Leftovers

• Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Blog questions and whatnot

  I've seen the blog question challenge going around recently among folks I follow and bacardi55 was kind enough to tag me to participate. So, without further delay, here we go!

• Mandaris Moore ☛ A brief note about longform

  We live in a world where sometimes 180 to 300 words don’t really convey what we want to say. For some of us, we’d like to share a little more. This works for our personal blogs, but it seems as if some of us want more. And it seems as if there is some change coming to the service.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ Leonardo da Vinci’s incredible studies of human anatomy still don’t get the recognition they deserve

    Being illegitimate, the young Leonardo was only permitted an elementary education in reading, writing and arithmetic. He was also barred from becoming a notary, but this worked out to his advantage. Instead of being constrained by life as an officiate, he was free to be creative and explore the world of nature, satisfying his insatiable appetite for knowledge.

    The human anatomy became one of his great interests. This was seeded during his time as an apprentice in Andrea del Verrocchio’s bottega (studio) in Florence, where studying the human form was crucial for achieving realistic depictions.

    Creating detailed anatomical drawings required precise sketching skills and the ability to accurately depict the structures being studied. As Leonardo’s fascination grew, he would delve deeper into anatomy as a discipline.

  • Science News ☛ Do science dioramas still have a place in today’s museums?

    Over the decades, though, dioramas have become dusty museum pieces themselves. These time capsules preserve the thinking of their time, including some biases that can be scientifically inaccurate, like an overemphasis on prize male specimens. And taxidermied still lifes must compete for attention in a multimedia world.

    Indeed, by 2000, many museums were wondering if they should toss their dioramas as old-fashioned space-hogs that stretched the truth in the name of storytelling. The displays were considered dull or downright creepy by some museum visitors; others criticized the echoes of an age when wealthy, white, male hunters grabbed fauna from native habitats to put on display.

    This “diorama dilemma” prompted some museums to reduce or remove displays. Others, recognizing the powerful hold that dioramas can still have on visitors, kept the displays in place.

  • The Register UK ☛ 'Abandoned' astro takes recordbreaking ninth spacewalk

    Williams was accompanied by fellow astronaut, Butch Wilmore, on her ninth spacewalk. It was Wilmore's fifth spacewalk. According to NASA, Williams now has 62 hours and six minutes of total spacewalk time, which places her fourth on the space agency's all-time list.

  • Science Alert ☛ Mouse Created With Two Fathers And No Mother Survives to Adulthood

    A major breakthrough.

  • Science Alert ☛ Giant Radio Galaxy Could Hold 30 Milky Ways, Astronomers Say

    Millions of light-years from end to end.

  • Science Alert ☛ Could We Use Gravitational Waves For Space Communication? Scientists Are Exploring

    They don’t fade like radio signals.

  • Science Alert ☛ Caffeine in Your Blood Could Affect Body Fat And Diabetes Risk, Study Reveals

    Something to think about.

  • Science Alert ☛ NASA Captures 'Most Intense Volcanic Eruption Ever' on Jupiter's Moon Io

    Images show an enormous hotspot.

  • Science Alert ☛ World's Space Agencies Say Asteroid Has 1.3% Chance of Hitting Earth in 2032

    Here’s what we know so far.

• Career/Education

  • James G ☛ Organising my bookshelf

    That is, until I saw a bookshelf for sale in a second-hand furniture store last week. As I walked through the store, I was delighted by all of the furniture around me that was built. Some pieces were antiquated, others were more modern. One piece caught my eye: a three-shelf bookcase. This would be great for my flat! I thought to myself. Excited, I purchased the bookcase. I now have a bookshelf. I am so excited.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Nebraskans want and support strong public schools

    Proponents of measures that would divert public resources to private schools often claim that public school advocates do not believe in choice. Nothing could be further from the truth. We believe that if a school is funded through public dollars, it should be publicly accountable and should follow the most important belief we hold: that we have the privilege of educating all students who come through our doors.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Donny Truong

    This is the 75th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Donny Truong and his blog, visualgui.com

  • Andre Alves Garzia ☛ Went to a book launch this week

    This week went to Glasgow for Annabel Campbell's debut novel launch. The Outcast Mage is a book that I been looking forward ever since Annabel first mentioned it to me at one of the Edinburgh SFF socials.

  • Caitlin Dewey ☛ Ground control to Myspace Tom - by Caitlin Dewey

    In 2014, when ABC News asked him if he’d ever come back to tech, Myspace Tom humbly demurred. “Why aren’t more tech people like MySpace Tom?” asked a 2020 Cracked article.

    In fairness, no one really knows if Anderson would navigate our current social media environment with more or less grace than the current bozos.1 He left the game in 2009, when social media was still widely and unreservedly viewed as a force for social good. His scandals were of the comical2 and momentary sort; his politics — if he has them3 — have always seemed wan and vague.

    But the fact that Anderson did retire from tech, and at the tender age of 38, testifies to a political philosophy and a set of values that feel almost radical today. People like Musk and Zuckerberg are hell-bent on amassing unprecedented, indecent stores of power and wealth. Anderson isn’t exactly curing cancer, by comparison … but he’s at least bucked the gospel of infinite extraction.

  • Pro Publica ☛ States Turn to Private Companies to Manage School Voucher Programs

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Intel cancels Falcon Shores GPU for Hey Hi (AI) workloads — Jaguar Shores to be successor

    Intel's next-generation Hey Hi (AI) and HPC GPU will only be used internally, Jaguar shores will be the real successor for Gaudi 3 in the Hey Hi (AI) space.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Why artificial intelligence [hype] could cause the lights to dim

    "Data centers is one of the new industrial sectors that we've been looking at because it's part of the emerging economy and new technologies," said Arman Shehab

  • Hackaday ☛ A 1962 Test Gear Teardown

    Although it sounds like some Star Trek McGuffin, a Q-Meter is a piece of test gear that measures the Q factor of a tuned circuit. [Thomas] got a Boonton meter from 1962 that wasn’t in very good shape, but it was a fun teardown, as you can see in the video below. The meter had signs of a prior modification or repair, but still a nice peek into some vintage gear.

  • Hackaday ☛ Retrotechtacular: The Tyranny Of Large Numbers

    Although much diminished now, the public switched telephone network was one of the largest machines ever constructed. To make good on its promise of instant communication across town or around the world, the network had to reach into every home and business, snake along poles to thousands of central offices, and hum through the ether on microwave links. In its heyday it was almost unfathomably complex, with calls potentially passing through thousands of electronic components, any of which failing could present anything from a minor annoyance to a matter of life or death.

  • Hackaday ☛ Comparing Adhesives For Gluing PETG Prints

    PETG is a pretty great material to print 3D models with, but one issue with it is that gluing it can be a bit of a pain. In a recent video by [Cosel] (German language, with English auto-dub) he notes that he found that with many adhesives the adhesion between PETG parts would tend to fail over time, so he set out to do a large test with just about any adhesive he could get his hands on. This included everything from epoxy to wood glue and various adhesives for plastics

  • Hackaday ☛ Copper Candle Burns Forever… Just Add Fuel

    [Zen Garden Oasis] wanted to heat and light a space using a candle. But candles aren’t always convenient since they burn down and, eventually, you must replace them. So he built copper candles using a common copper pipe and an old glass jar. Of course, the candle still takes fuel that you have to replace, but the candle itself doesn’t burn down.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Samsung’s stock falls on fears of weakness in memory chip markets

    South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. delivered better-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue today, though it reported a sharp fall in operating profit as a result of higher research and development costs in its chip business.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Hackaday ☛ Patching Up Failing Hearts With Engineered Muscle Tissue

    As the most important muscle in our body, any issues with our heart are considered critical and reason for replacement with a donor heart. Unfortunately donor hearts are rather rare, making alternatives absolutely necessary, or at the very least a way to coax the old heart along for longer. A new method here seems to be literally patching up a patient’s heart with healthy heart tissue, per the first human study results by [Ahmad-Fawad Jebran] et al. as published in Nature (as well as a partially paywalled accompanying article).

  • Is it safe to watch DCIS rather than remove it?

    It’s been a long time since I’ve written much about the one area where even quacks, cranks, and antivaxxers can’t argue that I don’t have expertise: Breast cancer. Oddly enough, it’s been a while since I’ve written about it, other than early after the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines, when radiologists were noting reactive enlarged lymph nodes under the arm after vaccination that were sometimes leading to unnecessary biopsies Oddly enough, even though I was aware of this study last month and had been meaning to write about it, what tweaked me to actually do so was an article that I encountered from an antivaxxer whom I’ve written about periodically, Maryanne Demasi, DCIS: should we stop calling it “breast cancer”?, with a blurb of, Renewed calls to minimise the overdiagnosis and unnecessary treatment of breast abnormalities.

  • EcoWatch ☛ Microplastics in Human Placentas Linked to Premature Births

    In the study, researchers analyzed 175 placentas collected at both term and preterm, or under 37 weeks of pregnancy, and measured the amounts of 12 different microplastics and nanoplastics, including polyethylene (PE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polyurethane (PU) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), using highly sensitive mass spectrometry.

  • The Atlantic ☛ America's Supplement Obsession Could Go Into Overdrive

    In an already permissive environment, Kennedy’s confirmation could signal to supplement manufacturers that anything goes, Cohen said. If the little regulation that the FDA is responsible for now—surveilling supplements after they’re on the market—lapses, more adulterated and mislabeled supplements could line store shelves. And Americans might well pour even more of our money into the industry, egged on by the wellness influencer charged with protecting our health and loudly warning that most of our food and drug supply is harmful. Kennedy might even try to get in on the supplement rush himself. Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that, according to documents filed to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Kennedy applied to trademark MAHA last year, which would allow him to sell, among other things, MAHA-branded supplements and vitamins. (He transferred ownership of the application to an LLC in December. Kennedy’s team did not respond to the Post.)

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Will big data lift the veil of ignorance?

    This may sound like science fiction. But many other insurances, e.g. car insurances, already build on automated data being shared with them. If they were allowed, health insurers would certainly like to access our data as well – not only those from smart toothbrushes, but also credit card data, behavioral data (e.g. from step counting apps), or genetic data. If they were allowed to use them, they could move towards segmented insurance plans for specific target groups. As two commentators, on whose research I come back below, recently wrote about health insurance: “Today, public plans and nondiscrimination clauses, not lack of information, are what stands between integrtion and segmentation.”

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft defines what it means by 'deprecation'

    This all leads us to the thorny issue of Windows 10. Has it been deprecated? While the AI overview provided by Google says, "Yes, Windows 10 is considered deprecated, meaning Microsoft has ended major development and support for it," we'd contend that the correct answer is no. Support will end for most versions on October 14, 2025, and development continues, as evidenced by the Windows Insider program.

  • The Register UK ☛ VMware plugs credential-leaking bugs in Cloud Foundation

    Broadcom has fixed five flaws, collectively deemed "high severity," in VMware's IT operations and log management tools within Cloud Foundation, including two information disclosure bugs that could lead to credential leakage under certain conditions.

    All five have patches available. Broadcom's security advisory doesn't note any in-the-wild exploits, yet.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Critical Vulnerabilities Found In CMS8000 Patient Monitor

    A new set of critical vulnerabilities has been identified in Contec Health’s CMS8000 Patient Monitor, posing significant cybersecurity and patient safety risks. These vulnerabilities, which have received a CVSS v4 base score of 9.3, allow for remote exploitation with low attack complexity. The security issues identified include an Out-of-Bounds Write vulnerability, a Hidden Functionality (Backdoor), and Privacy Leakage. These flaws could lead to remote code execution, unauthorized file uploads, and exposure of sensitive patient data.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • In the blink of an AI

      DeepSeek, an open-source Hey Hi (AI) app founded by a tech entrepreneur with close ties to the Chinese government.

    • Venture Beat ☛ Ai2 releases Tülu 3, a fully open-source model that bests DeepSeek v3, GPT-4o with novel post-training approach

      DeepSeek-R1 released model code and pre-trained weights but not training data. Ai2 is taking a different approach to be more open.

    • The Register UK ☛ DeepSeek means a rethink on AI investment

      The hysteria comes on top of a growing unease that more investment is being funneled into AI development and the infrastructure to support it, with little return to be seen so far.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ How DeepSeek ripped up the AI playbook—and why everyone's going to follow it

      But DeepSeek’s innovations are not the only takeaway here. By publishing details about how R1 and a previous model called V3 were built and releasing the models for free, DeepSeek has pulled back the curtain to reveal that reasoning models are a lot easier to build than people thought. The company has closed the lead on the world’s very top labs.

    • Wired ☛ DeepSeek’s Safety Guardrails Failed Every Test Researchers Threw at Its AI Chatbot

      Today, security researchers from Cisco and the University of Pennsylvania are publishing findings showing that, when tested with 50 malicious prompts designed to elicit toxic content, DeepSeek’s model did not detect or block a single one. In other words, the researchers say they were shocked to achieve a “100 percent attack success rate.”

      The findings are part of a growing body of evidence that DeepSeek’s safety and security measures may not match those of other tech companies developing LLMs. DeepSeek’s censorship of subjects deemed sensitive by China’s government has also been easily bypassed.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ DeepSeek AI leaves glaring security hole exposing user data, Italy blocks DeepSeek

      DeepSeek provided a hilarious back-to-earth moment for the American AI-VC-industrial complex earlier this week. But if you first assume everyone in the AI bubble is a grifter of questionable competence, you’ll save a lot of time.

      It turns out that DeepSeek left a database completely open to the [Internet] without authentication — exposing a “significant volume” of chat history, backend data, log streams with user data, API secret keys, and “operational details.” It apparently also allowed privilege escalation in the DeepSeek environment.

    • PC World ☛ One rebel's malicious 'tar pit' trap is driving AI web-scrapers insane

      According to the designer, it’s possible for this pattern to repeat for “months” if it isn’t caught, wasting vast amounts of resources for an AI company. And, to be fair, it also wastes the resources of whatever service is hosting the website being crawled. The designer says that pretty much every AI crawler has fallen for his intentional “tar pit” trap, with one notable exception: OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

      The anonymous designer isn’t shy about his intent to harm both AI companies and models with this tool (which is probably why Ars didn’t publish his real name), and that the Nepenthes tool doesn’t provide any real benefit to whoever implements it. But in addition to forcing AI scrapers into an infinite loop, it can be used to feed them useless data to “poison” their AI models and make their results materially worse.

    • Heise ☛ Nepenthes: a tarpit for AI web crawlers | heise online

      Nepenthes works by generating a page with around a dozen links that all link back to themselves. What's more, the Nepenthes pages have extremely long loading times, which ties up time for the crawlers. The concept can be tried out here (yes, loading the page at a snail's pace is intentional). If you have enough computing power and bandwidth, you can go one step further and feed the crawlers with Markov-generated nonsense that clogs up the hard disks of the AI servers.

    • teleSUR ☛ U.S. Congressional Staff Banned From Using DeepSeek

      “At this time, DeepSeek is under review by the Congressional Administrative Office (CAO) and is currently not authorized for official use in the House,” said the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives in a warning to employees, which Axios has accessed.

      The notice warned that there is evidence of “actors” who are “already using DeepSeek to distribute malicious software and infect devices.”

  • Social Control Media

    • New York Times ☛ Luddite Teens Still Don’t Want Your Likes

      Three years after starting a club meant to fight social control media’s grip on young people, many original members are holding firm and gaining new converts.

    • The Strategist ☛ Democracies should learn the Fentanylware (TikTok) lesson and restrict risky apps from day one

      With its recent halt on implementing a legally mandated ban on TikTok, the United States is learning the hard way that when it comes to Chinese technology [...]

    • New York Times ☛ Father Slays New York Girl, 14, in Fentanylware (TikTok) ‘Honor Killing’

      After being lured to Pakistan, Hira Anwar was fatally shot by her father and an uncle over online posts that her parents believed were immodest, the police said.

    • New Yorker ☛ Country-Club Etiquette Adjustments for Gen Z

      No TikToks on the premises.

    • Digital Music News ☛ $25 Billion for TikTok? Latest Bids Feature Roblox CEO & Employer.com Founder—But Radio Silence from ByteDance

      Will ByteDance accept a $25 billion offer for TikTok? American investors including the Founder of Employer.com, Roblox CEO David Baszucki, and Anchorage Digital’s Nathan McCauley are putting together a proposal. But ByteDance doesn’t seem interested at all. Jesse Tinsley, Employer.com Founder says the group has secured ‘over $20 billion’ to make the buyout offer.

    • Barry Hess ☛ Socials-free February

      So it’s time to slow that negativity spigot down. It’s time tamp down the FOMO.

      In February I plan to break the habit of daily socials check-ins. I’d like to put that time and energy into reading offline, blogging, organizing my darn spaces, and rebuilding some healthy habits.

    • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Texas man under investigation for using infant as makeshift snow scraper for TikTok

      “It’s a sad situation. I know a lot of people go to social media and they are looking for clicks … but this is not a deal where you should put a baby on the windshield,” Duriso told 12News.

    • Greg Morris ☛ Micro Social: Reading And Books

      There are many people out there that don’t realise just how much micro.blog can do, and one of my favourite things is to use it for is reading. It is a great resource for finding recommendations through all reading posts tagged 📚 and tracking the books I read through the year.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • RTL ☛ Not highest priority: OpenAI chief says it needs new open-source strategy

      "I personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open source strategy," Altman said.

      "Not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it's also not our current highest priority."

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Kevin Boone ☛ Kevin Boone: Watch out: the Chinese domain registration scam is getting slicker

      What typically happens is that the victim receives an email that purports to be from a Chinese domain name registrar. The email says that some company has applied to register a .cn domain whose name matches some part of the victim’s domain name. In my case, the email said that a Chinese company wanted to register the domain kevinboone.cn. There isn’t the slightest reason why any company would want to do this, and I don’t care if one does; but I can see why the owners of businesses might pay attention to this kind of warning.

    • Mediaite ☛ 13,000 Federal Employees Receive Abusive Email in Comms Exploit

      “Goes to show you how fast this [new comms system] was cobbled together – no security or screening on this address,” a NOAA employee told journalist Ken Klippenstein, who broke the news.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Cloudbooklet ☛ Best DeepSeek Jailbreak Prompts to Access the Hidden Treasure

      Explore DeepSeek Jailbreak Prompts and break through Hey Hi (AI) barriers, empowering you with enhanced tools for coding and advanced reasoning tasks.

    • TechRepublic ☛ DeepSeek Locked Down Public Database Access That Exposed Chat History

      Research Firm Wiz Research began investigating DeepSeek soon after its generative Hey Hi (AI) took the tech world by storm.

    • France24 ☛ Italy blocks DeepSeek over data privacy concerns

      Italy's data protection agency has moved to block the Chinese Hey Hi (AI) chatbot DeepSeek after its developers failed to hand over information about how personal data is collected and whether it's stored on Chinese servers. The French privacy watchdog also says it's questioning DeepSeek. Plus, luxury cars, designer bags and gold bars were among some 300 items that went under the hammer in an auction of confiscated goods held by France's anti-fraud agency.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ FBI nominee Kash Patel gets questions on cybercrime investigations, Silk Road founder, surveillance powers

      Cyber otherwise wasn’t a big focus during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Patel’s nomination to lead the bureau.

    • JURIST ☛ Sweden PM advances law allowing wiretapping children to combat organized crime

      The law would allow wiretapping for crimes that carry a prison sentence longer than four years, though a higher degree of suspicion would be used before pursuing the wiretapping than would be used for adults who allegedly committed similar crimes. The method of wiretapping would be “secretly monitoring phone calls and electronic communications” of young people’s cell phones. The law is projected to take effect in fall 2025, which is accelerated from its summer 2026 proposal.

    • Techdirt ☛ DeepSeek App Blocked In Italy After Privacy Complaint Under EU’s GDPR, Irish Data Protection Commission Also Investigating

      The Italian consumer organization Altroconsumo believes that there were “serious violations of GDPR regulations” (original in Italian, all translations by DeepL) in DeepSeek’s processing of personal data, and it submitted a report to the Italian data protection authority, the Garante della Privacy. The Garante requested information from DeepSeek about “which personal data are collected, the sources used, the purposes pursued, the legal basis of the processing, and whether they are stored on servers located in China.” In addition: [...]

    • Scheerpost ☛ ICE Is Swiftly Expanding Its Sprawling Surveillance Apparatus

      On Nov. 15, 2024, ICE posted a request for information from contractors on the federal procurement website to “augment its efforts towards ERO modernization and organizational transformation.” ERO stands for Enforcement Removal Operations, the division within ICE responsible for detaining and deporting noncitizens. ICE asked for “support for law enforcement systems programs, analysis, and operations.” The agency outlined one particularly alarming ability it needs: “predictive analytics and modeling” to collect data and improve forecasting methodologies and scenario-planning capabilities.

      The request for information appears to have been looking for data brokers, many of which use artificial intelligence (AI) to “predict” crimes. According to the 2024 report “Automating Deportation” by Just Futures Law and Mijente, Al tools are tainted with discriminatory police practices because they are often based on historical crime data provided by law enforcement.

    • La Quadature Du Net ☛ Justice finally finds Briefcam unlawful

      Yesterday, we achieved a great victory before the Grenoble administrative court! In La Quadrature du Net vs the city of Moirans, Isère, we obtained a decision recognizing the illegality of Briefcam’s algorithmic video surveillance software. The court ordered the town to immediately stop using the software.

  • Confidentiality

    • Dhole Moments ☛ Hell Is Overconfident Developers Writing Encryption Code

      Overconfident developers that choose to write their own cryptography code have plagued the information security industry since before it was even an industry.

      This in and of itself isn’t inherently a bad thing, despite the infosec truisms about never doing exactly that. Writing crypto code (but not deploying or publishing it!) is an important first step to understanding the algorithms.

      One trend I’ve noticed (as I recently noted about Session) is developers incorrectly insisting that they aren’t rolling their own crypto because they use a lower-level cryptography library.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Science Alert ☛ Doomsday Clock Moves to 89 Seconds From Midnight, The Closest Ever

    Here's what that means for humanity.

  • France24 ☛ Five Thai hostages released by Hamas

    Five Thai farm labourers, held hostage for nearly 16 months in the Gaza Strip, were released by Hamas on Thursday during a truce between Israel and the Palestinian militant group. They were released along with three Israelis. On October 7, 2023, after the unprecedented attack by Hamas militants on Israel, 31 Thais were taken to the Gaza Strip as hostages. FRANCE 24's Emily Boyle reports.

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Hungarian foreign minister says European politicians don't take Trump's Greenland demands seriously

    "The US President's statements on this issue are very serious, and European politicians and the European media, pretend that this does not exist, "Hungary's Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said during an interview with pro-government think tank XXI. Century Institute. 

    A large part of the conversation revolved around US President Donald Trump's recent claims that he wants to "buy" the vast Arctic territory. Trump previously floated this idea in 2019 saying it's an "absolute necessity" for international security. "I think Greenland we'll get because it has to do with freedom of the world," said the President.

  • France24 ☛ TikTok limbo: US Congress stays quiet as Trump breaks its law

    Many of the things Trump has done in the past two weeks will have long-term reverberations. His attempt to save TikTok might seem frivolous in comparison to the foreign aid shutdown or pardoning of January 6 insurrectionists.

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Traffic Largely Back to Normal in the US

    TikTok is mostly back to its original traffic levels in the US, despite its removal from app stores and the temporary shutdown earlier this month that saw usage fall by 85%.

  • Techdirt ☛ Elon’s Twitter Destruction Playbook Hits The US Government, And It’s Even More Dangerous

    Let’s be crystal clear about what’s happening: A private citizen with zero Constitutional authority is effectively seizing control of critical government functions. The Constitution explicitly requires Senate confirmation for anyone wielding significant federal power — a requirement Musk has simply ignored as he installs his loyalists throughout the government while demanding access to basically all of the levers of power, and pushing out anyone who stands in his way.

  • US News And World Report ☛ The University of Michigan Has Suspended a Pro-Palestinian Group for 2 Years

    Okemos is a community 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of the Ann Arbor campus. Hubbard said at the time that about 30 people were involved in the 6 a.m. demonstration.

    “They approached my home and taped a letter to my front door and proceeded to erect the tents. A variety of other things were left in the front yard,” Hubbard told The Associated Press. “They started chanting with their bullhorn and pounding on a drum in my otherwise quiet neighborhood.”

  • Chronicle Of Higher Education ☛ Trump Threatens to Deport International Students and Scholars Who Protested the War in Gaza

    The Trump administration on Wednesday issued guidance suggesting that international students and scholars who participated in protests against the Israel-Hamas war could lose their visas and face deportation.

  • Express ☛ Panic in Sweden as 31 bombings rock country with one city 'as dangerou

    Only Albania and Montenegro are ahead of Sweden in the rankings of gun deaths per capita within Europe and the city of Malmo is now classed as more dangerous than Baghdad.

    On Wednesday, Salwan Momika, 38, known for repeatedly burning the Koran, was gunned down in his Stockholm apartment. In a press conference following the killing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told the media it was “obvious that we have no control over the wave of violence”.

  • [Old] Nordic Review of International Studies ☛ Discussion Article NATO’s Nordic enlargement: Reconfiguring Sweden’s foreign policy identity after 200 years of neutrality and non-alignment

    The public discourse on the matter initially started as unequivocally uncompromising on the freedom of speech on both sides of the political spectrum, but the consensus started breaking as the situation escalated to the point of increased threat of terrorism in Sweden and violent attacks against Swedish representations in Turkey and Arab countries. By July 2023, a total of 53 percent of respondents in a poll commissioned by SVT were in favour of banning the burning of any religious books (SVT, 2023).

    In a marked contrast, Finland avoided such a situation, as it still has controversial blasphemy laws in place. What is more, the Finnish experience during the Cold War was that national survival can require compromising on some core democratic values, such as the freedom of expression, during the so-called Finlandisation period. In Finland, the culture of self-censorship persisted to an extent in the political communication even after the Cold War, as the decades-long prioritisation of securing sovereignty vis-à-vis the Russian neighbour even at the cost of domestic democratic standards had been a deeply internalised socialisation process for political elites.

  • [Old] BRÅ ☛ Gun homicide in Sweden and other European countries: A comparative study of levels, trends and homicide by other means. English summary of Brå report 2021:8

    As regards the level of gun homicide, the rate in Sweden ranks very high in relation to other European countries, at approximately 4 deaths per million inhabitants per year. The average for Europe is approximately 1.6 deaths per million inhabitants. None of the other countries included in the study have experienced increases comparable to that noted in Sweden. Instead, continued decreases were observed in both total homicide rates and rates of gun homicide in the majority of these countries. Temporary increases can be seen in a few other countries, but these are restricted to periods of only a few years, and in none of these cases has there been such a marked and continuous increase as that observed in Sweden over several consecutive years.

  • The Local SE ☛ What's behind the latest spate of bombings in Sweden?

    The police are calling it an 'escalation of violence', Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson a 'national crisis', and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has admitted that the government is not in control. But why has Sweden seen a record number of bombings in January?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ EU top diplomat: 'Sabotage is on the rise in Europe'

    "Clearly sabotage is on the rise in Europe," Kallas told DW's Alexandra von Nahmen when asked about a string of suspected hybrid attacks, the latest involving deep-sea cables in the Swedish economic zone of the Baltic.

    "We shouldn't really see these events in isolation, but as part of a bigger picture. And understand that Russia has intentions towards Europe and European security architecture that haven't changed," Kallas said in the exclusive DW interview at the Brussels headquarters of the European External Action Service on Thursday.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Norway releases cargo ship in Baltic cable sabotage probe

    Police in Norway said on Friday that they had released a Russian-crewed ship after intercepting the vessel off the northern coast in connection with damage to underwater infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

    "The investigation will continue, but we see no reason for the ship to remain in Tromso any longer," police attorney Ronny Joergensen said in a statement. "No findings have been made linking the ship to the act."

  • The Korea Times ☛ Norway seizes Russian-crewed ship over suspected cable damage

    "The ship is suspected to have been involved in serious damage to a fiber cable in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden," police said in a statement.

    "Police are now on board the ship to search, carry out interrogations and secure leads," it said, adding that the crew and shipowner were cooperating with police.

    "The entire crew on board is Russian," police said in the statement.

  • RFERL ☛ Norway Seizes Ship Suspected In Baltic Cable Damage

    Police in the city of Tromso said on January 31 that the Norwegian-registered and Norwegian-owned ship Silver Dania was detained based on a legal request from Latvian authorities and an order from the Nord-Troms and Senja District Court in Norway.

    The ship is the second to be seized in the past week in connection with the damaging of the cable. Swedish police detained the Maltese-flagged cargo ship Vezhen on suspicion it caused the damage.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Norway Seizes Russian-Crewed Ship Over Suspected Cable Damage - The Moscow Times

    The Norway-flagged Silver Dania was sailing between St. Petersburg and Murmansk when Norwegian police stopped it Thursday evening off the coast of Tromso in northern Norway.

    "The ship is suspected to have been involved in serious damage to a fiber cable in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden," Norwegian police said in a statement.

  • New York Times ☛ Norway Seizes Russian-Crewed Ship Suspected of Cutting an Undersea Cable

    The authorities in Norway have seized a Russian-crewed ship that is suspected of damaging an undersea cable in an act of sabotage in the Baltic Sea, the Norwegian police said on Friday.

    They were acting on a request from the Latvian authorities and on an order issued in Norwegian courts, the police said in a statement, after an undersea cable that runs between Sweden and Latvia was damaged this week.

  • The Record ☛ Norway seizes ship suspected of sabotage, says crew are Russian nationals | The Record from Recorded Future News

    Police in Norway have seized a ship suspected of sabotaging a communications cable running between Sweden and Latvia. The ship is the second of three that Latvian authorities consider suspects in the incident, and the third ship to be detained in recent weeks over concerns of intentional damage to subsea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

  • Norway ☛ Troms - Politiet.no

    Based on a legal request from Latvian authorities, as well as a ruling from Nord-Troms and Senja District Court i Norway, Troms Police District has brought in the Norwegian-registered and Norwegian-owned ship Silver Dania. The ship sails between St. Petersburg and Murmansk. The crew on board is Russian.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Just Pulled Something Unbelievably Sketchy at the US Treasury

    Lebryk has worked at the agency for decades. Since the election, according to the report, DOGE has hounded him for access to the Treasury's sensitive payment system, which is used to send out trillions of dollars every year and is normally accessed only by a small number of senior officials.

    Why Lebryk clashed over the requests is unclear. But maybe he just didn't like the idea of handing over the keys for a trillion-dollar money pipeline to Musk — a walking conflict of interest — and his retinue of sketchy and underqualified DOGE lackeys.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ China is Winning, the World is Losing: U.S. is Struggling to Counter China’s Asymmetric Tactics

    The world is no stranger to asymmetric tactics being used to intimidate, to control, and to bully. As has been explored in the past, asymmetric tactics such as those used by China emerge when a country believes they have an acute necessity for them. Countries that hope to accomplish diplomatic, informational, military, and economic objectives without using outright military power will resort to asymmetric tactics that do not rise to the level of sparking a conflict, such as using law-enforcement forces and plausibly deniable forces (in this case, the Chinese fishing militia).

  • New York Times ☛ ‘Her Opening Line Was a Home Run’: The Best and Worst Moments From the Tulsi Gabbard Hearing

    Eight Opinion writers weigh in on whether she’s up to the job of director of national intelligence.

  • The Dissenter ☛ Dissenter Weekly: Tulsi Gabbard's National Security Sin, Kash Patel's 'Enemies List'

  • New York Times ☛ Gabbard’s Hearing Turns Tense Over Snowden Questions

    Tulsi Gabbard, President Convicted Felon’s nominee for director of national intelligence, refused to fully denounce the 2013 leaks by Edward J. Snowden, eliciting concern from both parties.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Tulsi Gabbard tussles with senators over Snowden, surveillance

    President Convicted Felon’s nominee to lead ODNI substantially revised her previous positions on the former NSA contractor and Section 702 spying authorities.

  • New York Times ☛ Security at ISIS Camps in Syria Threatened by U.S. Funding Freeze

    A halt in foreign aid may undermine American organizations’ support for forces that guard the two largest camps holding Islamic State members and their families.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Dictator taps the military for immigration crackdown. Are there limits to using troops?

    President Convicted Felon’s use of the U.S. military for border security and immigration enforcement are pushing boundaries on the role of armed forces.

  • China’s spy agency warns people not to ‘endanger national security’ during holidays

    The Ministry of State Security says people should be careful what they say when meeting up with friends and family.

  • JURIST ☛ Dictator signs executive order authorizing Guantanamo Bay Migrant Operations Center to reach full capacity

    US President Donald J. Convicted Felon signed an executive order Wednesday directing the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to expand operations at the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity. 

  • JURIST ☛ Dictator signs new law requiring detention of illegal immigrants charged with theft

    President Convicted Felon signed the Laken Riley Act (the “Act”) into law Wednesday, which will require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain individuals who are unlawfully present in the United States and have been charged with, or arrested for, burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ South China Sea: Philippines arrests five more Chinese for ‘spying’

    Philippine security officials said Thursday they took into custody five more Chinese spies, following the arrest of a compatriot for espionage this month. The arrests come as confrontations between the two Asian neighbours over contested reefs and waters in the strategic South China Sea have escalated in recent months.

  • Defence Web ☛ Impressive line-up of speakers set to lead discussions at Public-Private Partnerships for Defence & Security Conference

  • Atlantic Council ☛ “No, really”: American PMCs in Gaza

    Host Alia Brahimi chats with modern warfare expert Andreas Krieg about the sudden deployment of three private military companies to the Netzarim corridor in the Gaza Strip.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • The Strategist ☛ To deal with Russia, first understand what Putin wants

      President The Insurrectionist has said he wants to end the fighting in Ukraine quickly.

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ Trump Admin Orders Deletion of Information About Climate Change From Government Websites

    With every new administration comes a host of small style changes to government sites, which can indicate policy directions under newly appointed agency heads. Not content just to rearrange some copy, though, Trump has taken to altering entire landing pages and scrubbing information that doesn't align with his agenda.

    The DHS site, for example, has scrubbed mentions of Ukraine, information on Border Security office and enforcement locations, and tabs regarding EEO/Diversity, Ethics/Standards of Conduct, as well as Civil Rights and Civil Liberties relating to Customs and Border Patrol.

  • Politico LLC ☛ USDA ordered to scrub climate change from websites

    The directive from USDA’s office of communications, whose authenticity was validated by three people, could affect information across dozens of programs including climate-smart agriculture initiatives, USDA climate hubs and Forest Service information regarding wildfires, the frequency and severity of which scientists have linked to hotter, drier conditions fueled by climate change. And it is reminiscent of moves made during the first Trump administration to remove references to climate change from federal government websites.

    The email sent Thursday afternoon calls on website managers to “Identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change” and “Identify all web content related to climate change and document it in a spreadsheet” for the office to review. It set a Friday deadline for handing over titles, links and “your recommendation on how the content should be handled.”

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Trump’s EPA Has Deleted All Web References to Climate Change

    Reflecting the Trump administration’s priorities, the Environmental Protection Agency has now removed all information about climate change from its home page and other prominent areas of its website.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ What does DeepSeek mean for AI's environmental impact?

    That could have big environment and climate implications, as training and running current AI models requires vast amounts of energy

    The long-held assumption was that the next AI wave would require massive data center expansion to satisfy increasing demand.

    Today's more than 8,000 data centers already consume about 1 to 2% of global electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • BIA Net ☛ Parliament to investigate deadly Bolu ski resort fire as report finds major safety flaws

      A new report from the Chamber of Civil Engineers outlines structural and safety failures at the Grand Kartal Hotel.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Seoul tourism recovers to pre-pandemic level

      Seoul's visitor numbers plummeted to 1.15 million in 2020.

    • DeSmog ☛ Peter Mandelson’s Consultancy Lobbied New Government on Behalf of Shell

    • DeSmog ☛ Protesters Blockade DNC Party Meeting, Demand Democrats Put Workers and Climate First

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Finally Admits That Teslas Don't Have What It Takes for Full Self-Driving

      Elluswamy, to his credit, handled the interruption diplomatically by teasing that Tesla will be releasing a "baby" version of FSD while its engineers work on the latest version of the self-driving feature for cars equipped with the newer Hardware 4 computers.

    • Futurism ☛ After Gutting Airline Safety and Immediately Experiencing the Worst Airliner Tragedy Since 2001, Trump Blames Woke

      More directly, Trump passed an executive order freezing all new hires of already chronically understaffed air traffic controllers, fired the head of the Transportation Security Administration, and completely cleared out a key aviation safety group at the Department of Homeland Security.

    • Futurism ☛ Tesla's Profits Are Falling Off a Cliff as Elon Musk Self-Immolates

      Tesla's revenue remains high, with total sales equaling $97.7 billion for 2024, a one percent increase from last year. But for the latest quarter, it's still fallen short of expectations: $25.7 billion, when Wall Street anticipated somewhere in the ballpark of $27.1 billion.

    • Sightline Media Group ☛ Top Army aviators were on routine flight when helo collided with jet

      Koziol described the crew members, whose identities have yet to be released, as “very experienced.”

    • Wired ☛ Early Investors in Donald Trump’s Memecoin May Have Been Tipped Off, Experts Claim

      WIRED asked two experts in crypto forensics to analyze these early TRUMP trades. Though multiple theories might explain their striking punctuality—among them blind luck—another possibility is that the traders were warned of the launch in advance, the crypto forensics experts hypothesize. In trading any new asset, an alleged early warning would put any trader at an immense advantage, allowing them to buy in earlier and at a lower price than almost everyone else.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Scotsman ☛ Rescuers manage to free humpback whale caught in rope off Skye

      It said members of its large whale disentanglement team were mobilised from across the UK and worked to free the whale with the help of the local community and emergency services.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Study finds India doubled its tiger population in decade, credits conservation efforts

      The number of tigers grew from an estimated 1,706 tigers in 2010 to around 3,682 in 2022, according to estimates by the National Tiger Conservation Authority, making India home to roughly 75 percentage of the global tiger population. The study found that some local communities near tiger habitats have also benefited from the increase in tigers because of the foot traffic and revenues brought in by ecotourism.

  • Overpopulation

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ On Trump's orders, officals released water from two California dams

      Pawlik said the Army Corps was releasing water from the dams “to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires.” It was not immediately clear how or where the federal government intends to transport the water.

• Finance

  • JURIST ☛ US federal employee union sues over Convicted Felon administration plan to fire, reclassify government employees

    Two unions representing US government employees filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging President Convicted Felon’s efforts to reclassify up to 50,000 federal workers, making it easier to fire them.

  • New York Times ☛ Rohit Chopra of CFPB Expected Convicted Felon to Fire Him Right Away, but He’s Hanging On

    Mr. Chopra, long a target of criticism by Republican lawmakers and banks, has not yet been forced out. “I swore an oath to a five-year term,” he said this week.

  • Latvia ☛ Latvian central bank urges home owners to think about switching mortgages

    Latvijas Banka, the Latvian central bank, said January 30 that people with home loans might find it worth their while to "consider options of refinancing mortgage loans and avoiding overpayment."

  • Pro Publica ☛ To Pay for Trump Tax Cuts, House GOP Could Slash Benefits for Poor, Working Class

    One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was a promise of sweeping tax cuts, for the rich, for working people and for companies alike.

    Now congressional Republicans have the job of figuring out which of those cuts to propose into law. In order to pay for the cuts, they have started to eye some targets to raise money. Among them: cutting benefits for single mothers and poor people who rely on government health care.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • New Yorker ☛ How Convicted Felon’s Federal-Aid Fiasco Is Testing the Separation of Powers

    “We are in an era of a real reckoning with the relationship of the President to the other branches of government,” the Harvard Law professor and New Yorker contributor Jeannie Suk Gersen says.

  • FAIR ☛ David Kass on Billionaire Election-Buying

  • FAIR ☛ ‘Because There Was Economic Insecurity, Immigrants Became an Easy Scapegoat’: CounterSpin interview with Silky Shah on the attack on immigrants

    Janine Jackson interviewed Detention Watch Network’s Silky Shah about the attack on immigrants for the January 24, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • The Nation ☛ Trump’s Racist Rants Conceal the Right's Air Safety Failures

    It would be difficult to imagine a scene more thoroughly illustrative of the advanced moral decay of today’s Republican Party than what transpired this week, especially when one measures Trump’s actions against those of the president after whom DCA is named.

  • The Nation ☛ The Social Critic Who Predicted Big Tech’s Dark Turn

    Roszak argued that the technocracy and its cult of expertise weren’t susceptible to traditional leftist critique. “It is essential to realize that the technocracy is not the exclusive product of that old devil capitalism,” he claimed. “Rather, it is the product of a mature and accelerating industrialism. The profiteering could be eliminated; the technocracy would remain in force.” Its primary mission was “the relentless quest for efficiency, for order, for ever more extensive rational control.” Roszak also noted that the technocracy had a remarkable ability to co-opt rebellion. Indeed, it eventually absorbed a slew of countercultural innovations without breaking a sweat.

    The technocracy was difficult to resist directly, but Roszak offered a modest proposal: [...]

  • Vanity Fair ☛ Meta Settles a $25 Million Trump Lawsuit Because It Had More to Lose by Winning

    But Meta arguably had more to lose by winning this one. Tech and media companies, eager to avoid conflict with the new administration, have recently settled a string of Trump lawsuits they probably would have won in court. According to the Journal, this settlement, in particular, grew out of Zuckerberg’s efforts to cozy up to Trump last November. The paper’s sources said the then-president-elect signaled during a Mar-a-Lago dinner that the Meta boss would need to resolve the suit before he could ever be allowed “into the tent.”

  • Gannett ☛ Meta agrees to pay $25 million to settle Donald Trump lawsuit

    "The parties have reached an agreement to settle the named plaintiffs’ individual claims and resolve this matter," Meta attorney Winn Allen wrote in a court filing Wednesday. "The parties will file a joint stipulation of dismissal with prejudice in the coming days."

    The suit was brought after Facebook, among other social media platforms, suspended Trump's account following the Jan. 6 insurrection that attempted to overthrow the 2020 election.

  • NBC ☛ Meta agrees to pay $25 million to settle Trump lawsuit

    Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, filed a notice of the settlement in federal court in San Francisco, where the lawsuit was pending. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone separately confirmed the terms: a $25 million payment from the company, with $22 million going toward a fund for Trump’s presidential library and the balance dedicated to legal fees and other plaintiffs in the case.

    The settlement does not require Meta to admit wrongdoing, Stone said.

  • ABC ☛ Meta agrees to pay $25 million to settle lawsuit with President Donald Trump

    In July 2021, Trump sued Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg for "censoring" his social media account after the Jan. 6 [insurrection], accusing the company of colluding with Democratic lawmakers to silence the then-former president.

  • Associated Press ☛ Meta agrees to pay $25 million to settle lawsuit from Trump after Jan. 6 suspension

    It’s the latest instance of a large corporation settling litigation with the president, who has threatened retribution on his critics and rivals, and comes as Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have joined other large technology companies in trying to ingratiate themselves with the new Trump administration.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Meta agrees to pay Trump $25m for suspending accounts over Capitol riots

    Meta has agreed to pay $25m to settle a lawsuit with Donald Trump. The suit originated in 2021 when Trump sued the social media company for suspending his accounts after the January 6 [insurrection] on the US Capitol. The settlement was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and has been confirmed by a Meta spokesperson.

  • ABC ☛ Meta agrees to pay $25 million to settle lawsuit from Trump after Jan. 6 suspension

    Zuckerberg visited Trump in November at his private Florida club to try to mend fences with the incoming president, something other technology, business and government officials have done as well. At the dinner, Trump brought up the litigation and suggested they try to resolve it, kick-starting two months of negotiations between the parties, the people said.

    Meta also made a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural committee, and Zuckerberg was among several billionaires granted prime seating during Trump’s swearing-in last week in the Capitol Rotunda, along with Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who now owns the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Remind me again why we can’t raise taxes on millionaires

    As things stand, any individual making more than $61,600 is taxed $3,911 plus 7.15% of excess over that amount. Couples filing jointly making $123,250 or more are taxed $7,825 plus 7.15% of excess. That means that someone making less than the state’s median household income is taxed at the very same rate as the wealthiest person in Maine.

    Carving out an additional tax bracket for those at the very top of the pay scale would bring in much-needed revenue. And let’s be clear, the millionaires are doing just fine.

  • Brandon ☛ I Am Just as Ignorant

    It startled me to realize that I was no different from my friends and family that I judged. I, too, was just as ignorant and listening to thoughts and ideas created to sway my opinion.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defends policy changes in town hall

    Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sought to reassure his workforce on Wednesday that the social media giant’s values haven’t changed despite a slew of policy shifts that included ending its diversity and fact-checking programs.

    In a companywide meeting, Zuckerberg told employees that 2025 would be a “big year for resetting our relationship with governments around the world.” But he specified that Meta would not forsake its values, according to a recording of the event obtained by The Washington Post.

  • India Times ☛ Mark Zuckerberg defends embrace of Donald Trump administration

    Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "I want to be clear, after the last several years, we now have an opportunity to have a productive partnership with the United States government. We're going to take that." He stated that it was "fundamental" for Meta, with Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, to improve its relations with governments globally.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • RFA ☛ Is Boeing to blame for the plane crash in Washington?

      This speculation is unfounded. The American Airlines passenger plane involved in the collision was not manufactured by Boeing.

    • Techdirt ☛ LA Times Flips Anti-RFK Jr. Op-Ed Into Pro-Kennedy Propaganda

      As Reinhart points out, the Times didn’t just soften his criticism – they systematically stripped out his core arguments against RFK Jr. and slapped on a misleading headline that completely reversed his intended message.

      The extent of the LA Times’ manipulation becomes clear when comparing the published version to Reinhart’s originally submitted op-ed (titled “RFK Jr.s Wrecking Ball Won’t Fix Public Health“). While the published version presents a sanitized critique of healthcare, the original piece drew sharp parallels between RFK Jr. and Luigi Mangione’s killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — a comparison the Times completely excised.

    • New York Times ☛ DeepSeek’s Answers Include Chinese Propaganda, Researchers Say

      Since the Chinese company’s chatbot surged in popularity, researchers have documented how its answers reflect China’s view of the world. Some of its responses amplify propaganda Beijing uses to discredit critics.

    • VOA News ☛ Fact-checkers in Ethiopia take on disinformation amid rising tensions

      As tensions flared between Somalia and Ethiopia last year, social media became a breeding ground for misinformation.

    • VOA News ☛ Trump’s ‘make peace or die’ message to Putin is deepfake. Yet it fooled Russians

      The video went viral by Jan. 24, spilling over to other social media platforms and even news outlets.

      Then, BAZA, ce Hʼyuston Telegram channel’s SMM specialists announced in the comment to the original post that the video is a deepfake generated with the use of artificial intelligence.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Pro Publica ☛ Astronomer Vera Rubin’s Federal Bio Altered to Omit DEI Efforts in Science

    During his first presidential term, Donald Trump signed a congressional act naming a federally funded observatory after the late astronomer Vera Rubin. The act celebrated her landmark research on dark matter — the invisible, mysterious substance that makes up much of the universe — and noted that she was an outspoken advocate for the equal treatment and representation of women in science.

    “Vera herself offers an excellent example of what can happen when more minds participate in science,” the observatory’s website said of Rubin — up until recently.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Faux Free Speech Warriors Attacking Free Speech

    Perhaps the most brazen practitioners of this strategy are those with the resources to weaponize the legal system itself. Take Elon Musk, who wraps himself in the mantle of “free speech absolutism” while filing censorial lawsuits against his critics. Or Donald Trump, who portrays himself as a free speech champion while maintaining a relentless campaign of legal intimidation—suing media properties for critical coverage, attacking CBS over 60 Minutes for a Harris interview he didn’t like, and even targeting pollster Ann Selzer for publishing unfavorable poll predictions.

    This censorship strategy has evolved to exploit every available pressure point in our system. Government officials like Carr and Jordan weaponize regulatory and investigative powers, while wealthy private actors like Musk and Trump deploy their vast resources to overwhelm critics with legal costs. The tactics are different, but the playbook is the same.

  • CPJ ☛ Taliban sentences Afghan journalist Sayed Rahim Saeedi to 3 years in prison

    According to the exile-based watchdog group Afghanistan Journalists Center, Saeedi was arrested for his work criticizing the Taliban, including a screenplay he wrote about a girl denied an education by Taliban authorities.

  • Wired ☛ Here’s How DeepSeek Censorship Actually Works—and How to Get Around It

    To figure out how this censorship works on a technical level, WIRED tested DeepSeek-R1 on its own app, a version of the app hosted on a third-party platform called Together AI, and another version hosted on a WIRED computer, using the application Ollama.

  • RFERL ☛ Pakistan Cracks Down On Free Speech Online

    But critics say the law is designed to quash dissent in the South Asian country, where independent media have faced growing censorship in recent years.

    Signed into law by the president on January 29, the law has triggered protests by journalists across the country of some 240 million people.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Channel 4 chief says Gen Z media habits causing ‘immense issues’

    Alex Mahon says news providers must take urgent action to reach young people who appear to hold extreme views.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Noel Clarke loses bid to get Guardian libel defence thrown out

    Guardian lawyers described an accusation of evidence fabrication by Clarke's team as "hopeless".

  • New York Times ☛ Paramount in Settlement Talks With Convicted Felon Over ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit

    A settlement, if reached, would be an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Google owes UK news industry £2.2bn from 2023 alone, claims new research

    Google says it does not run ads or make money from "vast majority" of news searches.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Online publishing revenue trends: Audio rising, video stalls, data is golden

    In a new quarterly series AOP managing director Richard Reeves analyses online publishing industry revenue trends.

  • RFERL ☛ Russia Designates 2 RFE/RL Journalists And 5 Others As ‘Foreign Agents’

    Russia has added seven people including two Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists to its long and growing list of “foreign agents,” a move RFE/RL’s president said was part of a “brutal assault on independent media.”

    The Russian Justice Ministry said on January 31 that the seven were designated for participating in foreign media platforms and in some cases for what it claimed was the dissemination of "false information" about Russia's electoral system. It did not provide evidence.

  • VOA News ☛ US aid freeze spells uncertain future for international media

    Journalists provide information about evacuation routes, document alleged Russian war crimes and troop movements, and counter Moscow’s propaganda.

    Even a temporary freeze of U.S. foreign aid can mean financial difficulties for small media organizations that rely on outside donors to keep working.

  • CPJ ☛ Turkish journalist Suat Toktaş arrested following broadcast 

    “Suat Toktaş’ arrest and the detaining of the other Halk TV personnel is a political move by Turkish authorities to silence critical voices,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “The authorities should immediately release Toktaş, lift the measures of judicial control imposed on other Halk TV staff, and stop using the legal system to harass the media.”

  • CPJ ☛ Journalists covering eastern DRC conflict face death threats, censorship

    The M23 rebel group’s assault on the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern city of Goma has brought familiar dangers for Congolese journalists, who for years have navigated intimidation and attacks from government and armed groups in the country’s restive, mineral-rich east.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Federal News Network ☛ USPS letter carrier union members reject tentative contract deal

    Build a Fighting NALC, a coalition of letter carriers advocating for a more inclusive collective bargaining process for rank-and-file employees, is calling for $30-an-hour starting pay, an end to mandatory overtime and full COLAs for all bargaining unit members.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Japanese Americans returned from prison camps 80 years ago

    That the coming-home began eight decades ago had not occurred to me. Calvin Naito, an Angeleno and fourth-generation Japanese American, tipped me to the anniversary. He himself hadn’t known much about the incarcerations until he was studying at the Harvard Kennedy school in 1988, when President Reagan signed a historic law about reparations.

  • Pete Brown ☛ Tech workers should unionize.

    I remember being at Velocity sometime in the late 2000s or early 2010s and hearing a bunch of people say some version of “If you don’t like your job, just quit! Everyone is hiring!” Even at the time, that sentiment struck me as naïve and tone-deaf; it was only true for this bunch of web-developer weirdos who thought they ruled the world.

    Now things are different, and a bunch of tech workers at Google—a place that used to be where everyone in this crowd hoped to end up—are signing a petition not to be laid off.

    You know what they might be better off signing? Union cards.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Dark Times Are Coming

    Because this is a topic where the righteous side has been effectively losing for my entire lifetime, it can be tempting to descend into doomerism. But “we’re so fucked” is neither a useful nor a factual conclusion. For one thing, our own actions affect the future, so as soon as we decide all is lost, we stop trying, and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. For another thing, the pendulum always swings back in its opposite direction, given enough time, so “we’re so fucked” is a temporary condition rather than the natural state of the world. As Martin Luther King, Jr. understood, we, collectively, will get to the promised land, but you, personally, might be dead before it happens.

    That said, I also believe in telling the truth. Now feels like a good time to take a blunt look at where the prospects of organized labor stand. If the pendulum is swinging, it is swinging into the very worst part of its cycle at the moment. I believe that a revival of organized labor power is vital to wresting America from the control of oligarchy—and, analytically, I have to admit that we are farther from accomplishing that than we have been since I was born. This is a result of both the forces arrayed against unions, and the weakness of unions themselves. Consider: [...]

  • University of Michigan ☛ UMich unveils digital accessibility initiative to expand online access

    On Jan. 13, the University of Michigan announced the creation of the Digital Accessibility Strategic Initiative, a program which aims to promote equitable access to digital services at the University and Michigan Medicine.

    The initiative comes after the U.S. Department of Justice updated regulations stipulated in Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act in April 2024. Public universities have until April 2026 to comply with new digital accessibility standards, which include making websites and apps compatible with screen readers and providing alternative text.

  • Jeremy Cherfas ☛ More Accessibility Fun

    Yesterday’s little accessability adventure unsurprisingly opened a whole ‘nother can of worms. As I was showing off my work in Front End Study Hall and learning how to check on dark mode easily in a browser, it became painfully obvious, to those who prefer dark mode, that this site doesn’t do dark mode. At all.

    Friends pointed me to a great tutorial: Come To The Light-dark() Side at CSS Tricks. So this morning, I set to.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ ICE Raids: Know Your Rights Amid Trump's Immigration Crackdown

    All warrants aren’t created equal. Ramos adds that many ICE officers tend to present administrative warrants that are issued by another ICE officer or the Department of Homeland Security, but these still don’t grant entry into a private citizen’s home. If an immigration officer presents you a warrant, you should check that it is signed by a judge, has the specific name of the person they’re looking for, their exact address, and a validity period that it’s good for. You can ask officers to pass the warrant underneath the door. Alway check that the warrant in correct before you open the door.

    This isn’t the same at workplaces, as ICE officers can enter and detain people if they have direct permission from a businesses’ owner. If you are detained, do not try to run. Instead, exercise the rest of your rights, as explained below.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Hackaday ☛ Forgotten Internet: Giving (or Getting) The Finger

    Hey, you know that guy in accounting, Marco? If you want to find out more about him, you’d probably go surf LinkedIn or maybe a social media site. Inside a company, you might look on instant messaging for a profile and even find out if he is at his desk or away. But back in the 1970s, those weren’t options. But if Marco was on the computer system, maybe you could finger him. While that sounds strange to say today, Finger was a common service provided by computer services at the time. It was like a LinkedIn profile page for the 1970s.

  • Internet Society ☛ Fostering Digital Literacy in Nicaragua

    In August 2024, the Internet Society Nicaragua Chapter bridged the digital divide in the small community of Reparto La Virgen Nueva.

  • Public Knowledge ☛ Public Knowledge Welcomes New Senior Policy Advocate Patrick Gallaher To Bolster Advocacy Efforts [Ed: When will they remove the Microsoft mole in their ranks though?]

    Public Knowledge welcomes Patrick Gallaher, Senior Policy Advocate, to our team to focus on copyright monopoly issues, including digital ownership and issues related to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

  • France24 ☛ South Korea's webtoon comics have readers hooked

    South Korea is seeing a boom in webtoons – short episodic comics that are designed to be read on smartphones. They are hugely popular in the country, where some 35 million people read at least one episode of a webtoon every week. Amid this success at home, webtoon creators are now turning their attention to international markets, including English-speaking countries and France. FRANCE 24's Chloé Borgnon and Justin McCurry report.

  • Federal News Network ☛ A court squashes net neutrality, what next for the FCC?

    With net neutrality A recent U.S. appeals court decision ended the idea of net neutrality. It said the Federal Communications Commission lacked authority to regulate internet service and broadband providers. The incoming FCC chair, Brendan Carr, was already planning to undo Biden administration rules for net neutrality favored by the outgoing FCC chair. For what the broadband industry hopes for next, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin turn to the president and CEO of the trade group U.S. Telecom, Jonathan Spalter.

    Interview transcript: [...]

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Petard (Part II)

    Biden's FCC unanimously passed a rules banning landlords from accepting kickbacks to force all their tenants to use one ISP as a rental condition. Last week, Trump's FCC boss Brendan Carr (who voted for the rule just last year) killed it, saying that he was sticking up for tenants, who would somehow save money from this sleazy arrangement: [...]

  • Techdirt ☛ The Trump FCC Makes It Easier For Your Landlord And Your ISP To Collude To Rip You Off

    Trump’s hand-chosen courts are already hard at work dismantling everything from net neutrality to financial aid for low-income broadband users. But his hand picked boss Brendan Carr is also busy dismantling all the consumer-friendly stuff the FCC accomplished, and even a lot of the stuff it hadn’t gotten around to yet.

    Case in point: Carr has killed an FCC plan to stop landlords and ISPs from colluding to rip you off via arbitrary exclusivity arrangements. The proposal to block such harmful arrangements was sitting in a list of Biden FCC proposals they hoped to implement, but former FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel never got around to despite having an available voting majority: [...]

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Right to repair farm equipment

    You know how so many things, from modern laptops and phones are sealed boxes where swapping a battery can void a warranty? It wouldn’t surprise you to know this is happening at a larger scale as well, from cars to factory equipment.

  • PC World ☛ The secret to saving big on streaming services: Ruthless disloyalty

    From the consumer perspective, streaming video services are objectively worse than they were a decade ago. Frankly, these services are absolutely milking and bilking their users. There’s no real alternative at this point, at least if you want to watch new shows or the occasional streaming-exclusive movie that isn’t terrible. But there are ways to maximize your enjoyment and minimize your money spent.

    Step one: quit.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Digital Music News ☛ Ticketmaster Settles Class-Action Litigation in Canada Over ‘Drip Pricing’

  Ticketmaster is set to pay $6 million in a Canadian class action lawsuit regarding ‘drip pricing’ practices. Ticketmaster has settled a class action lawsuit in Canada regarding its “drip pricing” practices, for which it must pay out $6 million CAD.

• Silicon Angle ☛ Justice Department sues to block HPE’s $14B Juniper acquisition

  The U.S. Justice Department has filed suit to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s proposed acquisition of Juniper Networks Inc. for $14 billion. Officials submitted the complaint today to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. HPE announced plans to acquire Juniper last January.

• The Register UK ☛ DoJ sues to block HPE's $14B acquisition of Juniper Networks

  Specifically, the Department of Justice is worried about consolidation within the wireless LAN (WLAN) market, where it says HPE and Juniper are already the second and third largest providers of the technology.

• New York Times ☛ U.S. Sues to Block Tech Deal in First Antitrust Action of Trump Term

  Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, a business software and services company, announced the $14 billion takeover of Juniper last year, with hopes of combining its data centers with Juniper’s networking business to take on giants like Cisco.

  Regulators in Britain and the European Union cleared the deal this summer. But the Biden administration’s antitrust enforcers had issued what is known as a “second request” for more information, indicating scrutiny of the transaction.

• Patents

  • Patent Filing Trends 2024– Market Share Shifts Continue as Firms Face Ongoing Challenges

    The landscape of patent monopoly filing activity across Australia and New Zealand underwent continued transformation in 2024, marked by declining total filings and ongoing shifts in market share distribution and firm performance.  Total standard patent monopoly applications filed in Australia decreased by 3.4% to 30,442, while New Zealand experienced a more pronounced decline of 7.3% to 6,202 applications.  These trends are set against a backdrop of substantial structural change in the industry, most notably the acquisition of QANTM IP Limited by private equity management company Adamantem Capital in August, leaving IPH Limited as the last publicly listed ownership group standing.

  • India Times ☛ iit: ‘One Patent A Day’ drives research at IIT-Madras

    Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) a few years ago had committed to filing ‘One Patent a day’. In 2024-2025 the institute filed 386 patents.

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ TTAB Reverses Section 2(d) Refusal of "12 & Design" for Cosmetics Due to Third-Party Registration Evidence

    The Board deep-sixed a Section 2(d) refusal to regsiter the mark shown below for "Non-medicated skin care preparations" and for on-line retail store services featuring cosmetics, finding confusion not likely with the registered mark TWELVE COSMETICS for “cosmetics; private label cosmetics" [COSMETICS disclaimed]. In re Metabeauty, Inc., Serial No. 97492557 (January 28, 2025) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Karen S. Kuhlke).

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ USCO Elaborates on Hey Hi (AI) Copyright Rules In Sweeping Report — But Stops Short of Recommending ‘A Change in the Law’

    Can you copyright monopoly works created entirely by AI? Definitely not, according to the U.S. Copyright Office, which has elaborated on this existing position and adjacent topics in a 50-page report.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Court Rejects Musi's Bid to Force Apple to Reinstate its Music App

    Musi's initial attempt to force Apple to reinstate its music app to the App Store has failed. A California federal court denied a request for a preliminary injunction, ruling that Apple did not act unreasonably or in bad faith when it removed the app following complaints from music industry players and YouTube. The court found that Musi’s proposed injunction would not serve the public interest.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Libraries Are Forbidden Fruit for AI Companies. But at What Cost?

    The future of AI innovation may hinge on the outcome of a global copyright debate. In the U.S., rightsholders are taking a hard line, pursuing legal action against AI companies that utilize copyrighted works without permission. However, other countries are adopting more lenient approaches, allowing AI models to learn from the vast troves of data found in 'pirate' libraries. This 'copyright schism' could have far-reaching consequences.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ FADPA: MPA's Export-Only Site-Blocking Primed For Full Strength U.S. Launch

    There's no ideal time to promote a blocking system that by design restricts freedom and, for the vast majority of citizens, offers no tangible benefit. Yet, over the past 15 years or so, the major Hollywood studios have convinced authorities in dozens of countries that blocking pirate sites benefits everyone. If the FADPA bill passes, the MPA's export-only site-blocking system will be reimported to the U.S. at close to maximum strength, straight off the bat.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Oh, I’m sorry, tech bros – did DeepSeek copy your work? I can hardly imagine your distress

    As news of DeepSeek played havoc with the tech stock market, OpenAI pressed its hanky to its nose and released a statement: “We are aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models, and will share information as we know more,” this ran. “We take aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology.” Oooooooooh! I want to say “welcome to America’s Dumbest Tech Barons”, except I can’t, because I think we all know that no law enforcement is coming to get Sam for the stuff he’s alleged to have made unauthorised use of first. That was the good type of alleged theft, whatever the claims of all the lawsuits belatedly trying to claw something back for the alleged copyright victims of his firm’s own inappropriate methods.

    So, to put it another way … wait, Sam – you’re not telling us that the Chinese hedge fund crawled all over your IP without asking and took it for themselves? Oh my God, IMAGINE?! You must feel used and abused. Financially violated. Like all your years of creativity were just grist to some other bastard’s mill. Like a host organism. Like a schmuck. Like Earth’s most screamingly preposterous hypocrite.

  • EFF ☛ Copyright is a Civil Liberties Nightmare

    Copyright owners have intimidated researchers away from disclosing that their software spies on users or is full of bugs that make it unsafe. When a blockbuster entertainment product inspires people to tell their own stories by depicting themselves in the same world or costumes, a letter from the studio’s lawyers will usually convince them to stay silent. And whose who sell software write their own law into End User License Agreements and can threaten any user who disobeys them with copyright damages.

  • VOA News ☛ DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT fuels debate over AI building blocks

    In statements to several media outlets this week, OpenAI said it is reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have trained its AI by mimicking responses from OpenAI’s models.

    The process, known as distillation, is common among AI developers but is prohibited by OpenAI’s terms of service, which forbid using its model outputs to train competing systems.

  • LOC ☛ Lifecycle of Copyright: 1929 Works in the Public Domain

    Copyright law arises from Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The Copyright Act describes that the exclusive rights of copyright owners include the right to use and give permission for others to use the work in many ways—making copies of and distributing the work, creating derivative works, and publicly performing or displaying the work. Under the Constitution, Congress may only provide these rights for “limited times.” The first federal copyright law, dating back to 1790, protected registered works for fourteen years with a fourteen-year renewal option. The law has changed over time, and today, the term of copyright protection lasts for the author’s life plus an additional seventy years.

    When copyright protection ends, a work enters the public domain, and the exclusive rights granted by copyright no longer exist. This means the work may be reproduced without permission, may be performed or displayed publicly, and may also be used in the creation of new works, such as adaptations and translations. However, even when copyright protection ends and a work is in the public domain, it is important to note that it may still be subject to other protections.[i]

    Below are just a few of the historical and cultural works that entered the public domain in 2025.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ DeepSeek impact: OpenAI complains DeepSeek stole the data that OpenAI stole first

    David Sacks, PayPal billionaire and Trump’s AI czar, says there’s “substantial evidence” that DeepSeek distilled some training from OpenAI, and — get this — violated OpenAI’s terms of service! Good thing OpenAI never did anything like that to anyone, hey.

    The sum total of their evidence is that OpenAI’s web API got hammered from China a couple of times last year — and general scaremongering about China.