Leftovers

• Tim Bray ☛ Long Links

  This will be the 30th “Long Links” post. The frequency has fallen off over the years; perhaps my time for long-form pieces has decreased or, just as likely, I protect my sanity in these dark days by consuming less. No, I don’t filter out Fascist Craziness, because it’s a thing that needs to be understood to be resisted. Thus, today’s Long Links does contain “the world is broken” pieces.”

• Yordi Verkroost ☛ Jacob Collier: The Open-Source Genius of Music

  I have a new fascination. A musical love for an artist that does things just a little bit differently. An artist who I consider to be the equivalent of open-source software, delivering great quality products and being very open about the production process at the same time.

• Lou Plummer ☛ Me, the Digital Packrat

  My decision to create a home lab made things even more complicated since now I have three computers to maintain and a fluctuating number of virtual machines. This means I have a half dozen large USB thumb drives with operating system installations on them. Yay! More data! Having high-speed Internet also allows me to suck information off the [Internet] at an outrageous rate. I can download dozens of GB of data in a morning if I feel like it, and of course, I often feel like it. I don't know for sure, but I suspect there may be a diagnosis associated with my personality type.

• Dedoimedo ☛ Schadenfreude as a Service

  It is almost impossible, and perhaps even counterproductive to try to fully disconnect oneself from this modern world. If you want to interact with the society, you must use a whole bunch of digital products. And sometimes, you must use these under duress, knowing there's no better alternative, not without actively harming your own interests and ability to function. But even so, you can still resist the greed rush.

  I've mulled about this problem many times over the years. There's always something new that comes up, triggering my indignation. Each time, I find new ways to improve my privacy and frugality stance. I don't want to make myself into a techno hermit. That's useless. But I make it harder for the greedy companies out there to milk me.

• IBM

  • The Register UK ☛ IBM cuts US jobs in Classic Cloud and other groups

    IBM insiders believe Big Blue is laying off thousands of people at various locations around the US, including a quarter of staff the company's Cloud Classic operation.

    "Concrete numbers are being kept private," a source told us. "It is in the thousands."

Science

Career/Education

• The New Stack ☛ How Leaders Are Failing Engineers – and How To Fix It

  Eighty-one percent of engineers reported losing between six and 15 hours each week because they have to constantly switch between numerous different tools to do their jobs. However, around a third of engineering leaders (33%) don’t recognize this loss, indicating that many managers may not fully realize how much inefficiency affects their teams daily.

• Crooked Timber ☛ Dispensing with US universities, whether we want to or not

  Taken in the broader context of the Trump dictatorship, this means the end of international research collaboration involving the US. That will be a huge blow to global research of all kinds. Faced with this prospect, I would have expected our response to start with denial, before working through the other stages of grief.

Hardware

• GamingOnLinux ☛ The UPERFECT UMax 24 is a gorgeous addition to any desk

  In need of a new monitor? UPERFECT sent over a review unit of the UPERFECT UMax 24 and I've come away from it thoroughly impressed with it.

• The Register UK ☛ Non-x86 servers boom in GPU-hungry hardware market

  The United States is the biggest market for servers, accounting for 56 percent of revenue and posting 118 percent revenue growth. China’s share of server revenue grew by 93.3 percent year-over-year growth, well ahead of Japan, APAC and EMEA at 66.9 percent, 43.8 percent, and 28.2 percent respectively.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• LRT ☛ War fears grind down mental resilience, Lithuanian military psychologist says

  With constant discussions about a potential Russian invasion, the Lithuanian public is experiencing heightened stress and anger. However, a military psychologist suggests that this situation should be used as an opportunity to prepare and build resilience.

• RTL ☛ With industry giants: Swedish govt holds talks on countering rising food prices

  The main chains account for 90 percent of Sweden's grocery store market.

  "Consumers have had to pay more for many food products than what is justified by the increase in cost for the components in food production," said then head of the Swedish Competition Authority Rikard Jermsten in a report last year.

Proprietary

• The Record ☛ Western Alliance Bank says nearly 22,000 impacted by file transfer software breach | The Record from Recorded Future News

  The bank filed breach notification documents in Maine and California last week confirming that it was affected by a vulnerability in a “third-party vendor’s secure file transfer software used by Western Alliance and numerous other organizations.”

• [Old] CNN ☛ Something's Rotten In Cupertino As CEO Gil Amelio and an Ineffectual Board Dithered, Apple Computer Lost Market Share and Faded into Insignificance. Now Steve Jobs Has Returned, with a Turnaround Strategy that Could Make Apple His Once Again. - March 3, 1997

  Steve Jobs may be brash and impulsive, but he is also stubborn. While he abruptly sold all but one of his Apple shares after being ousted in 1985, he invested some of the resulting $100-million-plus in two startups that he has stuck with through many, many lean years--Next and Pixar.

• The Register UK ☛ Extortion crew to victim: Pay or we tell ... Edward Snowden? • The Register

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Futurism ☛ Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End

    Published in a new report, the findings of the survey, which queried 475 AI researchers and was conducted by scientists at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, offer a resounding rebuff to the tech industry's long-preferred method of achieving AI gains — by furnishing generative models, and the data centers that are used to train and run them, with more hardware. Given that AGI is what AI developers all claim to be their end game, it's safe to say that scaling is widely seen as a dead end.

  • New Scientist ☛ AI scientists are sceptical that modern models will lead to AGI

    “The vast investments in scaling, unaccompanied by any comparable efforts to understand what was going on, always seemed to me to be misplaced,” says Stuart Russell at the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the panel that organised the report. “I think that, about a year ago, it started to become obvious to everyone that the benefits of scaling in the conventional sense had plateaued.”

    Nonetheless, tech companies plan to collectively spend an estimated $1 trillion on data centres and chips in the next few years to support their AI ambitions.

  • Futurism ☛ Did Google Test an Experimental AI on Kids, With Tragic Results?

    Sewell was just 14 when, in February 2024, he died by suicide after what his mother describes as a swift, ten-month deterioration of his mental health. His death would make headlines later that year, in October, when Garcia filed a high-profile lawsuit alleging that her child's suicide was the result of his extensive interactions with anthropomorphic chatbots hosted by the AI companion company Character.AI, an AI platform boasting a multibillion-dollar valuation and financial backing from the likes of the tech giant Google — also named as a defendant in the lawsuit — and the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

  • Sean Conner ☛ Who serves whom?

    This has always been my fear of the recent push of LLM backed AI—not that they would help me do my job better, but that I existed to help it do its job better (if I'm even there).

  • Pivot to AI ☛ AI coding tools ‘fix’ bugs by adding bugs

    What happens when you give an LLM buggy code with and tell it to fix it? It puts in bugs! It might put back the same bug!

    Worse yet, 44% of the bugs the LLMs make are previously known bugs. That number’s 82% for GPT-4o. So it looks like the common bugs are all through the standard training. “In bug-prone tasks, the likelihood of LLMs generating correct code is nearly the same as generating buggy code.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Trained on buggy code, LLMs often parrot same mistakes

    That is to say, when shown a snippet of shoddy code and asked to fill in the blanks, AI models are just as likely to repeat the mistake as to fix it.

    Nine scientists from institutions, including Beijing University of Chemical Technology, set out to test how LLMs handle buggy code, and found that the models often regurgitate known flaws rather than correct them.

  • The New Stack ☛ Vibe Coding Is Here — But Are You Ready for Incident Vibing?

    Imagine coding while entirely giving in to the vibes and forgetting that the code exists. Instead of typing, tell Cursor and Sonnet to build everything for you. When faced with a bug, you don’t try to troubleshoot — instead, you feed the error back into the LLM and copy-paste the fix. The code grows beyond your comprehension, but it always ends up working. That’s how Andrej Karpathy — an OpenAI founding member — describes Vibe Coding.

  • 404 Media ☛ People Are Using AI to Create Influencers With Down Syndrome Who Sell Nudes

    A network of Instagram accounts is using AI to steal content from human creators and deepfake their faces to make them look like they have Down syndrome. 404 Media was able to determine the accounts are linked because they reuse Instagram bios, videos, and in some cases link to the same OnlyFans competitors pages where they monetize these videos.

  • Cendyne Naga ☛ "Vibe Coding" vs Reality

    Without expert intervention, the best these tools can do today is produce a somewhat functional mockup, where every future change beyond that risks destroying existing functionality.

    I cannot — and would not — trust a team member who vibe codes in a production application. The constant negligence I observe when "Vibe Coding" is atrocious and unacceptable to a customer base of any size.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ OpenAI brings you statistically average literary fiction

    Today, it’s time to get subjective. I’m a huge hipster snob. I have shelves full of records and books. I’m a rock critic. I have detailed opinions about why your favorite is trash.

    I do realise it’s okay for people to like things even if I think they’re trash. That’s fine. I suppose.

• Social Control Media

  • [Repeat] Press Gazette ☛ Newsreel: The gamified version of news aimed at Gen Z

    Newsreel is aimed at 18 to 30-year-olds, a demographic who rarely now visit publisher websites or watch TV news, and are likely to consume most of their online content via platforms like Instagram, Tikok and Youtube which offer readers an endless stream of short videos.

  • Manuel Matuzović ☛ Breaking up with my X

    I still don't know why they banned me in the first place and why they finally reverted it, but I don't care. What I care about is that I can finally close this chapter. Initially, I immediately wanted to delete my account, but several people suggested it may be wiser to leave it as is so that no one can take over the handle. Finally, I did the following: [...]

  • New Statesman ☛ Christine Rosen: “If you give people an easy path, they will take it”

    If such a thought experiment were to be repeated in 2025, would it produce the same results? The American academic Christine Rosen is not so sure. Her new book, The Extinction of Experience, argues that social media, gaming, dating apps and smartphones have severely diminished real-life experiences. Rosen, who is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a centre-right think tank based in Washington DC, spends most of her time thinking about the social and cultural implications of big tech. She believes that as more of us are living our lives through the small block of metal and glass in our pockets, our willingness and ability to experience the world is diminishing.

  • Techdirt ☛ After Election Chaos, Romania Proposes Platforms Invent Magic Wand As Content Moderation Solution

    The backstory here is pretty straightforward: A Russian-supporting candidate leveraged TikTok to build surprising momentum in Romania’s presidential election. The results were controversial enough to get thrown out. And now Romania wants to make sure this never happens again by… well, by proposing content moderation rules that seem designed to ensure no social platform will ever operate in Romania again.

• Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

  • The Register UK ☛ Cyberattack on nonprofit affects over 500k PA school workers

    The nonprofit, which represents more than 178,000 education professionals in the US state of Pennsylvania, confirmed data was stolen during a July 6 attack. According to The Office of the Maine Attorney General, the breach affected a total of 517,487 people.

  • The Record ☛ Poisoned Windows shortcuts found to be a favorite of Chinese, Russian, N. Korean state hackers

    Researchers at the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) said they have identified multiple campaigns exploiting the bug — which affects Windows shortcuts, or .lnk files — going back to 2017.

Security

• The Register UK ☛ IBM urges quick patching of critical AIX bugs • The Register

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • Atlantic Council ☛ As Chinese EVs threaten to overrun Europe, Germany should ramp up supply-chain investment

    What Europe will do is still up in the air. It must balance economic needs, climate goals, commercial and security risks from Chinese-made and internet-connected vehicles, and increasingly unpredictable ties with the United States. To resolve this EV dilemma, one option is for Germany, Europe’s largest economy, to tap its considerable fiscal space and undertake transformational investments in defense, EV supply chains, and other infrastructure. It wouldn’t take this leap alone; several northern European countries could join in this effort.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ House Democrat wants to modernize privacy law in light of DOGE [sic] data access

    Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., said in a press release that she is beginning an effort to reform the Privacy Act, which has been cited in various lawsuits against agencies over allegedly allowing unauthorized DOGE [sic] staffers to access data that could contain personally identifiable information. “Unaccountable billionaires, inexperienced programmers and unvetted political appointees are perpetrating the biggest government privacy scandal since Watergate,” Trahan said in the release.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Encrypted Messaging Apps Promise Privacy. Government Transparency Is Often the Price

    States and cities across the country are grappling with how to stay on the right side of government transparency laws as the use of encrypted messaging apps becomes more widespread

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Congress should re-up 2015 information-sharing law, top Hill staffer says

    The 2015 Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Act is due to lapse at the end of September. It provides defenses against lawsuits for companies sharing threat information, antitrust law exemptions and more.

  • 404 Media ☛ Facial Recognition Company Clearview Attempted to Buy Social Security Numbers and Mugshots for its Database

    Clearview AI spent nearly a million dollars in a bid to purchase “690 million arrest records and 390 million arrest photos” from all 50 states, court records reveal.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Alexa Removing “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” Feature

    I was not aware of this feature, but it turns out that my Echo Dot supports it. As far as I can tell, recent versions of Siri already do this on iPhone—HomePod presumably doesn’t have enough processing power—sending only transcripts of the text to Apple. An ongoing issue is that many of these requests seem like they could be processed locally but are instead sent to Apple.

  • Krebs On Security ☛ DOGE [sic] to Fired CISA Staff: Email Us Your Personal Data

    A message posted on Monday to the homepage of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is the latest exhibit in the Trump administration’s continued disregard for basic cybersecurity protections. The message instructed recently-fired CISA employees to get in touch so they can be rehired and then immediately placed on leave, asking employees to send their Social Security number or date of birth in a password-protected email attachment — presumably with the password needed to view the file included in the body of the email.

  • The Register UK ☛ Amazon kills off on-device Alexa processing for Echo owners

    Amazon hasn't formally announced the change, and the help page for the feature still makes no mention of the March 28 deprecation. But the [Internet] souk confirmed to The Register that emails to users about the update, which caused a stir on social media over the weekend, are indeed legit.

  • The Record ☛ The Citizen Lab’s director dissects spyware and the ‘proliferating’ market for it

    Deibert, who has been a leader in putting the rapidly growing spyware problem on the map, is the author of the new book “Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion and the Global Fight for Democracy,” which chronicles his longtime battle against commercial surveillance technologies.

    In an interview with Recorded Future News, Deibert discussed his book’s fly-on-the-wall account of the evolution of spyware and how to detect it. He details the technical aspects of the Citizen Lab’s methods, why there is almost certainly spyware being used that hasn’t yet been discovered and how spyware companies continue to evolve to evade detection.

    This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Defence/Aggression

• KJZZ Radio ☛ Bernie Sanders, AOC will bring 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour to Mullett Arena in Tempe

  In tearing into Trump's seizure of power and warning about the consequences of firing tens of thousands of government workers, Sanders is bucking the wishes of those who want Democrats to focus on the price of eggs or “roll over and play dead.”

  For now, at least, Sanders stands alone as the only elected progressive willing to mount a national campaign to harness the fear and anger of the sprawling anti-Trump movement.

• Fortune ☛ Bernie Sanders is launching a one-man resistance tour against Trump: 'You look around—who else is doing it? No one' | Fortune

• Futurism ☛ Former NASA Astronaut Says Elon Musk Has No Idea What He's Talking About

  "As I’ve always said... space travel is not trivial, and so what we need to do next is, we’re going to retire the International Space Station, invest that — that operational money in developing a lunar base where technologies that are needed to go to Mars need to be developed and tested and proved, because right now, there’s too many technical hurdles," Hernández said.

• Defense News ☛ China demonstrated ‘satellite dogfighting,’ Space Force general says

  A top Space Force general said Tuesday that commercial systems have observed Chinese satellites rehearsing “dogfighting” maneuvers in low Earth orbit — the U.S. adversary’s latest show of tactical and technological advancement in space capabilities.

• The Register UK ☛ 5 Eyes 'not completely' able to fill US intel sharing void

  If the United States stopped sharing cyber-threat intel with Ukraine, its European allies and the rest of the Five Eyes nations wouldn't be able to provide all the info Uncle Sam collects, according to former chief of US Cyber Command and the NSA General Paul Nakasone.

• The Local SE ☛ EXPLAINED: How will Sweden's school smartphone ban work?

  The ban is proposed to cover all schools that are part of compulsory education (with pupils between the ages of 6 and 16 years old).

  This will include the preschool class, elementary school, or grundskolan, compulsory school for pupils with intellectual disabilities (anpassade grundskolan), compulsory special needs schools (specialskolan) and Sami schools (sameskolan).

  It will also include the after-school activities (fritidshemmet) departments hosted at these schools.

• Techdirt ☛ Casual White House Starlink Use Is A Cybersecurity Nightmare, A Transparency Problem, And A Weird Marketing Stunt

  Now there’s reporting out of the New York Times suggesting that Musk is casually integrating Starlink systems into the White House telecom network for no coherent reason outside of the fact it gives the illusion that it’s helping: [...]

• New York Times ☛ Elon Musk’s Starlink Expands Across White House Complex

  But the circumstances are different from any previous situation to resolve [Internet] services. Mr. Musk, who is now an unpaid adviser working as a “special government employee” at the White House, controls Starlink and other companies that have regulatory matters before or contracts with the federal government. Questions about his business interests conflicting with his status as a presidential adviser and major Trump donor have persisted for weeks.

• Michigan Advance ☛ ‘My dad didn’t go to war for nothing’: Pentagon scrubs Native American heroes from website

  The Department of Defense website removed articles featuring details about the Navajo Code Talkers — Navajo men who served during World War II and used their language as a secret code in battle — along with U.S. Marine Ira Hayes from the Gila River Indian Community, who helped raise the flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.

  “Navajo code has absolutely nothing to do with DEI because Navajo code was a weapon,” Navajo Code Talker Peter MacDonald said in response to the removal during an interview with the Arizona Mirror.

• USMC ☛ Articles about Navajo Code Talkers removed in Pentagon’s DEI purge

  Many links that previously took viewers to informational articles about the Native American service members who used their native language as an indecipherable code to help win World War I and II were no longer accessible as of Tuesday afternoon. A Pentagon spokesperson said the department was working to rectify the situation.

• Mike Brock ☛ The Theater of Appeasement

  Vladimir Putin has “positively” responded to Trump's proposal by agreeing to halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure for 30 days. Notice what's absent from this magnanimous concession: any mention of civilian apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, or military operations. The bombing may continue—just not the power plants. For now.

• The Cyber Show ☛ Trouble at Mill: Layer 10 and the new international zero-trust reality.

  It's all about "Data Sovereignty" now. Europe is buzzing with programmes, initiatives, petitions, pending political bills, and soon emergency plans, imploring people to disengage with US American services. Today the Dutch government announced plans to reduce dependence on U.S. software companies - thirty years too late, but at last Europe is emerging from a dark age as vassal dependents on appallingly written insecure software and a culture of digital idiocy.

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: You can’t save an institution by betraying its mission

  Trump and his fascist movement wont't let up on their assault against institutions that support free inquiry, care, justice and openness. Rolling over for them now will not keep you safe tomorrow. But with every betrayal, these institutions alienate more and more of the public, without whose support they are ultimately doomed. Supporters will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no supporters.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• The Dissenter ☛ Trump Ramps Up Government Secrecy

• The Dissenter ☛ The Chaotic Release Of Long Sought After JFK Files

Environment

• Energy/Transportation

  • The Register UK ☛ Nvidia's Vera Rubin CPU, GPUs chart course for 600kW racks

    Rubin Ultra, Huang boasted, is designed so that 576 GPU dies can be crammed into a single rack consuming 600 kW of power. However, before those systems arrive in late 2027, we'll first be getting Vera CPU cores and Rubin GPUs.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Nvidia shows off Rubin Ultra with 600,000-Watt Kyber racks and infrastructure, coming in 2027

    Nvidia showed off a mockup of its future Rubin Ultra GPUs with the NVL576 Kyber racks and infrastructure at GTC 2025. These are intended to ship in the second half of 2027, more than two years away, and yet, as an AI infrastructure company, Nvidia is already well on its way to planning how we get from where we are today to where it wants us to be in a few years. That future includes GPU servers that are so powerful that they consume up to 600kW per rack.

  • The Register UK ☛ UK council says freak IT outage didn’t lead to data loss

    "The power outage subsequently impacted the council's central datacenter, which houses computing and networking equipment for the whole council, " the statement went on to say.

    "The serious nature of the unprecedented outage meant that all systems went offline, leading to disruptions to our phone lines and systems while we work to test systems before bringing them safely back online."

  • Dan Langille ☛ Installing the replacement UPS

    Sunday morning, I returned from the remote undisclosed location to the basement #homelab. Entering the basement, it was very quiet.

    On the UPS console screen, I saw this: [...]

  • El País ☛ Donald Trump: The [cryptocurrency] world is on edge: Why Trump’s become a nightmare for [cryptocurrency] bros

    One of Trump’s most impactful [cryptocurrency]-related initiatives has been the inclusion of Bitcoin — along with Cardano, Solana, and Ripple — in a plan to establish a strategic cryptocurrency reserve. The announcement initially boosted prices but also raised concerns within the Federal Reserve, which cannot legally hold [cryptocurrency] assets.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Only Rich People Should Be Allowed to Use Cryptocurrency, Russian Central Bank Says - The Moscow Times

    While private individuals are already prohibited from using [cryptocurrency] for payments, ownership is not banned, and the government has permitted limited use in international transactions under an experimental legal framework.

    The issue of cryptocurrency use has gained importance following the imposition of Western financial sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Can [Cryptocurrency] Help Russia Beat Western Sanctions?

    Russia’s first objective is to leverage its low energy costs to expand its crypto-mining industry.

  • Futurism ☛ Tesla Competitor Reveals Electric Car That Can Charge in Five Minutes

    Yesterday, the Shenzhen-based corporation revealed a lineup of cars it claims can soak up nearly 250 miles' worth of battery charge in just five minutes — just a hair longer than the time it takes to pump a traditional car full of gasoline. The buzzy new tech will be available next month in BYD's flashy new Han L sedan.

  • The Register UK ☛ Datacenter vacancies sink to 2.6% with no rescue in sight

    "The only alternative is [self hosting]," Batson told us in an interview. "And we don't see a whole lot of shifting back to that model."

    Batson said that JLL expects between 0 and 3 percent growth in self-hosting in the next year - not much by any metric.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • EcoWatch ☛ Wild Cougar Cubs Spotted in Western Michigan for the First Time in Over 100 Years

    Wild cougar cubs have been seen in the western part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for the first time in over a century.

• Overpopulation

  • Allen Downey ☛ Young Adults Are Having the Children They Want — But They Want Fewer – Probably Overthinking It

    The most recent data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) provides a first look at people born in the 2000s as young adults and an updated view of people born in the 1990s at the peak of their child-bearing years. Compared to previous generations at the same ages, these cohorts have fewer children, and they are less likely to say they intend to have children. Unless their plans change, trends toward lower fertility are likely to continue for the next 10-20 years.

  • The Independent UK ☛ World’s population may actually be vastly undercounted, study claims

    However, research, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that rural populations in these estimates could be undercounted anywhere between 53 per cent to 84 per cent over the study period between 1975 and 2010.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Hindustan Times ☛ Microsoft replaces its chief people officer to rethink performance reviews: Report

  Kathleen Hogan will be replaced by Amy Coleman, a Microsoft HR executive who had worked in the company for 25 years.

• The Register UK ☛ Ubuntu 25.10 plans to swap GNU coreutils for Rust

  The next version of Ubuntu, 25.04 "Plucky Puffin," isn't here yet – but a significant change is taking shape for the release after that, which will be 25.10. That is when Canonical and friends will replace the current core utilities – from the GNU project and implemented in C – with the newer uutils suite, which is written in Rust.

• Scoop News Group ☛ How DHS is working to continually improve the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program

  First launched in 2013, the program is now tracking approximately 6.5 million devices, which includes operational technology and internet-connected devices alongside traditional IT assets, and mobile devices.

• Unmitigated Risk ☛ Cloud’s Accelerated Evolution: Lessons from Telecom’s Century of Change

  What took the telecommunications industry a century to experience—the full evolution from groundbreaking innovation to commoditized utility status—cloud computing is witnessing in just 15 years. This unprecedented compression isn’t merely faster; it represents a significant strategic challenge to cloud providers who believe their operational expertise remains a durable competitive advantage.

  The historical parallel is instructive, yet nuanced. While telecom’s path offers warnings, cloud providers still maintain substantial advantages through their physical infrastructure investments and service ecosystems.

• Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Google agrees to buy security vendor Wiz for $32-billion

  The price tag is much higher than the roughly $23-billion Google had offered for Wiz last year before antitrust worries forced the start-up to shelve the deal.

• Scoop News Group ☛ Google acquires Wiz for $32 billion

  The move pairs Google — among the world’s largest cloud service providers — with one of the most promising cloud security startups. The purchase comes less than a year after Wiz rejected a previous $23 billion bid from Google, with executives saying at the time that they hoped to take the company public.

• CBC ☛ Google to buy cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32B US in company's biggest ever deal

  Wiz, a five-year-old startup founded by four longtime friends who met in the Israeli army when they were still teenagers, is on track for an estimated $1 billion US in revenue this year. After getting its start in Israel in 2020, Wiz now oversees an operation that makes security tools protecting the information stored in data centres from its current headquarters in New York.

• Cyble Inc ☛ $32B Google-Wiz Deal Marks Biggest-Ever Cybersecurity Merger

  The Google-Wiz acquisition comes after many months of talks and rejected offers. Reports of renewed talks and a potential agreement surfaced earlier today, and the official announcement came soon after.

• 404 Media ☛ Meta Promises to Fight Misinformation in Australia With Same Strategy It Killed in the U.S. to Appease Trump

  Meta is preparing for the Australian election by working closely with the government and news outlets that Zuckerberg said were “clearly political” and dismissed in the US.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Insight Hungary ☛ Hungarian parliament passes law banning Pride

  Hungary’s parliament passed a bill on Tuesday that bans the Budapest Pride and authorizes the use of facial recognition technology to identify participants. With far-right prime minister Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz having a two-thirds majority, the legislation passed with ease. Members of the liberal Momentum Party ignited colorful smoke bombs as a sign of protest.

  The bill criminalizes the organization and attendance of events deemed to breach Hungary’s controversial “child protection” law that bans the so-called “promotion or depiction” of homosexuality to anyone under the age of 18. 

• RFA ☛ Hong Kong ‘monitoring social media’ under year-old security law

  In the year since Hong Kong passed its “Article 23” legislation, national security police have hauled in the friends of a pro-democracy activist in Taiwan over comments he made on social media, and are increasingly monitoring people’s social control media interactions.

• Task And Purpose ☛ Soldier featured in movie 'Glory' scrubbed from Pentagon website

  A Black soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor at the Civil War battle retold as the finale of the 1989 movie “Glory” has been scrubbed from a Pentagon website, with an article on the soldier labeled as “DEI” in the now-broken web link.

• Air Force Times ☛ Air Force purges photos, websites on pioneering female pilots

  Air Force Times identified at least a dozen pages on the WWII-era Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, and retired Maj. Gen. Jeannie Leavitt, the Air Force’s first female fighter pilot, including biographies, photos, museum exhibits, a video and a commentary, were no longer online as of Tuesday.

• NL Times ☛ Ben & Jerry's claims Unilever fired the subsidiary's CEO over progressive politics

  The ice cream manufacturing company that was founded in 1978 is known for its unique flavors, but also for progressive social ideals that resonates with the brand.

  Unilever bought Ben & Jerry’s in 2000. At the time, it was agreed that an independent council would remain in place to protect the brand’s social values. However, Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever have had numerous conflicts about these issues since that time.

• BBC ☛ Ben & Jerry's claims Unilever ousted its boss over political activism

  The filing with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York said Unilever had "repeatedly threatened Ben & Jerry's personnel, including CEO David Stever, should they fail to comply with Unilever's efforts to silence the social mission".

  Ben & Jerry's has long been known for taking a public stance on social issues since it was founded in 1978 by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.

• Techdirt ☛ Unilever Turns On Ben & Jerry’s CEO As It Tries To Lick Trump Administration’s Boots

  That puts companies like Ben & Jerry’s, famous for its social stances, in a tough spot. The company has not been shy about criticizing the Trump team, going all the way back to the first administration. Nor has it been shy about taking moral stances on conflicts around the world, with one such stance notably resulting in some level of backing from its parent company, Unilever.

• Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Ben & Jerry's alleges parent company Unilever removed its CEO over social activism | Ap | reformer.com

  In a federal court filing late Tuesday, Ben & Jerry’s said Unilever informed its board on March 3 that it was removing and replacing Ben & Jerry’s CEO David Stever. Ben & Jerry’s said that violated its merger agreement with Unilever, which states that any decisions regarding a CEO’s removal must come after a consultation with an advisory committee from Ben & Jerry’s board.

• BIA Net ☛ Turkey restricts social media amid crackdown on İstanbul mayor

  Major platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, X, and TikTok, as well as messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal, have been subjected to bandwidth throttling, significantly slowing down access. NetBlocks, a global internet censorship watchdog, has confirmed the restrictions.

  There has been no official statement regarding the move. However, social media users report that all major mobile and broadband internet providers in Turkey are enforcing the throttling.

• Greece ☛ Germany says detention of Erdogan rival is ‘serious setback’ for Turkey

• The Nation ☛ America Needs a New Free Speech Movement

  In the 1960s, the Free Speech Movement was a rallying cry for students and activists who understood that the right to dissent, argue, and speak freely was essential to democracy. Today, we need a new Free Speech Movement—and not just a retread of the 1960s. A new free speech movement would recognize that both the direct authoritarian power-grabs of the Trump administration, and the power grabs of private monopolist entities represent a significant danger.Trump’s oligarchs—his big tech allies who control the flow of news and information—are themselves an independent threat to open society.

• RFA ☛ He escaped China. Harassment followed him to a New York courtroom

  China and other authoritarian regimes “are using frivolous lawsuits in U.S. courts to impose financial and psychological costs on dissidents,” said Diego A. Zambrano, a legal scholar at Stanford University who has studied similar cases involving Turkey, Venezuela and Russia. He told RFA, “The Chinese government has been one of the worst offenders.”

  RFA Investigative reviewed hundreds of pages of legal filings from the U.S. and China and spoke with legal experts and former law enforcement officials in both countries. Many raised concerns with Beijing’s latest strategy to quell criticism.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• [Old] Salon ☛ Paul Krugman ridicules GOP for believing "facts have a liberal bias"

  In his latest column for the New York Times, Nobel prize-winning economist and liberal champion Paul Krugman argues that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's recent claim that Republicans are to thank for the improving economy is just another example of the GOP's "epistemic closure" and belief "that facts have a liberal bias."

• [Old] American University School of Communication ☛ NPR CEO warns of ‘hostile environment’ ahead for journalism - Current

  “We are likely to face a difficult and potentially hostile environment for journalists and journalism,” she said. “The president-elect has made comments to this effect, threatening the press corps and invoking the potential of utilizing investigatory and regulatory power against media organizations.”

• CPJ ☛ Media rights, journalist groups call on US to protect press freedom after USAGM gutted

• RFERL ☛ Radio Free Europe Sues Overseer USAGM To Block Termination Of Federal Grant

  Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)said it has sued the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), along with USAGM officials Kari Lake and Victor Morales, to block their attempt to terminate RFE/RL’s federal grant, which provides the broadcaster with funds to operate.

  The complaint, filed on March 18, argues that denying the funds Congress has appropriated for RFE/RL violates federal laws and the US Constitution, which gives Congress exclusive authority over federal spending.

• Washingon-Baltimore News Guild ☛ Radio Free Asia forced to furlough 75% of its staff due to funding freeze - Washington-Baltimore News Guild

  Under the Guild’s contract with RFA, furloughs are not permitted — instead, RFA would be required to immediately lay off employees with severance. However, layoffs would be permanent, eliminating the possibility of affected employees returning if funding is restored.

• International Business Times ☛ 'Bloody Saturday': Trump Shuts Down US Government-Funded Broadcasters, Sparking Free Press Fears

  The shutdown follows a broader initiative to dismantle federal agencies, with the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM)—which oversees VOA, RFA, and RFE—being among those dissolved. Other affected institutions include the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MEBN), and the Open Technology Fund (OTF).

• Deutsche Welle ☛ Radio Free Europe vows to fight 'unlawful' Trump admin cuts

  "It is an unlawful act to withhold the funds that have been appropriated by Congress," Capus told DW from Washington, D.C., where he was holding meetings with congressional staffers to make his case.

• CPJ ☛ Groups urge US to protect press freedom and keep journalists safe after order to gut USAGM [PDF]

  We, the undersigned, reaffirm our support for press freedom and a free media that is able to operate without coercion by, or interference from, government – and call on the United States to protect all reporters and media workers employed by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), many of whom face significant personal risk in reporting on and from highly repressive regimes.

• Vox ☛ How the death of Voice of America explains Trump’s approach to government

  Among them was Voice of America — a news outlet founded to help the Allies fight the Nazis that still publishes and broadcasts today. Or did, until Saturday, when its employees found themselves unable to go to work.

• CJR ☛ The Last Days at Voice of America - Columbia Journalism Review

  As a press freedom reporter, I’ve spent the past few years constantly interacting with groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. But this time, it was my editor, Jessica Jerreat, and I who reached out to sound the alarm. I wasn’t acting in an official capacity—in fact, I had been ordered not to work—but I felt I had to do something.

  Dozens of VOA staffers in Washington are on J-1 visas, and if they lose them, they may have to return to countries whose governments have a record of jailing critics. Two VOA contributors are imprisoned in Myanmar and Vietnam, and I didn’t want them to be forgotten.

• Axios ☛ Radio Free Europe sues Trump admin, Kari Lake over funds termination

  What they're saying: "This is not the time to cede terrain to the propaganda and censorship of America's adversaries," said Stephen Capus, president and CEO of RFE/RL.

• ABC ☛ Trump silencing VOA threatens free media in repressive countries, advocates say

  Trump’s executive order also terminated grants for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, which broadcast news to Eastern Europe, Russia, China and North Korea and Central Asia.

  The order threatens to close down media organizations that for decades have provided independent news coverage and promoted journalism to hundreds of millions of people worldwide and provided an information lifeline to people living in countries under authoritarian regimes, advocates say.

• Los Angeles Times ☛ Voice of America has fallen silent. U.S. enemies are cheering

  This week, for the first time since it started operations in 1942, the VOA is almost entirely silent. Viewers and listeners primarily hear canned music or see a screen that simply says “VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”

• [Old] Inside Radio ☛ DOGE [sic] Targeting VOA And Radio Free Europe.

  Additionally, a bill has been introduced in Congress that would specifically prohibit federal funding for National Public Radio. The proposed No More Funding for NPR Act of 2025 would not only cut off future funding of NPR but also require that any money that had earlier been allocated but not yet been spent be permanently rescinded.

• teleSUR ☛ U.S. Judge Rules Musk's USAID Cuts Likely Unconstitutional

  DOGE [sic]’s fast-moving destruction of USAID likely harmed the public interest by depriving elected lawmakers of their “constitutional authority to decide whether, when and how to close down an agency created by Congress,” ruled the judge.

• RFERL ☛ Judge Bars DOGE [sic] From Further Dismantling Of USAID, Says Move Likely Unconstitutional

  "Today’s decision is an important victory against Elon Musk and his DOGE [sic] attack on USAID, the US government, and the Constitution,” said Norm Eisen, head of the State Democracy Defenders Fund and a lawyer representing the 26 anonymous plaintiffs in the suit.

Civil Rights/Policing

• EFF ☛ EFF’s Reflections from RightsCon 2025 

  EFF was delighted to once again attend RightsCon—this year hosted in Taipei, Taiwan between 24-27 February. As with previous years, RightsCon provided an invaluable opportunity for human rights experts, technologists, activists, and government representatives to discuss pressing human rights challenges and their potential solutions.

• Paul Krugman ☛ Smears, Sadism and Social Security

  Why do this? The alleged justification is to combat fraud. But ProPublica has acquired audio of a closed meeting held with Leland Dudek, the Social Security Administration’s acting administrator, in which he acknowledged that fraudulent benefit claims are not, in fact, a serious problem.

  So what the Musk is going on here? This plan would save some money, not by eliminating fraud, but by effectively cutting off aid to Americans who are legally entitled to that aid, and specifically those who need it most. But I don’t think the savings are the point.

• The Guardian UK ☛ I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

  That would be the response to nearly every question I would ask over the next two weeks: “I don’t know.”

• Axios ☛ Department of Defense restores Jackie Robinson webpage after outcry

  "On July 6, 1944, Robinson boarded an Army bus. The driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus, but Robinson refused," the article states. It was still accessible on the Internet Archive website before the DOD reposted it. "The driver called the military police, who took Robinson into custody. He was subsequently court martialed, but he was acquitted."

• CS Monitor ☛ The art of freedom in Iran

  An investigative report on Iran ordered by the United Nations Human Rights Council was delivered on Tuesday and it paints a picture of a theocratic government very much afraid of its own people.

  Aerial drones fly overhead to spot women without mandatory head covering. Facial recognition cameras look for dissidents in universities. An increase in executions of protesters has turned Iran into the world’s highest per capita user of the death penalty.

• Michał Sapka ☛ I stopped writing alt-text to most images here

  It’s all crap. We are not only doing it wrong, but also may not need to do it at all. I have a 0/0 (or as USA calls it 20/20) vision, so it’s hard to imagine what it’s like to browse the web with poor eyesight, but to surprise of everyone, people who have such problems have created guidelines.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Vox ☛ Trump’s firings at the FTC watchdog agency, explained

  The president removed all democrats from the Federal Trade Commission’s board.

• The Register UK ☛ Trump fires two remaining Democrat FTC commissioners

  Trump axed Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, leaving the regulator with just two commissioners instead of its usual five. The remaining commissioners - chairman Andrew Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak – are both Republicans who have previously articulated positions that suggest change could come to policy on four matters of interest to the tech community: Non-compete agreements; the right to repair; regulation of social media companies; and mergers.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• YLE ☛ Finnish Air Force commander dismisses concerns over F-35 'kill switch'

  He expressed confidence that the United States and Lockheed Martin would ensure the operational capability of Finland’s F-35 fleet in all circumstances, given the decades-long partnership. He also noted that all modern weapons systems, including those used in Europe, contain software components primarily originating from the United States.