, and metacarpal modification. Princess Noub-Hotep provides a particularly clear example, where skeletal changes align with the presence of arrows in her burial.”

  • Hackaday ☛ Cross-Sectioning Crickets With A Femtosecond Laser

    The laser itself and the scanning galvo are mounted outside the microscope, and shine in through a transparent window. To protect the detector and electron optics from a spray of ablated carbon, a servo motor swings an aluminium shutter between these and the sample while the laser is active. This caused some mysterious problems during testing: after the first ablation run, the electron microscope’s image would contain so much noise as to be unusable, but it would improve over time. As it turned out, the shutter was painted, and the other side of the paint was getting coated with charged carbon particles. This created a small capacitor which disrupted the electron optics as it discharged. Eventually, after solving this and a few other strange problems, [Ben] was able to take several time-lapse videos of the laser gradually ablating a cricket, 30 microns at a time, revealing its inner structure.

• Career/Education

  • Jay Little ☛ The Viral Nature of Institutionalized Uncertainty

    I probably should’ve swallowed my technical pride and just stayed there. I would’ve been unhappy from a technical perspective, which I am now, but it would’ve been for very different reasons. The truth is that it would’ve made for a nice long and comfortable exit ramp from this career. But I made a different choice and instead I’m here now writing this particular post. Is this a cycle? Yes. Is it vicious? Yes. But that’s not the fault of my current employer, but more like a clinical observation of how this industry tends to work. We claim to always be reinventing ourselves, but if you are at all familiar with our history, you know that’s just yet another lie we tell ourselves. What we really do is unleash new things upon the world, which create a litany of unintended problems and then unleash new things that purport to solve those problems.

  • Federal News Network ☛ University research costs tens of billions of dollars. Where does it all go?

    "Since World War II, the federal funding of U.S. basic science has been responsible for about half of all economic growth in America," said Darren Lipomi.

• Hardware

  • The Straits Times ☛ ‘They don’t need people’: The workers left behind by China’s robot drive

    Tens of millions of workers may be left behind by China’s pivot away from low-end manufacturing towards advanced technology.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Chinese repairwomen smash stereotypes with power tools

    The sound of pliers clicking filled a workshop in eastern China’s Hangzhou as a group of women practised stripping wires, their female instructor moving around the classroom to offer advice.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Another indeterminate shipping adventure

    After saving and searching for this specific machine for months, I eventually tracked one down in serviceable condition on a US store that ran on Shopify. I prefer buying from outside the US thesedays if I can, because their shipping prices are wild. It typically costs half as much to get something from the UK, despite it being further away. But something something specific people can’t be choosers.

  • Gough Lui ☛ Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn’t | Gough's Tech Zone

    I should’ve known better than to trust a listing that was very clearly selling this product as a 7-port USB 3.0 hub. I should’ve known better than to trust the blue-coloured ports and the 4.7/5 ratings out of over 600 reviews. In the end, I basically got myself a device that extends one USB 3.0 port and hubs together six additional USB 2.0 devices. That was definitely not what I had intended. Add to this the mild danger of back-feeding your computer if an external power source is plugged in and absolutely zero power protections on any port, making this a mildly dangerous device (in terms of causing damage to other devices). The build quality is flimsy with solder economised to the point of not even bothering with the mechanical shell of the connector leading to ports “flexing” on every insertion-removal cycle. The world of USB-compatible devices is quite wild and while it might “sort-of” work, it also adds insult to injury by using cheaper single-transaction-translator (STT) hub chips.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ When durian prices crash, Malaysia throws parties

    Cheap durians are bringing Malaysians together – from offices to political rallies.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong to probe for negligence in medical watchdog’s delay over infant cerebral palsy case

    Hong Kong will investigate whether any civil servant has been negligent over a 16-year delay in the medical watchdog’s handling of a complaint against a paediatrician found guilty over a blunder that left a boy permanently disabled.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Michigan Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollment slumps amid rising costs

    Michigan lost 130,000 enrollments in marketplace plans in February 2026, part of a national wave of dropoffs.

  • New York Times ☛ Why Young People in China Are Buying Feelings

    Young people in China are increasingly anxious about the future and spending on feel-good experiences and products that provide “emotional value.” A companion hiker and cosplayer show what it’s like to be part of this booming consumer market.

  • New York Times ☛ Appeals Court Revives Lawsuits Tying Tylenol Use in Pregnancy to Autism and A.D.H.D.

    A federal appeals court overruled a district court judge who dismissed the lawsuits, citing unreliable scientific evidence.

  • Futurism ☛ Lawsuit Claims the Mayo Clinic’s Use of Hey Hi (AI) Is Butchering Patient Care

    "If [people] care about the notion that Hey Hi (AI) has to be handled in a responsible manner... this is a case that should matter to you."

  • France24 ☛ Ebola spreads to more provinces

    In tonight's show, the Ebola outbreak spreads to two more provinces. A Sudanese court sentences paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo and 15 others to death in absentia. Residents of the Niger Delta town of Billé take to the streets to demand government action over catastrophic pollution.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • Dark Reading ☛ Inc Ransomware Exploits SonicWall SMA Zero-Days

    On July 14, the cybersecurity vendor SonicWall published a security advisory regarding two vulnerabilities in its SMA 1000 Series appliances, CVE-2026-15409 and CVE-2026-15410. Together they could allow any random, unauthenticated attacker to gain remote code execution (RCE) powers and then run commands on the box at the root level.

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

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

      "'Hey, we don't need the best model, we can use the faster, cheaper models.'"

    • Federal News Network ☛ AI is about to overwhelm cyber defenses for one simple reason

      However, in most organizations, vulnerability discovery is not what’s holding security teams back. Remediation is. Teams are already drowning in more common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) than they can prioritize and address. According to Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report, one of the most common breach vectors is the exploitation of known vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities exist, but because patching is difficult and requires significant resources, organizations often fall behind in fixing them in a timely manner.

    • The Verge ☛ Dave Eggers told OpenAI staff that ChatGPT was ‘silencing an entire generation’

      “The effect of ChatGPT on educators’ lives is catastrophic. Whether you intended to do it or not, you’ve made every teacher’s life infinitely more difficult than it was two years ago. So, just let that settle in… If students are using it to compose, which is the biggest tragedy of all, they’ll never learn to write. And their voice is stolen from them. They’ll never have the ability to say their truth and tell their own story. And that’s silencing an entire generation or two.”

    • Digital Camera World ☛ Memory card prices might not fall until after 2030

      The chip shortage is due to the unprecedented demand for HBM (high bandwidth memory) chips, which are being voraciously consumed by AI datacenters. SK Hynix produces around 58% of the global HBM chip supply and is investing heavily in in new semiconductor production facilities, with $4 billion allocated to build an advanced chip packaging plant in Indiana.

    • Olaf Alders ☛ Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature · Olaf Alders

      On Canada Day (July 1), 2026, Anthropic shipped a surprising “easter egg” to users of Claude Code: 2.1.198 includes an efficiency bypass which allows agents to continue on without being blocked on direction from a human. You essentially get a 60 second timer after Claude Code asks for input. If you miss the window, Claude Code helpfully does what it thinks is best and continues on its way. It looks like this: [...]

    • Lucidity ☛ AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

      Over the past year, I’ve run point on all of our company’s sales, led the technical components of all but two of our engagements, and over the lifetime of this blog have had something like 300 catchups with professionals from around the world. This has ranged from people on the ground in niche service industries to executives at Fortune 500 companies. Because of this, I've had a front-row view to our collective institutions across both the private and public sector undergoing breath-taking mass psychosis. This essay is an attempt to describe the bizarre dynamics that are currently at play, as I am in the rare position where my wellbeing is not contingent on paying lip service to madness, and to reassure the people trying to survive amidst all of this that they are not crazy.

      The reality is thus: the people in charge either have no plan, or see no path forwards other than keeping their heads down. Not at banks, not at hospitals, not in our government institutions. The world’s organisations have been captured by people in the throes of frothing excitement, and saner people who now live in a state of constant commingled fear and frustration.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Amazon Will Print Book-Length A.I. Gibberish on Demand

      Too bad about all the trees killed for this print-on-demand nonsense, though at least it fits with Amazon’s decline into one of the world’s biggest retailers of sketchy, counterfeit, and knock-off products.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Copyright Is Not Enough

      This is a terrific and well-rounded exploration of copyright law and generative artificial intelligence from a non-U.S. perspective. That matters because the U.S. has a carve-out for “fair use” of copyrighted works, which is something generative A.I. companies are relying on for their defence of their unethical and maybe illegal practices. If it holds, it makes the rest of the world less desirable for A.I. development which, I fear, means it becomes a race to the bottom for all the countries that want a slice of this well-funded pie.

    • Jonathan Kamens ☛ First Manufacturing Co. selling customer email addresses in violation of its own privacy policy

      A minute later the AI replied again, disregarding my explicit statement that I did not want the AI to reply to me again: [...]

    • Six Colors ☛ Unauthorized AI biographies are all over Amazon

      You know, it’s hard enough making any sort of living as a writer, but crowding the field with AI slop? It’s not even as if people are buying them and reviewing them favorably. They’re just old socks stuffed down the drain, clogging up the sink with putrid water.1 What are we even doing here, people?

    • ACM ☛ Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds!

      In this last Bikeshed in acmqueue, I will ponder the far future of free and open source software (FOSS), hoping to upset so many readers that my name will become an obvious addition to the “list of IT people who have predicted something utterly wrong and obviously silly about the distant future.”

      There are two hot envelopes in the FOSS inbox right now: LLM-assisted code reviews and age verification.

      The LLM-assisted code reviews are causing a lot of headlines because this comes out of one of those economic bubbles that seem to automatically inflate as soon as most people have forgotten how utterly stupid and predictable the previous bubble was.

      I’m not particularly worried about this.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Sal ☛ Moved the blog from GitLab to GitHub

    This has me thinking, though. I don’t really need either Gitlab or GitHub. Maybe I should just deploy from my local machine using wrangler and use my home server as my git origin.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Mozilla ☛ Period and Ovulation Apps Privacy Review 2026: Is Your Period Tracker Safe?

      The data we keep on [sic] our phones is sensitive. For women, period data is one of the most sensitive data points we share with our device.

      That’s because period tracking apps aren’t just about when your period happens. Apps in this space ask you to log extremely intimate details so it can predict your cycle or help you get pregnant. From when you bleed, but also when you've had that late-night chocolate craving, and even when you have a miscarriage.

      In the Post-Dobbs landscape, we believe safeguarding this data and keeping it private is more important than ever. Our privacy expert Shoshana Wodinsky did hands-on testing of 6 popular period tracking apps: Euki, Clue, Flo, Period Calendar, Planned Parenthood’s Spot On, and Stardust. We discovered data sharing to analytics companies, privacy-washing, but also, a stand-out option when it comes to keeping data safe.

    • TechCrunch ☛ Period tracker Stardust shares users' health data with analytics firm, says Mozilla research

      Mozilla’s research underscores the security and privacy risks with using period tracking and other health apps that share data with third parties. Oftentimes this happens as background activity within the app, and isn’t visible to the user. It’s not uncommon for apps to share data with other services for storage, analytics, and payments, but sharing users’ information with third parties inherently carries risks, such as potential security lapses, data breaches, or having the data sought by law enforcement.

• Defence/Aggression

  • StokeonTrentLive ☛ Victory! Neighbours stand 'shoulder to shoulder' to stop illegal traveller camp

    Councillor Sandiford said: "This has been a long and often frustrating battle - I’ve worked alongside residents, attended meetings, challenged the development, kept pressure on the council and supported enforcement action every step of the way. While it has taken time, I’m pleased we’ve finally reached this point.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ US accelerates development of chemical protection suits for warfighters

    With this Numat Technologies will accelerate the deployment of next-generation chemical and biological protection suits for U.S. Special Operations Forces.

  • New York Times ☛ Inside Israel’s Secret Operation to Install Ahmadinejad, Iran’s Former President, as Leader

    The yearslong effort to groom the former Iranian president as an intelligence asset culminated in a dramatic effort to take him to a Mossad safe house in Iran in the early days of the war. But the plan fell apart.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-12 [Older] How a Jewish heir is taking on Germany's far-right AfD

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-12 [Older] France opens terror probe after gun found in Jewish suburb

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-12 [Older] Germany news: Neuschwanstein killer fights extradition to US

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Meta trying to destroy whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, US senator says

    A US senator has accused Meta of using lawfare in “efforts to destroy” a whistleblower who made allegations about the social media company’s dealings with China and its treatment of teenagers.

    In a letter to its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, the Republican senator Josh Hawley demanded to know what measures Meta had taken to monitor Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook’s former global head of public policy, and her family.

    He also accused the firm of trying to make “truthful speech so perilous that no whistleblower like Ms Wynn-Williams can ever afford it”.

• Environment

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea issues first emergency heatwave warning under new rating system

    The country advised people to halt outdoor activities and keep cool.

  • CBC ☛ New York is pausing new hyperscale data centres. Could the same happen in Canada?

    Data centres accounted for about 1.5 per cent of global energy consumption in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency. That is expected to more than double by 2030.

    They are also known for using large amounts of water. Thousands of servers operate around the clock, drawing electricity and generating heat. Servers are often chilled through evaporative cooling, in which warm water absorbs heat and evaporates.

    This method is energy efficient, but it requires freshwater because minerals in untreated water can corrode machinery. Many centres use potable water, raising concerns that they could take resources away from nearby communities. Other cooling methods promise to use less water, though some experts say those claims can be misleading.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Slough is like an experiment’: Europe’s largest datacentre hub leaves town sweltering

    Ten miles (16km) west of Heathrow, Slough has become one of the largest datacentre hubs in the world, hosting an estimated 30 to 40 huge facilities, many of them on a campus in the centre of town. These – owned and maintained by companies like Equinix and Digital Realty – serve dozens of clients, including the world’s biggest tech companies: Amazon, Google, Oracle and Microsoft.

    More are still to be built in a planned development on the edge of the same campus.

    Emerging research – including a preprint of a paper led by researchers at Cambridge earlier this year – suggests datacentres create a heat island effect, pushing up temperatures in their immediate vicinity by an average of 2C, and as much as 9C.

  • Cowboy State Daily ☛ Wyoming Residents Join National Day Of Protest Against Data Centers

    A few dozen Wyoming residents gathered at the State Capitol on Saturday as part of a national day of protest against data centers. Organizer Taylor Haynes called data centers "digital prisons" and said the need for artificial intelligence has taken away Americans’ freedom.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Data center protests go national as backlash grows

    • Protests against data centers occurred in 125 locations nationwide on Saturday.
    • HumansFirst, a grassroots group, criticized data centers' unaccountable expansion.
    • Polls show only 14% support data centers in communities for AI projects.

  • Climate.us ☛ Cooking emissions rival fossil fuels as an ozone pollution source in Los Angeles

    According to new research from NOAA, the potent and often pungent volatile organic compounds (VOCs) given off from cooking food are now responsible for over a quarter of the ozone production from VOCs generated by human activity in the LA basin. This is roughly equal to the amount of ozone produced by VOCs from on-road and off-road motor vehicles.

  • The Washington Post ☛ How data centers became a symbol of Americans’ rage

    Feeling ignored by political and economic powers, people are rallying against computer hubs over concerns about their communities’ future.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Futurism ☛ Chinese Spacecraft Approaches Mysterious Object Near Earth

      It's the "smallest object that humans have visited with a spacecraft."

    • IP Kat ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Australia’s (conflicting) national AI interests: water, data centres and creativity [Ed: "AI" and "IP" as misnomers]

    • Futurism ☛ Data Centers Are Making Electricity Brutally Expensive for the Public

      According to a report by Monitoring Analytics, an independent monitor for the largest transmission company in the US, PJM, data center demand is expected to drive over $23 billion in customer price increases by 2028. That eye-watering figure, first spotted by Fortune, is a direct result of the country’s old and confusing electrical infrastructure, which ultimately leaves regular people, not the tech industry, holding the bag.

  • Overpopulation

    • France24 ☛ Global population at 8.3 billion: What does that mean for anyone under 30?

      With the world population surpassing 8.3 billion today, can we truly realize the hopes and dreams of the largest generation of young people ever? On World Population Day 2026, the spotlight is on empowering youth to shape their futures through education, health, and opportunity. From family planning to sustainable development, this global observance asks a vital question: are we investing enough in tomorrow's leaders today? Jean-Emile Jammine speaks with Diene Keita, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

• Finance

  • France24 ☛ US judge voids The Insurrectionist 'improper' $1.8 billion settlement with IRS

    A US judge on Monday voided a settlement between President The Insurrectionist and the Internal Revenue Service over leaked tax returns, ruling the lawsuit was filed for an "improper purpose." The agreement had granted Convicted Felon, his family and business broad protections from tax audits following their $10 billion lawsuit.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-12 [Older] Germany's Ruhr Valley: Cities on brink of financial collapse

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Techdirt ☛ Ken Paxton Vowed To Crack Down On “Illegal Voting.” He May Have Violated Texas Election Law.

    Despite his own warnings, Paxton appears to have used an address where he did not live while voting in six elections in the past two years, including in May’s runoff that made him the Republican nominee for U.S. senator, according to records obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

  • Techdirt ☛ RFK Jr. May Have Violated The Hatch Act In Encouraging Iowa Congressional Candidates To Drop Out

    And sometimes RFK Jr. rides in to provide a nakedly blatant example of a Hatch Act violation. Ron Wyden is calling for an investigation into Kennedy after he reportedly called two different Libertarian candidates in Iowa running for congressional seats to suggest that they drop out. This could be otherwise described as election interference in violation of the Hatch Act.

  • International Business Times ☛ Palantir CEO Alex Karp Predicts AI Will Give Him a $300BN Fortune While Workers Get Smaller Gains

    Karp's comments come as the AI sector continues to generate extraordinary wealth for executives and investors behind the industry's biggest companies.

    Palantir's market value has climbed to roughly £238 billion ($322 billion), lifting Karp's estimated net worth to around £11.1 billion ($15 billion).

  • Manton Reece ☛ Social web disconnect

    Opposition is not a principle. The political winds will inevitably shift, leaving polarization behind. Building a better web is much more universal. Empowering people to own their identity, publish more freely, form many kinds of communities, and leave without losing everything.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • International Business Times ☛ TikToker Jailed After Falsely Claiming Ghana's President Sacrificed 32 Cows To Win Election

      According to prosecutors, Alhassan uploaded multiple videos last month and earlier this month alleging, without presenting any evidence, that Mahama had sacrificed 32 cows as part of a ritual intended to secure his election victory. She also claimed that a government programme distributing sanitary pads to women affected by recent flooding was designed to distract the public from the alleged ritual.

      The allegations spread widely across social media before Alhassan was arrested earlier this month.

      During sentencing, the court rejected a plea for a more lenient punishment. The judge ruled that a custodial sentence was appropriate because it would discourage similar conduct and help address what the court described as the growing prevalence of false information circulating on social media.

    • The Next Move ☛ Some Big Truths To Displace Trump’s Big Lie

      It follows that Trump’s dishonesty demands more than just a five-Pinocchio rating and some sharp digs. A fatigued nation needs leaders who will reinforce Big Truths to displace the president’s Big Lie.

      Here are just a few: [...]

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • BIA Net ☛ Erdoğan dismisses governor after criticism over cycling outfit

    While such decrees do not specify the reasoning behind the decisions, the decision follows criticism from opposition and a public debate early this month over Çiçekli's public cycling appearances in athletic attire, and his interactions with the public in that outfit. Removal from office as the governor doesn't mean Çiçekli was dismissed from public service altogether.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • 404 Media ☛ You're Invited: 404 Media's Third Anniversary Live Podcast and Party!

    We're celebrating with TWO NIGHTS of good times: A live taping of the podcast, and a party the following night! Paid 404 Media subscribers get free and discounted access. Details below.

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ, partners call on Cambodian PM to seek release of journalists Phon Sopheap and Pheap Pheara

    Under Cambodian law, the prime minister holds exclusive authority to submit requests for royal amnesties to the country’s king. Such clemency, the letter says, “would enable [Phon Sopheap and Pheap Pheara] to regain their liberty, reunite with their families and young children, and resume their professional work as journalists.”

  • CPJ ☛ Open Letter to the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia [PDF]

    We, the representatives of media associations and national and international civil society organizations, are deeply concerned over the recent court decision sentencing two journalists, Phon Sopheap and Pheap Pheara to 14 years’ imprisonment each.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • The Straits Times ☛ Teen files complaint in South Korea over ‘violent’ in-flight movies

    Korean Air and Asiana Airlines, the two largest Korean carriers, do not show content rated for viewers 19 or above

  • NL Times ☛ 2,600 Dutch [sic] girls at risk of genital mutilation during summer vacations

    The tradition is prevalent in several African countries, including Somalia, Sudan, Mali, Egypt, and Eritrea. Asylum applications from Somalia and Sudan have risen sharply in the past year, heightening concerns.

  • India Times ☛ US judge won't block Meta from laying off workers who filed AI discrimination lawsuit

    A US judge on Friday rejected a bid by 26 employees of Meta Platforms to block the tech giant from laying them off while they pursue claims that they were targeted for job cuts by the company's AI-powered tools because they have disabilities or took medical leave. U.S.

  • Futurism ☛ Family Horrified When They're Forced to Sell Their Beloved Home to Make Way for AI Data Centers

    Like a tornado descending from the heavens, data centers are tearing through homes across the US, roaring like a jet engine, leaving schools without power, and decimating entire communities unlucky enough to stand in their path.

    Case in point, one Georgia family has been forced to sell their home, after the state utility concern decided it needed to build a new transmission line to connect new AI data centers.

  • Natchez, Mississippi ☛ My land is my land

    If Mississippi utilities ever use eminent domain against a farmer or homeowner to build a transmission line for a hyperscale data center, it will be no different in principle from what happened to Susette Kelo in New London or what is happening to Ansley Brown in Georgia. The state will be taking someone’s land for someone else’s profit.

  • CBS ☛ Georgia family says they're forced to sell home to help power AI data centers: "It's theft"

    Utility giant Georgia Power is planning to build a new transmission line to in part help power new data centers. It estimates 70-80% of the power on the new line will help serve data centers and the remaining 20-30% of power will serve the state's growing residential and commercial demand.

    According to the company, increasing demand has outpaced the capacity of its existing grid and building a new transmission line requires acquiring more than 300 parcels of land, including residential properties.

  • Curtis Media Group ☛ Farmers and Ranchers Fighting Data Centers for Survival

    Ansley Brown has been leading efforts for the past year to stop the easements from going through. She says and others feel their rights are being ignored.

    “Not only does Georgia Power not care about our American farmers, they also don’t care about our American mothers. This is happening to my mother. This is happening to Cynthia. And on to the point of the easement being only 12 feet from her house, I hope you guys realize that means when she is sleeping in her bedroom, Georgia Power can pull a truck 12 feet from that window and be right there.”

    In a statement, Georgia Power said there are 20 to 30 homes it expects to demolish as part of the project.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ ICE officer in Maine shooting has history of terrifying, violent behavior, family and records say

    David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, according to those relatives. They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.

    Brouillette’s troubling past further challenges how thoroughly the Department of Homeland Security has vetted recruits as it went on a hiring spree to help carry out President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

  • TruthOut ☛ Backing for UBI Is Growing. Let’s Push for the Most Progressive Version of It.

    Folbre, who is professor emerita of economics and director of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, acknowledges that, given the balance of power between capital and labor in today’s world, the obstacles to implementing a fully progressive version of such a plan are enormous. Yet, societies must care for the well-being of citizens if they are to continue sustaining themselves. As Folbre says, a philosophy of every person for themselves philosophy “is a recipe for extinction.”

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Internet Society ☛ How Local Peering Is Strengthening Africa’s Internet

    Across Africa, local technical communities are building and strengthening peering infrastructure.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Just Made It Easier For Your ISP To Rip You Off With Bogus Fees

    Enter Republicans, who work seamlessly with the telecom lobby to destroy even these bare-bones proposals, framing them as radical. The result: no real oversight of telecom giants, who then double down on all of their worst behaviors.

    This just happens again and again and again in U.S. policy (privacy, net neutrality, predatory business practices). And will keep happening until the U.S. addresses its corruption problems. Which, with a minimum 2.5 years of Trumpism left, doesn’t seem likely anytime soon.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Macworld ☛ If you subscribe to Apple Music, you're going to pay more next month

    Apple first increased Apple Music prices in October 2022, when it went from $9.99 to $10.99 per month. This update raises the price by another buck, to $11.99 a month. Here’s how the new pricing looks across all tiers: [...]

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • New York Times ☛ Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger Is Challenged in Court by California and 11 Other States

    The lawsuit, filed by California and 11 other states, argues that the deal would harm movie theaters and damage America’s entertainment industry.

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] [Guest Post] The proposed changes to Polish IP law: Will trade secret deposit be a successful tool to enforce protection of trade secrets? [Ed: Corruption galore]

  • Niels Provos ☛ When AI Safety Becomes a Competitive Moat

    Anthropic wants government to turn frontier AI into a permissioned market. The gate would bind lawful American companies while open-weight capability spreads beyond its reach.

  • India Times ☛ Apple in early settlement talks with US DOJ over antitrust case, Bloomberg News reports

    The department ⁠and 15 ‌states sued Apple in 2024 as the government cracks down on Big Tech, alleging the iPhone maker ⁠monopolized the smartphone market, hurt smaller rivals and drove up prices.

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] [Guest Post] This Little Piggy Went to Court: Peppa Pig vs Wolfoo

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Humans, not muses.

  • Patents

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ US firm gets license to commercialize seawater uranium extraction tech

      Developed with support from the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy and led by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the licensed technology is designed to extract uranium from seawater using advanced adsorbent materials. SuperCritical said the agreement grants the company rights to manufacture and deploy the technology at industrial scale in the United States, with plans to expand into allied nations in the future.

    • Kangaroo Courts

      • IP Kat ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] [UPCKat]Winning, yet appealing: can a successful party feel crossed? Cross-appeals and Rule 236.2 RoP [Ed: UPC is illegal, yet profiteers of this illegality speak of "wins"]

  • Copyrights

    • Digital Music News ☛ Warner Music Hits Back Hard at the American Federation of Musicians’ Hey Hi (AI) Lawsuit

      Warner Music Group (WMG) is officially looking to toss the breach of contract lawsuit filed against it by the AFM, maintaining, among other things, that the agreement at the case’s center “does not cover Hey Hi (AI) licenses.” WMG recently shed light on its dismissal arguments when requesting a related pre-motion conference.

    • India Times ☛ Indonesia's copyright rewrite puts Google, AI platforms on notice

      If passed, Indonesia could become the first country in Southeast Asia to incorporate AI in its copyright law, as governments globally grapple with the impact of the technology on copyright rules, including ‌the use of work ⁠created by ⁠humans to train AI models. It was not immediately clear when the bill, which was an initiative of parliament and given to the government for its input, would be passed into law.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Breach of A.I. Music Generator Suno Reveals Scraping of Music From Deezer and YouTube

      Suno is fighting several lawsuits, including one filed by UMG in which it makes the argument its use is sufficiently transformative. But people have been prosecuted for the mere act of downloading hundreds to thousands of songs. This line of argument suggests to me that, beyond some astronomical number of downloads, it becomes entirely legal because no single song will be of much consequence.