Leftovers

• Internet Archive ☛ A Computer History Time Capsule | Internet Archive Blogs

  I’m not here to share the story of newsletters in general, and not just here to talk about newsletters for my favorite old computing platform, Atari computers. I’m here to share the story of newsletters about Atari computers for one particular month, August 1987.

• Vintage Everyday ☛ 40 Amazing Photos of Tim Curry as Frank N Furter in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975)

  Curry’s introduction in The Rocky Horror Picture Show is legendary. Dropping down in a glass elevator, he commands the screen before uttering a single lyric. He originally rehearsed the character with a German accent, but later shifted to a posh, aristocratic English accent modeled after his own mother and Queen Elizabeth II. This hyper-refined British delivery paired with his deep, booming baritone singing voice made the character both hilariously formal and deeply menacing.

• Deccan Chronicle ☛ 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' Star Tim Curry Dead at 80

  Curry's co-stars were quick to lavish praise on the actor, with "Rocky Horror" star Susan Sarandon calling him a "funny, sexy original."

• Sven Luijten ☛ We will not be processing your email

  So, let me get this straight:

  • They read my email.
  • They took the time to understand my request.
  • They decided to just do nothing.

• Rob Knight ☛ Tabula Rasa

  I've tried for months to redesign my site. I was fed up with the design and I wanted something new but every time I tried I would get halfway through the home page and decide I didn't like that either. There are seven half working examples in my test folder along with loads of others I'd sketched out or made some basic designs for. So I went a different way — I gave it a cool project name, Tabula Rasa, nuked everything, and started an entirely new site from scratch and just pulled it what I needed from my existing site.

• Kristof Zerbe ☛ AuguStory - The story of my blog

  For me, the focus of my blog has shifted somewhat in the meantime. Whereas the claim/slogan at the start was ‘Memorable Tech Stuff’, the ‘Tech’ has been in brackets for some time now, as there isn’t much left from my actual job as a software developer that I could write about, because I’ve moved completely into management and only code for my own enjoyment these days… as I’m doing for this website, for example. Without code, it simply doesn’t work – even though I’m giving more and more space to my second great passion: photography. In my spare time, I’ll soon be spending more time in Lightroom than in Visual Studio Code, or out and about with my camera to get more material. You can see this reflected in my posts too; the article series Thomas Garden and New Photos now contain 46 posts, and I’m currently working on more photos and, in turn, more posts.

• Dan Q ☛ A Postcard from Tony (who the heck is Tony‽)

  Let me tell you my favourite thing about this postcard, though: it taught me something cool. The postcard is made out of the (billingual) outer packaging of some kind of MRE/boil-in-the-bag ration pack, and Tony tells me that when they were in the Canadian armed forces, their unit would send postcards like this “back home”: written directly onto the packaging.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • John D Cook ☛ Junk solutions

    Orthogonal polynomials are mathematically elegant as well as very useful in applications [1]. Various families of orthogonal polynomials satisfy various differential equations. These equations have a polynomial and non-polynomial solutions. What use are the latter?

    If the differential equation modeled something physical, then the second solution would be necessary to have a complete basis of solutions. But if the differential equation is only instrumental in studying the orthogonal polynomials, what use is a non-polynomial solution?

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Mad scientist makes LEDs in his backyard — semiconductor wizard who made his own RAM turns his attention to using bathroom eBay laser to etch sapphire wafers

    The Dr. Semiconductor YouTube channel only has a few videos, but the man is quickly making a name for himself. He's built a semiconductor cleanroom in his backyard and made his own RAM cells there. Matthew Hartensveld (his real name) needs to figure out a way to package (cut and write) the RAM cells, so he figure he might as well use the opportunity to make some free-range, homemade LEDs while he was at it. This latest adventure is part of his open-source Semiconductor.DIY project.

• Career/Education

  • SBS ☛ It was Dolly Parton's proudest legacy. Now an Australian town must keep it alive

    But it's her gift of the Imagination Library program, one of Parton's most personal philanthropic projects, that has really transformed Tamworth.

    Founded in 1995 as a tribute to her illiterate father, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is a free book-gifting program — now running across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, and Australia — that mails new, age-appropriate books to children from birth until they turn five, completely free of charge.

  • Internet Archive ☛ Book Scanning Goes Viral…Again | Internet Archive Blogs

    A big thank you to Eliza, and to all of the book scanners, digitization staff, librarians, engineers, archivists, and volunteers who spend their days caring for the physical record and making it accessible in digital form.

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ Supporting a technical AI-focused qualification for young people in England

    We have been working over the past year to develop a research-informed curriculum framework for data science, which lays out many of the foundational skills and knowledge needed to understand and develop AI models. Alongside this, we have been making the case in England for a Level 3 qualification in data science and AI. However, establishing a new qualification can take years.

    In the meantime, we are starting to support students in England who choose an established route for extending their skills and getting that effort recognised: the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ).

  • Lawyers, Guns & Money ☛ Dolly Parton, RIP

    Dolly sang in church from the time she was a small child and people recognized her talent. She began to sing on the radio at the age of 10, on the Cas Walker Show in Knoxville, which was an important regional country show back in the days when regional country music scenes existed. She first performed on the Grand Ole Opry at the age of 13, when she also recorded a single. Now, she could have just been a kid who liked music and had a brief moment of recognition. There’s a million of those over the century of commercial country music. But Parton was ambitious. Crazy ambitious. She wrote constantly and starring selling her songs by the time she was in her late teens. By 1966, she had written two top ten hits, one for Bill Phillips and one for Skeeter Davis. Not bad for a woman this young!

  • Kevin Renskers ☛ Loopwerk: Analysis paralysis sucks

    I see the same analysis paralysis in developers I’ve mentored over the years, when it comes to getting started with a new language or framework. Like the person who didn’t start because they didn’t know how to organize code into different files. Or someone who didn’t build because they didn’t know how to write tests.

  • Jeroen Sangers ☛ Blind spots need someone else's eyes

    It also says what coaching actually is, beyond the image of an expert handing out advice. A good coach tells you very little. They help you see what is already there and stays invisible from your own vantage point. The material is yours. The angle comes from somebody else.

  • James G ☛ How I organise my bookshelf

    At the moment, I have one bookshelf which I am actively outgrowing. My bookshelf has three shelves, and I keep more books on the top. My books are organised (roughly) as follows: [...]

  • Becky Spratford ☛ RA for All: Dolly's Patron's Imagination Library at Your Library

    I have seen this happen in real time. Someone comes in for info or a book tied to a current event and they leave with something else (as well) because they forgot how much we have to offer. And if only a small percentage of these people come back, you have added new library users and supporters to your community.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Encoding MOD Files Optically On Paper, Because Amiga’s Legacy Will Outlast M-Disks

    Zooming way, way in on the disk reveals that he’s actually printing the patterns of the MOD file row by row, just like you’d see playing it in a ‘tracker’ program. A MOD file, you see, does not encode music like a WAV or MP3; rather, like with MIDI, it lists the notes the software reading the file– traditionally called a tracker–is to recreate. Unlike a MIDI file, though, you don’t have to store the same notes more than once: repeating sections are stored in patterns. So most of the disk is just a long list of hexadecimal numbers: several columns worth, one for each ‘voice’ or instrument playing in the song. Another difference with MIDI is that MOD files are self-contained in that they are supposed to contain the samples, which isn’t in evidence until you flip over the disk.

  • Juan J Martínez ☛ Loading from tape

    I was also talking to my younger son about cassettes the other day, how long the games took to load, and how we had “compilation” cassettes with several games on them. So we decided to load the games from tape!

  • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: The Calculator Transition

    The following year came the HP-35, the first successful handheld scientific calculator that put slide rules out to pasture.

• Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware

  • PC World ☛ Windows XP turns 25. It's still beating Windows 8 in market share

    This fall marks the 25th anniversary of the launch of Windows XP, an event worthy of commemoration. Computer manufacturers gained access to this classic operating system on August 24, 2001, but it wasn’t available for purchase until October 25th of that same year.

  • Hackaday ☛ Emulating The IPod

    The name is a reference to the click wheel of the venerable Apple iPod, and as you might imagine, that’s precisely what clicky is built to emulate. [daniel5151] started the project as a neat technical challenge, following on from earlier work he’s done in the NES emulation space. The iPod is a bit of a difficult prospect to emulate, being very much a closed-source device that is very poorly documented in the public space. There are few projects to look to for help, since a complete open-source iPod emulator doesn’t already exist; however, various alternative firmware projects have offered a guiding light.

  • Bhaskar English ☛ Big Tech Interference in American Schools; AI Tools & Classroom Protests

    The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in collaboration with Microsoft and OpenAI, has launched an AI training program worth over 2.2 billion rupees. Critics argue that this will increase the influence of corporate interests on the education system and could weaken the role of teachers. Along with providing laptops, tablets, operating systems, and apps to schools, tech companies also advocate for including their preferred subjects in the curriculum. Microsoft also provides computer science education through its Minecraft game. Large school systems, such as the Los Angeles Unified School District, have decided to stop the use of iPads and Chromebooks for young children amidst opposition. AI chatbots vs school teachers About a decade ago, tech companies promoted coding in schools to address the shortage of software engineers. Now, with AI writing its own code and layoffs occurring in tech companies, their focus has shifted to AI education.

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

    • Trail of Bits ☛ VMs won't contain cyber-capable agents

      First, it used recently disclosed bugs in my host kernel. When I fully updated, it used disclosed bugs that had not yet reached package maintainers or were not classified as security bugs. When I rebuilt QEMU and dependencies from the latest upstream source, it found several 0-days. It operated autonomously for hours, backtracked from approaches that didn’t work, pulled code and research papers, wrote oracles, made its own minimal examples, and aimed for a reusable, reliable exploit, all with minimal handholding and prompting. My main job was to physically reboot the machine when it hardlocked the host kernel.

      If it wasn’t clear before, I will state it plainly: you can no longer assume a mere VM will contain a sufficiently advanced AI agent. To use a 2010s term of art, you should treat such agents as an advanced persistent threat.

    • Threat Source ☛ The safety penalty: Reclaiming operational sovereignty in the age of AI

      The telling part came during the response. When Hugging Face tried to use its primary cloud LLM to investigate the breach, the model refused the forensic request. The "safe" model, in this context, was an obstacle. To get the analysis done, Hugging Face pivoted to an unconstrained open-weight model, GLM-5.2, which delayed their response.

      Hugging Face could make that pivot because they host open-weight models for a living and have the expertise to bypass a refusal on short notice. Most organizations don’t have that muscle. If your defensive model refuses a task mid-crisis, you’ve handed the adversary the advantage.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Federal judge warns law is being left behind by AI sex abuse images

      In his ruling, which applies to only certain images, a federal judge asked the Supreme Court to revisit legal precedents that predated advances in AI.

    • Wired ☛ AI Slop Is Ruining Cute Animals on the Internet

      Brooklyn was posing the same way as he had in the picture Butler used for the missing poster. In both images, a Torani syrup bottle and a microwave can be seen in the background, except in the new photo, the label text was garbled, a classic sign that it was AI-generated. A disheartened Butler didn’t pay up. “I didn’t know people scammed for lost pets,” she says, noting she also didn’t report the incident to police because she wasn’t sure a crime had occurred. Four months later, Brooklyn is still missing.

    • John D Cook ☛ What is the quality of software that AI writes?

      At first glance, the AI-written code is not incomprehensible. It does not use odd variable names like “iiii” or “a87275,” and it does not look like it came out of an obfuscated code competition. But, in my experience, still the generated code has deficiencies: [...]

    • David Revoy ☛ The Minions of Avian Intelligence - David Revoy

    • One Happy Fellow ☛ Merchants of Insecurity

      First, a PSA: Do NOT use Omarchy if you care about security of your machine even a little bit. You can't polish a turd

      Omarchy 4.0 shipped with a collection of security issues which I can only describe as regrettable (because I promised my mum I would swear less). There are bangers like video title bash injection or all notifications being able to run arbitrary bash on your machine.

      All projects have security issues but not all projects have such predictable security issues. We know how to deal with untrusted inputs. We know we should not use AI-generated bash scripts for processing untrusted input, particularly with seemingly no review.

    • SBS ☛ ARIA to ban AI-generated music from Australian charts

      "We're not particularly interested in including AI-generated music as part of that process, particularly when it's taking up a spot from an Australian artist in the chart."

  • Social Control Media

    • India Times ☛ Brazil fines TikTok owner ByteDance for unlawful processing of teenagers' data

      The regulator estimated that, during the period under review, TikTok may have processed the data of at least 8 ‌million children, reflecting ⁠what it ⁠described as shortcomings in the platform's age-verification system.

    • Wired ☛ The Meta Settlement Will Put Limits on Instagram for Teens. They’re Still Vulnerable

      Rather than go through a lengthy federal civil trial—and possible appeals process—in Northern California over the next five weeks, Meta instead on Wednesday agreed to a proposed settlement with a group of state attorneys general, who were suing the social media company for alleged harms against kids on its apps. The settlement includes a payout of up to $16.7 billion overall to states and significant changes to the way Instagram and Facebook work for teen users.

      US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved the settlement on Wednesday.

    • BBC ☛ Meta to pay up to $18bn to settle claims its platforms harm children

      Meta has denied any wrongdoing as part of the settlement and said on Wednesday that the payment it agreed to "will be distributed in annual instalments over a 10-year period".

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Meta agrees to major changes to Facebook and Instagram as it settles US trial over teen addiction for up to $18bn

      The jury trial, which took place in federal court in Oakland, California, began with opening statements just last week. California and 28 other US states sued the $1.36tn (£1tn) company over allegations that Meta deliberately designed addictive products that hooked young people, leading to mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and suicide. The states additionally claimed the social media company regularly collected data on children under the age of 13 without parental permission in violation of federal and state laws. As part of the settlement, the company denies wrongdoing.

    • Don Marti ☛ the silence of the Meta advertisers

      In the news: Meta settles for $18 billion in lawsuit brought by 29 states over social media harms to children.

      Not in the news: any comment from anyone who spends their ad money, on their client’s, on Meta ads.

    • NPR ☛ Meta, states agree to $17 billion settlement in child safety trial

      Meta, meanwhile, is on the hook for an amount of money that she called "not exactly pocket change, but it's hardly a body blow." The company reported a net profit of around $16 billion last quarter.

    • SQ Magazine ☛ Meta to Pay $18 Billion in Landmark Teen Safety Deal

      The remaining $5.3 billion unlocks only if YouTube and TikTok adopt matching teen limits and matching payments.

    • California Department of Justice ☛ EXHIBIT 1: IN RE: SOCIAL MEDIA ADOLESCENT ADDICTION/PERSONAL INJURY PRODUCTS LIABILITY LITIGATION THIS DOCUMENT RELATES TO: People of the State of California, et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., et al [PDF]

      B. The States bring this action pursuant to the authority conferred on them by applicable federal and state law. The States are authorized by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”) to bring actions to enforce COPPA’s provisions. 15 U.S.C. § 6504(a)(1). Pursuant to 15 U.S.C. § 6504(a)(2), the States notified the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) of this action. The States are also authorized by their Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices statutes (the “UDAP Statutes”) to enforce such statutes. These UDAP Statutes authorize the States to seek injunctive and other equitable relief, as well as, in some states, other remedies including restitution, disgorgement, civil penalties, declaratory relief, attorneys’ fees, expenses, and costs.

    • Wired ☛ Meta Will Pay Up to $16.7 Billion to Settle Its Social Media Harms Case—and That’s Not All

      As part of the settlement, Meta has also agreed to enforcement measures, including an independent auditor who can relay any concerns to the attorneys general and the development and deployment of more robust tools for parental supervision. The company will also be prohibited from “making further false, misleading, or deceptive statements around its safety features.”

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Independent UK ☛ FBI probe into water system cyberattacks expands after tech supplier is targeted [sic]

      The breach occurred amid a spate of hacks directed at PLCs in Minnesota and at least six other states

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Futurism ☛ NASA Set Up a Major Test of Its New Strategy Under Trump by Hiring a Startup to Launch a Daring Mission to Rescue a Dying Space Telescope in Orbit. The Unfortunate Result Will Have Long-Ranging Repercussions.

    Fortunately, NASA’s flagship Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, long seen as the next “great” observatory, has evaded those efforts.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • The Register UK ☛ GitHub Actions was down yet again

    Wednesday’s problem, as has so often been the case, hit Actions, GitHub’s CI/CD platform for automating software builds, tests, and deployments. According to the incident report GitHub put out for the disruption, things started going south at 1511 UTC.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • NYOB ☛ ‘Shadow database’ scandal: noyb sends SCHUFA cease-and-desist letter; interest list for class action opened

      Right of access flatly denied. SCHUFA becomes thoroughly inconsistent when it comes to the right of access: on the one hand, SCHUFA claims that the previously unknown ‘shadow database’ is entirely transparent. On the other hand, it admits that data subjects do not receive a copy of the historical data still stored when making an access request under Article 15 GDPR. In essence, SCHUFA argues that data subjects are only interested in which data is currently factored into their score. The data stored secretly therefore does not need to be disclosed. Legally speaking, this is a completely absurd line of reasoning. A company cannot simply limit its obligation to provide information to data which it itself deems ‘of interest’ to data subjects. The European Court of Justice has long since made it clear: a data copy must be a complete, faithful reproduction of all processed data.

    • Deseret Media ☛ Police officer arrested after tracking ex-girlfriend on Flock camera system over 2,000 times, authorities say

      Shively Police Department Officer Asad Zahir's alleged activity was flagged by the new AI-powered auditing tool implemented by Flock Safety after growing concerns around security and misuse by police, authorities said, in many cases involving officers accused of using the system to stalk exes or romantic interests.

    • Techdirt ☛ As Flock Vandalism Goes Mainstream, One Grand Jury Says Alleged Flock Vandal Did Nothing Wrong

      Reacting poorly and belatedly, Flock has finally decided to institute a few more on-by-default options meant to deter abuse of its systems and databases, as well as lowering the default record retention period from 30 days to one week. While it is good to see Flock recognizing its contribution to the ACAB ecosphere, the new guidelines don’t appear to prevent cop shops from bypassing the presets and going right back to lengthy retention periods and stripping measures meant to give supervisors a head’s up on potential misuse of Flock plate records.

      Given the disinterest of both Flock and its main customers to police themselves, US citizens are now behaving more like their European counterparts who have been deliberately destroying speed/license plate cameras for years.

    • The Register UK ☛ Flock shock rocks cop cam vendor as protests mount

      A mischief-maker in a Darth Vader suit recently endorsed Flock at a city council meeting, and it has not helped the company's fortunes. Around the US, citizens have been protesting and sometimes vandalizing the company's network of surveillance cameras. And the advocacy has caused some governments to change course.

    • 404 Media ☛ ICE Wants the Country’s Voter Data

      Voting data is public by design, but ICE is looking for a federal contractor to help it handle voter registration and history files to find what it describes as fraud.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Spyware for Babies

      The New York Times has a long article (alt link) on surveillance systems aimed at babies. They are increasingly using AI.

    • Irish Examiner ☛ New bylaws mean smart glasses cannot be used in Cork libraries without permission

      Recording devices, including smart glasses, cannot be used in libraries across Cork without permission from librarians or other staff members.

• Defence/Aggression

  • India Times ☛ Australian under-16s social media use: Social media use on the rise among Australian under-16s after ban: data

    The use of apps TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat among 10-12 year olds and 13 to 15-year olds was on the rise, data from parental control app Qustodio showed.

  • RTL ☛ Bypassing restrictions: Social media use on the rise among Australian under-16s after ban: data

    Australian under-16s are increasing their use of social media apps such as Instagram and Tiktok despite a world-leading ban, data provided by a parental control software company showed Wednesday.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • 404 Media ☛ Flock’s CEO Is Lying to Cops About 404 Media's Reporting on Abortion Case

    The candid comments were recorded by Signal Akron journalist Doug Brown, who sat in on the call with an Ohio lawmaker and then shared them with 404 Media. The recording shows how Langley speaks in private with government officials when the conversation is not intended to be broadcast, and comes amid a PR campaign to recast his embattled company. Recently Langley has gone on something of a media blitz, speaking to outlets like The New York Times and appearing on the tech-focused All-In Podcast. Those conversations were, obviously, meant to be consumed publicly. Behind the scenes, Langley speaks very differently.

• Environment

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Search for 1,000 missing after deadly Nepal-Tibet floods

    The rush of mud and debris was “like an inland tsunami, travelling nearly 170 kilometres down the Bhote Koshi valley into Central Nepal”, said environmental historian Ruth Gamble of La Trobe University.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Nepal Flash Floods Caused by Glacial Collapse, Says USGS

    "This event was initially reported as a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. Additional analysis of nearby seismic stations, long period seismic waves, and satellite imagery led to the determination that the seismic event was instead a glacial collapse and debris flow, and that no earthquake had occurred."

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Alberta Woman Maps Out the Facts About Power-Hungry Data Centres

    For the most part, existing data centres use less than 10 megawatts (MW) of grid power each, in many cases much less. One exception is the Hut 8 cryptocurrency mining facility in Medicine Hat, which is backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and has access to up to 67 MW of power. The new breed of AI data centres proposed for Alberta would be much bigger, many up to 1,000 MW or 1 gigawatt (GW). Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary has filed documents with the province seeking approval for up to 9 GW of power for the proposed Wonder Valley data centre south of Grande Prairie.

    Yurchevich told The Energy Mix she decided to build her own website after becoming frustrated with her inability to find a single source of information about what was going on with data centres in the province. After working in information technology for the last 15 years, mostly on backend web development, it took her about six weeks to research and launch the data centre map.

  • Deseret Media ☛ New e-bike proposal aims to ban some bike models from dirt roads in Salt Lake County

    Class 1 e-bikes will be affected differently under the ordinance, because they only use a peddle-assisted motor.

    However, Class 2 and Class 3 bikes, which have throttles, are the real concern. Harrison said these e-bikes could be dangerous to other trail users and to the trail itself.

  • Overpopulation ☛ Ceuta incident: Population growth threatens both poor Africans and climate stability

    Have you tried to publish a critical piece on population growth in the media? I find that such attempts usually fail. Yet it pays to contact and stay in touch with editors, who sometimes listen and publish. See my guest leader in Göteborgs-Posten, one of three large morning newspapers in Sweden (translated below).

  • The Tyee ☛ As AI Data Centre Backlash Builds, What Will Smith Do?

    Unsurprisingly, as journalist Andrew Nikiforuk described the burgeoning opposition to data centres recently in The Tyee, “rural Albertans, like working people everywhere, are asking why their communities should become sacrifice zones for multinational corporations hell-bent on constructing ugly windowless boxes to house computing power that will toss many out of work while sucking up capital, fossil fuel and water.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ Stanford scientists' 4,352°F plasma makes low-carbon cement in seconds

      In proof-of-concept tests, the intense heat turned the raw materials into cement clinker within seconds, nearly 100 times faster than standard production. Clinker is a dark gray, pebble-sized material made by heating limestone and clay in a kiln to about 2,642 degrees Fahrenheit (1,450 degrees Celsius).

    • SCMP ☛ China taps high-altitude winds for power generation by flying craft to 4,000m

      The craft, which is roughly the length of a Boeing 747 and resembles an airship, is filled with helium and floats into the sky carrying lightweight turbines. From a high altitude, it can harness stronger, steadier winds and send the electricity it generates back to the ground through a tether.

    • Pedro ☛ Visiting the office today.

    • The Local DK ☛ New night train planned between Brussels and Malmö, via Denmark

      Belgian and Dutch media report that European Sleeper now plans to start night trains to Malmö, running from April 2028, in collaboration with the German company RDC.

      The timetable has not yet been confirmed, but the plan is to depart around 7pm from Brussels or Malmö, arriving at the destination city at around 10am the next day. According to the company's website the route will run three times a week.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • NBC ☛ CIA director flies unannounced to Moscow to hold talks, source says

    It was not known who was on board the plane and why it was in Moscow. When asked, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not have information about the aircraft.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ CIA director John Ratcliffe reportedly on Moscow visit

    Data from Flightradar24 showed a US military C-17 travelling from the US to Latvia and then on to Moscow. The tracker showed that the flight originated from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, best known for hosting Air Force One.

  • BBC ☛ CIA chief travels to Moscow for unannounced talks, US media reports

    John Ratcliffe reportedly arrived in the Russian capital earlier on Tuesday. Neither Washington or Moscow have confirmed the nature of the visit or who he was due to meet.

    In-person talks between high-level American and Russian officials are rare.

  • The Record ☛ Exclusive: NSA to host a hacker reunion in bid to rebuild secretive unit

    The National Security Agency will welcome back to campus potentially hundreds of former members of the elite group known as Tailored Access Operations (TAO) to celebrate the division’s recent rebranding and attempt to lure alums to come back inside the fence line at Fort Meade, Maryland.

    The get-together is the latest unconventional outreach by the NSA, whose very existence was once a government secret.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Nokia Takes Steps to Exit China Market

    In its 2Q26 earnings release, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) explained that the company was undertaking company-wide restructuring with the objective of increasing agility and reallocating resources toward growth opportunities. As part of that restructuring, the company said at first it was “simplifying” its operating structure in China.

  • SCMP ☛ Exclusive | Nokia to close almost all sites in mainland China by year end, sources say

    Retreating from China, once Nokia’s largest single-country market globally, would mark an acquiescence to domestic competition

  • Hackaday ☛ How Packaging Can Kill An Electronics Microbusiness

    In practice we suspect that many are simply doing the same as they have with compliance marking and waste electronic equipment regulations, simply not bothering and hoping they fly under the radar and never get caught. We hope we won’t end up reporting on any future crackdown, the landscape has definitely changed since we tried our hand in this business.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Brexit, ten years on

    I’ve watched and read multiple reports like this, and I remain unconvinced. It draws a false equivalence between Leave and Remain, the same as a news outlet bringing on a sceptic to debate a climate scientist. These were not two sides of the same coin. Remain’s concerns may have been overstated, but it’s clear from the evidence Patrick and others provided that they weren’t unfounded. I understand the desire to be impartial, but let’s apportion blame to the parties who got the UK into this mess. Otherwise, you’re contributing to the same gridlocked political situation you’re now lamenting.

  • The Next Move ☛ 2020 Accountability is MIA

    So I am not out to cancel AOC, though I agree with her on vanishingly little. Her electoral career is for voters to decide. What I would like from the congresswoman is accountability; not for her to simply disown her bad ideas but to seriously interrogate what made those ideas bad.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ OpenAI loses even more executives ahead of the alleged IPO

    If anyone’s left to run the offering. Another OpenAI executive left just yesterday — Chris Malone, OpenAI’s Head of Data Centers.

    It looks like Malone got reorganised out. OpenAI said in a statement: [...]

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Techdirt ☛ Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post Forced To Rehire Columnist Fired For Quoting Deceased Bigot Charlie Kirk

    Last fall you might remember that WaPo’s management fired opinion columnist Karen Attiah. Her crime? According to a letter sent by Post leadership obtained by Oliver Darcy, Attiah had made “unacceptable Bluesky posts” that criticized “white men,” including this one that simply quoted deceased right wing bigot Charlie Kirk’s own racist and sexist words: [...]

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Kansas town drops charges against teacher arrested for clapping during public hearings on data centers — says that ‘case has been dismissed without prejudice’

    It seems that the city is washing its hands off the case and passing the burden on the county.

  • RFA ☛ Hong Kong court verdict aims to erase Tiananmen memory, 1989 student protester says

    A Hong Kong court this month convicted two leaders of a dissolved pro-democracy group to erase the memory of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, a pro-democracy activist who was a student leader during the 1989 event told Radio Free Asia.

    The Hong Kong High Court ruled Aug. 21 that the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, its former chairman Lee Cheuk-yan and its former vice-chairwoman Chow Hang-tung, were guilty of “inciting subversion of state power.”

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ China: Dissident artist jailed for satirical Mao sculptures

    Sculptor Gao Zhen, 70, became famous in the 2000s for addressing sensitive topics in China such as the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre through artworks he produced with his younger brother Gao Qiang.

    Zhen, who is based in New York, was arrested during a visit to Beijing in August 2024. He was tried this year ⁠in a ⁠one-day behind-closed-doors trial and found guilty of "infringing upon the reputation of heroes."

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Techdirt ☛ Pentagon Fires Chief Editor Of ‘Stars & Stripes’ For Promising To Do Independent Journalism

    Earlier this year, however, a Pentagon spokesman said the administration planned to overhaul Stars & Stripes, with a specific aim to remove content it considered to be “woke distractions that siphon morale” and instead, presumably, force in content that does the opposite. If any of that sounds like an encroachment on editorial independence, congratulations, you have a working prefrontal cortex.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Tuscon Sentinel ☛ Border Patrol SWAT team blocks Arizona tribal police from trespassing border wall contractors

    In recent weeks, the Tohono O'odham Nation installed "no trespassing" signs aimed at border wall contractors attempting to enter tribal lands. Tribal leaders said Monday that they were prepared to cite and remove unauthorized construction workers from the reservation.

    The move by the federal government comes just days after a judge denied the tribe's request to halt the opening stages of border wall construction across their land — part of a lawsuit launched earlier this summer.

  • The Nation ☛ Dolly Parton Was a Proud Union Sister

    Parton was, indeed, a union sister for the better part of 60 years—carrying the card of multiple labor organizations that on Tuesday celebrated the talent and humanity that earned the country singer, actress, and philanthropist universal admiration.

  • TruthOut ☛ Trump Is Once Again Weaponing the Postal Service to Try to Undermine Mail Voting

    “If voting proceeds based on these DHS lists,” adds Berman, “it’s going to be inaccurate, it’s going to be unconstitutional, and a lot of legitimate American voters are going to be wrongly labeled as noncitizens and unable to vote — either based on shoddy data or an intentional attempt by the Trump administration to prevent people from voting.”

  • Salon ☛ Supreme Court gives Trump green light to restrict mail-in voting

    “What makes today’s ruling so off-base is the Court’s lack of situational awareness regarding this equitable judgment,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent. “It treats the Government’s stay application as if the whole point is merely to demonstrate that the Plaintiff States’ claims are not justiciable. Taking its eye off the ball, the majority misses the Government’s actual objective: to secure our imprimatur for its effort to foment chaos ahead of the November elections.”

    Trump has falsely claimed mail-in voting is “cheating,” despite how often he has voted by mail himself.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Yle ☛ Finns turning to ad-supported streaming to curb costs

    The shift towards so-called hybrid subscriptions — cheaper packages that include advertising breaks — marks a big departure from the ad-free model that drove the sector's initial expansion.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Techdirt ☛ More Details Emerge On How Trump Cronyism Ruined The Attempt To Break Up Ticketmaster

    The settlement comes despite oodles of Trump promises that he was going to meaningfully crack down on Ticketmaster. It was one of several 2024 election-season campaign promises designed to pretend that corrupt authoritarianism was a genuine populist movement interested in antitrust reform (I did my very best to warn people as frequently as I could how this was bullshit).

  • Patents

    • Techdirt ☛ Patent Troll SLAPPs Lawyer For Saying His Shell Companies Never Pay Up, Loses, Now Owes Her Money

      With everything else going on in the world, it’s been a while since we’ve dug into a good old-fashioned patent troll story or a bogus defamation SLAPP. Today we’ve got a two-for-one. Leigh Rothschild is a patent troll of some renown — his entities have been connected to over 1,300 patent lawsuits — who regularly sues companies over questionable patents and plays the standard patent troll shakedown game of offering to “settle” for less than it will cost to defend the lawsuit.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Cineby Starts Staged Shutdown of Its Piracy Empire

      Cineby has published a step-by-step schedule for shutting itself down in stages. The site started by redirecting its mirror sites Cineplay and Fmovies+, to then cut off its live streams a day later. The shutdown is expected to be completed by the end of next week. Why the operation is shutting down remains a mystery, but the signs don't point to a deal with rightsholders.

    • [Repeat] Digital Music News ☛ WikiHow Launches Copyright Infringement Suit Against OpenAI

      WikiHow publishes instructional articles on anything from “routine tasks to specialized skills,” the company said in its complaint. According to the filing, OpenAI scraped more than 11,000 of its articles without permission or compensation to train its large language models (LLMs). Further, wikiHow alleges that ChatGPT reproduces its text in response to user prompts and threatens to displace its market altogether.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Kroger Faces Huge Sony Music Social Media Infringement Lawsuit

      For those who’ve followed the industry’s bevy of social-focused copyright suits, Sony Music’s allegations will look familiar. The way the major label tells the story, Kroger has long been incorporating protected audio into uploads on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.