Leftovers

• Kevin Kelly ☛ The Technium: 50 Years of Travel Tips

  There are two modes of travel; retreat or engage. People often travel to escape the routines of work, to recharge, relax, reinvigorate, and replenish themselves— R&R. In this mode you travel to remove yourself from your routines, or to get the pampering and attention you don’t ordinarily get, and ideally to do fun things instead of work things. So you travel to where it is easy. This is called a vacation, or R&R.

  The other mode is engagement and experience, or E&E. In this mode you travel to discover new things, to have new experiences, to lean into an adventure whose outcome is not certain, to meet otherness. You move to find yourself by encountering pleasures and challenges you don’t encounter at home. This kind of travel is a type of learning, and of the two modes, it is the one I favor in these tips.

• Lou Plummer ☛ Work Friends, Real Friends

  I hear many men say that as we get older, it becomes more difficult to make new friendships. That's true, I think. Holding on to the friends we do have should really be a high priority. I can think of few things more valuable.

• Henry Desroches ☛ What To Say When You Don't Know What To Say

  I have this weird relationship with Incredible Amounts Of Grief where, like, I’ve literally been there — I know there’s nothing to say, and nothing will heal but time. When The Bad Thing™ happened, I felt angry so often with people wasting both my time and theirs trying to string together something moralizing and impactful, either to Make It Better, or to make themselves feel like they tried. When The Bad Thing™ happened, the only thing that would’ve made it better in any capacity, in any universe, was The Thing un-happening, or (the more common path) simply many years of hurt, of crying in the middle of the day for seemingly no reason, until the sun started to rise on my world each morning again.

• MaskRay ☛ Migrating comments to giscus

  Unfortunately comments from Disqus have not been migrated yet. If you've left comments in the past, thank you. Apologies they are now gone.

• Science

  • International Business Times ☛ Why Did The Deep Sea Anglerfish Rise Thousands of Feet in the Ocean? Scientists Baffled by Odd Behaviour – 'I Thought It Was AI!'

    David Jara Bogunyà, a marine wildlife photographer, was aboard the research vessel Glaucus when the creature appeared. 'It was like a dream come true,' he says. 'When I was a child, I had a book with deep-sea creature illustrations. These animals looked so wild, they didn't seem real.' Yet, for over an hour, Jara and his team were able to swim alongside and capture this rare sighting of the black seadevil, a species that usually inhabits the inky depths of the ocean between 650 and 6,500 feet.

  • Groot Koerkamp ☛ Minimizer papers

    This post is simply a list of brief comments on many papers related to minimizers, and forms the basis of /posts/minimizers/.

  • Science Alert ☛ NASA May Have Found The Fastest Planetary System We've Ever Seen

    "If so, it will be the first planet ever found orbiting a hypervelocity star."

  • Wired ☛ A ‘Teleportation’ Breakthrough for Quantum Computing Is Here

    The Oxford scientists used quantum entanglement to almost instantaneously send basic information between computers. When data travels long distances under this principle, "quantum teleportation" is said to have occurred. This is not to be confused with the conventional idea of teleportation, which involves a hypothetical immediate exchange of matter in space. In the experiment, the light particles remained in the same place, but entanglement allowed the computers to "see" each other's information and work in parallel.

• Career/Education

  • Namanyay Goel ☛ New Junior Developers Can’t Actually Code

    Sure, the code works, but ask why it works that way instead of another way? Crickets. Ask about edge cases? Blank stares.

    The foundational knowledge that used to come from struggling through problems is just… missing.

    We’re trading deep understanding for quick fixes, and while it feels great in the moment, we’re going to pay for this later.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Axios ☛ Teen loneliness machine: What happens when social life moves online

    Why it matters: It's a dangerous environment for a generation that's already sad and stressed. And it's more difficult than ever for their parents, teachers and coaches to understand and help them.

    The big picture: Data shows that teens are spending less time hanging out with friends in person, and more time on their devices.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Bank of England's Oracle partner spend doubles

    According to a recently published procurement note, the 330-year-old institution said it was increasing the contract value awarded to its Oracle implementation partner Version 1 to £13.8 million. This is a significant increase from the £8.7 million awarded and nearly double the £7 million originally advertised. Still, if you're printing the money, who's counting?

  • LWN ☛ 14 years of systemd

    It is a standard practice to use milestones to reflect on the achievements of a project, such as the anniversary of its first release or first commit. Usually, these are observed at five and ten‑year increments; the tenth anniversary of the 1.0 release, or 25 years since from the first public announcement, etc. Lennart Poettering, however, took a different approach at FOSDEM 2025 with a keynote commemorating 14 years of systemd, and a brief look ahead at his goals and systemd's challenges for the future.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Chinese Hackers Still Breaching U.S. Telecoms Despite Sanctions

    To carry out these attacks, Salt Typhoon exploited two vulnerabilities to compromise unpatched Cisco devices running Cisco IOS XE software. The hacking group has attempted to compromise more than 1,000 Cisco devices globally, focusing particularly on devices associated with telecommunications providers’ networks, Recorded Future said.

    Recorded Future said it observed Salt Typhoon targeting devices associated with universities, including the University of California and Utah Tech. The researchers said the hacking group “possibly targeted these universities to access research in areas related to telecommunications, engineering, and technology.”

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • India Times ☛ AI regulations still in beta phase

      As India shapes its AI policy, government bodies discuss regulation, ethics, and innovation. Experts stress sectoral frameworks, copyright reforms, and supply chain resilience to balance AI risks while fostering growth and global competitiveness.

    • Mike Brock ☛ The Final Despotism

      Throughout history, tyranny has been limited by human frailty. Dictators tire. Their attention wanders. They must sleep. Even the most sophisticated systems of oppression ultimately relied on human beings to maintain control—people who could be corrupted, convinced, or who might simply look the other way at crucial moments. Resistance always remained possible because no human system of control could achieve total perfection.

      Artificial intelligence fundamentally changes this equation. For the first time in human history, we face the prospect of systems of control that never sleep, never tire, and never look the other way. AI-enabled surveillance can watch everyone, everywhere, all the time. AI systems can process vast amounts of data to identify patterns of resistance before they even fully form. AI can optimize systems of social control with inhuman precision, crafting personalized manipulation for every citizen.

    • Herman Õunapuu ☛ Turns out that I'm a 'prolific open-source influencer' now

      Turns out that my thoughts on Ubuntu were somewhat popular, and it ended up being ingested by an AI slop generator over at Fudzilla, with no links back to the source or anything.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Business school professors trained an AI to judge workers’ personalities based on their faces

      Theory-free inference is a hell of a drug. For years, Big Data advocates – the larval form of today's AI weirdos – have insisted that if you have enough data, you can infer causal relationships between complex phenomena without ever having to understand how x causes y, and thus, we can slay the dread "correlation is not causation" beast.

    • Tim Kellogg ☛ LLaDA: LLMs That Don't Gaslight You

      A new AI architecture is challenging the status quo. LLaDA is a diffusion model that generates text. Normally diffusion models generate images or video (e.g. Stable Diffusion). By using diffusion for text, LLaDA addresses a lot of issues that LLMs are running into, like hallucinations and doom loops.

    • Roman Kashitsyn ☛ ONNX introduction

      onnx is an open format for representing machine learning models; it aims to unify the ecosystem. It doesn’t support advanced use cases, such as model training checkpoints, but it is simple, secure (no arbitrary code execution), and easy to build on.

      This article is an introduction to the onnx file format I wish I had when embarked on my ml model transformation journey at Gensyn.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ How to Recognize the Early Warning Signs of a Security Breach in Your Email

      Email breaches can be devastating, but the earlier you recognize the signs, the quicker you can take action. Keep an eye on your account for strange activities, put strong passwords, and adopt two-factor authentication to secure your account. Should you identify any of the red flags explained earlier, act promptly to ensure safety of your email and identity. If you deal with a possible breach as soon as possible, there is a lower probability that your delicate information may be violated.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

      • Cendyne Naga ☛ Dual-Device Authorization with QR Codes

        If they're already authenticated on their phone with an identity provider like Google, and they have an account on the application on-site, then they can sign in under fifteen seconds with a QR code. Here's how it works: [...]

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • La Quadature Du Net ☛ What is “AI Video Surveillance”?

      Because words carry a lot of weight, we prefer “automation” – this term erases the notion of intelligence that technology would supposedly bring to the process. Automation is not a neutral process outside the social world, but one that carries1 with it representations and norms from our social world. And we use “algorithmic” to highlight the addition of software, which is manufactured by start-ups and multinational corporations we know very little about.

      This algorithmic layer aims to do video analysis, whether in real time or after the fact, and to find… whatever the police wants to find. This ranges from “detecting suspicious behavior”, to “loitering” (being stationary in a public area), “crossing a line”, tracking a person, or detecting an abandoned object, a fight, a theft, etc.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ No, Notepad for Windows 11 doesn't require you to use a Microsoft account — unless you're trying to use AI

      For the past few days on Twitter, a particularly alarming screenshot has spread of a forced Microsoft account sign-in screen appearing on Windows 11— this screenshot, originally posted by @TheBobPony, was captioned with "Sign in with a Microsoft Account for Notepad!?," showing a quite understandable amount of distaste for this needless new bloat on Notepad.

    • EFF ☛ Atlas of Surveillance

      The Atlas of Surveillance is a database of surveillance technologies deployed by law enforcement in communities across the United States.

      This includes drones, body-worn cameras, automated license plate readers, facial recognition, and more.

      This research was compiled by more than 1,000 students and volunteers, and incorporates datasets from a variety of public and non-profit sources.

    • The Independent UK ☛ Elon Musk’s DOGE is seeking access to IRS system with sensitive taxpayer records, triggering lawmakers’ concerns

      Under pressure from the White House to comply with DOGE’s efforts, the IRS is reportedly considering issuing a memorandum that would give officials broad access to datasets and tax systems, including the Integrated Data Retrieval System – which contains taxpayers' Social Security number, bank information, returns and more.

      The memorandum, obtained by the Washington Post, would give DOGE team member Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old software engineer, access to the system while he is based at the IRS for at least 120 days.

    • Axios ☛ DOGE seeks access to IRS system with sensitive taxpayer data

      An Internal Revenue Service employee connected with the Elon Musk-led DOGE team is set to seek access to an IRS system that includes sensitive taxpayer data, the Washington Post first reported Sunday and Axios can confirm.

    • NBC ☛ DOGE-affiliated employee expected to seek access to IRS system with sensitive taxpayer information

      It contains information such as taxpayers’ individual master files, taxpayer identification numbers, retirement account information and details on pending adoptions.

      IDRS users “are authorized to access only those accounts required to accomplish their official duties,” according to the IRS website. They are not allowed to access the accounts of people with whom they have personal or financial interests, such as friends and relatives, according to an IRS document.

  • Confidentiality

    • The Record ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Treasury agrees to block additional DOGE staff from accessing sensitive payment systems

    • 2025-02-07 [Older] Attorney General James Releases Statement on DOGE Access to Sensitive Personal Information

    • APNIC ☛ Preparing for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH)

      As he reviewed the existing security controls, it was reassuring to confirm that the measures they had chosen would remain effective. The browser’s built-in endpoint protections — Chrome, in this case — were actively in use. Since Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) secures the session between the browser and the Content Delivery Network (CDN), browser-managed controls will continue to function as expected.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-08 [Older] Canada detects China-linked campaign targeting Freeland

  • Spiegel ☛ 2025-02-12 [Older] The Phantom Terrorists: Searching for Islamic State in Syria

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-12 [Older] US Tells UN: We Cannot Pay Forever for Syria Camps With Islamic State-Linked Prisoners

  • The Local SE ☛ 2025-02-11 [Older] Sweden jails woman for keeping slaves in Syria in groundbreaking court case

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-11 [Older] Sweden Sentences Woman to 12 Years in Prison for Genocide, War Crimes in Syria

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-02-09 [Older] Turkey bombs water tanker in Northern and Eastern Syria

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-08 [Older] Chemical Weapons Watchdog Delegation Meets With Syria's New Leaders

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Protesters Denounce Donald Trump and Elon Musk on 'No Kings Day'

    Demonstrators from New York to Atlanta to San Francisco have taken to the streets Monday in the largest mass-protests since the beginning of the second Trump administration.

    The Presidents’ Day protests — branded, cheekily, as “No Kings Day” — are evidence of a growing public backlash against the authoritarian executive orders issued by Donald Trump, as well as the havoc Elon Musk and his tech-bro minions are unleashing in federal agencies, through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

  • The Washington Post ☛ British couple traveling the world by motorcycle detained in Iran

    It was not clear when and where the couple was seized. “We are providing consular assistance to two British Nationals detained in Iran and are in contact with the local authorities,” an FCDO spokesperson said in an email.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Judge expected to rule in 24 hours in case that aims to sharply curtail Musk's DOGE

    U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., heard arguments on Monday, the Presidents Day holiday when federal courts are closed, to consider an emergency request by 13 Democratic state attorneys general seeking to block Musk and DOGE from accessing government systems and firing employees at seven agencies.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Exclusive-FDA Staff Reviewing Musk’s Neuralink Were Included in DOGE Employee Firings, Sources Say

    The cuts included about 20 people in the FDA’s office of neurological and physical medicine devices, several of whom worked on Neuralink, according to the two sources, who asked not to be identified because of fear of professional repercussions. That division includes reviewers overseeing clinical-trial applications by Neuralink and other companies making so-called brain-computer interface devices, the sources said.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Federal Workers Are Mobilizing Against Musk’s Purge

    Donald Trump and Elon Musk's assault on federal workers threatens government employees, working conditions throughout the economy, and the viability of crucial services. Federal workers are uniting across agency and union lines to fight back.

  • International Business Times ☛ USAID Workers Sue Elon Musk Over 'Unconstitutional Power Grab' And Endangering People's Careers And Safety

    The lawsuit highlighted that Musk and his new department have endangered critical foreign aid programmes and subsequently put people's careers, personal safety, and the lives of the less fortunate at risk.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Elon Musk’s newest target is the regulator that fined him $20m and is still investigating him

    This time Musk is investigating the exact same agency that is currently targeting him – and fined him $22 million for security violations in a past case.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Moscow Furious Over Italy’s ‘Third Reich’ Comparison

    Speaking about the conditions that gave rise to World War II, he warned of "authoritarian drifts" where "the criterion of domination prevailed over cooperation. And wars of conquest followed."

    "That was the Third Reich's [Nazi Germany's] project in Europe. Russia's current aggression against Ukraine is of this very nature," he continued.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Swedish Court Acquits Three Men of Preparation of Terrorist Crime

    The three men together with a fourth were, however, convicted of participation in a terrorist organisation, Islamic State in Somalia, the court said in a statement.

  • India Times ☛ Russia fines Google for YouTube clip telling Russian troops how to surrender

    A Russian court has fined Alphabet's Google 3.8 million roubles ($41,530) for hosting content on YouTube that included videos instructing Russian soldiers how to surrender, Russia's TASS news agency reported on Monday.

  • [Old] Firstpost ☛ At 4% of UK’s population, Muslims make up 18% of criminals in jail

    As per the report, there are 13,724 Muslims residing in England and Wales. “The proportion of Muslim prisoners has increased from 8 per cent in 2002 to 18 per cent in 2021,” the report stated.

    The report shows that there has been a remarkable increase in number of criminal activities by Muslims in the UK.

  • [Old] BBC ☛ Warning over Islamic radicalisation in England's prisons

    There are more than 12,000 Muslims in jails across England and Wales and the latest official data, external shows that more than 100 Muslims are in jail for terrorism offences in Great Britain.

    The worry particularly concerns converts to Islam, as research, external from the former chief inspector of prisons, Dame Anne Owers, suggests they are more vulnerable to extremism.

  • [Old] The United Kingdom ☛ Radicalisation in prisons in England and Wales

    Peer-to-peer radicalisation within prisons has been identified as one factor fuelling extremism, not just in the UK but around the globe, and so combatting radicalisation in prisons is one strand of the Government’s counter-extremism strategy-y. The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is reviewing how it deals with extremism in prisons and its report is expected later this year.

  • [Old] The United Kingdom ☛ Summary of the main findings of the review of Islamist extremism in prisons, probation and youth justice

    In September 2015 the then Secretary of State for Justice commissioned a departmental review, supported by external expertise, to:

    • assess the threat which Islamist Extremism (IE) and the radicalisation which sustains it pose to prisons and probation services; and
    • assess the capability of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) to manage that threat.

    The review team submitted a detailed report of their findings and recommendations to the then Secretary of State on 17 March 2016.

• Environment

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ How Elon Musk Could End Fossil Fuel Subsidies

    The extent of these federal subsidies depends on how they are counted. The Fossil Fuel Subsidy Tracker pegged them at nearly $18 billion in 2023. The International Monetary Fund estimate is $757 billion, including what it calls ‘implicit’ subsidies, such as undervaluing environmental harm. While the exact number is debated, it is clear that ending these industry benefits could reap billions in revenue.

    “The enormous handouts that we continue to make to an industry that extracts tens of billions of dollars out of our country already should certainly be somewhere within their line of sight,” Tejada said. “There are dozens and dozens of different subsidies.”

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Bill Gates Is Playing Both Sides of the Climate Crisis

    Bill Gates presents himself as a climate champion, but his trust has actually increased its fossil fuel investments since his divestment pledge. It's just the latest example of the billionaire appointing himself to solve problems he helps perpetuate.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ California banned polystyrene: Has the plastic industry spooked the governor into silence?

    Instead, there's growing concern among environmental groups and some lawmakers that plastic manufacturers, producers and distributors are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to derail the plastics law, known as SB 54.

    The regulations for the law, which have been argued and negotiated over the last two-and-a-half years by the plastic and packaging companies, lawmakers and environmentalists, are supposed to be finalized on March 8. If not, the stakeholders will have to start the whole process over again.

    They are also worried that the silence emanating from Newsom's office is an indication the whole deal may be off course.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Should Washington state test human waste fertilizer for PFAS?

    If passed, the bill would require the state Department of Ecology to establish PFAS sampling and testing requirements for biosolids by July 2027. A year later, the department would be required to finish an analysis of PFAS levels in biosolids produced in Washington, and by the end of 2028 it would have to report its analysis back to the Legislature with recommendations on how to move forward.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ On the back foot

    The climate aware intersectional justice movement is on the back foot, and the fascists have (for now) won the propaganda war.

    The vast majority of folks outside of the ivory towers have no idea of what we’re going on about. They get their misinformation and fake news from group threaads on WhatsApp, Facebook and X. The right wing owns media right now.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Gray Zone ☛ Argentina’s Milei faces impeachment for promoting crypto scam

    • 2025-02-07 [Older] Indiana Man Sentenced to 20 Years in Federal Prison for Conspiracies Involving Cyber Intrusion and a Massive $37 Million Cryptocurrency Theft

    • New York Times ☛ Southwest Airlines Plans to Cut 15% of Its Work Force

      Southwest Airlines on Monday announced plans to cut 15 percent of its work force, the first round of broad layoffs in the airline’s 53-year history.

      The company said it planned to cut about 1,750 jobs, with the cuts mostly focused on corporate positions. The layoffs will include 11 senior leaders with titles of vice president or higher, the airline said. Most of the cuts will be carried out by the end of June.

      In a statement, Southwest’s chief executive, Bob Jordan, called the decision “unprecedented.”

    • Hundreds of FAA Employees Drawn into Mass Layoffs

    • ABC ☛ Hundreds of FAA air traffic control staff fired just weeks after fatal DC plane crash

      The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal mid-air collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

      Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement.

    • DeSmog ☛ LEAKED: Oil Execs and Trump Allies Attend Jordan Peterson’s ARC Conference

    • DeSmog ☛ U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright Backs Coal and Attacks ‘Sinister’ Climate Targets at ARC Conference

    • BoingBoing ☛ Trump fires "hundreds" of FAA workers — hours before yet another deadly plane crash

      The Musk-Trump Administration fired "three hundred" FAA employees over the weekend — just hours before Saturday's deadly plane crash near Atlanta, Georgia that killed two people. And within just weeks of four other deadly crashes in the United States that happened on Donald Trump's watch.

    • CNN ☛ Hundreds of FAA probationary workers fired by Trump administration, union says

      The Trump administration has started firing hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration probationary employees who maintain critical air traffic control infrastructure, according to their union.

      An exact number of firings is not yet known, but the head of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, AFL-CIO, said that “several hundred” workers started getting firing notices on Friday — and that they could even be barred from FAA facilities Tuesday after the federal holiday. CNN has reached out to the FAA for comment.

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Nuclear Energy for AI Data Centers

      According to the US Department of Energy, the energy requirement for a large data center is 100 MWe, which is equivalent to the energy consumed by approximately 80,000 households in the United States. In a data center, the process of cooling the servers and Central Processing Units (CPUs) consumes the largest share of electricity. McKinsey and Company, a global consulting firm, estimates that the process of cooling accounts for nearly 40 percent of the total energy consumed by AI data centers. In addition, computing accounts for 40 percent of the electricity while 20 percent is used for IT-related equipment in a data center.

      A report titled “Electricity 2024-Analysis and Forecast to 2026” by International Energy Agency (IEA) highlights that global energy demand from data centers will double by 2026. In 2022, data centers consumed an estimated 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) globally and this figure could increase to more than 1000 TWh in 2026. A measure of how much electricity is consumed by AI data centers can be gauged by the fact that this increased demand is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of Japan. Another indication of AI’s energy needs is the fact that OpenAI’s ChatGPT requires around 10 times as much electricity as compared to a Google search.

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2025-02-09 [Older] High costs, shifting gears: Quebec business leaders say diversifying exports easier said than done

  • CBC ☛ 2025-02-09 [Older] Shipping container village in Gatineau, Que., full after one month

  • CBC ☛ 2025-02-09 [Older] I didn't feel able to have a child because I didn't own a home. I'm glad I was wrong [Ed: Corporate media trying to tell people to get child-saddled, never mind overpopulation woes]

  • The Local DK ☛ Digital nomads: How to work for a Danish company without paying Danish tax

    A new ruling from the Danish Tax Council (Skatterådet) has determined that you are no longer tax liable in Denmark if you move abroad.

    That remains the case if you retain your job with a Danish company and continue to receive a wage paid into your Danish bank account.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Tim Bray ☛ Posting and Fascism

    Recently, Janus Rose’s You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism crossed my radar on a hundred channels. It’s a smart piece that says smart things. But I ended up mostly disagreeing. I’m not saying you can post your way out of Fascism, but I do think it’s gonna be hard to build the opposition without a lot of posting. The what and especially the where matter. But the “posting is useless” stance is dangerously reductive.

  • AJ Bourg ☛ “I Desire Mercy”

    Jesus’ warnings are dire: it is possible to love the Bible so much that you lose sight of loving the people God loves: the lost, the lowly, the broken, those far from God.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Common Cause ☛ Here's the ad the Washington Post wouldn't run

    Our ad was all set to run tomorrow morning, with a signed contract and all. But at the last minute, Jeff Bezos’s newspaper rejected our ad from running in its White House edition with no explanation, even though they have run similar ads complimenting Trump.

    You read that right. The Washington Post – which has a responsibility to hold a magnifying glass up to powerful people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump – refused to run our ad calling them out.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Bezos is, as always, 100% in the bag for Musk and Trump

  • Axios ☛ Trump asks Supreme Court to let him fire agency head

    The Trump administration is facing multiple lawsuits challenging the actions.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia’s Putin Bears ‘Ultimate Responsibility’ for Navalny’s Death – EU

    "As Russia intensifies its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, it also continues its internal repression, targeting those who stand for democracy," Kallas said.

    Navalny's lawyers remain "unjustly imprisoned, together with hundreds of political prisoners," she added.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ UN Expert Sounds Alarm on 2,000 ‘Political Prisoners’ in Russia

    Navalny — Russian President Vladimir Putin's main opponent declared "extremist" by Moscow — died on February 16, 2024, in Penal Colony No. 3 in Kharp, above the Arctic Circle.

    Anybody in Russia who mentions Navalvy or his Anti-Corruption Foundation without stating that they have been declared "extremist" is subject to fines, or up to four years in prison for repeated offenses.

  • The Verge ☛ X is blocking links to Signal

    Signal is notably used by journalists to receive confidential information from sources, reassured by the knowledge that messages are end-to-end encrypted and stored on-device. The messaging service has become especially relevant in recent weeks as a tool for federal whistleblowers to report DOGE activity to the press.

    Alongside being blocked from sharing Signal.me links in public posts and direct messages, users are also discouraged from clicking existing links published prior to the ban, and prevented from adding them to their profile bio. An error message displayed when the latter is attempted says the update failed due to the new description being “considered malware.”

  • The Washington Post ☛ How Elon Musk uses his X influence to target critics, federal workers

    Digital rights experts say the situation has created an unprecedented imbalance in power. Musk’s massive online following, his ownership of a social media platform where he can dictate content moderation rules, and his position heading a government entity with access to private data, give him a unique ability to threaten those who question him and chill dissenting speech.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ Dissenter Weekly: A Star Chamber For Journalists?

    Now, the legislation calls it an "ethics review board," but let's be clear—it would arbitrarily penalize journalists when they do not follow the rules for "responsible journalism."

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Guardian does OpenAI deal, New York Times goes AI for newspaper content generation

    “Generative AI can assist our journalists in uncovering the truth and helping more people understand the world,” management fantasized.

  • Axios ☛ Why Trump is targeting AP over "Gulf of America"

    The other side: AP — which has long been considered the gold standard of neutrality — rejects any accusation of bias. Lauren Easton, vice president of corporate communications, told Axios that AP "is a global, fact-based, nonpartisan news organization with thousands of customers around the world who span the political spectrum."

  • The Verge ☛ The New York Times adopts AI tools in the newsroom

    It isn’t clear how much AI-edited copy The Times will allow in published articles. The outlet promised that “Times journalism will always be reported, written and edited by our expert journalists,” in a memo it released last year, and it reaffirmed that commitment to human involvement a few months later.

  • India Times ☛ Generative AI is already being used in journalism - here's how people feel about it

    A new report published today finds that news audiences and journalists alike are concerned about how news organisations are - and could be - using generative AI such as chatbots, image, audio and video generators, and similar tools.

    The report draws on three years of interviews and focus group research into generative AI and journalism in Australia and six other countries (United States, United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and France).

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Independent UK ☛ Woman awarded £94,000 payout after being sacked with a ‘jazz hands’ emoji while pregnant

    His argument was rejected by the tribunal, which upheld Ms Miluska’s claims of pregnancy discrimination and unfair dismissal, and awarded her £93,616.74 in compensation.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Meta plans to link US and India with world’s longest undersea cable project

    More than 95% of the world’s internet traffic is transferred through undersea cables, which has triggered concerns about their susceptibility to attacks or accidents and being a target during geopolitical tensions and conflict.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Conversation ☛ YouTube at 20: how it transformed viewing in eight steps

    YouTube is a massive competitor to TV, an engagement beast, uploading as much new video every five minutes as the 2,400 hours BBC Studios produces in a whole year. The 26-year-old YouTube star Mr Beast earned US$85 million (£67 million) in 2024 from videos – ranging from live Call of Duty play-alongs to handing out 1,000 free cataract operations.

    As a business, YouTube is now worth some US$455 billion (2024 Bloomberg estimate). That is a spectacular 275 times return on the US$1.65 billion Google paid for it in 2006. For the current YouTube value, Google could today buy British broadcaster ITV about 127 times.

  • Leon Mika ☛ An Incomplete List of DRM-Free Media Stores

    I’ve been seeing a bunch of links to online stores that sell digital media — books, music, etc. — that is without DRM. I’ve thought of starting a collection of some of them here for my own reference. This is an evolving list and is by no means complete, but I want a central place to put these links.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Incredible Fmovies Piracy Indictment is Not a "Stunning Victory" For Hollywood

    The Hanoi People's Procuracy in Vietnam has issued an indictment against two men said to be the operators of the massive Fmovies piracy empire shut down last year. The indictment offers detail on when the men first met, when their plans for Fmovies began to take shape, and how the site generated revenue. Last year the MPA described the shutdown as a "stunning victory." New revelations are indeed stunning, but extremely puzzling too.