Leftovers

• The Pudding ☛ How do animals sound across languages?

  Languages differ in their characters and spelling, so we can use a common tool of linguists to effectively compare how they sound. The International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, is used to show how words are pronounced in any language. Each letter in the alphabet represents a singular sound, also known as a phone. IPA phones give us insight into the place of articulation (the part of the mouth that’s used to produce the sound), manner of articulation (the way the sound is produced), and voicing (whether the vocal folds come together). Here’s how a cat’s sound in English is transcribed to IPA: [...]

• The Register UK ☛ French web biz Gandi.net raises the white flag over outage

  The problems started on Saturday and were investigated by Gandi from the early hours of Sunday. The Parisian outfit, which serves customers globally and is owned by Total Webhosting Solutions these days, has not provided a detailed reason for the IT breakdown – but blamed an issue with a filer storage system for the unavailability of multiple services, including email delivery and fetching, site hosting, and user account logins.

• The Register UK ☛ FTC’s $25.5M scam refund treats victims to $34 each

  The consumer watchdog separately released its review of all things scammy in 2024 on Monday, saying the dollars lost to online miscreants keep rising.

  A total of over $12.5 billion was lost last year, accounting for all different kinds of scams. That's $2.5 billion more than in 2023.

• Science

  • The Independent UK ☛ NOAA is bracing for another round of devastating layoffs - and already facing the consequences of the first

    The latest firings would affect 10 percent of the agency's remaining workforce, though it's unclear which departments would be hit in the new round after 1,2000 were let go late last month.

    "NOAA was already understaffed for the mission that is congressionally mandated. And to sustain this initial round of cuts, much less further cuts, much less the fiscal cuts that are in the continuing resolution, there's going to be pain and a lot of it,” an unnamed official who left during the Biden-Trump transition told The Independent.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A New Study Finds That Domestic Cats Traveled the Silk Road to China About 1,400 Years Ago | Smithsonian

    Now, using genetic testing, researchers have discovered that pet cats likely arrived in China around 600 C.E.—over 1,500 years after their introduction to Europe. According to a study recently published on the preprint server bioRxiv, cats were one of the many assets that traveled east on the famous Silk Road, the lengthy trading network that connected Asia with Europe between the second century B.C.E. and the 15th century C.E.

  • The Register UK ☛ Is NASA's science budget about to be halved?

    This comes shortly after the American space agency was told to get ready to lay off 1,000 employees. That threat was removed, possibly at the behest of the incoming Administrator Jared Isaacman. Still, according to The Planetary Society, budget belt-tightening would be "an extinction event for space science and exploration in the United States."

  • Wired ☛ What's Really Happening With Elon Musk and Those ‘Stranded’ Astronauts?

    After this interview, a Danish astronaut named Andreas Mogensen asserted that Musk was lying. "What a lie," Mogensen wrote on the social media site Musk owns, X. "And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media."

    [...]

    Let's examine each of Musk's claims in light of what Bowersox and Stich said Friday evening.

  • System76 ☛ Bug Fixes: Unlocking Health Secrets from Insect Genomes on Thelio Astra

    My research is focused on genomic data science. I'm also the Program Director for our Master's in Machine Learning. I work with biologists to process the raw sequencing data into a usable form, and then analyze it using data science techniques. We collect data during an experiment with a particular research question in mind, and often I'm helping determine what evidence the data might provide to help answer that question.

  • Futurism ☛ NASA Just Fired Its Chief Scientist, Won't Hire Another One

    NASA's office of the chief scientist was created to ensure that the agency's scientific endeavors were "aligned with and fulfill the administration’s science objectives," per the agency's website.

    The latest news could be a harbinger of what's still in store for NASA. Petro said the agency is only beginning its "phased approach to a reduction in force."

• Career/Education

  • The Walrus ☛ They Sold Out Big Bird, and They’ll Sell Out the Rest of Us Too

    It was nice while it lasted. In 2016, after nearly five decades on PBS, Sesame Workshop inked a new distribution deal with Warner Bros. (now Warner Bros. Discovery), bringing Sesame Street to HBO. New episodes of the show—originally conceived to close the literacy gap for inner-city Black children—were now reserved for paying subscribers of HBO. Last December, Warner Bros. announced that it would not renew its distribution deal with Sesame Workshop, effectively cancelling the show after its upcoming fifty-fifth season.

    The cancellation of Big Bird and co. would be a loss, but there’s something bigger going on. Sesame Street’s fate is symptomatic of a larger shift in how corporations, governments, and, increasingly, citizens have lost faith in the spirit of solidarity that made initiatives like the PBS show possible.

    In other words, this is more than a budgetary decision. Liberal democracies are in the grips of an anti-establishment fever in which education equals elitism, ignorance equals authenticity, and any defence of the public good is vilified as incipient Stalinism. Techno-populists are fighting for a dumber world, and they are winning. To oppose them, we need to build a new case not just for public funding but for the continued existence of the “public” itself.

  • [Old] Mira Welner ☛ Why I Don't Like Hackathons

    That being said, I don't really see the appeal of creating a project in a day anymore. I can't remember the last time I created something that I am proud of in less than 24 hours on little to no sleep. As much as I am still a 'code adrenaline junkie,' realistically, that sort of project just isn't that interesting. I would much rather make something genuinely worthwhile in a month.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • US Navy Times ☛ Military medical system unprepared for future conflict, experts say

    He and two other military retirees who rose to high-ranking positions in the military medical establishment testified Tuesday about ways to prepare the military’s surge capacity, including the need to invest in Level 1 trauma centers for military medical facilities.

    “We’ve de-scoped our facilities to the point where they take care of low-acuity community hospital patients, not trauma patients,” said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Paul A. Friedrichs, the former Joint Staff Surgeon. “We need our key hospitals to be Level 1 trauma centers in partnership with the American College of Surgeons in the communities where they’re located.” To do so, there must be adequate funding, he said.

  • Wired ☛ This Is How Measles Kills

    “No matter how healthy you are at baseline, it very efficiently enters the body through the upper airway,” says Glenn Fennelly, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and assistant vice president for global health at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso.

    In the lungs, the virus enters a type of white blood cell called alveolar macrophages, which transport pathogens to the lymph nodes. Typically, the lymph nodes act as a drainage system, removing foreign substances. But when the measles virus gets shuttled to lymph tissue, the virus attacks and destroys an important part of the immune system called memory cells. These memory cells remember prior infections and help the body fight pathogens it’s encountered before. When memory cells get wiped out, it leaves an individual more susceptible to future infections.

  • International Business Times ☛ Woman's Nail Allegedly Ripped Off by Tesla Door Handle And It's More Common Than You Think

    The Tesla driver is now calling out the company's CEO, Elon Musk, after experiencing the issue with the car's pop-out door handles. Moments after her nail was ripped off, Marc D'Amelio, father of TikTok stars Charli and Dixie, captured his wife Heidi's frustration on camera as she explained how her nail had become trapped in the door's gap.

  • Westenberg ☛ I’m Entering My Curmudgeon Era

    Not in the nostalgic, “things were better in my day" way.

    More in the "I refuse to be gaslit by modernity" way. I refuse to pretend that constant connectivity has made us happier. I refuse to buy into the idea that infinite scrolling is anything but digital debt—time spent, nothing gained.

    I love technology. I love the Internet. But I hate what's been done to it.

  • Brad Frost ☛ Part 1: The Shitball

    Our primate brains — orders of magnitude out of our evolutionary depths! — have been ragdolled by a frothy, relentless, unceasing media tsunami. The result is complete disorientation. We become unmoored from logic, rationality, values, and our shared humanity. We watch in horror as loved ones become swallowed whole by hyperbolic talking points, or worse travel further down increasingly-unhinged rabbit holes. We even begin to question our own sanity: “what exactly is truth, anyways?”

    And in this state is where the malignant narcissists find us. Muddled and confused, like juvenile antelopes separated from the herd. The malignant narcissists cynically (and, as covered above, compulsively!) weaponize the media landscape to help them achieve their primary goal: for you to pay attention to them.

• Proprietary

  • The Business Journals ☛ Microsoft employees weigh in on pay packages

    That comes from a company survey issued last October showing 65% of employees agreed with the statement: "There is a reasonable balance between what I contribute to Microsoft and what I get..."

  • X Outages Have Increased Since Elon Musk’s Takeover, ‘Massive Cyberattack’ Follows Mass Layoffs

    While Musk has sought to pass the blame for X’s repeated crashes onto adversaries, his record compared to the previous management is poor.

    Although Twitter was hit by a string of hacks in 2008 and 2009, it proved to be much more reliable throughout the 2010s.

    With one major exception in October 2016, Twitter largely avoided the kind of cybersecurity incidents that have plagued X during this period.

  • The Register UK ☛ Google warns folks with dead Chromecasts not to reset them

    For those who have already tried a factory reset, and even for those who haven't, there's still hope for getting your gear functional again. Polish security researcher Maciej Mensfeld shared a guide for users on how to remedy this.

    His workaround involves setting your phone's date to before March 9, 2025, and then attempting to reauthorize the Chromecast. However, this method doesn't work for everyone and may require multiple attempts. Additionally, streaming services such as Spotify might still face issues after applying this fix.

  • The Record ☛ Previously unidentified botnet infects unpatched TP-Link Archer home routers | The Record from Recorded Future News

    The hacker behind the malware, who they believe is based in Italy, has been exploiting a firmware vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-1389 to allow the botnet to “spread itself automatically over the Internet” through the unpatched TP-Link devices.

    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency previously confirmed that CVE-2023-1389 is being exploited in the wild and ordered U.S. civilian agencies to patch the bug The documentation for the vulnerability and the patch emphasize the TP-Link model known as AX21 or AX1800.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Gurman: Apple’s Operating Systems to Be Redesigned to ‘Look More Consistent’

    I am trying not to get too far in my thoughts until I see it for real, but I do not like the sound of more glassy, translucent effects. One of the most common phrases I have used in recent years of filing Apple bug reports is “insufficient contrast”. I am not optimistic that pattern will not continue.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Apple preparing for a major software overhaul

    The revamp, which is loosely based on Vision Pro's software, would include a style update of icons, menus, apps, windows and system buttons

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Being keen for new macOS releases

    The Mac is still a vastly better platform than Windows for “work”, and I feel nothing but relief every time I stroll by those PC laptops in electronics stores, with their flimsy plastic construction, terrible screens, and whatever a Copilot is. But it’s still a bit sad that the high water mark for the Mac is now firmly in the past.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Pivot to AI ☛ OpenAI’s for-profit plan is in trouble

      OpenAI wants to convert from a charity with a for-profit subsidiary into just an ordinary commercial company. That subsidiary is the part that’s taken billions of dollars from investors and set those billions on fire. And the investors want a pay day at last.

    • Quanta Magazine ☛ Why Do Researchers Care About Small Language Models?

      Small models are not used as general-purpose tools like their larger cousins. But they can excel on specific, more narrowly defined tasks, such as summarizing conversations, answering patient questions as a health care chatbot and gathering data in smart devices. “For a lot of tasks, an 8 billion parameter model is actually pretty good,” said Zico Kolter, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. They can also run on a laptop or cellphone, instead of a huge data center. (There’s no consensus on the exact definition of “small,” but the new models all max out around 10 billion parameters.)

    • Paweł Grzybek ☛ Decade of blogging

      At first glance, the situation does not look like the slow process of blogging is an idea worth pursuing. Precisely the opposite is true! Critical thinking required for writing (and other acts of creation) is the only thing that can save us from becoming idiots. Microsoft, the same one that made a pretty close partnership with OpenAI, funded the interesting research about “The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking.”

    • The Register UK ☛ Consumer Reports calls out poor AI voice-cloning safeguards

      The nonprofit publication evaluated the AI voice cloning services from six companies: Descript, ElevenLabs, Lovo, PlayHT, Resemble AI, and Speechify. It found ElevenLabs, Speechify, PlayHT, and Lovo "required only that researchers check a box confirming that they had the legal right to clone the voice or make a similar self-attestation."

    • Rach Smith ☛ In the way

      My thought process was immediately broken as I contemplated what an absolutely obscene thing it would be to send in that moment.

    • Nick Heer ☛ The Slop Refinement of E-Book Scams

      I have previously described Amazon as a “low grade flea market mixed with a liquidation store”. That now seems like high praise. In the five years since I wrote that, it has descended to feeling like one is picking through a scrap heap of products confiscated by customs agents for being dangerous, knockoffs, or stolen.

    • The New Stack ☛ What’s Missing With AI-Generated Code? Refactoring

      Last month, GitClear published an analysis of 211 million lines of code in its AI Copilot Code Quality report. One of the key findings is that refactoring signals are crashing while code duplication and churn is increasing. In fact, 2024 is the first year when the introduction of repeated code is greater than refactoring activity.

      The trend is attributed to the rise in AI coding assistants, and if it continues, we could be heading toward a software crisis.

  • Social Control Media

    • Jacky Alciné ☛ Nah, Y'all Got It

      So, for those who are playing into the idea of sports-driven politics, please reserve that energy for community action and aid. Talk to the people who need defense instead of throwing digital tomatoes at people who won't ever see or care about what you post into a digital void.

    • The Local DK ☛ 2025-03-03 [Older] 'Small number of users' send most hate speech on Danish social media

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Project Censored ☛ ICE Solicits Social Media Surveillance Contracts to Identify Critics

      US Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to hire private contractors to “monitor and locate ‘negative’ social media discussion” about the federal agency, according to February 2025 articles by Sam Biddle for The Intercept and Brett Wilkins for Common Dreams. Biddle and Wilkins reviewed ICE documents that cited increased threats to its agents and leadership as a cause for digital surveillance. If contractors uncover social media content ICE deems suspicious, they are instructed to assess users’ “proclivity for violence” using “social and behavioral sciences” and “psychological profiles.”’ Assisted by facial recognition technology, they would assemble dossiers with critics’ offline identity, including personal information and relationships.

    • The Register UK ☛ 'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII

      More than 86,000 records containing nurses' medical records, facial images, ID documents and more sensitive info linked to health tech company ESHYFT was left sitting in a wide-open misconfigured AWS S3 bucket for months — or possibly even longer — before it was closed it last week.

      Cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler spotted the non-password-protected, unencrypted database on January 4 and two days later reported it to ESHYFT, a New-Jersey-based company that operates in 29 US states and bills itself as being "like an Uber for nurses."

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Google reportedly negotiating $115M deal for eye-tracking startup AdHawk Microsystems

      According to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, who references “people who asked not to be identified because the deal hasn’t been announced,” Google is looking to make the acquisition as part of a renewed push into headsets and smart glasses. The reported $115 million acquisition price on the table would include a $15 million payout based on AdHawk reaching certain performance targets, which is not an unusual clause in some tech acquisition deals.

    • PC World ☛ Is the [Tor] network still secure? Key online anonymity tools, explained

      Major international media outlets such as the BBC, the New York Times, and the NDR maintain mailboxes in the [Tor] network, through which they can be reached anonymously by informants. And the darknet is not all evil either. Deutsche Welle, for example, operates a website there to give the inhabitants of some heavily monitored countries free access to information.

      Are all these services no longer secure? And what other options are there for remaining anonymous on the [Internet]?

    • Manton Reece ☛ Apple's response to AI

      Ever since Apple revealed their AI strategy to lean into on-device models, there has been a sort of tension with the approach from other companies like OpenAI, Google, and Amazon. Was Apple Intelligence going to work? There are advantages: for user privacy because more data stays on your phone, and for scaling because the load is distributed across millions of phones instead of only running in data centers.

    • Michał Sapka ☛ Re: A weekend paying for everything with cash

      Has this changed anything? I was paying with Apple Pay ever since it became available here, but I try to de-phone myself. I should not need a phone to pay for a coke! My bank should not be aware of me drinking a coke. Moreover, no bank should take a cut from the money I pay to my local grocery shop. (but I drink coffee on the go, I’m not made of money).

    • EDRI ☛ Stop Europol’s Trojan Horse

      EDRi, together with the Equinox Initiative For Racial Justice, today published a joint statement signed by 168 organisations and experts. We call for the full rejection of the Europol Regulation. We also demand amendments to the Facilitation Directive that would bring the legislation in line with international standards.

      The EU Commission has proposed a so-called ‘Facilitators Package’ that consists of a proposed Facilitation Directive and a reform to the Europol Regulation. The proposals are presented under the guise of “counter-smuggling” narratives but would really lead to the criminalisation of migrants and rights defenders.

    • [Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ A weekend paying for everything with cash

      I had to recall just how one hands over notes and coins, and how to hold out my hand to accept a complicated assortment of cash as change from someone. It reminded me of accepting my first change from a cashier as a kid when my mum showed me how it was done. That was a sweet memory. Fortunately it did come back to me almost immediately, like tying shoelaces on formalware after I insisted I’d never use shoes with laces again.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ How Russian spymaster worked with UN official

      At the time of discussion in 2019, Marsalek was chief operating officer of Wirecard, the Germany payments processor. It has since emerged that he was also working for the Kremlin and running surveillance operations on enemies of the Russian state.

      The information available on the card would be “invaluable” to the intelligence services and could allow hostile states such as Iran and Russia to track dissidents, security experts have said.

  • Confidentiality

    • Igalia ☛ Can I use Secure Curves in the Web Platform?

      Long story short, yes, it’s possible to use the Ed25519 and X25519 algorithms through the Web Cryptography API exposed by the major browser engines: Blink (Chrome, Edge, Brave, …), WebKit (Safari) and Gecko (Firefox).

      However, despite the hard work during the last year we haven’t been able to ship Ed25519 in Chrome. It’s still available behind the Experimental Web Platform Features runtime flag. In this post, I will explain the current blockers and plans for the future regarding this feature.

• Defence/Aggression

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-05 [Older] Iran Refutes 'Accusations' That Tehran Is Trying to Threaten British Security

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-05 [Older] Sixth Inmate Dies at Troubled Wisconsin Maximum Security Prison

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-03-04 [Older] KCDP: 16 women were murdered in Turkey in February

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-05 [Older] Syria's Foreign Minister Makes Landmark First Visit to Global Chemical Weapons Watchdog

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Thousands reported killed in Syria as HTS-allied forces attack, execute Alawites

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-05 [Older] Syria Vows to Rid Itself of Assad's Chemical Weapons Legacy

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-04 [Older] What is Israel doing in Syria, and why?

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-01 [Older] Israel's Military Is Told to Prepare to Defend a Druze Community Outside Syria's Capital

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Switzerland to Impose Additional Freeze on Assets of Syria's Assad

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Jordan Says It Supports Syria and Rejects Foreign Meddling

  • CBC ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Dozens dead in Syria after clashes between Assad loyalists and government forces

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] After Assad’s fall, over 300,000 Syrians return home

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Heavy clashes in Syria leave at least 70 dead

  • Project Censored ☛ 2025-03-03 [Older] Borders, Empire, and Resistance: Confronting Racism, Nationalism, and the Fight for Alternatives

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-03-01 [Older] Biological Weapons: Today’s Most Significant WMD Threat to U.S. National Security

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-02 [Older] More Than 40 Al Shabaab Members Killed by Somali Security Forces, SNTV Says

  • The Register UK ☛ CISA worker says 100-strong red team fired after DOGE [sic] action

    "DOGE [sic] cut our entire red team and all support roles — over 100 people impacted. The following Wednesday, DOGE [sic] cut a second CISA red team also doing mission-critical work. As a result, I and many other experienced red team operators are now seeking new opportunities."

  • The Local DK ☛ EU to pave way for controversial return hubs for migrants

    "If we are not going to do the return hubs, what will we do instead is my question? We have tried other systems for many years, it doesn't work," Johan Forssell, Sweden's migration minister, told AFP.

    Irregular border crossings detected into the European Union were down 38 percent to 239,000 last year after an almost 10-year peak in 2023, according to EU border agency Frontex.

  • El País ☛ Submarine cables: The weakest link in Europe’s strategic infrastructure

    A succession of major incidents has raised alarm bells and called into question the security of pipelines that are increasingly important for the continent’s communications and energy

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas public administration professor calls for action in wake of eroding democratic norms

    The misinterpretation of Jefferson and erosion of foundational rules and standards of democracy has become an international crisis, he said. The latest action by President Donald Trump to challenge longstanding principles of democratic government demonstrated how quickly the American system could be unraveled, Koliba said.

    The list of at-risk framework pieces in the United States included adherence to constitutional obligations, separation of powers, scientific reason, thoughtful regulation, individual rights and promotion of tolerance, he said.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Chinese Telecoms Questioned About Their U.S. Operations - Inside Towers

    The lawmakers are concerned the firms could exploit access to American data through their U.S. cloud and [Internet] service businesses ultimately forwarding such data to Beijing, citing a 2024 Reuters report on a Commerce Department investigation into the matter.

    “China Telecom’s ongoing U.S. operations – particularly in [Internet] backbone exchanges and cloud computing environments – could … allow unauthorized data access, espionage, or sabotage by the Chinese Communist Party,” the lawmakers wrote. The firm’s “documented connections to (Chinese) intelligence raise urgent national security questions in light of the Chinese government’s increasingly aggressive attacks on U.S. telecommunications networks,” they added.

  • Daniel Pipes ☛ Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East: The 1948 Arab War Against Israel and the Aftershocks of World War II

    But it was shortwave radio that brought these ideas to the masses: the barrage "embedded Islamic antisemitism in the consciousness of the 'Arab Street' and continued to exert its influence even in the postwar period." Indeed, Küntzel concludes his groundbreaking analysis by documenting the ways how Nazi ideas continue to influence Muslim attitudes and actions vis-à-vis Jews.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-05 [Older] EU leaders seek security within the bloc, without the US

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ ICE Leaks: Trump Officials Crack Down On Media Sources

    If the Trump administration pursues such charges, it will represent a concerted attack on potential whistleblowers or media sources that share information about ICE operations.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The whistleblower for the whistleblowers

    As the leader of the Office of Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger’s role was to get wrongfully fired civil servants back on the job—until he got fired himself.

  • 404 Media ☛ Here is NASA’s Contract with Clearview AI

    NASA paid for access to Clearview AI’s “Investigator Tool + Cloud Database,” according to a set of procurement documents obtained by 404 Media under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

    Clearview is a controversial facial recognition company which was the first to cross the rubicon of allowing third parties to search for someone’s face and then link that to their online activity, such as their social media profiles. Since gaining attention at the start of the decade, its facial recognition tool, built on a massive database of scraped images, has become a staple in law enforcement and federal government agencies.

  • The Korea Times ☛ US judge says Musk's DOGE [sic] must release records on operations run in secrecy

    The ruling, the first of its kind, marked an early victory for advocates seeking to force DOGE [sic] to become more transparent about its role in the mass firings being conducted in the federal workforce and the dismantling of government agencies by the Republican president's administration.

  • The Record ☛ Trump administration ends FTC’s ransomware data breach case against MGM Resorts

    The FTC filed a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) in January 2024 seeking answers to dozens of questions about the ransomware attack that involved customer and employee data as well as troves of business information.

    The FTC specifically wanted information on the company’s compliance with Section 5 of the FTC Act, the Safeguards Rule under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Red Flags Rule under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

    MGM Resorts International repeatedly refused to provide the information and the FTC in June 2024 filed a lawsuit in Nevada to enforce the CID. The two sides went back and forth in court for months, with the casino giant demanding FTC chair Lina Khan recuse herself because she happened to be staying at a Las Vegas hotel owned by the company at the time of the cyberattack.

  • Wired ☛ The Worst 7 Years in Boeing’s History—and the Man Who Won’t Stop Fighting for Answers

    As often happens when Pierson gets going, we need to back up. Boeing has had a hellacious stretch. In 2018, a Boeing Max dove into the sea. Four months later, a Max crashed into a field. After that came the fact-finding about design flaws; criminal charges for corporate fraud; lawsuits and settlements for 346 people killed. As those events faded from memory, a door then blew off of an Alaska Airlines flight over Portland, Oregon; passengers filmed the open patch of sky. Boeing was back in the spotlight, bashed by everyone from John Oliver to Josh Hawley. A Boeing whistleblower took his own life next to a profane note about management. A whistleblower from a supplier died weeks later of a bacterial infection, sending conspiracists chattering. Then came more grillings before Congress, and the specter of junk-bond status—junk status for Boeing, king of the jet age.

• Environment

  • CBC ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Cuts to U.S. weather forecasting, climate science create dark clouds for Canadian counterparts

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Is climate science threatened as US slashes jobs, funding?

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Brazil Presses for Climate Action with Grandson of a Champion of Israel

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] United States Quits Board of UN Climate Damage Fund, Letter Shows

  • CBC ☛ 2025-03-06 [Older] Who's going to fill the U.S.-sized hole in climate diplomacy?

  • The Age AU ☛ 2025-03-06 [Older] ‘Like preparing to fight a war’: Can we stop a cyclone in its tracks?

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-05 [Older] Defense of Climate Multilateralism Key to Brazil's Leadership, COP30 President Says

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-03-04 [Older] Disaster Movies Can’t Keep Pace With a World of Catastrophes

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-03-04 [Older] We Urgently Need a Global Peace Movement to Combat Climate Change and Avoid Nuclear Apocalypse

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-03-03 [Older] Why Environmentalists Are Still Losing

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-03-03 [Older] Who Should Pay for Climate Disasters?

  • New Yorker ☛ 2025-03-02 [Older] Geothermal Power Is a Climate Moon Shot Beneath Our Feet

  • Vox ☛ 2025-02-28 [Older] We’re all drawn to bad news. Here’s how to fight it.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Fossil Fuels Fund Higher Education

    Universities pride themselves on being engines of progress, knowledge, and public good—and students are increasingly drawn to institutions with strong sustainability commitments. Many universities publicly tout their fossil fuel divestment, but when it comes to the funding they receive from the industry, they remain conspicuously silent.

    In Canada, fossil fuel interests have influenced research priorities through government funding mechanisms that favour industry-aligned projects. Our research examines how institutions and media in the United Kingdom and the United States respond when fossil fuel companies fund higher education, revealing a troubling disconnect: While public discourse increasingly recognizes the problematic influence of fossil fuel funding in academia, university policies remain vague and inadequate in addressing these concerns.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Contributor: In Trump war on NOAA, Americans and the economy will lose

    Perhaps, but it’s also clear that the entire right-wing network of policymakers, think tanks and MAGA influencers setting the second Trump administration’s agenda have a vendetta against NOAA. The agency’s climate science and assessments, considered preeminent sources for U.S. and global planning, are anathema to the oil industry and the right-wing think tanks it helps fund.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-03-04 [Older] Arctic partnerships and energy upheavals

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] US Estimates It Will Take $20 Billion and Years to Refill Oil Reserve

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Why Donald Cheeto Mussolini Has Turned on Europe

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini’s Grand Strategy of American Energy Dominance: Effect on Europe and the East Mediterranean

    • Truthdig ☛ The United $tates of Pump-and-Dump

      Trump’s meme coin gambit was so audacious that it drew condemnation from the [cryptocurrency] media. One commentator in Bitcoin Magazine denounced it as little more than a “pump and dump self-enrichment scheme.” [Cryptocurrency]’s true believers hoped that Trump would legitimize their beloved technology and make it respectable; instead he legitimized the con while ushering in a new golden age of corruption.

    • The Register UK ☛ US trio wants to pipe coal mine gas to fuel datacenters

      But this expansion isn't without its challenges, and powering those multiplying bit barns is one of them. A study last year predicted that US power consumption from datacenters is set to more than double by 2030, while one developer on the other side of the pond proclaimed that access to power is the single biggest constraint on new builds, and that he would be investing "hundreds of millions and more" if it weren't for issues in getting the projects wired up to the national grid.

    • Molly White ☛ [Cryptocurrency] reserves: no public good, no principles

      The formerly anti-establishment bitcoin movement abandons its principles in favor of number-go-up, applauds federal plan to stockpile seized [cryptocurrency] with no clear benefit to national interest

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ [Cryptocurrency] crackdown in South Africa

      As of 30 April 2025, Directive 9 will introduce stricter requirements for tracking and reporting [cryptocurrency] asset transactions. A key component of this is the “travel rule”, which mandates that client details accompany domestic and cross-border crypto transfers.

      This information includes the originator’s full name, identity or passport number, date and place of birth, residential address (if “readily available”), and wallet address for transactions over R5 000.

    • India Times ☛ EU worries US embrace of [cryptocurrency] assets could impact Europe financial stability

      Euro zone finance ministers are worried that the change of policy under the new US administration to embrace cryptocurrencies could affect euro zone monetary sovereignty and financial stability, top officials said on Monday.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2025-02-28 [Older] 'This is insane!' B.C. man gets en-dolphin rush as pod joins him for skim on the ocean

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-27 [Older] World agrees on how to fund nature protection

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ These Male Octopuses Use Venom to Subdue Female Mates—and Avoid Being Eaten After Sex

      Blue-lined octopuses are tiny, measuring just six inches across, but their venom packs a serious punch. Their salivary glands are full of symbiotic bacteria, which pump out a deadly poison called tetrodotoxin, or TTX for short.

  • Overpopulation

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-03-01 [Older] Can AI Solve Food and Energy Crises in the Global South? [Ed: Stupid "hey hi" hype, as if it's some magic solution to everything]

• Finance

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-03-05 [Older] Sanders Calls Out Cheeto Mussolini’s “Outrageous Lie” on Social Security in Scathing Speech

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-01 [Older] U.S. Social Security Administration to Cut 7,000 Workers

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-03-05 [Older] US Social Security Releases 1.1M Retroactive Payments: Here's the Average Amount

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-03-03 [Older] Türk-Iş: Hunger threshold in Turkey surpasses minimum wage

  • CBC ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Canada's labour market at a standstill in February, with unemployment unchanged, few jobs added

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-03-05 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini’s Speech Vowed a New “Golden Age,” But His Policies Drive Us Into the Dust

  • The Korea Times ☛ South Korean [Internet]-only banks expand offline access to boost customer engagement

    According to Kbank, all transaction fees will be waived nationwide starting April 1. Previously, fees were charged for ATM transactions, except at Kbank’s own ATMs, bank-affiliated ATMs and machines inside GS25 convenience stores. With this decision, the number of no-fee ATMs will increase from 49,000 to 60,000.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ Facebook Employees Would Lose Board Games Against Zuckerberg on Purpose, Former Executive Claims

    That insight into what makes Zuck tick, alongside other telling details — including his belief that Andrew Jackson, the architect of the genocidal "Trail of Tears," was the best American president — paint the portrait of an out-of-touch tech founder who oversaw a toxic work culture that ultimately led to Wynn-Williams' departure.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Meaning of Joe Rogan

    Joe Rogan built his empire by presenting himself as an entertaining, independent commentator. He gave it up for the 2024 election.

  • Tedium ☛ Shaking The Wasp’s Nest: Gamergate’s Lasting Lessons For The Internet

    Today In Tedium: You probably have noticed, just like me, that online culture has been a bit chaotic of late, and it’s been hard to even have a conversation without it feeling like a fresh argument is about to break out. Facts and BS constantly battle to become the dominant narrative, with truth an afterthought. And everyone’s on edge—and if you’re not, someone is trying to put you on edge. Over on Bluesky, I have had random posters infuse my nonpolitical posts with politics, because they have no chill. And people have reason to be worked up, because I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but our political climate is friggin’ nuts. And if you were to point to one thing that broke it, the original sin for which we are still correcting, the one word that comes to mind is “Gamergate.” A full 11 years on from the mess that happened there, it still feels like a relevant conversation to bring up, even if we’re not in the thick of the scandal. And in a climate where it seems like every discussion gets weaponized, it is worth looking back at in context. Fortunately, I know a guy who has thought about this more than I have. His name is David Wolinsky, and he recently wrote a book about this topic. Today’s Tedium leans into the awkward discussion, what we learned from it, and whether we can move past it. — Ernie @ Tedium

  • Security Week ☛ UK Government Report Calls for Stronger Open Source Supply Chain Security Practices

    The weaknesses include a lack of industry-specific practices (affecting both sector and company size), no consensus on managing OSS components, no formal process for judging OSS component trustworthiness, and the outsized influence of large tech companies on the OSS ecosphere.

  • UK ☛ Open Source Software Best Practices and Supply Chain Risk Management

    This report aims to map and evaluate existing best practices for managing and mitigating risks related to open-source software across various organisational contexts. It seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the guidance offered by international governments, industry standards, and formal standards bodies, focusing on the usage, production, security, and licensing of open-source software and the management of software supply chain risks.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ The danger of mixing law and religion, in two Alabama bills

    HB 342, sponsored by Rep. Susan DuBose, R-Hoover, would force local school boards to give academic credit to students participating in religious instruction programs.

    And how does HB 342 define religious instruction?

    It doesn’t. Nor did DuBose when Anna Barrett asked her about the bill last week.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Register UK ☛ Birmingham didn't inform auditors of failing Oracle system

      Since it replaced aging SAP finance software with Oracle's cloud-based Fusion for HR, payroll, ERP, and finance in April 2022, Europe's largest local authority found the system "effectively crippled" its ability to manage and report on finances, auditors found. It was still not "safe and compliant" two-and-a-half years after the replacement went live, according to evidence presented to the council in January.

      While the debacle hit local media headlines in May 2022 after schools were left unable to pay their bills and a series of complex manual workarounds were required to operate the system, councillors didn't begin to discuss the failures until April 2023.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact check: Fake news about violence in Syria

      Brutal videos and images about violence against Alawites in Syria are circulating online. Some are true, many are false. A DW fact check.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Spite turns normal people into horse-paste-eating conspiracy addicts, says study

      Researchers at Staffordshire University and the University of Birmingham, did three different studies with over 1,000 Brits. They found that when people feel like they're getting the short end of the stick in life, they're more likely to embrace conspiracy theories as a way to metaphorically flip off the experts and elites.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-03-04 [Older] Tesla Terminates Worker for Criticising Elon's Nazi 'Joke': Is Free Speech Dead at His Companies?

  • CBC ☛ 2025-02-28 [Older] 'It's kind of scary': Growing book banning calls in U.S. prompt Canadian librarians to raise awareness

  • Project Censored ☛ 2025-03-06 [Older] Meta Shifts Right: Big Tech, Project 2025, and the Assault on DEI

  • Scheerpost ☛ 2025-03-06 [Older] Judge Orders Defendants in CN v NewsGuard & USG to Respond to Cheeto Mussolini Executive Order on Censorship

  • The Atlantic ☛ Mahmoud Khalil’s Detention Is a Trial Run

    Yesterday, President Donald Trump announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had “proudly apprehended” Khalil, describing him as a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student.” A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson described Khalil as having “led activities aligned to Hamas.” There is, notably, not even a hint of an allegation of criminal behavior in that description. They do not accuse him of being a member of, fighting for, or providing material support to any terrorist group, all of which are prosecutable crimes. The phrasing aligned to implies that if Trump-administration officials think the views of a green-card holder are unacceptable, they can deprive him of his freedom. How does one even prove they are not “aligned” with Hamas, a subjective and arbitrary judgment that could be thrown at anyone deemed too critical of the Israeli government?

  • New York Times ☛ Federal Judge Blocks Government From Removing Mahmoud Khalil From the U.S.

    On Monday, a federal judge in Manhattan ordered the government not to remove Mr. Khalil from the United States while the judge reviewed a petition challenging the legality of his detention. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers also filed a motion on Monday asking the judge to compel the federal government to transfer him back to New York.

    President Trump said Mr. Khalil’s case was “the first arrest of many to come.”

  • The Nation ☛ Mahmoud Khalil’s Abduction Is a Red Alert for Universities

    Schools across America have a choice: Defend their students against Trump or be complicit in his crimes.

  • Vox ☛ Mahmoud Khalil: ICE arrest of Palestinian activist has chilling implications

    US Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly showed up at Mahmoud Khalil’s university-owned apartment in Manhattan on Saturday and arrested him without telling him or his pregnant US citizen wife why. They later informed his attorney that they were revoking his green card, claiming that Khalil had “led activities aligned to Hamas” but not charging him with a crime. On Monday, a federal judge in New York temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation amid a legal battle over his future.

    The case may test First Amendment protections, especially for noncitizen legal residents. But it could also have broad implications for every American.

  • Project Censored ☛ UN Cybercrime Treaty Supported by Autocrats Raises Human Rights Concerns

    “The U.N. cybercrime convention is a blank check for surveillance abuses,” warned Katitza Rodriguez, the policy director for global privacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “It can and will be wielded as a tool for systemic rights violations.”

    As Freedom House explained, the new understanding of cybercrime includes “any ‘crime’ committed using information and communications technology,” a conception of cybercrime that would provide “legal cover for states to broadly criminalize the online activities of human rights defenders, journalists, researchers, and others in civil society.”

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ It Is Forbidden To Think For Yourself

    The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was there to keep all that at bay. Almost all forward-thinking European scientists and philosophers were put on the banlist: Blaise, Spinoza, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Voltaire, Locke, Diderot, Montaigne, de Beauvoir, you name it. The Beacon of Freedom Expression database allows you to search the index in case you’re curious: some works are banned in certain countries (Poland seems to be especially strict), and some works are partially censored instead of fully banned. de Beauvoir’s feminist statement The Second Sex was one of the last to be on the list (1956).

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • BIA Net ☛ 2025-03-04 [Older] Media and democracy in the Western Balkans and Turkey: alarming trends unveiled

  • CPJ ☛ 2025-03-03 [Older] In Turkey, 5 Halk TV journalists face trial for influencing judiciary with broadcast

  • BIA Net ☛ 2025-03-03 [Older] The future of media in Turkey: Democratic decline, pressures, and the need for reform

  • India Times ☛ FiveThirtyEight employees learned of their layoffs from the press, then ABC News boss Almin Karamehmedovic read a script to make it official

    ABC News layoffs have resulted in the shutdown of FiveThirtyEight, leaving 15 employees jobless overnight. The decision, part of Disney's broader cuts affecting 200 staff members, blindsided employees who learned of it through media reports before official confirmation. ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic delivered the news in a brief, scripted meeting, offering no explanations. FiveThirtyEight's closure marks a major shift in political data journalism, with uncertainty surrounding its vast database. Meanwhile, ABC News is restructuring, affecting major programs like 20/20 and Good Morning America.

  • Poynter Institute ☛ Disney and ABC News cuts include the shutdown of FiveThirtyEight

    Thus ends a site launched in 2008 by Nate Silver, best known for its near-perfect prediction of Barack Obama’s victory in that year’s presidential election. (The site was correct in 49 of 50 states and nailed every senate race that year.)

  • BuzzFeed Inc ☛ 538 To Shut Down Amid Layoffs At ABC And Disney

    During its run, FiveThirtyEight partnered with The New York Times and ESPN before being moved to ABC News in 2018 and rebranded as 538.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Political poll news site 538 to close amid larger shuttering across ABC and Disney

    But the website’s workforce had been slowly dwindling for a couple of years. The 15 employees still with the outlet make up less than half of the team from 2023, when it had about 35 employees.

    The decline began when 538’s founder, Nate Silver, left the company two years ago when his Disney contract expired.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Regional newspaper ABCs: No daily now has print circulation of 20,000 or more

    Total regional daily circulations fell 16% compared with 2023 while those at non-dailies dropped 14%.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] US Ends Collective Bargaining for 50,000 TSA Officers

  • Scheerpost ☛ 2025-03-01 [Older] Chris Hedges Full Speech at Workers Strike Back Conference

  • El País ☛ Eight women take on sexism in the Americas

    The advancement of women’s rights in the Americas has been shaped by decades of struggle and perseverance by activists, feminists, community leaders, judges, lawyers, doctors, politicians, and journalists. Today’s reality demands their participation in a resistance movement that cannot be understood in isolation but as a united force. In the face of sexism in the Americas, their response is to build feminist networks that fight for equality.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ ACAB or Not?

    The tiny university where I worked spent big bucks buying gear for the campus police, including two four-wheel-drive vehicles and new long barrelled weapons. This was the same year they laid off librarians, admin assistants and humanities professors. Of course, they also changed the names of the DEI department since January too. But hey, people still have their pronouns in the email signatures and discreet pride flags can be seen, so the important stuff is covered, I guess.

  • NBC ☛ Ex-Facebook employee alleges harassment and retaliation in memoir

    In a memoir set to be published Tuesday, a former Facebook employee lays out allegations of misconduct at the company, including claims of sexual harassment and what she says were incomplete statements to Congress about Facebook’s relationship with China.

    Sarah Wynn-Williams says in the book and in an exclusive interview with NBC News that she faced retaliation from the company after she reported sexual harassment by her boss, Joel Kaplan, who at the time was a vice president for global public policy. Kaplan has since become chief global affairs officer, serving as the company’s public face in Washington and other world capitals.

  • Jacky Alciné ☛ Nation Sovereignity Only Matters When it's a Colonial One - Jacky Alciné

    You see, when Hawai'i was forcibly annexed and its power was usurped by American imperalism from its queen, the people of Hawai'i did what the West would consider "civilized": created a petition in the tongue of the colonizer and despite that, the State department of the United States went around the conventional process for land theft. The executive branch and others (like the canonical corporate interest in Hawai'i, Dole) endorsed this behavior for the better of the American nation: [...]

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ The More You Have, the Less You Fight

    So where does this leave us? If the most powerful and wealthiest parts of society will not form the vanguard of the resistance, who will? It is a question that answers itself. Grassroots movements made up of regular people are where the resistance has to happen. Ideally, enough pressure can be created from below to bolster the fearful institutions into joining the fight. But they will not lead it. At best, they will get on the right side of the fight when they make the judgment that doing so is a bet that has a reasonable chance of success. Allow your disappointment in this fact to be leavened by the knowledge that you, yourself, are the most important determination of what America’s future will look like. If you, and millions of people like you, resolve to stand up, we will win. We have the numbers. If you and I sit around waiting for all of those Respectable Institutions to take the lead, we will be spending the next few years doing nothing except being crestfallen by the inaction from above. I guess we might as well get to it, then. Don’t be sad you’re not rich. Be happy that you’re free.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Dalai Lama says his successor will be born outside China in the ‘free world’

    “Since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama – that is, to be the voice for universal compassion, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and the symbol of Tibet embodying the aspirations of the Tibetan people – will continue,” the Dalai Lama writes.

  • India Times ☛ Dalai Lama: ‘Will be born in free world’: Dalai Lama declares successor will be born outside China; Beijing counters

    The Dalai Lama has revealed in his new book, Voice for the Voiceless, that his successor will be born outside China, which has challenged Beijing’s authority over Tibet’s spiritual leadership. The book, released on Tuesday, provides a historical account of his dealings with Chinese leaders and offers a vision for Tibet’s future after his death.

  • VOA News ☛ Dalai Lama says his successor to be born outside China

    His book marks the first time the Dalai Lama has specified that his successor would be born in the "free world," which he describes as outside China. He has previously said only that he could reincarnate outside Tibet, possibly in India where he lives in exile.

    "Since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama - that is, to be the voice for universal compassion, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and the symbol of Tibet embodying the aspirations of the Tibetan people - will continue," the Dalai Lama writes.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Tens of thousands commemorate 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma

    Speaking at the 60th anniversary commemoration of Bloody Sunday and the Selma-to-Montgomery March on Sunday, Webb-Christburg said she thinks voting rights are in peril.

    “Back in the 60s, we fought to gain the right to vote,” she said in an interview. “Today, in 2025 we are still fighting to hold that right to vote through the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. That’s sad.”

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ FFRF condemns President Trump's impending order to dismantle Education Department

    FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor expressed deep concern over the potential consequences of this executive order: “Public education is the cornerstone of a free and democratic society — and the Department of Education plays a crucial role in ensuring that every child, regardless of their background, has access to a quality education.”

  • YLE ☛ People adapt to remote working's 'new normal', study says

    Research Professor Jari Hakanen told Finnish news agency STT that remote workers now reported less strain, fewer conflicts and fewer emotional issues at work.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr Harasses Google For Not Carrying Right Wing Religious Programming

    Instead of tackling any of this, new Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has spent the lion’s share of his first months in office engaged in erratic zealotry, whether it’s abusing FCC authority to harass journalists who refuse to kiss Donald Trump’s ass, or investigating Verizon and Comcast for not being racist enough.

    Last week Brendan took a break from abusing government power to abuse government power in a slightly different way — harassing Google for not including enough religious programming in its YouTube TV live streaming television lineup: [...]

  • APNIC ☛ IPv6 is hard

    When you run traceroute -T for both IPv4 and IPv6, you’ll see that, in this case, IPv6 ends one hop earlier than IPv4. Alternatively, the last hop might loop back to itself.

    This could mean that there is a missing firewall rule allowing traffic to the server or there is a routing issue on the firewall.

    But we can learn much more from this: [...]

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Register UK ☛ Outlook users using iOS native app finally get mail

  Outlook.com users on iOS trying to access their messages via Apple Mail are still struggling more than a week after users first reported service disruption, and Microsoft still hasn't confirmed the root cause.

• Patents

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-03-04 [Older] Is ‘Sophienwald’ a geographical indication? Yes says the General Court, no the German Patent Court [Ed: Why would a "Patent Court" deal with geographical indication??]

  • 2025-03-04 [Older] Judge Newman Files Reply Brief in Newman v. Moore [Ed: The patent extremists want the patent booster as a judge]

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ IBM secures patent for 4D printing — smart material uses ML for transporting microparticles

    After being deformed, the smart materials return to their original shape, allowing the researchers to induce movement in them and use them to transport minute-sized particles that would be difficult or impossible to transport using traditional delivery methods.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Authors Put a Spotlight on Meta's BitTorrent Leeching Activity

    Meta is among a long list of companies now being sued for this allegedly infringing activity, including a class action lawsuit filed by authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden. This case has a clear piracy angle, as Meta used libraries of pirated books as training material.

    Meta admitted the use of these unofficial sources early on. At the same time, however, the company denied the copyright infringement allegations, noting that it would rely on a fair use defense, at least in part.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post:  Trying to Write a Paper with LLM Assistance

    I tired three different large language models (LLMs) to rewrite a potential article. I started with seven paragraphs and decided to see if one of the GenAI systems could help me with punctuation and sentence structure. I tried three different LLMs to rewrite the potential article: Claude, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini. The results are WILDLY different. The amount of time needed for each attempt varied. During the interactions I further asked each for reference citations and metrics to add to the article.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Federal Judge Allows Authors’ AI Copyright Case Against Meta

    Even with part of the lawsuit dismissed, things don’t look good for Meta. Discovery in the case has shown that Meta employees discussed internally the use of copyrighted works to train the company’s LLMs. Documents submitted to the court allege that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave his AI team the go-ahead to train on copyrighted content acquired through “legally questionable” means, while halting AI training data licensing talks with book publishers.

  • Federal News Network ☛ This Library of Congress office will never run out of things to do

    Among its duties, the Library of Congress preserves films, TV programs, radio broadcasts and sound recordings. The field changes more than you might think. For what they’re up to, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to the newly appointed Chief of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Rachel Stoeljte.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Police Shut Down Pirate Streaming Network That Cost Broadcaster 'Millions'

    In what appears to be a significant law enforcement operation, police say over 150 task force officers from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland, targeted a total of 18 suspects at 17 locations in Germany. Arrest warrants against the three main suspects were issued by the Bamberg District Court for suspected commercial computer fraud.