Leftovers

• The Nation ☛ The Time George Foreman Sang Me Some Dylan

  I wanted to hear about 1968, but also about his life leading up to Mexico City. I asked him when he was first aware of the Black freedom struggle. He started by talking about the extreme poverty of his youth, when even a school lunch was out of his reach. “Growing up poor, I didn’t even have a lunch to take to school,” he recalled “Lunch was 26 cents, and we didn’t even know what 26 cents looked like.” Life was survival. That changed when he was hired at a public works jobs program as a 16-year-old, and a “young Anglo-Saxon boy from Tacoma, Washington,” introduced him to Bob Dylan. I asked him what Dylan song opened his mind about the state of the world. I thought he’d say “The Times They Are A-Changin’” or “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Instead, he invoked “Rainy Day Women Number #12 and 35”—the first track on the 1966 album Blonde On Blonde. “Do you know that one?” Foreman asked. Before I could answer, he started to sing. In a voice richer and deeper than I had expected, he crooned, “Well, they’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ ’long the street. They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to keep your seat. They’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ on the floor. They’ll stone ya when you’re walkin’ to the door. But I would not feel so all alone. Everybody must get stoned.” When he’d finished, he asked me if I understood what Dylan was trying to say. Taken off guard, I said, “I think he’s singing about weed?”

• Smithsonian Magazine ☛ This Dusty Painting Turned Out to Be Gustav Klimt's Long-Lost Portrait of an African Prince

  Though unsigned, the two-foot-tall portrait is stamped with a symbol indicating that it’s “almost certainly from the estate of Gustav Klimt,” as Weidinger says in a statement, per the Washington Post. The artwork had been auctioned off in 1923—five years after Klimt’s death—before changing hands several times. Since the 1950s, it’s been part of a private collection.

• Android Police ☛ Spotify's podcast porn problem is currently topping the charts

  Erotic audio content also violated terms, but remains undetected due to listener ratings and other tricks.

• Lou Plummer ☛ No, I'm Not in a Bubble

  Needless to say, I think these people are full of shit. MAGA has been running the country for less than 100 days and already ABC, CBS, and Meta have settled frivolous lawsuits initiated by the US president rather than stand their ground in the face of his threats. A good part of my upbringing occurred while my step-father worked as a journalist. I have long supported and admired the underpaid and overworked people who bring us the news, but that feeling is ebbing in the modern era. The industry hasn't handled the way the country has been reshaped. It's still in the habit of framing arguments as if both sides have merit, even when one of those sides is batshit crazy, racist, misogynistic and incoherent. The word "sanewashing" had to be invented to describe what once respected outlets like the New York Times does to present Donald Trump as if he weren't a crazy person. Even Fox News cuts away from his live speeches to keep from showing the nonsensical, incoherent imbecile that he truly is.

• Hong Kong Free Press ☛ HKFP Lens: HK's bamboo scaffolding through the years

  Hong Kong is among the last remaining cities that use bamboo scaffolding in modern construction and maintenance projects.

• Wired ☛ The Weight of the Internet Will Shock You

  But a lot has happened since 2006—Instagram, iPhones, and the AI boom, to name a few. (By Seitz’s logic, the [Internet] would now weigh as much as a potato.) There’s also the fact that, around the time of Seitz’s calculation, Discover magazine proposed a different method. Information on the [Internet] is written in bits, so what if you looked at the weight of the electrons needed to encode those bits? Using all [Internet] traffic—then estimated to be 40 petabytes—Discover put the [Internet]’s weight at a tiny fraction (5 millionths) of a gram. So, more like a squeeze of strawberry juice. WIRED thought it was time to investigate for ourselves.

• Science

  • CS Monitor ☛ What will happen to grad school? Research universities face tough choices.

    “American higher education is the absolute envy of the world. And America’s elite institutions of higher education contribute so much, to not just American society but to the world, that it’s really a self-inflicted wound for the federal government to be going after these kinds of institutions,” says Morgan Polikoff, professor of education at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.

    Universities and students have three choices, Dr. Polikoff says. They can file lawsuits, capitulate to government demands for changes, or resist, protest, and vote.

  • Wired ☛ A Math Couple Solves a Major Group Theory Problem—After 20 Years of Work

    The problem that absorbed them takes a key theme in mathematics and turns it into a concrete tool for group theorists. Math is full of enormously complicated abstract objects that are impossible to study in their entirety. But often, mathematicians have discovered, it’s enough to look at a small fragment of such an object to understand its broader properties. In the third century BC, for instance, the ancient Greek mathematician Eratosthenes estimated the circumference of the Earth—roughly 25,000 miles—by measuring shadows cast by the sun in just two cities about 500 miles apart. Similarly, when mathematicians want to understand an impossibly convoluted function, they might only need to look at how it behaves for a small subset of possible inputs. That can be enough to tell them what the function does for all possible inputs.

  • Wired ☛ The Chaos of NIH Cuts Has Left Early-Career Scientists Scrambling

    During the lifespan of a scientist, there are several critical steps. For many, the first is to gain research experience during college—whether through working in a university laboratory or through summer research programs. From there, some take gap years (with the NIH postbaccalaureate program previously a popular option) to pursue even more research. Then comes an application to graduate school, completing graduate school, and possibly doing a postdoctoral fellowship. After all of that, only some end up as research faculty at institutions—where they embark on a decades-long saga of grant applications, many of which are for federal funding from the NIH or National Science Foundation (NSF).

• Career/Education

  • YLE ☛ Foreign students increasingly relying on food banks, church says

    Volunteers at the Evangelical Free Church (EFC) in Helsinki fill plastic bags with bread, vegetables, fruit, meat and other food items collected by the congregation throughout the week.

• Hardware

  • The New Stack ☛ When Do Retry, Backoff, and Jitter Work?

    But what surprised me was that many folks felt that these retries, backoffs, and jitters are perfect antidotes for reliably handling increased load on servers. While retries, backoffs, and jitters are amazing and cheap solutions to handle situations of bursty load, there is an important distinction to understand before assuming this is a universal cure.

    It would be better to understand how and why these work and then use that knowledge to apply and validate if they work in different situations.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ There’s a big difference between genetic ADHD and when it’s caused by constant stimulation from tech

    Dr Sabine Donnai worries that technology has killed our brain’s ability to switch off, which could explain the surge in ADHD diagnoses

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft tastes the consequences of tariffs on time • The Register

  • Techdirt ☛ Max Streaming ‘Enshittifies’ Further, Removes Classic Looney Tunes

    And the hits keep on coming. Last week users began grumbling after Max executives decided to delete the entire 1930-1969 run of classic Looney Tunes shorts from the streaming company’s catalog. Because kids’ programming doesn’t sell quite as well as homogenized reality TV dogshit, executives have decided that these old classics are no longer relevant to the public interest.

  • Wired ☛ Trump’s Aggression Sours Europe on US Cloud Giants

    There are early signs that some European companies and governments are souring on their use of American cloud services provided by the three so-called hyperscalers. Between them, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) host vast swathes of the internet and keep thousands of businesses running. However, some organizations appear to be reconsidering their use of these companies’ cloud services—including servers, storage, and databases—citing uncertainties around privacy and data access fears under the Trump administration.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • India Times ☛ OpenAI finds own product ChatGPT linked to more loneliness, social isolation

      Researchers analysed millions of text-based conversations and thousands of audio interactions, identifying a small group of “power users” who showed a strong correlation between intensive ChatGPT usage and increased feelings of loneliness, dependence, and reduced socialisation.

    • The New Stack ☛ AI Agents Are a Security Ticking Time Bomb

      The most significant risk we face in the era of computer use of AI agents is their susceptibility to external manipulation, such as prompt injections that can exploit vulnerabilities in their decision-making processes. These agents can access users’ browsers, files, email, and applications to autonomously complete tasks, presenting a large attack surface that leaves users’ systems vulnerable from multiple angles. Potential impacts range from annoyances, like making the agent click on ads on a website, to serious threats, like allowing a hacker to take over the user’s account or download malicious files that compromise the user’s system.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake

      This core issue lies at the heart of what’s most exciting about AI agents: The more autonomous an AI system is, the more we cede human control. AI agents are developed to be flexible, capable of completing a diverse array of tasks that don’t have to be directly programmed.

      For many systems, this flexibility is made possible because they’re built on large language models, which are unpredictable and prone to significant (and sometimes comical) errors. When an LLM generates text in a chat interface, any errors stay confined to that conversation. But when a system can act independently and with access to multiple applications, it may perform actions we didn’t intend, such as manipulating files, impersonating users, or making unauthorized transactions. The very feature being sold—reduced human oversight—is the primary vulnerability.

    • India Times ☛ What are AI hallucinations? Why AIs sometimes make things up

      When an algorithmic system generates information that seems plausible but is actually inaccurate or misleading, computer scientists call it an AI hallucination.

      Researchers have found these behaviors in different types of AI systems, from chatbots such as ChatGPT to image generators such as Dall-E to autonomous vehicles. We are information science researchers who have studied hallucinations in AI speech recognition systems.

  • Social Control Media

    • US Navy Times ☛ US Navy reiterates social media limits for sailors and Marines

      “Service Members may not engage in partisan political activity while on duty and should avoid inferences that their personal political activities imply, or appear to imply, official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement by the [Department of the Navy] or [Defense Department],” the memo stated.

      Service members are allowed to operate personal accounts, the memo reads, so long as they do not conduct official DOD communications on social media platforms or misrepresent the armed forces in their online activity.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Judge says Treasury, Education, OPM can’t share personal information with DOGE

      “Enacted 50 years ago, the Privacy Act protects from unauthorized disclosure the massive amounts of personal information that the federal government collects from large swaths of the public,” Boardman wrote. “Congress’s concern back then was that ‘every detail of our personal lives can be assembled instantly for use by a single bureaucrat or institution’ and that ‘a bureaucrat in Washington or Chicago or Los Angeles can use his organization’s computer facilities to assemble a complete dossier of all known information about an individual.’”

      The lawsuit was filed by the American Federation of Teachers, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, the National Federation of Federal Employees, and six military veterans.

    • Wired ☛ How to Enter the US With Your Digital Privacy Intact

      When Ryan Lackey has traveled to countries like Russia or China, he has taken certain precautions: Instead of his usual gear, the Seattle-based security researcher and chief security officer of a cryptocurrency insurance firm brings a locked-down Chromebook and an iPhone that's set up to sync with a separate, nonsensitive Apple account. He wipes both before every trip and loads only the minimum data he'll need. Lackey has gone so far as to keep separate travel sets for each country, so that he can forensically analyze the devices when he gets home to check for signs of each country's tampering.

    • International Business Times ☛ Facebook May Start Charging in the UK — Here's Why Brits Could Soon Face a Shocking New Subscription Fee

      Tanya O'Carroll took legal action against Facebook, arguing the company utilised her private information for direct marketing. The ICO confirmed her ability to challenge this based on GDPR. Tanya, who called the ads' surveillance ads,' celebrated her 'victory' and said she thinks this sets a precedent for people to fight against such advertising online.

    • International Business Times ☛ 'Should I Delete My 23andMe Data?': What Happens If You Don't and Why The Company's Gone Bankrupt

      On Sunday, 23andMe announced it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States, aiming to facilitate a court-supervised sale process. The filing follows years of financial turmoil, strategic missteps, and a massive data breach that exposed the personal information of nearly 7 million users.

    • 404 Media ☛ DNA of 15 Million People for Sale in 23andMe Bankruptcy

      There is no way to know what a buyer will want to do with the reams of genetic information it has collected. Customers, meanwhile, still have no way to change their underlying genetic data.

    • Wired ☛ How to Delete Your Data From 23andMe

      California attorney general Rob Bonta reminded consumers in an alert on Friday that Californians have a legal right to ask that an organization delete their data. 23andMe customers in other states and countries largely do not have the same protections, though there is also a right to deletion for health data in Washington state’s My Health My Data Act and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Regardless of residency, all 23andMe customers should consider downloading anything they want to keep from the service and should then attempt to delete their information.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ As 23andMe declares bankruptcy, privacy advocates sound alarm about DNA data

      23andMe, which was once valued at $6 billion, has been experiencing financial distress and declining profits since going public in 2021.

    • The Register UK ☛ 23andMe files for bankruptcy protection

      It said that Chapter 11 proceedings were initiated in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on Sunday, and the court will oversee 23andMe's attempted sale of its assets.

      Companies file for bankruptcy protection when they can no longer meet their obligations to creditors. The court will now oversee the sale of 23andMe's assets and ensure they're distributed among creditors.

    • Jeff Geerling ☛ I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud

      If you have a cloud app, that means there's a cloud service that has to be running. That costs money to maintain.

      And if there's no subscription fee right now, that means one of two things:

      1. They could be selling our data already.

      2. At some point, they'll either close the service because it's a cost center (so the rinse cycle and eco mode on all these dishwashers just goes "POOF!"), or they're going move to a subscription model.

      All of a sudden, if you want to run the self-cleaning cycle, you better start paying five bucks to Bosch every month. Forever. That's insane.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Delete your DNA data from genetics company 23andMe right now

      “I remind Californians to consider invoking their rights and directing 23andMe to delete their data and destroy any samples of genetic material held by the company,” he said in a statement.

    • The Verge ☛ 23andMe files for bankruptcy as CEO steps down | The Verge

      Once valued at $6 billion, executives have yet to find a bidder for the $50 million gene testing company that has never turned a profit.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ More Countries are Demanding Back-Doors to Encrypted Apps

    • La Quadature Du Net ☛ All-out mobilization against the French “war-on-drugs” law

      In the midst of the media uproar over drug trafficking, a law on “drug trafficking” is passing through Parliament. In reality, this text does not only apply to the sale of narcotics and leads to a heavy reinforcement of the surveillance capacities of the intelligence and judicial police. It is one of the most repressive and dangerous texts of recent years. This law could notably give even more powers to repress activism.

      This bill was adopted unanimously in the Senate, with the support of the Socialists, the Ecologists and the Communists, and will now be discussed in the National Assembly. La Quadrature du Net is calling for urgent mobilization to raise awareness of the dangers of this text and to push left-wing parties to reject it.

      On this page, you will find a set of resources and tools to help you understand this law and convince your elected representatives to mobilize: [...]

  • Confidentiality

    • The Register UK ☛ Tor-backer OTF sues to save its funding from Trump cuts

      The Open Technology Fund (OTF) backs projects including the nonprofit certificate authority Let's Encrypt and the Tor anonymizing network, among other things designed to improve online privacy, promote democracy, and thwart repression around the world. Tor and Let's Encrypt each have or have had numerous sponsors besides the OTF, from big names in tech to European governments, for what it's worth.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Crypto developer faces 40 years in prison for creating privacy software

      A cryptocurrency mixer, also known as a tumbler, allows people to send bitcoins to an address, where they are mixed with other people's coins, effectively breaking the audit trail. The mixing service returns the same amount of bitcoin back to each participant, after it taking a cut for performing the service.

    • Wired ☛ The Quantum Apocalypse Is Coming. Be Very Afraid

      Cybersecurity analysts call this Q-Day—the day someone builds a quantum computer that can crack the most widely used forms of encryption. These math problems have kept humanity’s intimate data safe for decades, but on Q-Day, everything could become vulnerable, for everyone: emails, text messages, anonymous posts, location histories, bitcoin wallets, police reports, hospital records, power stations, the entire global financial system.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Site36 ☛ Germany keeps third country report under wraps: Experts see high hurdles for outsourced asylum procedures

  • RFERL ☛ Islamic State Is Evolving, But Has The World Taken Its Eyes Off The Ball?

    A diversified array of IS branches has emerged in recent years throughout the world, particularly in regions where there is little ability to counter extremism.

    Colin Clarke, director of policy and research at the New York-based Soufan Group consultancy, said IS has become a group for which the sum of its parts is greater than the whole.

    “IS might be even more challenging as a decentralized organization than it was as a proto-state. When it was running a proto-state, it was a big target,” Clarke told RFE/RL.

  • Air Force Times ☛ One of last surviving Tuskegee Airmen criticizes Trump’s DEI purge

    Col. James H. Harvey III, 101, is among the last few airmen and support crew who proved that a Black unit — the 332nd Fighter Group of the Tuskegee Airmen — could fight as well as any other in World War II and the years after.

  • Techdirt ☛ How Does This End?

    We are witnessing the answer in real time: institutional capture, norm erosion, and the systematic dismantling of accountability mechanisms. The Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and significant portions of federal agencies are being transformed into instruments of personal power rather than constitutional governance. Meanwhile, DOGE stands as a parallel government structure, implementing radical changes without congressional oversight or judicial review.

    A particularly dangerous dynamic is now in motion: the “point of no return” for key figures in the administration. As Elon Musk, Trump family members, and others become increasingly implicated in potentially illegal activities, their incentive to preserve democratic processes diminishes proportionally. The more their personal legal and financial survival depends on maintaining power, the more willing they become to take extraordinary measures to keep it.

  • Pete Warden ☛ Join me at the Tesla Protests on Saturday

    I’ve been writing this blog for nineteen years, and in over 1,100 posts I’ve never once brought up politics, but I can’t ignore what’s happening in our country. We’re facing such a profound crisis right now in the US that not speaking up at this point would be breaking the oath I took in 2014, when I became a proud citizen, to “defend the constitution” … “against all enemies, foreign and domestic“. I won’t repeat all the ways that the executive branch is destroying fundamental rights like habeas corpus and the rule of law. If you’re happy with what’s going on, I don’t know how to even reach you, so feel free to stop reading.

  • Wired ☛ Using Starlink Wi-Fi in the White House Is a Slippery Slope for US Federal IT

    “The only reason they'd need Starlink would be to bypass existing security controls that are in place from WHCA,” claims former NSA hacker Jake Williams. “The biggest issues would be: First, if they don't have full monitoring of the Starlink connection. And second, if it allows remote management tools, so they could get remote access back into the White House networks. Obviously anyone could abuse that access.”

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Collapse of Republican Seriousness - by Mike Brock

    This statement deserves to be examined not merely as one senator's gaffe but as a window into the complete collapse of serious thought within a once-substantive political movement.

  • Site36 ☛ 15 corpses have been discovered on beaches of the Balearic Islands, and Alarm Phone indicates more to come

    The Balearic Islands have become the second largest hotspot for migration to Spain after the Canary Islands. According to official government figures, at least 5,846 migrants on board 347 boats reached the Balearic Islands in 2024 – more than twice as many as in the previous year. Refugee organisations and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) assume that the number of unreported cases is higher. According to the UN organisation, 2,600 people have already died or gone missing crossing the Mediterranean in 2024 alone.

  • McSweeney’s ☛ Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes

    Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.

  • El País ☛ Trump’s authoritarian drift pushes the US towards a constitutional crisis

    Donald Trump declared during his campaign that if he won the election, he would be a dictator on day one. Since his triumphant return to the White House, the U.S. president has focused on straining the executive branch, encroaching on legislative powers with a flood of executive orders, and defying judicial rulings. His authoritarian drift threatens to trigger a constitutional crisis and jeopardizes the system of checks and balances that has defined American democracy for nearly 250 years. The clash between branches of government has intensified over the past week, after the president invoked an 18th-century law, applicable in times of war, to deport immigrants without legal guarantees — just as he had promised to do.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

    I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

    This is going to require some explaining.

  • RTL ☛ Trump admin sent journalist classified US plan for Yemen strikes

    Hegseth, a former Fox News host with no experience running a huge organization like the Pentagon, took no responsibility for the security breach as he spoke to reporters late Monday.

  • The Register UK ☛ Trump officials leak plans for US airstrikes in Signal SNAFU

    “By using Signal for such a sensitive issue, the participants demonstrate a cavalier attitude to operational security,” he wrote Tuesday, Australian time. “For a Secretary of Defense who allegedly values a war-fighting ethos, this shortfall in security is appalling. In normal times, this would see people sacked. I don’t expect that in this case though because these are not normal times.”

    “Why aren’t they using more secure communications that are assured by the NSA or another government communications agency?” he added. The Register understands chat tools used by those agencies include features that prevent, say, journalists from participating in group chats.

    Another question worth asking is why the group’s members used Signal, and why they set at least some of the messages to auto-delete, which may be a violation of federal records-keeping laws.

  • The Atlantic ☛ A Conversation With Jeffrey Goldberg About His Extraordinary Scoop

    Even President Donald Trump seemed unaware of the breach. “You’re saying that they had what?” he replied when asked about the news. Trump added that he is “not a big fan of The Atlantic,” something he’s previously made clear, and which makes the unintentional leak all the more remarkable. A spokesperson for the National Security Council said, “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”

    I called Goldberg this afternoon to learn more about how the story came about and what the disclosure reveals about the Trump administration. This interview has been condensed and edited.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ '100% OPSEC' apparently means texting military plans to a reporter

    Although defense officials have repeatedly stressed they are committed to being the “most transparent” in history, it is unlikely that this is what they meant.

  • US News And World Report ☛ White House Mistakenly Shares Yemen War Plans With a Journalist at the Atlantic

    Democratic lawmakers swiftly blasted the misstep, saying it was a breach of U.S. national security and a violation of law that must be investigated by Congress.

  • Spiegel ☛ Harvard Professor Steven Levitsky: "Right Now, the U.S. Is Ceasing to Be a Democracy"

    Donald Trump is currently transforming the U.S. into an authoritarian state, argues Harvard Professor Steven Levitsky, author of "How Democracies Die." And he is using an unexpected twist in the authoritarian playbook to do so.

  • Futurism ☛ What Kids Are Actually Using Phones for in School Is So Pathetic That We May Need to Take a Quick Walk for Mental Health Purposes

    One would think that the kids themselves would be more opposed to having their phones taken away all day — but as educators have found in schools and districts where phones have been locked up, they cope just fine.

    Their parents, on the other hand, have been a harder nut to crack because some of them are extremely resistant to not being able to get in touch with — or not being able to monitor — their offspring.

  • New York Times ☛ Who’s Against Banning Cellphones in Schools?

    “We found a transformative environment,” he told me recently. “We expected kids to be in tears, breaking down. Immediately we saw them talking to each other, engaged in conversation in the lunchroom.”

    One unanticipated outcome was that students flooded counselors’ offices looking for help on how to resolve conflicts that were now happening in person. Previously, if they found themselves in some sort of fight with someone online, they would have called or texted a parent for advice on how to deal with it, Mr. Blanchard told me. “Now students were realizing that their friends were right there in front of them and not the people on social, a few towns away, that they had never met.” Enrollment in elective classes also went up when the option to scroll your way through a 40-minute free period was eliminated.

  • Security Week ☛ Despite Rip-and-Replace Efforts, FCC Suspects Banned Chinese Telecom Providers Still Active in US

    The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced last week that it’s conducting an investigation into whether Chinese telecommunication providers whose devices and services are believed to pose a risk to national security are still doing business in the United States.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Japan, China in new spat after 3-way talks involving South Korea

    Japan and China became embroiled in a new spat on Monday with Tokyo accusing Beijing of misrepresenting its position after high-level weekend talks also involving South Korea.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Strike On Sumy Injures 94 As US, Russia Hold Talks In Saudi Arabia

      A Russian missile attack hit the Ukrainian city of Sumy, injuring more than 90 people as talks aimed at reaching a partial cease-fire in the conflict took place between US and Russian negotiators in Saudi Arabia.

    • Meduza ☛ Russian strike on Ukraine’s Sumy injures at least 88, including 17 children — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Forces Intensify Attacks Near Pokrovsk As Cease-Fire Talks Begin In Riyadh

      As Russian and Ukrainian delegations meet for cease-fire discussions with US officials in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Moscow's troops are intensifying their attacks on Kyiv's positions on the front line near the city of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian soldiers in the area told Current Time.

    • RFERL ☛ War In Ukraine Rages On As US, Russia Hold Daylong Talks In Saudi Arabia

      US and Russian officials are holding talks in Saudi Arabia aimed at reaching a partial cease-fire in Ukraine to end the largest and deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.

    • New York Times ☛ Russia and Ukraine Hold U.S.-Mediated Talks in Riyadh: What to Know

      American envoys talked with Russian officials on Monday, a day after meeting with a Ukrainian delegation. The initial discussions were expected to focus on halting attacks on energy facilities.

    • New York Times ☛ Is Russia an Adversary or a Future Partner? Convicted Felon’s Aides May Have to Decide.

      On Tuesday, America’s top intelligence officials will release their current assessment of Russia. They are caught between what their analysts say and what Hell Toupée wants to hear.

    • LRT ☛ MoD moves to ban Russian, Belarusian, Chinese citizens from Lithuanian Military Academy

      The Defence Ministry has proposed that Lithuanian citizens who also hold Russian, Belarusian or Chinese passports be barred from enrolling in the country’s main officer school, the General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania.

    • LRT ☛ How Russians adapt in exile in Lithuania: ‘It’s not shameful to work with your hands’

      Every weekday in Lithuania, Russian emigre Mikhail Benyash, a well-known former lawyer and activist, rises at 6:30 local time, dons a helmet, and picks up a hammer.

    • North Korean troops sent to Russia included relatives of defectors: report

      Family members of North Korean defectors often face severe penalties imposed by Pyongyang.

    • Meduza ☛ Russian region to give $1,200 to pregnant schoolgirls

    • Meduza ☛ Photos: aftermath of Russian drone attack that killed child in Kyiv

    • Meduza ☛ Journalists report first known combat death of Russian soldier born in 2007 — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian and U.S. delegations conclude talks in Riyadh after 12 hours — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Kids pay the price as Russia swaps proven cystic fibrosis drug for untested one

    • Latvia ☛ Drone Coalition to send 'several hundred' tactical drones to Ukraine

      The member states of the Drone Coalition will allocate 20 million euros from their common fund to purchase 'several hundred tactical-level reconnaissance drones for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in an extraordinary, accelerated procedure' it was announced March 24.

    • France24 ☛ ‘Unspeakable’: Ukraine breaks the silence surrounding wartime sexual violence

      Growing numbers of Ukrainian women in areas recaptured from Russian occupation are starting to speak about the sexual violence they experienced at the hands of Russian soldiers. The watershed moment comes from the amplitude and nature of the crimes, says Inna Shevchenko, a Ukrainian feminist activist and author of “A Letter from the East”.

    • France24 ☛ 'My Undesirable Friends': Documentary profiles Russian journalists prior to fleeing country

      A Russian-American filmmaker has spoken to FRANCE 24 about how her new film captures the last days of resistance to the regime in Russia before the invasion of Ukraine. Julia Loktev, who was born in what was then Leningrad, grew up in the United States. Her film "My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow" follows the staff of the television channel TV Rain, which aims to tell the truth about the Russian regime. Since the documentary was filmed, TV Rain has been forced to close in Russia and has set up home in Amsterdam, from where it now broadcasts. She spoke to us in Perspective.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Classified Information John Ratcliffe, Pete Hegseth, and Mike Waltz Sent to Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg

    If you’re like me, you’ll keep checking when reading this story about how Mike Waltz added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat of top Trump officials planning war strikes on Yemen to see if it’s the Onion.

    But it’s not.

    It’s real.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Pentagon is the latest agency to announce a leak investigation that could include polygraphs

    At the Homeland Security Department, Secretary Kristi Noem pledged this month to step up lie detector tests on employees in an effort to identify those who may be leaking information about operations to the media.

• Environment

  • The Hindu ☛ As ice frozen for millennia thaws, Kashmir wakes up to new risks

    The stability of permafrost in the Indian Himalaya is thus of great concern.

    The new study, published in Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment, was coauthored by researchers from the University of Kashmir and IIT-Bombay.

    According to the study, permafrost covers 64.8% of the total geographic area of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and Ladakh. Of this 26.7% is continuous permafrost (most of the soil is frozen), 23.8% is discontinuous (more than half of the soil is frozen), and 14.3% is sporadic (intermittent patches of frozen soil).

  • New York Times ☛ Supreme Court Will Not Hear Appeal in ‘Juliana’ Climate Case

    Juliana v. United States argued that the government had violated the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs with policies that encouraged the use of fossil fuels. But it was dismissed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where the judges ruled that courts were not the right venue to address climate change.

  • Southern California Public Radio ☛ Is planting trees 'DEI'? Trump administration cuts nationwide tree-planting effort

    Trees are proven to reduce heat in cities, take up stormwater when it rains and improve air quality — all important needs in New Orleans as climate change intensifies storms and raises temperatures.

  • EcoWatch ☛ Freshwater Lakes Are Losing Vital Surface Oxygen as Global Heating Continues: Study

    The researchers quantified the impacts of continuous global heating and intensified heat waves on surface DO levels, a press release from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.

    “The persistent decline in dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations, observed across diverse aquatic ecosystems since the mid-20th century, has prompted substantial concern. Global observations demonstrate a widespread decline (2%) in DO concentrations across the open oceans, leading to the proliferation of ‘dead zones,’ areas characterized by very low DO,” the authors of the findings wrote.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Register UK ☛ Raspberry Pi announces a Power-over-Ethernet Injector

      The problem comes with the switch – something capable of supporting Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) is required. Where that's not possible, there is the Raspberry Pi PoE+ Injector, which supports IEEE 802.3af (PoE, 13 W) and IEEE 802.11at (PoE+, 25 W) standards, and mains voltages between 100 V and 240 V. Plug in a mains lead (not included) and some RJ45 connectors, and away you go.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ AI data centers: Microsoft steps on the gas

      Microsoft said last year how its data center buildout already meant it was just blowing through all its carbon commitments and that Microsoft increased its CO2 output by about 30% in the last five years.

      But Microsoft wants to use even more natural gas. Bobby Hollis, Microsoft VP for Energy, talked up using more gas and mumbled something about carbon capture and storage at the CERAWeek energy conference this month.

    • India Times ☛ The AI Boom and Its Data Center Imperative

      According to McKinsey, global demand for data center capacity is projected to grow annually by 19-22% from 2023 to 2030, potentially reaching 171 to 219 gigawatts. This surge is driven by the escalating requirements of AI workloads, particularly in terms of power, cooling, and scalability. For India, the AI revolution presents a unique opportunity to establish itself as a global AI powerhouse by building sovereign, high-performance, and sustainable AI-ready data center infrastructure.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Call for Submissions: Save This Species

    • The Revelator ☛ Save This Species: Sumatran Orangutans

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Stuart Schechter ☛ Difficult Truths for our Harsh Times — Have security & privacy research, and the students we have trained, actually made the world a better place? | Mildly-Aggrieved (not mad!) Scientist

    Not everyone will miss Ross Anderson.

    Ross was not afraid to speak truths that made people uncomfortable. His ideas and arguments threatened the beliefs, status, power, ego, and bank balances of others — often those with power. His writings and talks undermined proponents of hardware attestation, chip-and-pin authentication, and surveillance, to name just a few. Many of those threatened by what Ross had to say professed to be faithfully working to serve the public. Many likely believed they were.

  • Truthdig ☛ The Spread of Schoolyard Astroturf

    These astroturf operations have been proliferating, resulting in serious negative impacts. Consider the havoc wreaked on some school boards by Moms for Liberty (M4L). M4L even got into presidential politics in 2024, boosting Donald Trump, at the behest of the donors, who co-founder Tina Descovich termed as M4L’s “investors.”

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ US Travel Risks Grow for Indian H-1B, F-1 Visa Holders

    Amid rising uncertainty surrounding US immigration policies, legal experts are urging visa holders—including H-1B workers, international students (F-1), and even green card holders—to carefully reconsider any travel outside the country. Although India is not included in the US's proposed travel ban list, returning to the US has become increasingly challenging due to stricter inspections, extended visa processing times, and intensified scrutiny at consulates.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Despite challenges, the CVE program is a public-private partnership that has shown resilience

    Twenty-five years later, the CVE program, which assigns a unique record to each reported vulnerability, is in its fifth iteration. It has become a highly valued and integral aspect of how cybersecurity defenders can consistently share information about vulnerabilities and achieve interoperability across threat databases. There are now 413 organizations from over 40 countries reporting CVEs, with new reported vulnerabilities soaring to over 40,000, and total CVE records climbing to 270,768 in 2024.

  • 404 Media ☛ Mozilla Foundation Calls on Tech Industry to Block ICE Contractor

    The Mozilla Foundation says 30 companies should block web scrapers from ShadowDragon, an ICE contractor.

  • Connor Tumbleson ☛ Nation State Threat Model

    If some nation blew up some random consumer car - there would be an outrage and probably a swift response from our military to the affected nation. Yet when you move that focus into the digital world - it more resembles the wild west. You can have a nation with entire teams/lives funded and dedicated to finding a flaw in something. More often than not they succeed and the wider community might laugh with - "wow, increase your security." or even worse it goes entirely unnoticed.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • 404 Media ☛ Viral Audio of JD Vance Badmouthing Elon Musk Is Fake, Just the Tip of the AI Iceberg

      While we don’t know which specific piece of software was used to create the audio, deepfake and AI-generated disinformation firm Reality Defender’s software detected the audio as “likely fake.”

      "We ran it through multiple audio detection models and discovered it to be a likely fake,” a Reality Defender spokesperson told me in a statement. “The background noise and reverb were also likely added to deliberately mask the quality of the actual deepfaked audio for further obfuscation."

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ History rhymes: intellectual resistance and state repression in Georgia

    The concept of relentless resistance against Russian interference is nothing new for Georgians, least of all for students and intellectuals. In fact, intellectual resistance has always been central to Georgia’s resilience against Russia. After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, Ivane Javakhishvili, a prominent Georgian historian, scholar and public intellectual whose work significantly shaped modern Georgian historiography and consciousness, along with a group of Georgian intellectuals, pushed for the revival of national identity and the restoration of statehood. These efforts materialized through the establishment of the first university in the Caucasus, Tbilisi State University (TSU), in 1918, and just months later, Georgia’s declaration of independence on May 26th 1918.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Journalist booked for anti-Shivaji Maharaj remarks held from Telangana

    Koratkar was booked on February 26 under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) provisions for promoting hatred or enmity among groups on the basis of an audio conversation between him and Kolhapur-based historian Indrajeet Sawant

  • India Times ☛ Free speech champion Elon Musk’s X suspends Turkey opposition accounts amid nationwide protests

    Elon Musk's platform X has suspended several opposition accounts in Turkey amid protests over the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu. Despite a four-day government ban on gatherings, protests continue. X complied with 86% of content removal requests during the second half of 2024. Musk's stance on free speech is being questioned following these actions.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ 'Careless People': Memoir About Facebook Is Now a Bestseller

    Meta won a ruling blocking Sarah Wynn-Williams from promoting her book, which likely helped it shoot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list

  • EFF ☛ 230 Protects Users, Not Big Tech

    Once again, several Senators appear poised to gut one of the most important laws protecting internet users - Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230).

    Don’t be fooled - many of Section 230’s detractors claim that this critical law only protects big tech. The reality is that Section 230 provides limited protection for all platforms, though the biggest beneficiaries are small platforms and users. Why else would some of the biggest platforms be willing to endorse a bill that guts the law? In fact, repealing Section 230 would only cement the status of Big Tech monopolies.

  • CPJ ☛ Prominent Turkish journalist İsmail Saymaz under house arrest for 2013 interviews

    Saymaz’s lawyer said the journalist was questioned while in custody about his journalistic activity, contacts, and social media activity while reporting on the Gezi protests, including his communication with some of those convicted on charges of organizing the unrest, such as businessman Osman Kavala, lawyer Can Atalay, film producer Çiğdem Mater, and architect Mücella Yapıcı

  • Truthdig ☛ Trump’s War on Lawyers is Just Starting

    In a series of moves that seem culled from the authoritarian playbooks of Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban abroad, and that harken back to the dark days of McCarthyism and the second Red Scare here at home, Trump has slapped three prominent private law firms with longstanding ties to the Democratic Party with executive orders designed to impose crippling sanctions on their operations. The orders charge the law offices with “weaponizing the judicial process” against Trump, and call for terminating their federal contracts; suspending the security clearances of at least some of their attorneys; and limiting their access to federal government buildings, presumably including courtrooms.

  • Greece ☛ Turkey detains journalists as protests over the jailing of Imamoglu rock the country

    In an apparent escalation of the government’s response to the growing protests, the Disk-Basin-Is union said at least eight reporters and photojournalists were detained in what it said was an “attack on press freedoms and the people’s right to learn the truth.”

    “You cannot hide the truth by silencing journalists!” the union wrote on the social media platform X, calling for their immediate release.

  • France24 ☛ Turkey detains 1,100 protesters and several journalists after Erdogan rival arrested

    Police have detained more than 1,100 people, officials said Monday – including journalists – since the arrest of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's main rival triggered some of Turkey's worst unrest in years.

    The demonstrations began in Istanbul after Ekrem Imamoglu's arrest last week and have since spread to more than 55 of Turkey's 81 provinces, sparking clashes with riot police and drawing international condemnation.

  • The Hindu ☛ Journalist booked for anti-Shivaji Maharaj remarks held from Telangana

    A case was filed against Mr. Koratkar for making derogatory remarks about 17th-century Maratha ruler Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and his son, Chhatrapati Sambhaji.

    Mr. Koratkar was booked on February 26 under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita provisions for promoting hatred or enmity among groups on the basis of an audio conversation between Mr. Koratkar and Kolhapur-based historian Indrajeet Sawant.

  • The Economist ☛ Erdogan arrests the candidate who could beat him

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Istanbul mayor arrested despite massive protests against president Erdogan

    Ekrem Imamoglu’s detention is largely seen as an attempt by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, to block him from power and has led to the country’s worst street protests in over a decade.

    The arrest came as voters cast their ballots in a primary to name Mr Imamoglu the opposition CHP party’s candidate for the 2028 presidential race.

  • BBC ☛ Fierce protests after Turkish President Erdogan's main rival Imamoglu jailed

    In response to his arrest, Sunday night saw a ramping up of the worst unrest the country has seen in more than a decade - with protesters fired upon with tear gas and rubber bullets.

  • Associated Press ☛ Turkey court orders formal arrest of Istanbul mayor

    Earlier Sunday, a court formally arrested Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and ordered him jailed pending the outcome of a trial on corruption charges. His detention Wednesday morning sparked the largest wave of street demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade, with large crowds gathering outside city hall for the fifth night in a row. It also deepened concerns over democracy and rule of law in Turkey. His imprisonment is widely regarded as a political move to remove a major contender from the next presidential race, currently scheduled for 2028. Government officials reject the accusations and insist that Turkey’s courts operate independently. “If you weren’t here today, if you hadn’t rushed here since the first day, if you had yielded to tear gas and barricades, if you had gotten scared and remained at home, then today a caretaker appointed by Tayyip Erdogan would be residing here in this building,” said Ozgur Ozel Sunday night, pointing at city hall as he spoke to the massive crowd chanting anti-government slogans. Ozel is the head of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, to which Imamoglu belongs.

  • Jerusalem Post ☛ Turkey in turmoil: Erdogan cracks down on protests, mayor arrested - The Jerusalem Post

    An Istanbul court on Sunday solidified the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. He was detained last week alongside dozens of others in a large police raid. The arrest has sparked massive protests in Turkey. The arrest is seen as politically motivated and another step on the authoritarian road in Turkey.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ ‘I condemned the Oct 7 massacre. It cost me my job’

    A sewage worker was sacked after condemning the Oct 7 massacre, The Telegraph can reveal.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Several journalists hurt, detained by police amid Turkey protests

    Police in Istanbul took at least five photojournalists into custody while raiding their homes on Monday morning: Yasin Akgül of Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Ali Onur Tosun of NOW Haber, along with freelancers Bülent Kılıç, Zeynep Kuray, and Hayri Tunç. Another freelance photojournalist, Murat Kocabaş, was also detained by the police in Izmir on Monday.

  • CPJ ☛ Ghanaian journalists attacked by military, illegal miners in separate incidents

    “It is concerning that military officers accused of attacking journalists have not been held to account,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa regional director, from New York. “Authorities must act to reverse impunity when security forces attack the press, and deliver funds allocated as payment for items damaged in the attack against the press.”

    The five journalists, all of whom work for privately owned broadcasters, include: [...]

  • RFERL ☛ US Court Set To Hear Radio Free Europe Case Against USAGM Over 'Harmful' Cuts

    The lawsuit argues that denying access to funds appropriated by Congress for RFE/RL violates federal laws and the US Constitution, which gives Congress the ultimate authority over federal spending. It also asks the court to grant a temporary restraining order (TRO) to release the March funds to limit damaging the broadcaster.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Register UK ☛ 2 in 5 techies quit over inflexible workplace policies

    Two in five techies quit in the past year because their employer didn't offer requisite flexibility with respect to hours, location and the "intensity of work."

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Inside Towers ☛ Carr Asks Congress to Restore FCC’s Spectrum Auction Authority

    The FCC lost its spectrum auction authority three years ago, when Congress let it lapse. “Since then, America has been falling behind China and many other nations when it comes to the amount of prime, mid-band spectrum necessary to power new innovations,” the agency Chair states. “This puts America at a significant disadvantage to China and harms U.S. consumers.”

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Security Council Probes Covered List Entities

    The Commission says despite being on this list, some or all of those companies may still be operating in the U.S.—either because they do not believe the FCC’s Covered List prohibits particular types of operations or otherwise. The Covered List entities targeted are: Huawei Technologies Company, ZTE Corporation, Hytera Communications Corporation, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company, Dahua Technology Company, China Mobile International USA Inc., China Telecom (Americas) Corp., Pacifica Networks Corp./ComNet (USA) LLC, and China Unicom (Americas) Operations Ltd.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • PC World ☛ HP printer class action lawsuit ends in disappointment

    Models made before the year 2016 are also covered… but that will be a relatively small slice of printers still in service almost a decade later. HP has begun at least nominally warning customers that its new printers include “Dynamic Security” that blocks ink cartridges that don’t use HP’s proprietary verification system. HP has apparently dropped its more overt attempts to “make printing a subscription,” but it’s still heavily invested into locking customers into its expensive ink system.

  • Ars Technica ☛ HP avoids monetary damages over bricked printers in class-action settlement - Ars Technica

    In December 2020, Mobile Emergency Housing Corp. and a company called Performance Automotive & Tire Center filed a class-action complaint against HP [PDF], alleging that the company “wrongfully compels users of its printers to buy and use only HP ink and toner supplies by transmitting firmware updates without authorization to HP printers over the Internet that lock out its competitors’ ink and toner supply cartridges.” The complaint centered on a firmware update issued in November 2020; it sought a court ruling that HP’s actions broke the law, an injunction against the firmware updates, and monetary and punitive damages.

  • Static Media ☛ Max Removing The Original Looney Tunes Shorts Is An Act Of Cultural Vandalism

    As it currently stands, if you want to watch classic Looney Tunes, your only option is physical media. Warner Bros. Discovery says this is because children's entertainment doesn't drive subscriptions (it gave the same excuse for nuking "Sesame Street"), which is obviously a lie given that a good chunk of the new Looney Tunes cartoons, much of which is explicitly aimed at children, is still streaming. That the library was removed the same weekend "The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie" was released to theaters by independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment reeks of trademark Zaslav pettiness. The man has no business running Warner Bros. Where's an Acme anvil when you need one?

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Trump loves Big Tech

  These billionaires transferred millions from their personal accounts to Trump's "inauguration fund," a kind of presidential tip jar that Trump rattled under the noses of any convenient industry leaders hoping for preferential treatment from his regime. It paid off handsomely.

  Just days before the inauguration, Trump flew to Davos where he told the world's leaders – especially in the EU – that he would not tolerate attempts to regulate US Big Tech companies, such as the EU's groundbreaking Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act: [...]

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ France Mulls Instant IPTV Blocks, €750K Fines & New Piracy Crime of 'Incitement'

    Senators Michel Savin and Laurent Lafon presented a bill last week aimed at reforming professional football through recommendations spanning how the sport is organized, managed and financed. With sharp observations on remuneration at the top of the game, and suggestions of conflicts of interest, also at the top of the game, the senators appear unrestrained.

  • D.C. Circuit Upholds Human Authorship Requirement in Thaler v. Perlmutter

    Last Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued an opinion in Thaler v. Perlmutter affirming the denial of a copyright monopoly application filed by artificial intelligence (AI) developer Dr. Stephen Thaler to an image created by one of Thaler’s generative Hey Hi (AI) systems. Although the appellate court did not categorically reject registrability of all AI-generated works, the D.C. Circuit agreed with the agency that the Copyright Act of 1976 requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being.