Leftovers

• Terence Eden ☛ Why do audience members choose specific shows at the Edinburgh Fringe?

  At the end of nearly every show the performer begged us to leave a review on the Fringe website and to tell our friends. In absolutely none of the shows did the performer ask why we were there, how we found out about the show, which poster or leaflet attracted us, or whether we followed them on social media.

  All that money spent on posters and no one knows if they work. As the old saying goes "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don’t know which half.".

• Ruben Verweij ☛ Tune in to other writers

  My overarching theme for this month has been music: I’ve been listening to it, playing it, and also writing about it more often in August. As the well-known quote, "writing about music is like dancing about architecture", already warns us, this hasn’t always been easy. Luckily, there are plenty of web writers who have inspired me with their music related writing, and I hope you’ll like their work as well. Time to tune in to some other musical folks!

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Reply to Dale’s comment on my IndieWeb post

  We don’t disagree here at all.

  I don’t think IndieWeb is “a recursive effort to ultimately converge everybody towards a set of ideas”. I apologise if my communication was lacking on that part. First of all, I don’t think everybody is the target of IndieWeb. I’m not even sure if I agree with the “converge [ - - ] towards a set of ideas part”. To encourage an adoption of certain ideas, sure. But not converge in a sense that these would be the only right things.

• Jono Alderson ☛ SEO is the cleanup crew for organisational dysfunction

  When something breaks on the website, more often than not, it’s the SEO team that finds it. A redesign doubles page weight. Product pages inherit three teams’ worth of contradictory messaging. Analytics stops measuring the thing everyone presents to the board. Nobody has looked at what customers have been saying on Reddit for six months. Eventually, somebody notices. And it’s usually us.

• DNA Lounge ☛ DNA Lounge: 24-Aug-2026 (Mon): Wherein someone tries to sell our Prince scraps

  The reason I have so many extras is because of how big printers work. Or worked, at the time, anyway. We needed like 3,200 tickets, but these things were stamped in large galleys, so if you ordered 3,200 they ended up printing 5,000 and threw the rest away. And for a show like this, we did not want those discards falling into the wrong hands and ending up on the scalper market, so we had them send us the entire batch from the print run.

• Indie Web Is Punk ☛ The IndieWeb Is Punk Manifesto

  You don't need a deal with a label. You don't need a platform's blessing. All you need is an out of tune guitar you can barely play, or a free text editor and a hosting bill. That's it. That's the whole scene.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Journalism Can Help Expose Bad Science And Trigger Real-World Change, New Study Shows

    A new study published in Media and Communication looks at the practice of watchdog science journalism, where journalists investigate issues such as malpractice, fraud, and corporate manipulation in scientific research.

  • Wired ☛ Transistors Changed Everything. Here’s How They Work

    Life would be completely different without transistors. For starters, there would be no personal computers or cell phones, so no Amazon, no video games, no dating apps, no messaging, no streaming, no social media, no Apple Pay or Google Maps, and no AI (hmm). Cars contain billions of transistors. They're really everywhere. So what is a transistor?

  • Hackaday ☛ Making Better Rubies At Home

    That basic method used involves blasting aluminium oxide with a laser, which results in a container full of what are technically gems, but – as the image on the right makes clear – not exactly the prettiest or easiest to shine up. Much of the problem here is that these are hollow geodes composed of countless tiny crystals instead of solid singular crystals.

  • John D Cook ☛ Three-term recurrences

    There many examples of families of functions where each function can be computed as a linear combination of the two previous terms

    f_{n+1}(x) = a(x) f_n(x) + b(x) f_{n-1}(x)

    where a and b are functions of x but not on n. This is called a three-term recurrence formula.

  • John D Cook ☛ von Mises probability distribution | von Mises-Fisher

    Probability density function must integrate to 1, and so if you know a density function up to a constant, the constant is determined.

  • John D Cook ☛ What exactly is modified about a modified Bessel function?

    Special functions often have arcane names that not very helpful without some context. The previous post goes into some reasons for this. This post will expand on a point at the end of the post about “modified” functions.

    Things are given their names for reasons. Discovering those reasons may help you understand their motivation and use.

• Career/Education

  • Futurism ☛ Employers Are Hiring Recent Grads and Then Saying "Oops, Never Mind"

    Entering what is one of the worst job markets in decades, you almost can’t blame recent grads for blasting out AI-generated resumes. But recruiters, in turn, are using faulty AI tools to filter through the garbage. Internal documents at Google revealed, for example, that its internal AI systems are wrongly throwing out the applications of qualified candidates. Many job postings are themselves AI generated. Some employers are also using AI to screen candidates and conduct interviews. Job seekers, aware of this AI-dominated paradigm, are tailoring their resumes to please AI tools.

    In sum, it’s AI warfare on all sides.

    Still, some basic human decency — such as not taking back job offers and ghosting applicants — would be nice.

  • SFGate ☛ Employers are ghosting college grads and rescinding offers

    For the past two years, navigating the job market has been demoralizing, especially for those who are just now graduating college and entering a tumultuous workforce rife with ghost jobs, smug artificial intelligence agents and disturbing “blue people.” As a result, spraying and praying — the act of blasting out hundreds or even thousands of AI-generated resumes to job postings out of desperation — is becoming the norm. Now, according to career experts who spoke with SFGATE, overwhelmed employers are rescinding job offers and ghosting applicants, creating even more pain, confusion and regret among recent college grads.

  • Deseret Media ☛ 3-year college degrees grow more popular in the US, saving time and cash. But critics aren't sold

    The condensed programs have exploded in popularity. As of this spring, 26 U.S. states have a college that offers at least one reduced-credit, three-year bachelor's degree, according to the nonprofit research group RAND.

  • American Library Association ☛ ALA Opens 2027 Annual Conference & Exhibition Call for Proposals

    ALA invites education programs and posters for the ALA 2027 Annual Conference & Exhibition, June 24-28, 2027, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Annual Conference explores key challenges and opportunities facing libraries, with professional development rooted in timely research, innovation, and best practices.

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ My book TBR system

    I know. And yet, over the past 15 years, I have developed a reading system that relies on a Goodreads feature: custom shelves. I keep looking at Hardcover, but they don’t have custom shelves, and I’m not sure I could tolerate adapting my system to what Hardcover allows. (I’m not a fan of Story Graph though admittedly it’s been five years since I tried it.) To some extent, I feel like my system has trapped me on Goodreads — but at this point Goodreads doesn’t bother me enough to justify the effort that changing my system would take, especially when it works well for me currently.

    (To be clear, this post is a lament about my own need for categorization, not a complaint that any given software is not perfectly suited to my needs — I recognize that I am not a typical user. I am also guessing that custom shelves are either difficult to code or introduce complexity that isn’t worthwhile for most software companies.)

  • Luke Davis ☛ AME: ask me everything

    Having worked in digital marketing for 7 years, customer service for 5, and being a consumer for over 30, the one thing that dumbfounds me is why we don’t ask people what they want or how they want it.

    I’ve been open about my issues with the concept of experts. We place them on pedestals as paragons of knowledge and wisdom.

  • Kevin Kelly ☛ The Technium: A Billion Dollars

    The point of my exercise is that most people’s dreams are not gated by money. Sure you need some money, but you probably don’t need as much as you might imagine. You most likely don’t need multi-million dollars to start your dream.

    The bottleneck for most dreams is not financial. It’s a lack of confidence, willingness to take a risk, and face failure, or a lack of imagination of what is possible with current resources. If you want to write a novel you don’t need capital — you need discipline and 1,000

  • James G ☛ Art, technology; change

    This year I have spent a lot of time thinking about art. I have spent many weekends in art galleries, a kind of building that has a magnetism comparable to that I used to feel writing code. Except unlike software, art makes me stop and look and listen. When I study art, I am not trying to make anything. I am following my curiosities. I am letting my imagination run wild. I enjoy coming up with questions about what I see and sitting with them, without the obligation of trying to immediately find an answer. Art fills part of my life that I didn’t realise needed filling. I look at canvases like I do stars: with the greatest awe and curiosity that I know.

  • [Old] Software Should Work ☛ Software Should Work

    An independent conference on software reliability.

  • Lars Faye ☛ AI Coding will Prevent Expertise

    In my previous article, Agentic Coding is a Trap, I discussed the "skilled orchestrator paradox", where the skills required to manage AI agents for coding are the same ones that can be diminished through the continued use of said AI agents. Expertise was largely the differentiator; the more experienced a developer is, the less likely it is that they might experience skill atrophy, as the knowledge has had a chance to ossify after years of experience.

    If you look around right now, you'll find the vast majority of those that are seeing the most benefits from these models are those that have had years, if not decades, of experience in the field (which predates AI tooling, of course). And any industry veteran will tell you the same: the bedrock of this knowledge comes from doing the work.

  • Natchez, Mississippi ☛ The school day should belong to students, not their cell pho...

    That doesn't necessarily mean students shouldn't be allowed to bring phones to school. We understand why parents want their children to have them, particularly before and after school. But there is a significant difference between having a phone available when it is needed and having unrestricted access to it throughout the school day.

    The latter is increasingly difficult to defend.

  • Guillaume Heu ☛ My experience as a first time speaker

    I was lucky enough to be selected to speak at the 2026 Gleam Gathering, which was my first conference talk ever. As you'd expect, I was nervous. You won't see it in the video, but I blanked out for a whole minute at the start of my presentation. Thankfully, the crowd was being patient, and once I found my first few words, I was on straight tracks.

    I've learned a lot from this initial experience. Some things I did right, some things I wasn't prepared for, and I was very lucky to have such a good audience.

• Hardware

  • Android Police ☛ Google is still prioritizing repairability, as this Pixel 11 Pro XL teardown gives us a better look inside

    Naturally, with any new phone, some folks will get curious about just how durable it might be. That's where the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel comes in, stress testing phones beyond what most normal people will put their devices through.

  • Hackaday ☛ An Electronic Explanation Of 1960s Fuzz Boxes

    It’s likely that even those of us who have never picked up a guitar in our lives will recognize the sound of an electric guitar with a fuzz box effects pedal. The raspy distorted sound has been at the heart of so many very well known recordings. Behind it is a distortion circuit, or as [Bill Jehle’s Mad Scientist Guitar Lab] is here to tell us, eight different circuit topologies.

  • Hackaday ☛ At Last, A Gameboy Advance With Decent Audio

    It takes the form of a PCB that hooks into the pads of the removed GBA audio chip, and provides a much cleaner audio path with filtering and EQ and a class D audio amplifier. In addition there’s an audio codec and an ESP32 for Bluetooth connectivity, enabled by a long press of a GBA button and configured via a web interface on the ESP. Best of all there is no case modification, this is designed to remain as stock as possible.

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Must-read Wired story captures soul (and tech) of drone light shows

    Every once in a while, a piece of journalism comes along that captures an industry shift so vividly, thoughtfully and humorously that you can’t help but pass it along to everyone you know.

  • Jim Grey ☛ 35mm f/2.8 SMC Pentax-A

    The 35mm f/2.8 SMC Pentax-A is the 35mm lens I bought for my Pentax manual-focus SLR bodies. (The 35mm f/2.8 SMC Pentax-M shares its optical formula.) It is easily my favorite 35mm lens across all of the SLR systems I own. It has little or no optical distortion, it is sharp across the frame, and — delightfully — its tonal and contrast biases are fairly neutral, letting the film itself shine through.

  • Bernardo Kastrup ☛ The immortal 1984 Macintosh (restoration diary)

    After a long pause of a year and a half, I finally managed to complete a modest new restoration project this summer.

    The goal this time was to restore an original Apple Macintosh 128K (1984) for display and daily use in an office environment, where it will serve both as an educational curiosity and a source of entertainment and relaxation for employees.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The New Lede ☛ This American city perfected clean water for beer — now it’s fighting to keep cancer-causing nitrates out of the tap

    Ever since Jacob Leinenkugel discovered spring waters here that were pure enough to brew his famous beer, this small Wisconsin city’s devotion to clean water has been paramount.

    That’s why in 1997, when Chippewa Falls utility managers detected potentially dangerous concentrations of nitrates in a well supplying city water, officials acted. They installed new filtration equipment in their treatment system and drilled deeper wells into cleaner aquifers to ensure the water delivered to the city’s 16,000 customers contained nitrates at concentrations less than 10 parts per million, the level deemed safe by federal law. It costs Chippewa Falls $200,000 a year to operate the system.

• Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware

  • Business Insider ☛ Leaked Microsoft pay data shows how much hundreds of employees report making in AI, cloud, and other teams [Ed: Associating roles with buzzwords, not substance]

  • Former Bethsoft devs claim Microsoft changed the company and mishandled recent layoffs

  • Salon ☛ I was fired for resisting technology. It saved my career

    “I tried it. That software is too complicated for me and I don’t need it,” I told her. “Other teachers got permission to skip it, so I requested a waiver.”

    As a popular college creative writing professor who’d filled up in-person sections every term for 25 years, I worried I was too much of a Luddite to learn new cyber tricks. Yet I’d actually adapted to and enjoyed easy Zoom live video meetings, which mirrored my regular courses. I assumed I’d just get an exemption to avoid the Canvas Learning Management System requirement.

    Instead, when I didn’t complete the tutorial, the algorithm canceled my classes. Checking the university’s website, I saw that my list of 50 current students disappeared overnight. While two younger male colleagues were somehow excused from the cyber course prerequisite, I was dismissed after a quarter of a century of service, and I was distraught.

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

    • El País ☛ China does not want its internet users to fall in love with an artificial intelligence

      Beijing bans chatbots from fostering emotional dependence in a pioneering regulation to contain the social risks of a technology poised to transform personal relationships

    • Futurism ☛ Clueless AI CEOs Still Baffled Why Everybody’s So Mad About AI All the Time

      The tech industry’s standing in the eyes of the US public has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last few years. Where Americans were once excited for new tech products and industry ideas, they’re now exhausted by the sector’s intrusions into their lives, whether with AI-generated slop or the data centers that power it.

      Pretty much everyone has received that message loud and clear: political strategists are issuing frenzied memos about the data center backlash, while tech financiers are now forced to consider the financial cost of AI hatred.

    • Digital Music News ☛ AI-Generated Music to Be Banned From ARIA Charts in Australia

      Australia will exclude songs created wholly or mostly by artificial intelligence from the country’s official music charts beginning this Friday, according to new rules established by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). Notably, AI-assisted recordings can still chart if they are “substantially human-made.”

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Kids outlearn AI—and we still don't know why

      LLMs need vastly more data than children to learn language. Understanding why could help us create more efficient models—and reveal more about developing minds.

    • Tim Bray ☛ Text Watermarking

      LLM software generates output a word at a time. The way it works is, it takes the last few words it’s generated and feeds them to the Large-Language-Model process, and what comes out is a list of plausible next words, and a number which represents just how plausible they are. So if the last few words were “my favorite tropical fruit is” the LLM might come back with “mango”:30, “lychee”:20, “papaya”:10.

      You might think that LLMs always choose the most-plausible next word, but that turns out to give lousy results. So they randomly select from the list in a way that respects those numbers. First, note that the numbers add up to 60. So in this case, you’d want it to select “mango” 30 out of 60 attempts, i.e. half the time, “lychee” 20/60 or a third, and “papaya” 10/60 or a sixth.

    • Gigi ☛ Rebuilding Boris

      I still find it curious that we call these lies “hallucinations,” as if providing inaccurate or dangerously wrong information to millions and millions of people is somehow cute, a little oopsi-daisy that might happen on an LSD trip or something.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Born on technology’s third base (21 Aug 2026)

      As Gary Marcus describes in a recent Organized Money interview, an LLM can recite the rules of chess, but it can't play chess because – lacking a theory of how chess works – it will just emit statistically likely chess moves, even if those moves cause pieces to illegally move through other pieces. The first conventional chess-playing programs ran on electromechanical proto-computers, and they played a better game of chess than an LLM that uses billions of times more computing power and energy: [...]

    • Armin Ronacher ☛ Anger, Anxiety and Agency

      "How can you work in tech right now and not be angry?"

      In the context of the thread, this was clearly also about AI and agents. For me, the emotions I would expect in tech vis-a-vis these new developments are disorientation and anxiety, but not anger.

    • Arjen Wiersma ☛ AI is not an engineer

      I made the mistake (looking at it in hindsight) of allowing AI to take over my critical thinking when it comes to coding. Like many I found the wonder of AI in that it was able to very quickly write entire programs for me. The downside of this was that I felt no connection to the code whatsoever.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Twitch Streamers Sue Twitch, Amazon Over AI Training Data Use

      According to the filing, streamer and class representative Warren Pandiscia alleges that Amazon began scraping video streams for training purposes before Twitch updated its terms of service to address AI data use, which included an opt-out option for creators.

      The alleged data collection began over two years ago, per Pandiscia’s complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The filing cites a previous statement from Twitch’s former Chief Monetization Officer Mike Minton, who said video data was used in a “prototyping capacity.”

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Twitch AI class action: inept and written with ChatGPT

      I would first assume: not very. Most class actions don’t go anywhere. They have to get the judge to certify there is a group they represent and that they have a cause of action. Anyone can file a case, it’s not really a news story.

      And the complaint itself is a bit lightweight. If your first claim is implicit terms that aren’t written, is that the best you’ve got? The other claims are no stronger.

    • CNET ☛ The Dead Internet Theory May Be Coming True, Pew Research Findings Show

      Nonetheless, the study found that 10% of the samples “show significant signs of AI authorship.”

      “One in 10 webpages as of July 2026 may seem modest. But the internet includes a mix of new and old material. A lot of pages in these random samples couldn’t have been written by AI,” the study findings said. “If we filter old webpages out of our samples and look at only the pages published after the release of ChatGPT, the trend is even more pronounced.”

    • BoingBoing ☛ California State University system uses AI as a money incinerator

      The cash-strapped university system spent $17 million to give everyone ChatGPT, watched sign-ups come in far more slowly than expected, and responded by committing another $39 million to it.

    • SFGate ☛ Calif. colleges bought everyone ChatGPT. No one knows what to do.

      “Equity doesn’t matter if it’s not an educational technology,” Kenney said. “If I gave every CSU student a can of Coke, that’s equitable. But is that going to help their education?”

      In a 2025 study at the University of Minnesota and Dublin City University, researchers analyzed some college classrooms where AI was openly used. In one case, a professor asked his students to use ChatGPT to assist them with their essays; however, some students accepted the output without verifying the information. Many of the essays had “made-up sources” and wrong information, the study states. And in another professor’s physics class, some students who used ChatGPT also blindly followed the chatbots.

      “… Students believed that ChatGPT had superhuman intelligence and was practically infallible, even when it answered their physics questions incorrectly,” the study says.

      If students are misled by ChatGPT’s information, Kenney and other professors believe it would do more harm than good.

    • Salon ☛ Are kids “guinea pigs for chatbots”? McMahon backs classroom AI use

      Those limitations can be significant. During a recent AI training session for educators in South Carolina, an AI-generated world map misspelled Mali as “Mail,” labeled Egypt “Sopth” and replaced Libya with a country simply called “Africa.”

      McMahon said schools should monitor whether AI tools actually improve student outcomes and remove those that don’t. She also emphasized that AI should not replace human teachers.

  • Social Control Media

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-12 [Older] Brazil orders Discord to halt livestreaming after teen death

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Facebook, TikTok promoted Colombian armed groups' content to recruit children: HRW

      HRW said the circulation of social media content by armed groups "glorifies life in armed group ranks" and promotes "deceptive job offers."

      Since 2021, around 1,500 children have been recruited by armed groups, according to the non-governmental organization.

    • HRW ☛ “I Thought I’d Never See My Mom Again”: Recruitment and Use of Children by Colombian Armed Groups

      This report examines the dynamics of child recruitment, the factors that place children at risk, the strategies armed groups utilize to recruit them, and how children are used by the groups. It also analyzes the government’s response and its shortcomings in preventing child recruitment, protecting and rescuing children, assisting in the recovery and reintegration of those who have been released, and prosecuting the armed groups responsible. Human Rights Watch conducted 184 interviews with government officials, humanitarian workers, Indigenous and community leaders, members of human rights and children’s rights organizations, and Colombian state child protection officers. We also held in-person and virtual group meetings with children who had been victims of recruitment or had been at risk of recruitment, and obtained data and other information from multiple government sources.

    • HRW ☛ Colombia: Armed Groups Expand Child Recruitment

      “Armed groups in Colombia are recruiting children with impunity, as protection systems are failing, and social media platforms have become a more effective recruiting ground,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Every child recruited is indicative of a government failure.”

    • India Times ☛ Facebook, TikTok promoted Colombian armed groups' content to recruit children: NGO

      Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the circulation of social media content by armed groups "glorifies life in armed group ranks" and promotes "deceptive job offers."

      Since 2021, around 1,500 children have been recruited by armed groups, according to HRW.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Wildlife trafficking spreads across social media, putting thousands of species at risk

      A new study published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity by an international team of experts led by researchers from the University of Helsinki highlights that thousands of animal, plant and fungal species, many of which are threatened with extinction, are being illegally traded online as global consumer demand continues to grow.

      "The online illegal wildlife trade spreads across many platforms, including popular social media platforms, and represents a growing and evolving threat to biodiversity conservation," says Professor Di Minin.

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Do Not Go Gentle Into Silicon Valley’s Dark Night

      Perhaps the most important trial — and test — will be an action launched by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, which began last week. The states, which are seeking $200 billion in damages, argue that Meta and its platforms are addictive, targeted at children, and in violation of privacy and consumer protection laws. Meta, of course, maintains its innocence.

    • International Business Times ☛ Substitute Teacher's AI Fake in Lingerie Spreads on TikTok as Easy-To-Use Nudify Apps Drive Surge in Abuse

      DeSantiago traced the image to a TikTok account using the real name of a student he recognised from a local middle school where he regularly worked. He suspected two further students were involved, based on who followed and engaged with the account.

      He reported it to the school's assistant principal, who told him the matter would be 'taken care of'. Searching his own name on TikTok that evening, DeSantiago found a second account impersonating him, using a misspelt version of his name and the same doctored image as its profile picture.

    • Numeric Citizen ☛ Being manipulated

      This morning, I visited Reddit to answer a question about Craft. When I noticed five notifications, I clicked the bell icon. Two of them were about engagement stimulation, which I felt was manipulative and deceptive. I dislike being tricked this way. LinkedIn is also good at this. And Meta, the master of them all. Major platforms will likely face legal challenges in the future because their product design promotes toxic engagement tactics that manipulate users for growth. Om Malik won’t be around to see this unfold, sadly.

    • Floh Gro ☛ Disappointment

      It's not often that something happening online stays on my mind this long. It's not often that a social media situation disappoints me this much.

      Last week, MacStories decided to return to posting on X, which caused a big wave of anger on Mastodon and, I guess, some excitement over there. Federico and John might have good reasons for this - personally and on the business side - and I'm not in a position to judge the business decision itself. What I'm 99.999% sure about is that they are good people, and it's not right to reduce this move to them turning around and supporting fascists. Cancelling a subscription (or a follow) because of it is a legitimate response, and so, perhaps, is staying.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Federal News Network ☛ TSA to replace ‘Gold+’ in privatization push

    Under SPP, private companies run security screening services at commercial airports under TSA oversight. Currently, 20 commercial airports across the United States use private screeners under SPP.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Atlantic ☛ Logging in Was Never Supposed to Be This Complicated

      All of these steps serve a purpose. At least in theory, each added layer helps prevent hacks and breaches. Erring on the side of safety is worth an amount of inconvenience. At the same time, extra steps can introduce security problems of their own. Last year, Hunt fell for a clever phishing scheme when he clicked a link to log in to his newsletter service. His password manager failed to autofill his information, which should have alerted him that something was wrong, he said. But like the rest of us, he was so used to things not working that he went ahead and manually entered his credentials on a site that turned out to be an impostor, designed to steal and exploit them.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-12 [Older] Unconstitutional? German intelligence to receive more powers

    • EU ☛ Regulation (EU) 2023/1543 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2023 on European Production Orders and European Preservation Orders for electronic evidence in criminal proceedings and for the execution of custodial sentences following criminal proceedings

      In view of the more sensitive nature of a European Production Order to obtain traffic data, except for data requested for the sole purpose of identifying the user, as defined in this Regulation, or to obtain content data, it is appropriate to provide for a notification mechanism applicable to European Production Orders to obtain those data categories. That notification mechanism should involve an enforcing authority and consist in the transmission of the EPOC to that authority at the same time as the EPOC is transmitted to the addressee. However, where a European Production Order is issued to obtain electronic evidence in criminal proceedings with substantial and strong links to the issuing State, no notification to the enforcing authority should be required. Such links should be assumed where, at the time of issuing the European Production Order, the issuing authority has reasonable grounds to believe that the offence has been committed, is being committed or is likely to be committed in the issuing State, and where the person whose data are requested resides in the issuing State.

    • CBC ☛ Woman flagged by ID scanner as nationwide 'public safety concern' after incident in Winnipeg bar

      She said she was not told why they were scanning it and had no idea an incident later that evening would lead to a flag that potentially banned her from bars across Canada.

      "This flag had denied me entry at an establishment in a whole other province without my knowledge, without any transparency surrounding how this flag had been established," Alexandra said.

    • Ludlow Institute ☛ The coolest anti-surveillance tools at Defcon

      I go to DEFCON every year because I think the people there are doing really cool and awesome stuff. And this year was no different. The Ludlow Institute hosted a hackathon at IoT Village where we had people hack into IoT devices like electronic basketball hoops, electric cars, smart lights, and other everyday connected junk. And we gave out prizes when people found anything interesting.

    • FSF ☛ The hidden cost of today's "smart" devices

      Audio headsets that connect to computers wirelessly via Bluetooth demonstrate how quickly this loss of control turns into a security problem. Millions of Bluetooth-capable products utilize Google's "Fast Pair" service, which is nonfree software that promises to make pairing of wearable devices easier. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy and Android’s location services to detect nearby Bluetooth devices automatically and prompts you to pair. Security researchers discovered this feature was really a bug, as it introduced a serious weakness across a wide range of devices. This included wireless earbuds and headphones from major manufacturers, which could be turned into surveillance machines. Attackers could silently pair with these devices and hijack the audio to spy on the person wearing them, as well as anyone they spoke to. In some cases, the microphone could be activated and the wearer could be tracked through Google's own network.

    • The Register UK ☛ AliExpress accused of fingerprinting shoppers with silent audio trick that also muted a dev's headphones

      He said the scripts built a WebAudio graph that introduced a sawtooth oscillator to generate a waveform, an analyzer to measure the result after the waveform passes through a browser’s audio implementation, and a script to read the associated frequency data.

      The scripts set the audio’s gain to zero, meaning the end user won’t hear anything, but the WebAudio graph will still be processed by the browser.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-15 [Older] Morocco detains dozens of migrants trying to enter Spanish North African exclave Ceuta

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-13 [Older] How Germany's drone defense fails

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-14 [Older] NATO jets shoot down drone over Latvia

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-14 [Older] Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in Brian Thompson death

  • Barnabas Aid ☛ Thirty Killed as 100 Gunmen Attack Village in Plateau State, Nigeria

    At least 30 people were killed when around 100 gunmen descended on a village in Nigeria’s Christian-majority Plateau State on Sunday August 16.

    Suspected Fulani Islamist militants attacked Jwak Maitumbi in Mango Local Government Area at around 7.30am, just as people were preparing for morning church services.

  • Barnabas Aid ☛ At Least 130 Christians Killed in Three Weeks of Violence Across Ituri, D. R. Congo

    Islamic State terrorists have claimed the killing of at least 130 Christians in three weeks of violence across Ituri Province, north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

  • Wayne State University ☛ Detroit Evening Report: Anti-Muslim demonstration at Dearborn city council meeting, Mayor Hammoud’s response

    The city council meeting was moved to the Henry Ford Centennial Library in anticipation of large crowds for Jake Lang’s appearance in Dearborn Tuesday night. City officials encouraged residents not to engage with Lang supporters the day before. Several commentors praised Lang’s rhetoric during public comment.

  • CBS ☛ Anti-Islam protest roils Dearborn, Michigan city council meeting as crowds try to rush through doors

    Sewell, the senior pastor of 180 Church in Detroit, accused the city of being "under Sharia Law" and demanded that councilmembers renounce it. The topic has been a hot-button issue in other U.S. states, including Florida and Texas. Sewell previously hosted then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and even spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Arson and bomb attacks hit more than 70 locations in Thailand’s deep south, authorities say

    More than 7,800 people have been killed in provinces bordering Malaysia since 2004, when the latest round of a long-running insurgency led mainly by the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) flared.

  • Techdirt ☛ Don’t Trust The Name On The PAC

    Political action committees are responsible for nearly two-thirds of all federal election funding, with about US$6.3 billion raised and $4.8 billion spent since January 2025. But their outsized political influence does not just come from their wallets. It’s also generated from their names.

    Political strategists are adopting PAC names that signal the opposite political goals from what those organizations truly intend. They hope to taint voter perception of the candidates or ballot initiatives to which they donate.

  • Vox ☛ Want to tax the rich? Start with the dead.

    And yet, in a world with stepped-up basis, the higher you raise the tax rate on capital gains, the more incentive you give the rich to sit on their most lucrative assets until they die. For this reason, hiking the top capital gains rate can theoretically cost the government money. In a 2021 analysis of President Joe Biden’s proposal to lift the top rate on investments to 39.6 percent, economists at the University of Pennsylvania projected that the policy would reduce federal revenue by $33 billion over the next decade, as investors sold off fewer assets.

  • New Republic ☛ Republican Shirks AIPAC Donation Amid Contentious Michigan Race

    Rogers reportedly brought up his reservations during a meeting last week with the AIPAC board chair, Michael Tuchin. Rogers did not explicitly say that he did not want AIPAC involved in his race, but encouraged the United Democracy Project, the organization’s super PAC, to ease up on its media plan and “give more serious thought to whether the organization is the best messenger” against El-Sayed, according to a source that spoke with the Times.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Scientists Used A.I. to Design New Viruses. The Technology Could Be a Boon for Medicine, but Experts Worry About Harmful Pathogens

    The findings represent the first genomes, or complete genetic instruction books, designed entirely with generative A.I. The resulting viruses attack only bacteria, which could one day help overcome the problem of antibiotic-resistant microbes

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: How Canada can help Americans and defeat America (23 Aug 2026)

    In 2020, Donald Trump ripped up NAFTA, a trade deal that conferred a huge advantage to the USA at Canada's expense, and replaced it with CUSMA, a trade deal that was even more advantageous to America, and even worse for Canada. In 2024, after being elected for the second time, Trump publicly railed against CUSMA using the exact same language he'd used to decry NAFTA, branding it "a very bad deal" that needed to be shredded and renegotiated.

    [...]

    The fact that Trump is immune to learning from his mistakes (because that would require admitting that he made a mistake) does not bind Canada to do the same. Quite the contrary: Trump's inability to learn or reason means that if Canada engages in novel retaliatory tactics, it stands a good chance of flummoxing the Mad King, leaving him flat-footed and lumbering while it dekes him out and swarms past him.

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ General Staff: Russia has lost 1,476,580 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022

    A January 2026 CSIS report said Ukraine has likely suffered between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties from February 2022 to December 2025, of which between 100,000 to 140,000 are thought to be killed in action (KIA).

  • Yle ☛ Finland and Ukraine reaching drone cooperation agreement

    The country will send 90 percent of its drone production to Ukraine, says Finnish President Alexander Stubb.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Joseph Lorenzo Hall ☛ Cliff Stoll at DEF CON 34: The Best Talk I’ve Ever Seen

    He did not bring a polished slide deck. He brought an overhead projector and the original physical transparencies from a presentation he gave to the NSA in 1987. Sitting nearby was a thermos of minestrone soup.

    Then he spent an hour retelling the story that became The Cuckoo’s Egg—one of the great stories of computer security.

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-12 [Older] EU waste packaging rules: Why small businesses are worried

  • Futurism ☛ Trump Says You're a Rube If You Don't Want a Data Center in Your Backyard

    In a bizarre interview with his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, flagged by Forbes, the president went out of his way to defend the AI industry’s data center frenzy, in opposition to the vast majority of American voters.

  • Science Alert ☛ First Evidence That London's Scheme to Cut Car Emissions Worked To Improve Child Health

    It's called the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ).

    Now, five years' worth of data from this 'natural experiment' has provided scientists with strong evidence that central London's ULEZ (and the Toxicity Charge that preceded it) made a big difference to young residents' lung health.

    It's a promising sign for similar clean air efforts around the world.

  • The Register UK ☛ US datacenters tripled their water footprint in 10 years

    In a recent report published by the Library of Congress, the CRS casts an eye over how server farms use water, looks at potential options to reduce this, and discusses the current federal role in overseeing the use of H2O by operators.

  • US Congress ☛ Data Centers and Water: Frequently Asked Questions

    Communities may have concerns over potential water quality impacts of discharges from data centers into nearby waterbodies or into wastewater treatment systems. The quality of water discharged from data centers may affect wastewater treatment processes or the receiving aquatic ecosystem.

    Data center water use is difficult to quantify comprehensively, and understanding of its potential effects on local water resources is evolving. Some Members of Congress have shown interest in improving understanding of the potential water-related effects of data centers on communities and the environment. In the 119th Congress, some Members have introduced bills regarding water use by data centers. Many of these bills are related to gathering and publishing data on data center water use, as well as other approaches to incentivize certain practices at data centers. Others would support or limit data center development.

    The questions in this report pertain to direct water use by data centers; a discussion of indirect use, such as the use of water in offsite power generation, is beyond the scope of this report.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Amazon Abandons Plans For Data Center Campus at Calvert Cliffs

    Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN) has withdrawn its proposal to build multiple data center campuses at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Southern Maryland. The proposed project would have covered about 2.4 million square feet. The decision follows strong local opposition to large-scale data center development, including a major political backlash.

    That opposition was reflected at the polls. In Calvert County’s June 23 primary election, three incumbent commissioners who favored the data center build and opposed pausing that development, lost their respective races, reports Maryland Matters.

  • Futurism ☛ The Ocean Hasn't Been This Hot in 125,000 Years, Alarmed Researcher Suggests

    Ocean surface temperatures are also steadily creeping up, hitting 70 degrees Fahrenheit this month, the hottest point since records began. That’s despite ocean heat records usually being set in March and April, following the austral summer.

    In fact, as University of Ottawa environmental studies professor Ryan Katz-Rosene pointed out in a tweet over the weekend, this new record may be a new high “for the entire Holocene period, and possibly even as far back as the last Interglacial 125,000 years ago.”

    “Should be major news!” he argued.

  • BBC ☛ World's oceans hit highest temperature on record as El Niño grows

    The average surface temperature of the planet's seas outside the polar regions hit 21.1C (70F) on Saturday, according to figures from the European Copernicus climate change service.

    That edges past the 21.09C recorded on three separate days in March 2024, and is far above average for the time of year.

  • India Times ☛ Nvidia invests in data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure

    Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Alberta Minister 'Peppered with Profanity' Over AI Data Centre

    Glubish also took heat for the Smith government’s use of the notwithstanding clause, a once-rarely-used provision that can override rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

    “How can we trust you guys when you constantly lie and show us how slimy you are?” asked one man.

  • Cowboy State Daily ☛ Developers Now Targeting Public Lands To Build Huge AI Data Centers

    The project could set a precedent for building AI data centers across the country on public land.

    It isn't happening in Wyoming — yet — although the state has one of the most aggressive data center developments as companies propose huge projecrts here.

    “I can tell you from a Wyoming point of view we have no current project applications for data centers on BLM land,” Wyoming BLM spokesperson Courtney Whiteman told Cowboy State Daily.

  • CBC ☛ Why are there suddenly so many data centres planned in Canada? Your questions answered | CBC

    "For an older-style conventional cloud facility, we might have a couple of megawatts moving into that building, but for AI facilities, it's much more common to see hundreds of megawatts," Anne Pasek, Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture and the Environment at Trent University, told CBC News.

    These facilities can span thousands of square feet, with "hyperscale" data centres becoming more common. Definitions of hyperscale vary: Some place the threshold at 50 megawatts, others at 100. Just 50 megawatts is enough electricity to power 37,500 homes.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Hospital sees daily child injuries from electric scooter accidents

      All serious cases, according to Ustav, are caused by excessive speed and not wearing a helmet. "Statistics show that 80 percent of these accidents do not happen because of a collision with another vehicle or person, but simply by losing balance or falling," Ustav said.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Self-driving Ford F-250 truck with shotgun-equipped drone-killing turret tested by US Army — autonomous system designed to blast fast-moving drones at between 10 and 100 meters range

      Sandhills 2.0 builds on the original Sandhills project which spawned the Lancer UGV, built on the Polaris Ranger 1500 utility vehicle, which ended up being gifted to Ukraine. However, this new breaching solution adds C-UAS abilities to bolster their abilities to clear the way for human soldiers to advance. Breaching operations can be seriously compromised by a determined enemy using increasingly common FPV drone technology and this fact inspired the changes delivered in Sandhills 2.0.

    • New York Times ☛ Four Years Ago, a Crypto Boss Went Missing. Now His Successor Has.

      “One crypto boss disappearing is bad enough, but two in four years is crazy bad,” said Robert Nogacki, a lawyer in Warsaw who represents Zondacrypto customers locked out of their accounts. “Nothing about this company makes any sense.”

    • Hackaday ☛ An Early History Of Space Stations: Where’s My Wheel?

      Convair had been studying multi-person orbital stations under Krafft Ehricke since the late 1950s. One result was TASSEL, an acronym for the Three Astronaut Space System Experimental Laboratory. Proposed in 1960, TASSEL was a three-man laboratory intended for an Atlas-Centaur launch into a roughly 200-nautical-mile orbit and missions lasting two or three weeks.

    • NPR ☛ Thousands in northwest Indiana still without power nearly two weeks after storm

      The start of the prolonged outage coincided with an announcement by the local power company's parent, NiSource Inc., that it would be paying out around $140 million in dividends to its shareholders.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-14 [Older] Vast German wildfire forces evacuation in Eifel forest

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-14 [Older] Germany: Firefighters say Eifel wildfire now under control

    • Digital Camera World ☛ These National Geographic filmmakers spent four years following the journey of a single lion cub – I can’t wait to watch!

      During this time, the small cub – nicknamed Kio – goes from fighting for survival to becoming leader of the pack, all of which is captured in incredible close-up detail using a full suite of traditional cameras and camera drones.

• Finance

  • Fannie Mae lays off a dozen senior officials

    Bill Pulte is done pulling double duty as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and acting director of national intelligence, a shift that coincided with bad news for many top officials at Fannie Mae.

    A dozen high-ranking officials were laid off from the government-backed enterprise, the Wall Street Journal reported. Pulte took to social media after the cuts were reported, saying that technology “is improving and providing opportunities for us to remove unnecessary processes and unfortunately at times personnel.”

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ Hugging Face sale: AI startup Hugging Face exploring sale valuing it at $13 billion

    The New ‌York-based ⁠company, which ⁠hosts open-source large language models and datasets, has been working with a bank to gauge bidders' interest, the report said.

  • Futurism ☛ Texas Governor Suddenly Turns on Data Centers as Backlash Grows

    His comments indicate that it’s not just blue states growing wary of data centers. It’s a particularly noteworthy new take for Abbott, who mere months ago was an outspoken supporter of the massive facilities powering the AI boom. Just in November, he gloated that Texas was the “epicenter of AI development,” offering major sales tax exemptions. At the time, Abbott proudly announced that Google was making a major $40 billion investment in the state.

    The backlash has become one of the biggest uniting, bipartisan movements in the country, turning vast swathes of the population firmly against the tech. Lawmakers are only now starting to catch on that the subject could quickly turn into a major political crisis, which could have significant consequences not just during the upcoming midterms, but 2028’s presidential election as well.

    The sheer level of opposition is finally dawning on Abbott.

  • Internet Archive ☛ Archiving Democracy: How the U.S. End of Term Web Archive Preserves Government History | Internet Archive Blogs

    Beginning in January 2025, we witnessed an unprecedented removal of material from U.S. federal websites — documents related to education, health, science, and more, gone from public view almost overnight. Dozens of articles appeared on this topic, including this one from IEEE Spectrum, published in February 2025, shortly after the beginning of the new presidential term. The author, Gwendolyn Rak, like many other doing research in this area, noted that not only did individual web pages change or vanish almost overnight, but that the web presence of entire agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) disappeared from view. Moments like this are exactly why libraries have collaborated to build the End of Term Web Archive.

  • Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences ☛ Criminal Deception in Silicon Valley

    With entrepreneurial fraud cases on the rise, we investigate how entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception, employing deceptive means to defraud audiences. Analyzing court data from Silicon Valley ventures and their founders prosecuted for fraud between 2000 and 2023, our findings reveal that entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception through a process of façading: Entrepreneurs construct, perform, and protect illusory appearances (façades) that externally project high-growth performance to audiences while masking ventures’ actual underperformance. We identify three forms of façading—surface, reinforced, and deep façading—that are contingent on the severity of the gap that entrepreneurs face between audiences’ performance expectations and ventures’ performance reality. Our theoretical framework captures how entrepreneurs facing minor, wide, and extreme expectation-reality gaps engage in evermore sophisticated efforts to detach the venture’s externally projected appearance from its actual operational reality. Practically, we propose several approaches to deter and detect criminal deception, including the extension of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission surveillance and whistleblower program, investor due diligence reform, and dedicated entrepreneurship education interventions that clearly demarcate when entrepreneurs transgress into criminal deception. We make contributions to literatures on cultural entrepreneurship, organizational wrongdoing, and the social effects of entrepreneurship.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Criminal Deception in Silicon Valley

  • Michael Geist ☛ Culture Off the Table? What the Collapsed Canada-U.S. Trade Talks Reveal About the Carney Government's Cultural Policy

    I believe the distinction lies, at least in part, in the government and cultural sectors now viewing the issue of cultural protection differently, with the government open to cutting mandated payments for culture and news, but not moving on the power to regulate how culture is distributed and promoted. If true, that represents a significant shift since the cultural sector has long viewed payments as a cornerstone of cultural policy.

  • Brett Chalupa ☛ Why I'm Learning Rust

    These questions are valid ones, but they are based upon a flawed premise. It is 100% okay for someone to learn anything without any good reason! Learning can be purely just for fun, based on a hunch, based on an intuition. So while I don't have great answers to those questions, I at least have some hopes and dreams and a few motivating factors.

  • India Times ☛ Orbital data center startup Starcloud valued at $2.3 billion in latest funding

    SpaceX's blockbuster IPO ‌has rekindled ⁠investor ⁠interest in the space industry, including in emerging ​areas such as orbital data centers.

    Manhattan West led the round that included new investors Nvidia and Cisco Investments, alongside existing backers Benchmark, EQT and ⁠Soma, among ‌others.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ NVIDIA-backed US startup to provide 20-GW computing capacity in space

    The company is building data centers that place high-performance GPUs on satellites, with the goal of using space-based infrastructure to support the rapidly growing computing demands of AI. The latest funding will support spacecraft manufacturing, engineering and future launches as it works toward a large orbital computing network.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New Eastern Europe ☛ From social media to politics: Poland’s Ukraine debate

      “Over the last two years, on Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, and even already on LinkedIn, we saw a spike in negative comments about Ukrainians,” Sydorenko says. “These could be news stories about everyday conflicts that were heavily dramatized, or comments on political events.”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ Defiant Iranian Film Spotlights Crackdown On Female Singers

    An unauthorized Iranian film released for free on YouTube is stirring debate by openly challenging restrictions on women singing and Iran’s compulsory hijab rules. Bidad, or Outcry, directed by Soheil Beiraghi, was made without government approval and features the voice of Parastoo Ahmadi, a singer who was sentenced to 74 lashes after performing publicly without a head scarf. Parisa Sohbati from RFE/RL's Negah-e-Farda (Iran Tomorrow) program explains.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Iran protest victim: 'They were shooting to kill'

    Seven months after the bloody crackdown, victims are dealing with permanent physical disability along with losing the opportunity to work or get an education.

    Obtaining information from within Iran is both difficult and dangerous, and DW's interview partners chose to use pseudonyms for safety reasons. DW was able to contact victims through human rights networks.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Threatens Think Tank With Libel Lawsuit For Telling The Truth About National Guard Deployments

    But no matter where the National Guard went, the promised reduction in violent crime failed to materialize. It’s an assumption anyone could make, given that it was more a show of force meant to force more cities and states to bend the knee, rather than a well-designed plan to address alleged crime epidemics.

    The Center for American Progress released a report early last month, one that showed National Guard deployments weren’t doing much in terms of crime. Instead, the administration was spending more than a billion dollars ($1.7 billion at last count) in an attempt to take credit for the status quo: a long, sharp decline in violent crime rates that long proceeded either of Trump’s two presidential terms.

  • TruthOut ☛ WaPo Ordered to Rehire Karen Attiah, Who Was Fired for Charlie Kirk Comments

    “The ruling marks a landmark moment for press freedom, confirming that corporate media institutions cannot use retaliatory discipline to silence journalists who address uncomfortable truths,” said Democracy Defenders Fund, which signed on to represent Attiah, along with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, when she filed a grievance against the Post arguing she had been wrongfully terminated.

  • Robert Reich ☛ How Trump Plans To Silence CNN, Jon Stewart, and John Oliver (the Same Way He Silenced CBS News)

    Trump’s game plan is for the Ellisons to control a giant media monopoly — including CBS News, CNN, Comedy Central (home to Jon Stewart), HBO (John Oliver), and even TikTok (where 1 out of 5 Americans now get their news) — to silence criticism of Trump.

    The Ellisons have already gobbled up CBS and CBS News. If they get Warner Bros. Discovery, they’ll also own CNN, Comedy Central, and HBO. Larry Ellison’s company, Oracle, leads an investor group that holds a majority 80.1 percent stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations.

  • The Walrus ☛ Canada, You Don’t Have First Amendment Rights

    Clearly something is amiss. If we do not understand what the Charter is, and if we fail to grasp what is in it and what isn’t, we have a real problem on our hands. When citizens do not understand the supreme law of their land, confusing their rights with those of another country, surely the civic health of the nation is at risk.

    There are certainly similarities between the Charter and the US Bill of Rights. Both documents guarantee a set of liberal democratic rights that include freedom of expression, religion, association, and assembly; procedural protections for those arrested and charged with crimes; a prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments; and equal protection of the laws. Neither expressly includes guarantees of social and/or economic rights, such as the right to food, housing, health care, education, or income support, or the protection of the environment. Like the US, Canada is a federation, and like the US Bill of Rights, the Canadian Charter is binding on all spheres of government but not on private individuals, firms, or institutions.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Raw Story ☛ Bezo's WaPo humiliated as it's ordered to rehire columnist fired over Charlie Kirk post - Raw Story

    The Washington Post has been ordered by an arbitrator to rehire a Black columnist who clashed with the Opinion page editor who abruptly left the paper just weeks ago.

  • Karl Bode ☛ The Hulk Hates Fascist Media Consolidation

    Large media consolidation is always harmful. There is no real debate. There's 50 years of indisputable evidence that massive U.S. media mergers always result in mass layoffs, higher consumer prices, and shittier overall product as freshly-fused companies force workers and customers to pay off deal debt.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • HRW ☛ 2026-08-13 [Older] South Africa Names Gender Apartheid. Now It Should Act.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘It’s absolutely criminal’: US tipping culture has reached the UK – and is causing chaos

    Service charges used to be a matter of choice, but now consumers feel obliged to pay them for even a cup of coffee. How do we navigate this minefield and who is really profiting?

  • ANF News ☛ Yazidis react to attempts to amend the 'Survivors Law'

    The statement noted that the dangers created by ISIS in the region are still ongoing, and said that Yazidi society has not yet recovered from the effects of the group’s crimes. It said: “Thousands of people are still missing, and the fate of many remains unknown. Many mass graves have yet to be opened. The Yazidi Survivors Law was enacted by the Iraqi state to address the suffering and victimization experienced by Yazidis. Any change or amendment to this law, or weakening it for any reason whatsoever, would amount to evading duties and responsibilities,” the statement said.

  • New York Times ☛ Supreme Court Allows Trump to Pursue Mail Voting Limits, for Now

    The administration asked the court to clear the way for President Trump’s order that creates “state citizenship lists” and directs the Postal Service to decide who gets a mail-in ballot.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ ICE detained an Army sergeant’s wife. His family is still waiting for answers.

    On July 11, ICE detained Villafranca Trejo as the family drove home after a trip to Walmart. Turcios said he observed a vehicle following his family out of their military housing subdivision on the way to the store and then, when the family left Walmart, it reappeared.

  • The Conversation ☛ Why police have been told to pause their use of AI in court cases

    The concern is not simply that AI can make mistakes. Generative AI can produce statements that sound plausible but are false. It’s a problem that becomes much more serious when those statements can influence an investigation or form part of a case presented in court.

    This has already happened. West Midlands Police used information generated by Microsoft Copilot while preparing material relating to a proposed ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters attending a football match against Aston Villa in November 2025. Copilot referred to disorder at an earlier match between the two clubs. But the match had never taken place.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Human rights rankings reveal surprising over- and underperformers

    A new book co-written by researchers at Binghamton University and the University of Rhode Island provides a framework for comparing human rights practices around the world and over time and identifies overachieving and underachieving nations.

    The book, "Science and the Study of Human Rights," by Binghamton University professors David L. Cingranelli and Mikhail Filippov and University of Rhode Island associate professors Skip Mark and Ashlea Rundlett, also evaluates barriers to improvement and ranks countries around the world on a variety of human rights measures.

  • The Verge ☛ Robotaxis are real now — so is the pushback

    In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul withdrew a proposal earlier this year that would have opened the door to driverless robotaxis outside New York City after taxi drivers, unions, and state lawmakers opposed it. Six months later, commercial driverless service remains illegal in the state, and legalization efforts are stalled.

    In DC, labor unions are fighting legislation that would legalize commercial robotaxis, while lawmakers are weighing a 200-vehicle cap and a 15-cent-per-mile fee that would fund Metro upgrades and aid workers displaced by autonomous vehicles. A July City Council hearing on the proposal stretched for a grueling 10 hours.

  • Ken Klippenstein ☛ The Most Dangerous Feds You’ve Never Heard Of

    Nested within ICE is an American Stasi with the power to target U.S. citizens. Called Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, it is the country’s second-largest criminal investigative agency behind only the FBI — though with broader authorities.

    But the most dangerous feds in America may also be the most incompetent. The Justice Department’s ongoing attempt to turn 15 Minnesota anti-ICE activists into a sprawling “Antifa” conspiracy opened a rare window into HSI, with disclosures that are equal parts creepy and hilariously inept, including: [...]

  • NPR ☛ 'It embarrasses me to be involved': Inside the National Guard D.C. deployment

    "I will say very frankly that the bad taste that this mission left in my mouth, it actually embarrasses me to be involved in any way," one guard member who was part of the deployment for several months recently told NPR.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Says Broadband Deployment Is Reaching More Americans

    The FCC, in a report released last week, says broadband deployment is progressing at a reasonable pace, with fewer Americans lacking high-speed internet access. From June 2024 to June 2025, the number of Americans who still did not have access to fixed terrestrial broadband speeds of at least 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload declined roughly 23 percent over that period, according to the FCC’s latest Section 706 report. The decline reached about 43 percent over two years.

    Despite the improved availability, about 10.6 million people still lacked access to those fixed terrestrial speeds as of June 2025, including more than 9 million rural residents and about 500,000 people on Tribal lands.

  • Ana Rodrigues ☛ )Towards a personal online third-space

    This a ramble about what a safe personal online space focused on creativity, community, and self-expression could look like.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Verge ☛ ESPN streaming plans are getting more expensive

    Though Disney last raised prices across its bundles last year, this is the first increase for ESPN, which rolled out its standalone streaming subscription last August. As part of the launch, ESPN updated its mobile app with a TikTok-like feed of videos and a personalized version of SportsCenter. ESPN also launched multiview in its app on major smart TV platforms.

  • The Verge ☛ The cat-and-mouse game over 3D-printed guns has begun

    Cody Wilson, who claims to have made the detection-defying tool, is calling it “Hochulization” as a direct jab at New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who pushed through the nation’s first law mandating gun file detection software on new printers earlier this year. “New York is trying to reach into the internet and police how open-source 3D printing is done,” Wilson, who’s based out of Austin, Texas, told The Verge. “I think of it as a self-defense measure.”

  • Nathaniel Snelgrove ☛ Sony ending PlayStation disc production

    And the fact of the matter is, a digital copy of the game is the same as the disc copy. It’s not like steaming a movie compared to the Blu-ray. If they stop making Blu-rays, I’ll scream bloody murder. They are far superior to streaming. But a digital download of a game and a fully-patched disc will be, byte for byte, the same experience.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-08-17 [Older] Why Elon Musk Should be Boycotted, as Seen From South Africa

  • The Verge ☛ Zillow and Redfin settle FTC antitrust case over their rental listings partnership

    They had allegedly conspired to reduce competition in rental listings, leaving fewer options and higher prices.

  • Trademarks

    • CBC ☛ Conservative MP urges government to release 'full details' of U.S. trade deal that was on the table

      The Conservative Party is urging Prime Minister Mark Carney's government to release "the full details" of the proposed Canada-U.S. trade deal that was on the table before negotiations collapsed late on Friday.

    • Right of Publicity

      • Wired ☛ They Dedicated Their Lives to Teaching. Then the Deepfakes Started

        The deepfake epidemic in schools is affecting more than students. Four teachers tell WIRED about becoming targets of sexualized, AI-generated content—and how difficult it was to find accountability.

  • Copyrights

    • CopyrightLately ☛ Oasis Photograph Sparks Copyright Lawsuit Over $1.9M Painting

      Music photographer Justin Thomas took the photo at an Earls Court afterparty in 1995, at the height of Oasis’s Britpop reign and just after (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? turned the band into a global phenomenon. Earlier that year, Noel had reportedly hit Liam over the head with a cricket bat during the album’s recording sessions, so the kiss wasn’t exactly a representative sample of Gallagher family life.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Anna's Archive Owes $340 Million, Lost Several Domains, but It's Still Online

      When Anna's Archive suffered widespread downtime earlier this month, many users feared a legal crackdown. Instead, the site was reportedly targeted by a coordinated assault on its network infrastructure. Just as it did after facing $340 million in damages and losing several domains earlier this year, the Archive quickly bounced back.

    • International Business Times ☛ Twitch Creator Sues Amazon Over AI Training After Streamers Were Automatically Opted In

      Warren Pandiscia filed a proposed class action in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on 20 August (No. 3:26‑cv‑08721), naming Twitch Interactive and Amazon.com as defendants. The case is listed as a breach‑of‑contract action and also seeks to challenge the companies' alleged use of creator material for AI training.

      The lawsuit arrives just days after Twitch disclosed that channel content could be used to train Amazon's generative AI models. The platform's settings allow creators to opt out, but the training control is enabled by default.