Leftovers

• Robert Birming ☛ Your blog is loved

  If you love the personal aspect of blogging, sharing your thoughts with the world, no matter the number of views, you will always have someone who loves your blog: you.

• Rebecca Solnit ☛ A is for Airtight Categories, B for Blanket Statements, C for Cherrypicking....

  I guess people like rules. Maybe that's why we get those everything/nothing statements, and boy do we get them. Last weekend on BlueSky I wrote a thread about the power of nonviolence, in response to someone saying "holding up signs & peacefulness didn't get rid of bad people throughout history." Sometimes it didn't; sometimes it did as recently as Bangladesh's July Uprising that toppled an authoritarian regime in 2024. (As nonviolence scholar Stephen Zunes comments, "he seems to think holding up signs & peacefulness' is what nonviolent action consists of, and not also occupations, general strikes, blockades, alternative institutions, and countless other confrontational but nonviolent tactics which really did get rid of bad people throughout history.")

• Panagiotis Vryonis ☛ My right to use the emdash

  tldr; I used them long before LLMs were a thing and I can prove it.

• Johanna-Mathilda Langenhan ☛ Style Guide

  A few people I know have a style guide for their blog/website, so here are my thoughts on a Style Guide for this site.

  Up to the point when I saw people disgussing style guides for their writing I'd only known of style guides in the context of CD/CI, a.k.a. mostly graphics focused. But of course it makes sense for publications to have a consistent language too.

  But does it make sense for a personal blog? Surely it's more comfortable for the reader to have a uniform style, especially with several authors (had this situation when I ran a fanzine). But for me it's just more work.

  So here is the ruleset for my very own dead dot garden style guide: [...]

• Daniel Lemire ☛ AI programming : are you angry yet?

  AI-assisted programming is fast evolving and there is a tension between ‘we no longer need to understand the code’ and ‘what is my purpose as a programmer’. I recorded a short video on this topic with how I think the tension can result in conflicts.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Wired ☛ How and When to View the Perseid Meteor Shower (August 2026)

    In addition to a historic total solar eclipse, August also features one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year. On the night of August 12 and into the early morning of August 13, astronomy enthusiasts in the northern hemisphere and parts of the southern hemisphere will be able to admire the Perseids during a particularly favorable viewing window.

  • Mark-Jason Dominus ☛ There are two kinds of theorems

    In mathematical study there are two kinds of theorems, which serve very different purposes. Math instruction follows the same pattern. Students are often very puzzled by this, and rightly so, because it's never explained, or at least I've never seen it explained. There is this crucial, critical piece of mathematical methodology which is never made explicit, students just have to figure it out on their own, and many of them never do.

  • Søren ☛ Solar Eclipse

    I think she didn’t understand what was happening but enjoyed looking through the „camera obscura“ - something L built because all of those fancy glasses were sold out.

• Career/Education

  • Computational Complexity ☛ Unexpected Unemployment

    Illinois Tech got hit hard by a large drop in foreign graduate enrollment due to changing visa requirements, general anti-US sentiment, more opportunities in other countries and a weaker job market for graduating Masters students partly due to artificial intelligence. Universities face challenges beyond international students including Baumol's disease, administrative bloat to meet expanding regulations, the demographic cliff, reduced grant funding, and less support of universities by the public and both political parties, and AI changing how and why we teach. Illinois Tech is one of the first tech research schools to eliminate tenured roles, but it won't be the last.

  • Yle ☛ Finland sees dramatic drop in student applications from abroad

    Yle reported last year that unscrupulous third-party agents were spreading false and misleading information to prospective fee-paying students about life in Finland. The new arrivals often end up living a life of poverty and marginalisation as a result of the deception, increasingly relying on handouts to survive.

• Hardware

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Capitalism Is Killing an American Cinema Renaissance

    The Odyssey’s runaway success should green light more 70mm IMAX screens. But deindustrialization killed the skilled trades that built the projectors and the union jobs that ran them — so instead we’ll get resale markets and paywalled seats.

  • The Register UK ☛ Spectre rears its ugly head again as researchers show some RISC-V chips are susceptible

    Spectre flaws have dogged x86 and ARM chips for years, leading computer scientists to develop a series of defenses, including Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS), Indirect Branch Prediction Barrier (IBPB), and Single Thread Indirect Branch Predictor (STIBP).

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • RFERL ☛ 'All Our Hopes Have Been Destroyed': Afghanistan's Maternal Mortality Crisis Under Taliban

    At least 521 mothers died for every 100,000 births, according to the latest UN estimate published in 2023. No official figures are available for 2024 or 2025. The real number could be even higher as some cases go unreported, especially in remote areas.

    The UN has said many of the deaths were due to preventable pregnancy complications exacerbated by severe shortages in qualified birth attendants and an under-resourced health-care system.

  • The New Lede ☛ California phasing out herbicide linked to Parkinson’s disease

    Paraquat has been under scrutiny for the last few years due to mounting scientific evidence connecting chronic exposure to the herbicide to Parkinson’s disease and other health problems. It is one of the most widely used herbicides in the US — largely as a tool to kill broadleaf weeds and grasses — and is used in growing soybeans, cotton, and corn as well as in growing grapes, pistachios, peanuts and other crops.

  • International Business Times ☛ Luigi Mangione Plea Talks: Federal Deal Could Erase State Murder Case Ahead of Friday Hearing

    The timing is significant. Mangione's state murder trial is due to begin with jury selection on 8 September, while his separate federal trial is scheduled for January 2027. The federal case now centres on two stalking charges carrying potential life imprisonment after a judge dismissed the federal murder and weapons counts earlier this year, and the scheduling of Friday's hearing has prompted legal observers to speculate that plea discussions may have resumed.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ The Rise of the Measles-Industrial Complex

    However, you know what does have a strong, well-documented correlation with autism? Air pollution. Childhood exposure to air pollution is clearly associated with higher rates of autism. Moreover, scientists have found a found a strong association between autism and pre-natal maternal exposure to particulate matter from fossil fuel pollution.

  • Mere Civilian ☛ Donate Blood

    In Australia, blood is neither sold or bought there donation remains the only viable pathway for people who need blood. Frankly this is the best system. Blood is priceless and therefore any value attributed to it meaningless. Afterall, what value would you put on your life?

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • Security Week ☛ SharePoint Vulnerability Exploited Shortly After PoC Release

    Rapid7 disclosed the technical details of CVE-2026-55040 on August 11, showing how a remote, unauthenticated attacker could exploit it to bypass authentication and perform operations as a SharePoint site user or administrator. The security firm also made a PoC script available.

  • Wired ☛ This Coin-Sized Device Can Hack a Boeing 737

    Tomorrow at the Usenix Cybersecurity Conference, researchers from the University of California at San Diego and Oberlin College will present a hacking technique capable of commandeering the autopilot of a Boeing 737 to redirect its navigation or silently altering key values in the plane's takeoff and fuel calculations while spoofing the results on the pilot's screen—subtle changes the researchers say could potentially cause anything from runway overruns on takeoff to diversions to a different country's airspace to catastrophic crashes.

  • The Verge ☛ Cats and dogs are missing meals after a popular smart feeder went down

    A Petlibro outage is preventing its smart pet feeders and other devices from performing scheduled tasks, like dispensing food. The outage began on Tuesday, with users across Reddit reporting that their smart feeders, litter boxes, and water fountains have gone offline.

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

    • teleSUR ☛ AI in Mexican Companies: High Adoption but Low Economic Impact

      The analysis, based on 163 Mexican organizations with more than fifty employees, indicates that technological expansion has not yet translated into a widespread transformation of corporate operations. Only 31.1% of companies report broad integration of AI into their business processes, and 71% do not recognize any concrete economic value.

    • Futurism ☛ Protesters Arrested After Storming OpenAI Lobbying Office

      Once inside the lobby, the demonstrators unfurled a massive banner reading “Stop Stealing Our Future,” while others held signs with messages like “OpenAI bought my Senator.” The demonstration lasted two hours, and ended when police stormed the lobby, arresting 13 protestors.

    • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ Farmer Horrified as AI Gives Bad Advice That Kills 25 Acres of Crops

      Since that time, Wu has come to rely on his LLM for everything from fertilizing guidance to scheduling various tasks around the farm. After months of fruitful consultations, he decided to follow his AI chatbot’s new pesticide plan to the letter, letting loose on some 25 acres of precious sesame seedlings, all without ever double-checking with an expert or outside documentation.

    • EFF ☛ Who (or What) Generates Images for EFF?

      To be as clear as possible, we are now adding a small credit in the lower righthand area of each banner image that will read “Image created by EFF.” As mentioned earlier, there may be rare exceptions, when an EFF designer uses an automatically generated image as a small element in a larger illustration. In these cases, we will indicate that use with additional text, specifying the elements involved, and naming the image generator used.

    • Salon ☛ Bernie Sanders' AI warnings are being ignored in the Senate

      On Monday Sanders issued another unwelcome proclamation in a career full of them, sending a letter to the CEOs of the three largest artificial intelligence companies that called on them to pause the technology’s development. The letter follows news of several AI prototypes breaking the confines of their testing sandbox and accessing the internet. In the most shocking example, an agent made by OpenAI hacked into Hugging Face, a platform that AI programmers use to share datasets and models. The news prompted the company Anthropic to review its own tests; it discovered that models had found a way around their parameters to access the internet in three cases. Meta also shared that one of its own prototypes had done the same.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Anthropic Will Watermark All Text Generated by Its AI Models

      “Because the watermark is part of the text, it will travel with the text when it’s copied and pasted elsewhere and may persist through some editing,” Anthropic’s support page reads. “Watermarking will be applied at the model level, which means it will be present no matter which Claude product or surface the text comes from.”

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Anthropic to start watermarking Claude-generated text, images

      The watermarking mechanism is designed to bring Claude into compliance with the European Union’s AI Act. The law, which went into effect in 2024, includes a voluntary clause known as the Code of Practice that Anthropic has signed. The provision requires model providers to mark AI-generated content.

    • New York Times ☛ Spotify Will Label A.I. Artists and Avoid Promoting Them

      Starting in September, Spotify will affix labels to the profiles of artists whose identities it believes were most likely generated by artificial intelligence, the streaming service announced on Tuesday. Users behind A.I.-generated artists will also be able to identify those artists as such.

      Once labeled, the profiles will be excluded from the company’s editorial and algorithmic recommendations, Spotify said.

    • David Revoy ☛ Bubble Therapy - David Revoy

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Model collapse (12 Aug 2026)

      What are we to make of the people who've been fired by bosses who replaced them with AI, in light of the fact that AI is demonstrably not able to do their (former) jobs? Again, it's simple if you separate out two distinct phenomena: "AI can do your job" is the first. The second is: "Your boss is a credulous dolt who is infinitely horny for replacing lippy workers with pliable machines, which made him an easy mark for an AI salesman who convinced him to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job": [...]

    • Rlang ☛ Announcing AI in Production 2027

      Hands-on workshops on Thursday 10 June, then a full day of talks and lightning talks on Friday 11 June. On the workshop day you take one morning and one afternoon session, with lunch included and a dinner and drinks reception in the Catalyst atrium afterwards. Topics across both days cover deployment, monitoring and observability, generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation, and responsible AI as it applies day to day. The talks we like best are the ones that cover what went wrong as well as what worked.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Hobby programming communities vs. LLMs

      Fogus writes. "The process of mastering a difficult field itself is the product, and something that runs is generally a nice-to-have." Members earn standing slowly, over years in the forums, through elegant code and shared domain knowledge. "At the end of the day, these communities don't care if your code works at all, but instead care that you know why and how it works."

  • Social Control Media

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Trump sued over $100,000-a-month early-access offer to Truth Social posts

      Suit alleges subscription offer aims to sell privileged access to information generated in president’s official capacity

    • New York Times ☛ Trump Is Sued Over Plan to Sell Early Access to His Truth Social Posts

      A lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in New York challenges a plan to sell early access to President Trump’s posts on Truth Social for up to $100,000 a month, arguing the First Amendment “guarantees equal access to the President’s public announcements.”

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • TMZ ☛ Bill Gates' Daughter Phoebe's App Accused of 'Cookie Stuffing'

      Bill Gates' daughter is getting some heat after her app allegedly took credit for sales it didn't drive ... and a new report claims she knew it was happening.

    • International Business Times ☛ What Is 'Cookie Stuffing'? Bill Gates' Daughter Could Face up to 20 Years in Prison if Charged and Convicted

      Cookie stuffing refers to the deceptive placement of affiliate tracking cookies on a user's browser without a genuine referral or meaningful interaction with an affiliate link. The purpose is to make an affiliate network believe that a particular publisher generated a sale, allowing that publisher to receive a commission.

      In legitimate affiliate marketing, a customer might click a creator's product link, visit a retailer and eventually buy something. The tracking cookie helps the retailer identify who referred the shopper. The Federal Trade Commission describes affiliate marketing as a system in which third-party marketers promote products and receive a percentage when their referrals result in sales.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Futurism ☛ Man Covers Car in Special Wrap That Breaks Flock Cameras' Electronic Brains

      To come up with the pattern, he used a reinforcement learning model that trained itself on patterns that evade detection. The model got to the point of being able to confuse all 11 open source detection algorithms he tested, per TechCrunch, in addition to Flock’s license plate readers and even Axon’s body-worn cameras used by police departments.

    • TechCrunch ☛ This 'adversarial' pattern can prevent surveillance cameras from detecting you

      His project, which he calls noRecognition, allows people to escape the automatic detection and algorithmic surveillance used across the U.S. and beyond.

      In recent years, surveillance cameras have been supercharged with the ability to detect what is happening in the footage being recorded, from tracking the license plates of speeding vehicles to using facial recognition to identify suspected criminals, albeit with mixed success and sometimes terrifying results. The detection algorithms that power most surveillance cameras today can sift through vast amounts of footage, allowing law enforcement to pick out activity of interest, akin to pulling a needle out of a haystack.

    • Federal News Network ☛ Pentagon wants to spend millions on Palantir with few details

      A DoD official described the memo as a planning directive that reflects the work of Business Operators for National Defense, the initiative Feinberg created in February to give private-sector leaders a hand in defense acquisition reform. The Pentagon said earlier this year it sought about 250 industry executives to participate in BOND.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Rising Prevent referrals and the runaway train of mass surveillance

      Instead of relying on surveillance, suspicion, and continual expansion of definitions of extremism, we need a real investment in education, community health services and local infrastructure. We need to invest in social cohesion, rather than demonising and excluding people, which only leaves them more vulnerable to predation.

    • Wired ☛ McDonald’s Built a 515-Page Dossier on Me. It Says I’ll Never Stop Eating There

      I requested a copy of my data from McDonald’s loyalty program and received an extensive, personalized report that algorithmically predicts my next purchase.

    • Marty Day ☛ Hey, So, McDonalds Probably Has a Lot of Data on You

      If McDonalds can use your data to come up with tracking this detailed — understanding the days and times you’re most likely to come in, the expected order value, how often you’re likely to return — imagine what bigger orgs with less focused data collection can do.

  • Confidentiality

    • Dan Erat ☛ Issuing internal SSL/TLS certificates

      I run various web services on my home network, and I prefer (and increasingly need) to use HTTPS when connecting to them. This requires generating TLS (formerly “SSL”) certificates corresponding to those services’ hostnames.

    • Signal ☛ Introducing Automatic Key Verification

      Signal now offers a feature called “automatic key verification” which complements the existing safety number system. Signal is always end-to-end encrypted, and automatic key verification provides an additional, streamlined way to confirm that there’s no unexpected party between you and the other “end” of an end-to-end encrypted session.

      It works through a system of verifications performed by you, your Signal connections, and third-party auditors that together provide the same assurance as manually verifying safety numbers. Unlike safety numbers, these verifications are done independently and do not require an in-person meeting or a secondary communication channel.

• Defence/Aggression

  • teleSUR ☛ Zambia Goes to the Polls as Hichilema Seeks Reelection

    Zambia is at the center of geopolitical competition between China, the United States, and the European Union for its mineral wealth, particularly its copper reserves. Beijing recently revitalized the 1,860-kilometer Tazara railway line, while Washington and the EU are funding the Lobito Corridor, a railway that will link the Atlantic with the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia via Angola.

  • New York Times ☛ Afghanistan’s Unhappy Anniversary

    With the country on the verge of another all-out war, this time with Pakistan, that is less than certain. Today, my colleague Elian Peltier explains why all the ingredients for things to spiral out of control are there.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ TikTok can be on government phones. Managing it comes next.

    Agencies disclosed policies for TikTok that range from permissive to blanket prohibitions, following a DOJ opinion allowing the app on government devices.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Centrists Are Still Defending California Billionaires

    California Democrats just defied Gavin Newsom to endorse a billionaire wealth tax. The fight previews a national battle in which centrists push “pragmatic” alternatives that would barely make a dent in ultra-elites’ wealth or power.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ When Elites Scheme Behind Closed Doors

    The history of the Veiled Prophet Society, the St Louis secret society whose origins are in white supremacy and the suppression of worker organizing, is a window onto elite capitalist society and how it operates to protect its own interests.

  • New York Times ☛ How Social Media Sparked a Refugee Crisis Between Spain and Morocco

    The video seemed to legitimize rumors that had percolated for weeks on social media suggesting that a recent ruling by Spain’s Supreme Court meant migrants who arrived illegally by sea could stay in the country. As one account on Facebook put it, falsely, “Ceuta is turning into an open gate,” when in fact migrants still faced expulsion after a judicial review.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Truthdig ☛ DOJ Relying on Anonymous Israeli Agent to Prosecute US Resident

    According to court filings noted by journalist Ken Silva, the Israeli agent has been identified only as “Avi” and is described as a “longtime employee of the Israeli security agency” who currently directs the Assessment Division of the Israeli Bureau of Counter-Terror Financing.

  • Fabio Akita ☛ Digital David and Goliath: Understanding MegaLag vs Honey/PayPal

    I’m telling this story in three acts: the last-click trick against creators, the extortion model against stores, and the defeat device that fooled the networks’ auditors. The technical core, the part that matters to us developers, is in the third act. But without the first two it makes no sense.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Manitoba premier: booze back when Epstein files drop

    The anchor interviewing Kinew asks if actions like keeping American-made booze off of the shelves of Canadian stores in protest of Trump's economic terrorism is doing more harm than good. I'm guessing that he wasn't expecting the answer that he got as the look on his face and the pause in dialog would make you think he just suffered a stroke.

• Environment

  • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ Amazon's New AI Data Center Is So Enormous That It Appears It Will Become the Largest Single Source of Pollution in the United States

    According to the New York Times, Amazon has confirmed its investment in a massive gas-burning power plant in Texas, meant to supply up to 7.65 gigawatts of energy to a planned data center in Pecos County. Should it come online as planned, the plant’s 35 turbines would be allowed to spew 33 million tons of CO2 a year, the NYT notes, which would easily make it the largest single fount of emissions in the country.

    That’s a stunning amount of carbon exhaust, putting that single data center in a league with entire countries including Switzerland, Ireland, and Bulgaria.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ U-M affirms Ypsilanti $1.2B computing center site; township officials vow fight

    Ypsilanti Township has pushed U-M on its plans since last summer, passing resolutions against it and encouraging a year-long pause on data center project approvals through the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority.

    While aspects of the project are classified, [...]

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Models of glacial collapse in Antarctica improve predictions of sea-level rise

    The study is described in a paper appearing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Aug. 11. The work was conducted in the laboratory of Brent Minchew (PhD '16), professor of geophysics.

  • Wired ☛ AI Could Help Fossil Fuel Companies Create More Emissions

    New research finds that by making the fossil fuel industry more productive, AI could help increase carbon emissions by up to nearly 5 percent—vastly outpacing the impact of data centers.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ The quiet rewiring of the world's financial plumbing

      The distinction between private permissioned blockchains and public permissionless ones matters, too. Private networks may improve efficiency, but they often replicate the features of the systems they are meant to replace. The greatest potential lies in public networks, where transparency, interoperability and shared infrastructure can unlock new ways of transferring value and connecting markets.

    • Medievalists.net ☛ Five Famous Horses from Medieval Legends

      For a renowned knight, getting the equipment right is just as important as to having the courage, the skill, and the willingness to help others. One essential part of that equipment is the horse, which is inextricably bound to the knight’s identity – indeed, what is a knight but a man with a horse? Therefore, in many medieval legends and literary works, great knights and great horses are often found in pairs; the master’s worthiness manifests in the extraordinariness of his horse. Here are five of those legendary animals.

    • Tuscon Sentinel ☛ Pedestrian death rate on Tucson streets doubles from last year

      A recent study shows Tucson streets remain among the deadliest for pedestrians, and the number of people killed to date this year is twice the number as last year at this time. Safety advocates say multiple solutions are needed to reduce the risks of crossing our roadways.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Bridge Michigan ☛ Think you're getting old? New study says Michigan sturgeon may live to 400

      A new study suggests the fish, already known to be among North America’s longest-lived freshwater species, may routinely survive for more than 200 years, some potentially reaching 300 or even 400 years.

  • Overpopulation

    • Overpopulation ☛ Here's Some Good News!

      It is estimated that more than 120 million unintended pregnancies are conceived every year. Some of these are miscarried and some are aborted, but perhaps half – 60 million – are carried to term. Most of the children who were unintended will nevertheless be loved and cared for, but some won’t. There is evidence that the unintended, unloved kids have a greater than average chance of growing up to be problems to society.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Deutsche becomes first non-Chinese bank to settle yuan

    China has made increasing the use of the yuan in international transactions a key priority of its latest five-year plan, including financing development projects abroad in its currency. US President Donald Trump’s “erratic” trade policies have added urgency to Beijing’s ambitions, the Financial Times argued, while historically low interest rates in China have also made the yuan more attractive for lenders.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Following Pope Leo XIV's Encyclical, the Vatican Announces a New Art Triennial Celebrating Human Creativity and Empathy in the Age of A.I.

    More than 100 artists will showcase their art on four continents as the Catholic Church continues to emphasize human creativity and relationships over artificial intelligence tools

  • TruthOut ☛ ICE Stationed Undercover Agent Outside of Ilhan Omar Town Hall Meeting, She Says

    The woman initially claimed to be a security officer, but Omar’s team said that she was not involved with their security for the event. It was then that she called her supervisor and admitted that she was an agent of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a law enforcement agency within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She left after speaking with her supervisor, Omar says.

  • Rebecca Williams ☛ Unwinding the Great Tech Power Grab

    Despite the heaviness of the stakes, the event itself was light: plays, puppets, clown workshops—I put on a gnome hat. My favorite moment of the event, which I dipped in and out of all week, was when a yellow gnome asked me to put my iPhone away and “carry this instead,” then passed me a hand-painted cardboard apple attached to a popsicle stick. How silly; how reasonable.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ "Someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this"

    It was never about the money, it's about the impunity.

  • TechCrunch ☛ Google co-founder Sergey Brin has now spent $100 million to fight the billionaire tax

    Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated another $20 million to Build a Better California, an organization advocating against California’s proposed billionaire tax, according to a new filing. That means that the world’s fourth-richest man, whose net worth hovers around $267 billion, has now spent more than $100 million to avoid an estimated $13.3 billion tax payment.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Millions of US tax dollars sent to rightwing European thinktanks. Did any Trump supporters vote for that?

      Just a few hours later USAID was in effect closed down, with most of the staff placed on indefinite administration leave. This was framed as part of Trump’s “America first” agenda. USAID, the Trump administration and his sycophants in the rightwing media had argued, was wasting taxpayers’ hard-earned money on ridiculous projects abroad instead of improving life at home. In the lead-up to the shuttering of USAID, for example, one of the most shameless lies about the agency, repeated without any evidence by the likes of Fox News, was that it was spending millions on condoms for Gaza.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Moscow Times ☛ As Russia Strips Rights from Exiled Regime Opponents, Many Don’t Know if They Should Worry

    The list of prohibited activities includes managing one’s finances, properties and legal matters. Bank accounts will be frozen, embassies will refuse most appointments, and people to whom the law applies won’t even be able to use the government’s digital services portal or do something as simple as register a marriage.

    Human rights organizations have decried the new measures as an attempt to further hamstring Russian political exiles, many of whom fled Russia due to increased wartime repression. Their shorthand for the bill, the “civic death law,” underscores its severity.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Zambia's 2026 election: Key issues to watch

    Amnesty International says Zambian laws, including the Public Order Act and cybercrime legislation, have been weaponized to restrict dissent, opposition gatherings and freedom of expression. It also warns that the increasing use of criminal charges against government critics could have a chilling effect on political expression.

  • Techdirt ☛ Ninth Circuit Rewrites Section 230 To Remove The Part That Actually Mattered

    For all the talk of “reforming” or “repealing” Section 230 in Congress, the fact is that the courts over the past three or four years have effectively chipped away so steadily at the law that it’s lost a significant chunk of its usefulness. The latest comes from the Ninth Circuit, which ruled earlier this week that Section 230 is not, in fact, an immunity from lawsuit, but merely a defense against liability. This may sound like a procedural technicality — and, indeed, the coverage of this case from the likes of Reuters covers it as a boring procedural story — but it’s a huge deal.

    To get there, the panel had to rewrite the history of Section 230 and wave off a whole stack of its own prior rulings as either sloppy word choice or mere dicta.

  • JURIST ☛ Amnesty International warns of rising authoritarian risk in Zambia ahead of elections

    The briefing flagged several legislative threats, such as the Cyber Security Act and Cyber Crimes Act 2025, particularly the latter’s provisions on defamation and harassment, which have become tools to silence independent media and government critics and suppress public debate ahead of the vote. In July, Amnesty International called for the release of ZNBC journalist MacPherson Mukuka, who was arrested after posting a recording reportedly depicting public servants on a Presidential Campaign Team committee secretly discussing election tactics.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ How Argentina Banned Its Opposition

    Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has been imprisoned and barred from public office for life. As Argentina heads toward its 2027 elections, her case shows what democratic erosion looks like when it comes in judicial robes.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Russia sentences journalist Vasilisa Shishkina to 12 years in jail on treason charges

    “The prosecution and sentencing of Russian journalist Vasilisa Shishkina has been shrouded in secrecy and authorities have given no details of the charges against her amid reports that she was targeted for her work,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director. “Russian authorities should immediately explain why Vasilisa Shishkina was prosecuted and sentenced and, more broadly, stop using politically motivated charges to silence the press.”

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • RFA ☛ Late former premier Zhu Rongji used economics to tighten China’s grip on Tibet

    The pair are credited with orchestrating China’s gradual escape from international isolation following the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and its path to becoming the world’s second-largest economy.

    But for Tibetans, Zhu’s legacy as an architect of China’s economic rise is one of increasing Beijing’s political control over the region, Buchung Tsering, research director at the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet, told RFA.

  • New York Times ☛ ICE Plans to Give Officers Gloves That Can Deliver Electric Shocks

    The department did not answer questions about how the gloves would be used, such as whether they would be used to apprehend individuals during immigration operations or during encounters with protesters.

  • Court House News ☛ ICE agents are building a DNA database. What about the Constitution?

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have for years collected DNA samples from people detained as part of their operations. But under the second Trump administration, the number of genetic records taken by federal agents has skyrocketed. According to a July report published by the Georgetown University Law School’s Center on Privacy and Technology, ICE agents captured the DNA of as many as 900,000 people last year.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Union Deal That’s Undermining Gig Workers

    Drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft are wildly exploited, largely because they’re misclassified as independent contractors. Recent union deals to protect those drivers leave them as independent contractors — just the way the rideshare bosses want it.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ John Deere Is Testing Its Workers’ Resolve

    The union contract for 10,000 UAW workers at John Deere’s Midwestern plants is set to expire fall 2027. The agricultural machinery maker is asking them to extend that contract by two years, probing whether workers are willing to fight for a better deal.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AI data center developers begin suing local jurisdictions behind bans and moratoriums — claims range from officials exceeding authority to violations of due process and equal protection laws

    A few AI data center developers have started suing local governments after the latter either denied their application or passed laws that banned or put a moratorium on such developments. According to Bloomberg Law, some of the lawsuits alleged that officials exceeded their authority in banning data centers, while others say that their right to due process and equal protection has been violated by these moratoriums.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • RFERL ☛ 'Russian Starlink' Is Fast Becoming A Reality, There's Just One Problem For The Kremlin

    The Russians "simply don't have the launch capacity," she said. "This does not mean that they can't get a satellite Internet constellation going but it probably won't be as fast or effective as Starlink (or the two versions that China is working on, known as Guowang and Qianfan)."

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Russia building its own Starlink - and faster than expected

    Russia is rolling out its own version of the Starlink satellite internet system faster than expected and plans to have nearly 300 satellites in orbit by 2027, according to a Ukrainian intelligence official.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Internet slowdown and drones in the Strait: Taiwan preps for potential China conflict

    The half-hour drill on Monday in the central city of Taichung – to be repeated Thursday in northern Taiwan and in Taipei – blocked millions of people from using mobile video streaming and other high-data phone functions, while the government tested backup communication systems. Air raid sirens sounded as people took shelter in underground parking lots, shops, and basements.

    The unprecedented test marks a new initiative in Taiwan’s efforts to leapfrog ahead in its defensive tactics against China, a much stronger, better-resourced potential adversary.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Bruce Lawson ☛ Bruce Lawson's personal site : Microsoft admits it “leverages” Windows to push Edge, Bing, Copilot; pulls moonie at regulators

    But what does the word “leverage” mean in this context? Because I’m thick (but well-connected) I emailed Gene to ask. If he rolled his eyes and tutted, I didn’t see, and he graciously allowed me to quote his reply:

    "It’s kind of one of those magic words in antitrust law that can reveal the intent behind conduct that could be interpreted more than one way. Courts and regulators tend to be very deferential to unilateral business decisions of monopolists if there is any even plausible argument that they are “pro-competitive” or “competition on the merits”."

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Hollywood's UK "Omnibus" Pirate Site Blocking Order Surfaces Through Cloudflare

      In May, the UK High Court granted several Hollywood studios a broad "omnibus" site blocking order, allowing them to block rotating networks of pirate sites, without the need to link them to known pirate brands. This breakthrough order was recently cited in a Canadian court order, but remained unavailable to the public, until now.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Paris Court Kicks Off New Football Season with Multi-Intermediary Piracy Blocking Orders

      Europe's football seasons kick off again this month, with the Champions League to follow in September. In preparation, Canal+ has secured fourteen site-blocking orders spanning ISPs, DNS resolvers, VPNs, and search engines. It's a broad, coordinated effort — and one of the last that France will run by hand before an automated system takes over.