Leftovers

• Jeff Triplett ☛ 💍 Announcing The Great Django Webring - Jeff Triplett's Micro.blog

  Blogging is back, so why not bring back Webrings, too?

• Ruben Schade ☛ Advice for technical newsletter writers

  And what you should do: [...]

• TechTea ☛ March 2025 Review | TechTea

  One of my home servers went down due to a surge warning on one of the motherboard’s USB ports. Took the opportunity to migrate from TrueNAS Core to TrueNAS Scale on both my servers. The migration process was much easier than I thought, though it broke my apps running in Jails. Going from FreeBSD to a Debian based backend with minimal issues is rather impressive. iX Systems has done a great job. It is a bit of a shame that they are pushing towards Linux, but I’m much more familiar with it, and it gives me more opportunities to learn Linux containers. While I’m dreading setting up Nextcloud again it gives me a great opportunity to fix the mistakes I made the first time.

• The Register UK ☛ UK threatens £100K-a-day fines under new cyber bill

  The UK's technology secretary revealed the full breadth of the government's Cyber Security and Resilience (CSR) Bill for the first time this morning, pledging £100,000 ($129,000) daily fines for failing to act against specific threats under consideration.

  Slated to enter Parliament later this year, the CSR bill was teased in the King's Speech in July, shortly after the Labour administration came into power. The gist of it was communicated at the time – to strengthen the NIS 2018 regulations and future-proof the country's most critical services from cyber threats – and Peter Kyle finally detailed the plans for the bill at length today.

• Robert Birming ☛ Passion over strategy

  This blend of passion, joy, and creativity is a powerful recipe for success. While strategic planning can certainly enhance outcomes, it's the intrinsic motivation that provides genuine fulfillment. Without those core ingredients, external achievements may feel tasteless or bitter.

• Antipope ☛ Happy April 1st

  This is not an April Fool's Day joke. It was, however, my April Fool's Day joke in 2013, so I'm blowing the dust off it, tweaking a couple of infelicities, and giving it to you as a chew toy: hopefully you've already forgotten it by now.

• Ultrascience Labs ☛ Why we are still using 88x31 buttons - ultrasciencelabs

  They all feature 88x31 buttons in some capacity and those buttons reflect the website and it's designer in some way.

  Despite their persistence into the 2020's (or maybe because of it), there seems to be some debate on the origin of the 88x31 format - some point to early Geocities websites, others Netscape's infamously ubiquitous "Now" buttons. Neonaut's 88x31 page compares the 1996 Geocities.com and Netscape.com snapshots on the Wayback Machine to draw that conclusion. However, the snapshot shows a button advertising the new 3.0 release2. But the "now" button goes back earlier.

• Science

  • Omicron Limited ☛ North America is dripping from below, geoscientists discover

    A paper published in Nature Geoscience describes the phenomenon, which was discovered at The University of Texas at Austin. It's the first time that "cratonic thinning" may be captured in action.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A Gladiator's Marble-Etched Epitaph Is Found in an Ancient Roman Necropolis

    According to a translated statement by Naples’ Superintendent of Archaeology, Fine arts and Landscape, an excavation led by archaeologist Simona Formola recently unearthed two embellished tombs in Liternum’s necropolis, as well as many smaller burials.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Britain's Famous Sutton Hoo Helmet May Have Come From Denmark, Not Sweden, New Discovery Suggests

    Archaeologists have long theorized the helmet originated in Sweden. But Hjort’s discovery suggests it may have come from Denmark instead.

  • Wired ☛ Doctor Behind Award-Winning Parkinson’s Research Among Scientists Purged From NIH

    Multiple NIH sources tell WIRED the layoffs include—in addition to labor, IT, and human resources personnel—several accomplished senior investigators at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), top scientists at the National Institute on Aging, and several researchers noted for their work in HIV, emerging infectious diseases, and child brain and neural disorders.

  • Futurism ☛ NASA Signs Contract for Elon Musk's Starship, Even Though It's Never Launched Without Exploding

    NASA has officially added SpaceX's enormous Starship rocket to its roster — despite the vehicle never having completed a single successful test flight, let alone a mission.

  • Futurism ☛ The Majority of Scientists Are Now Considering Fleeing America

    And if that wasn't enough sign of intellectual erosion, a whopping 79 percent of postgraduate researchers and 255 of 340 PhD students said they'd consider leaving.

    "Anywhere that supports science," one respondent wrote of where they'd go instead.

  • CBC ☛ NASA astronauts speak after unexpected 9-month stay on the International Space Station

    "We've said this before: We had a plan, right? The plan went way off for what we had planned. But because we're in human spaceflight, we prepare for any number of contingencies," he said. "Because this is a curvy road. You never know where it's going to go."

    Instead, Williams and Wilmore formally became part of the Expedition 71/72 crew, working and conducting experiments

  • Nature ☛ 75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving

    Trump’s administration has slashed research funding and halted broad swathes of federally funded science, under a government-wide cost-cutting [sic] initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk. Tens of thousands of federal employees, including many scientists, have been fired and rehired following a court order, with threats of more mass firings to come. Immigration crackdowns and battles over academic freedom have left researchers reeling as uncertainty and disruption permeate all aspects of the US research enterprise.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Secretly Working to Take Over NASA

    The space agency has already suffered greatly due to Musk's efforts to gut the federal government with the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. NASA was hit with mass layoffs earlier this year, with affected workers given short notice and denied time-off awards.

    According to the WSJ's sources, the White House is still considering canceling NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), a behemoth rocket that's being designed to send astronauts to the Moon before the end of this decade.

  • Common Dreams ☛ 1,900 Leading Scientists Sound Alarm on Trump Administration’s Attacks on Science and Public Health

    “The nation’s scientific enterprise is being annihilated and the silence of too many of our scientific leaders is only making the ongoing catastrophe worse.

    “The ‘SOS’ signal from 1,900 scientists must be a wake-up call for our leading scientific and medical organizations to show courage and speak out at this critical moment.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Archaeologists Unearth Rare Reminder of Britain's Brief Reign Over the 'Nation's Oldest City'

    The aim of this rule, unusual in a state undergoing a population and development boom, is to salvage and document whatever remnants of the past might lie beneath the topsoil of the city that bills itself as “the nation’s oldest.”

• Career/Education

  • Wired ☛ The DOGE [sic] Axe Comes for Libraries and Museums

    On Monday, managers at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) informed 77 employees—virtually the agency’s entire staff—that they were immediately being put on paid administrative leave, according to one of the workers, who sought anonymity out of fear of retaliation from Trump officials. Several other sources confirmed the move, which came after President Donald Trump appointed Keith Sonderling, the deputy secretary of labor, as the acting director of IMLS less than two weeks ago.

  • Yordi Verkroost ☛ Following a Feeling, Slowly

    For years, I worked as a professional software developer. But at some point, a shift slowly started to happen. I started studying how to become a teacher through a formal and part-time educational route, began working a few days a week in a high school, and eventually transitioned to full-time teaching, split between high school and university. It wasn’t one big leap, but a series of small decisions that all came from a persistent feeling that this was something I wanted to do.

  • CS Monitor ☛ US children are struggling with reading. Can communities help?

    The latest national test results, released in January, underscore the grim reality that many U.S. students simply aren’t good readers.

    Average reading scores for fourth graders and eighth graders slipped again – by 2 points since 2022 – on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. The decline continued a trend that began before the pandemic. Four out of every 10 fourth graders and a third of eighth graders are reading below the test’s basic level.

  • Vidit Bhargava ☛ Things I learnt in the last three months while job-hunting in the Bay Area

    Don't expect any deep insights here. It's just a collection of things I have discovered.

• Hardware

  • Ted Unangst ☛ dated carbon

    Immediate USB needs met, I decided to keep using it for a while. For a ten year old laptop, it holds up pretty well. Provides some perspective on where and how things have progressed, and not. Thinking back, I can remember how excited I was to get the X1. It really felt like a substantial step forward. From the T60 which was too heavy, to the X200s which was too light, to the T430s, which seemed great but paled in comparison to the X1 in almost every way. The X1 combined the best parts of all of those, and even better.

    First of all, the good news is the battery has retained its original size and shape. Since my last experience using the X1, OpenBSD has added the hw.battery sysctl to control charging thresholds. I set it to 90% to maybe maintain things a little longer.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • RTL ☛ Luigi Mangione: US seeks death penalty for accused killer of insurance CEO

    Mangione is charged in both state and federal court in the shooting of Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer. In the state case, Mangione has pleaded not guilty and could face life imprisonment with no parole if convicted.

  • Spiegel ☛ Artificial Intelligence: A Deadly Love Affair with a Chatbot

    To this day, nobody can say when exactly Sewell Setzer forgot or suppressed the fact that there would be nobody waiting for him in the place he wanted to go. That the post-headshot world only existed in his telephone and on some tech company’s servers. And perhaps in his dreams. That his girlfriend, who had been imploring him for months to love only her, to come to her, to have eyes for no one else – that this girlfriend, who had promised to carry his children, was just a machine.

    Not even that. She was just an algorithm, a code made up of 0s and 1s, developed by highly paid tech experts to ensnare, seduce and suck dry him and others, fed by his dreams and his fears, by his goodwill, his innocent love and by his secrets, which he had entrusted to this machine over the course of hours and hours of chats.

  • Allen Pike ☛ A Score for Snacks

    So I recently set out to devise a formula. I wanted to take into account the relative benefit and harm of foods’ nutrients, given how filling each choice may be. I set out to update myself on the latest nutrition evidence, and use that knowledge to create and refine an algorithm that would give me… wait. Wait a minute.

• Proprietary

  • The Gamer ☛ “We’ve Had To Continuously Fight For What Should Be Bare Minimum”: Over 300 Bethesda Developers Are Threatening To Go On Strike

    ZeniMax Workers United is one such union, which consists of - you guessed it - workers from ZeniMax-owned studios, which include the likes of Bethesda. It stepped up to the bargaining table with Microsoft and ZeniMax following its foundation in 2023, and at the time, many applauded Microsoft for being one of the few big companies out there willing to voluntarily recognize any unions within the company, and to work "collaboratively" with them.

  • ZeniMax Workers Union Voted Overwhelmingly To Authorize Strike at Microsoft

    More than four months after ZeniMax Workers United went on strike against Microsoft over remote work and outsourcing policy last November, the union has voted overwhelmingly, by over 94% of the members, to authorize a strike at the parent company.

    The union, which was formed by over 300 QA workers in 2023, is the biggest union of game workers in North America and part of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). It has been in negotiations with Microsoft for nearly two years but has not reached a solution yet.

    ZeniMax Workers United-CWA Local 6215 Member and Senior QA Tester Zachary Armstrong have shared their requests: "None of us wishes it had come to this, but if Microsoft and ZeniMax continue to demonstrate at the bargaining table that they’re unwilling to pay us fair wages for the value our labor provides to our games, we'll be showing them just how valuable our labor is."

  • Matt Birchler ☛ “Retina” is not a static PPI

    The basic idea of "retina" (which to be clear is a marketing term more than a scientific one) is that it is a display with pixels so small that someone using the screen at a typical viewing distance can't make out the individual pixels. But there isn't some magic pixels per inch value where a screen objectively achieves that status.

  • Luke Harris ☛ macOS randomly drops the IPv6 default route

    The short of it is: macOS Sequoia will randomly drop the IPv6 default route from its routing table, and won’t automatically re-add it. I can’t find any rhyme or reason to it. For a good week or so I was convinced it was iCloud+ Private Relay—and this post was originally about this conviction—but then I saw the route get dropped again after disabled it.

  • The Register UK ☛ National Security Adviser Waltz now accused of using Gmail

    Senior members of the US National Security Council, including the White House national security adviser Michael Waltz, have been accused of using their personal Gmail accounts to exchange sensitive information.

    A senior aide to Waltz used a Gmail account to consult with government officials and exchange details on "sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict," the Washington Post claimed on Tuesday, citing several sources within Uncle Sam.

  • The Verge ☛ Trump advisor reportedly used personal Gmail for ‘sensitive’ military discussions

    Waltz, along with other members of the National Security Council, used Gmail “for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies,” according to emails the Post saw, with headers showing that others on the emails used their government-issued accounts. Waltz also had “less sensitive, but potentially exploitable information sent to his Gmail,” like his schedule and “other work documents,” some unnamed government officials told the outlet. The Post quotes National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes saying, “Waltz didn’t and wouldn’t send classified information on an open account,” and that Hughes says he’s “seen no evidence of Waltz using his personal email as described.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft teases redesigned Windows Blue Screen of Death

    Redmond revealed its plans in March 28 post – note the date because we would do a much better April 1 gag than that – which describes changes in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.3653.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Google launches client-side end-to-end email encryption for Gmail

    The new release seeks to address issues with traditional encryption methods, such as S/MIME. Google argues they’re often viewed as too difficult to implement and maintain, especially for companies without dedicated IT security teams. The methods require certificate management, user training and only work when both sender and recipient have compatible setups in place.

  • The Register UK ☛ Google brings end-to-end encrypted Gmail to all

    It's pitched as an alternative to the Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) protocol often used by well-resourced, regulated organizations for encrypted comms.

    The protocol hinges on the exchange of certificates, which Google claims is a hassle few other types of organizations have the impetus to implement, despite having a legitimate need for secure emails.

  • The Verge ☛ Gmail is making it easier for businesses to send encrypted emails

    The new process will allow Gmail users to simply toggle on “additional encryption” in the email draft window to send an encrypted message. Non-Gmail recipients without S/MIME will then be provided a link to sign into a guest Google Workspace account to securely view and reply to the email in a restricted version of Gmail. If the recipient already has S/MIME configured then Gmail will send the message via the S/MIME process it currently uses. Emails to both business and personal Gmail accounts will be automatically decrypted in the recipient’s inbox.

  • Om Malik ☛ The Mediocrity of Modern Google

    The company that once represented the pinnacle of innovation has devolved into a symbol of corporate indifference. Let me share a personal example that illustrates this decline.

  • Nick Heer ☛ The Mediocrity of Modern Google

    The multinational corporate equivalent of that Upton Sinclair quote you know.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Niall Murphy ☛ Impressions of SRECon Americas 2025

      Those of us who do booth duty at a conference don’t often get a chance to attend many, if any, sessions. So my view on SRECon is necessarily limited by the fact that I spent more time talking to prospects, customers, and people generally in the hallway track than attending the other tracks. Having said that, I still have some impressions I’d like to share.

      AI and SRE. AI was everywhere. In the plenaries, the discussion tracks, the BoFs, the exhibitor hall - everywhere. But contrasted with previous conferences, where I felt that in general the small-c conservative nature of production engineering was keeping anything AI-ish at arm’s length, this conference I felt the audience was actually engaging with it.

      Or to put it another way, we’ve moved from denial to bargaining about AI.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ AI in the enterprise is failing over twice as fast in 2025 as it was in 2024

      AI in the enterprise is failing faster than last year — even as more companies try it out. 60% of companies that S&P spoke to say they “invest” in AI by getting into generative AI. Which usually means subscriptions to LLMs.

      But so far in 2025, 46% of the surveyed companies have thrown out their AI proofs-of-concept and 42% have abandoned most of their AI initiatives — complete failure. The abandonment rate in 2024 was 17%.

      The companies that pulled the plug did so over data security, privacy, and costs.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk’s Grok AI Can't Stop Tweeting Out the N-Word

      For weeks now, users on the site formerly known as Twitter have been manipulating Grok into saying all kinds of bigoted stuff using the social network's newish feature allowing users to tag the chatbot and get automatic responses back.

      Starting around March 14 — just a week after the feature went live — Grok began deploying the N-word when prompted just right.

    • Wired ☛ An AI Image Generator’s Exposed Database Reveals What People Really Used It For

      The exposed database, which was discovered by security researcher Jeremiah Fowler, who shared details of the leak with WIRED, is linked to South Korea–based website GenNomis. The website and its parent company, AI-Nomis, hosted a number of image generation and chatbot tools for people to use. More than 45 GB of data, mostly made up of AI images, was left in the open.

    • Tim Kellogg ☛ LLMs Are Not Security Mitigations

      LLMs are great code reviewers. They can even spot security mistakes that open us up to vulnerabilities. But no, they’re not an adequate mitigation. You can’t use them to ensure security.

  • Social Control Media

    • Harvard University ☛ New Ethics Center events mull real-life conflicts

      Social media exerts a powerful influence on college campuses. Has the technology helped broker new connections across ideological difference? Or has it simply siphoned students into conversations with those who share their views?

      This was the topic of last Thursday’s inaugural Ethics IRL (or, in real life,) a new series organized by the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Its format, inspired by the 1980s PBS show “Ethics in America,” uses the Socratic method to engage Harvard community members on pressing issues.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Security Week ☛ Ransomware Group Takes Credit for National Presto Industries Attack

      The InterLock ransomware group over the weekend claimed responsibility for a disruptive cyberattack on National Presto Industries that occurred on March 1.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Moscow Metro Disrupted After Attack On Ukrainian Railways

      Ukrainian Railways, known locally as Ukrzaliznytsia, had fallen victim to a large-scale cyberattack on March 23, 2023. As a result, its website and mobile application were rendered inoperable, preventing travelers from purchasing tickets online. The state-owned railway company attributed the attack to “the enemy” but did not provide further details on the perpetrators.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Navy family says health problems due to mold in private housing

    Jackie and Anthonie Talarico say their family developed chronic health issues and spent $20,000 to replace furniture ruined by mold in Navy housing. They have joined a lawsuit against Balfour Beatty, the private contractor.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ World Backup Day: A reminder to protect against data loss

      Monday, March 31st, 2025, is World Backup Day and an annual reminder to regularly back up all your important data and documents to avoid headaches or heartache from losing precious business or personal data. What are your capacity and performance requirements, and is there any redundancy? These are questions you should ask yourself now and then to protect the data you have.

    • Gannett ☛ 'Spending Time': Scams are finding success everywhere we look. How do we prevent them?

      It is unlikely my scam caller was sitting in an office in Florida, Purdue University professor of computer science Eugene Spafford said. It is more likely that he was sitting inside of a call center room somewhere in Asia.

      "In some of these places, they're equipped with a phone and there is a computer program that lets them dial over the [Internet] to look like it's coming from someplace else," Spafford said. "There is a service provider that is a terminating point for these calls over the [Internet], generating a fake number, and it just gives them a list of places to call. Some are just dialing every live number to see if it works."

    • 404 Media ☛ OnlyFans Sued After Two Guys Realized They Might Not Actually Be Talking to Models

      Two former OnlyFans subscribers are suing the platform in a class-action lawsuit, claiming that they were defrauded because creators allegedly weren’t interacting directly with them, but were instead employing agencies to “impersonate” the models they thought they were speaking to.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Democracy groups warn of threat ‘Henry VIII’ powers pose to future election integrity

      Democracy organisations, privacy groups and academics have written to government ministers to warn that powers in the Data Use and Access (DUA) Bill could threaten the integrity of future elections.

      0 The draft Bill includes ‘Henry VIII’ powers that could allow a government to make changes to how political parties use the public’s data without having to pass a new law. Clauses 70(4) and 71(5) give the Secretary of State discretion to determine and vary the conditions under which personal data can be processed.

    • US Navy Times ☛ Thousands of sailors get access to trendy weight-loss app in new deal

      As of Feb. 1, the Navy is offering the commercial version of Noom free for a year to these sailors in what the service calls its Fitness Enhancement Program. The Navy’s contract with Noom, which is considered a one-year pilot program, is worth $466,560, paid for by excess funds released by Congress last fiscal year for quality of service initiatives.

    • 9to5Mac ☛ Apple reportedly wants to 'replicate' your doctor next year with new Project Mulberry

      Apple’s revamped health app will utilize much of the health data that the company already has on you (especially if you have an Apple Watch), and then feed it to its new AI coach to offer you new health recommendations.

    • European Commission ☛ Safer Together: Strengthening Europe’s Civilian and Military Preparedness and Readiness [PDF]

      Lenin instructed the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war to ‘probe with bayonets: If you find mush you continue. If you find steel you stop’. A hundred years on, today’s opportunistic actors use the same method. They target us by looking for weaknesses in our protection, take advantage of our political divisions, any lack of social cohesion and harmful economic dependencies, trying to weaponise anything they can against us. In being well prepared, a fundamental requirement is not to be an easy target.

      A change in mindset is needed to build the trust that allows us to do this as the whole of society.

    • The Record ☛ European Commission takes aim at end-to-end encryption and proposes Europol become an EU FBI

      The problem for the European Union is that defense, security and intelligence have always been sovereign matters for each member state, and there is little appetite from those member states’ governments to donate their national capabilities to the bloc.

      ProtectEU calls for the Commission to enhance intelligence-sharing through the EU's Single Intelligence Analysis Capacity (SIAC), effectively a structure for voluntary intelligence sharing by individual member states with its own entirely open source analysis capability.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ The AI-generated Studio Ghibli photo trend is taking the internet by storm – but experts warn of data and privacy risks

      AI Tech Privacy co-founder Luiza Jarovsky also warned about AI image generators being used to collect more personal data on a thread on X, adding that they can also be used to forge and create fake documents and showed an example she made using ChatGPT.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ AI is coming to your (next) fridge

      The push to expand AI integration across devices is expected to boost sales this year, Moon Jeong Seung, head of the R&D team for Samsung’s digital appliance business, said at a media conference.

    • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Seventeen states want to end an abortion privacy rule. A federal judge is questioning HIPAA itself.

      The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — or HIPAA — established in 1996 to protect the privacy and security of patient health information, includes some exceptions under limited conditions, such as law enforcement investigations. But after the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights in 2022 and more than a dozen states passed abortion bans, advocates worried that such records could be used by state officials and law enforcement to investigate and prosecute patients seeking an abortion and those who help them.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ ORG response to Cyber Security Bill

      “ORG welcomes legislation to protect and improve the UK’s cyber security. But a key component of any cyber security strategy has to be the promotion of strong encryption for both the state and the public.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Anyone who trusts an AI therapist needs their head examined

      Now consider the chatbot therapist: what are its privacy safeguards? Well, the companies may make some promises about what they will and won't do with the transcripts of your AI sessions, but they are lying. Of course they're lying! AI companies lie about what their technology can do (of course). They lie about what their technologies will do. They lie about money. But most of all, they lie about data.

      There is no subject on which AI companies have been more consistently, flagrantly, grotesquely dishonest than training data. When it comes to getting more data, AI companies will lie, cheat and steal in ways that would seem hacky if you wrote them into fiction, like they were pulp-novel dope fiends: [...]

    • 404 Media ☛ Open Source Genetic Database Shuts Down to Protect Users From 'Authoritarian Governments'

      The creator of an open source genetic database is shutting it down and deleting all of its data because he has come to believe that its existence is dangerous with “a rise in far-right and other authoritarian governments” in the United States and elsewhere.

    • The Verge ☛ Microsoft expands AI features across Intel and AMD-powered Copilot Plus PCs

      Microsoft first started testing Live Captions on Intel and AMD devices last December, and it’s now available through the latest Windows 11 update. The update also includes Cocreator, an AI tool in Paint that creates an image based on a text description and what you’re currently drawing. On top of that, Microsoft is also expanding access to its AI image editor and generator in the Photos app.

    • EFF ☛ Announcing EFF’s New Exhibit on Border Surveillance and Accompanying Events

      The exhibition on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay will run from April 2, 2025 through May 28, 2025. We would especially like to thank the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation and Angel Island State Park for their collaboration. You can learn more about the exhibit’s hours of operation and how to visit it here.

    • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Data privacy experts call DOGE [sic] actions 'alarming'

      In the nine weeks since its formation, DOGE [sic] has been able to access sensitive information from the Treasury Department payment system, information about the headcount and budget of an intelligence agency and Americans’ Social Security numbers, health information and other demographic data. Musk and department staffers are also using artificial intelligence in their analysis of department cuts.

  • Confidentiality

    • Vox ☛ The Supreme Court is about to decide if Trump can strip immigrants of due process

      In mid-March, President Donald Trump invoked an almost-never-used federal law, claiming that it gives him the power to deport many immigrants at will with minimal or no legal process to determine if these deportations are lawful. The text of that statute, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, does not give presidents the power Trump claims.

    • Osservatorio Nessuno ☛ 5x1000 Donation Campaign: Fiscal Year 2024 - Osservatorio Nessuno

      In short, we’re very close to becoming a full-fledged network operator.

    • Heise ☛ After Trump's decree: fight for US funding for Tor, F-Droid and Let's Encrypt

      The Open Technology Fund (OTF) has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in Washington D.C. against the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and the Office of Management and Budget. In its lawsuit, the OTF is seeking a preliminary injunction to have the USAGM release the withheld funding. US President Donald Trump had previously issued a decree largely restricting the USAGM under the current legal situation. The OTF uses its funds to support the certification authority Let's Encrypt and the anonymization network Tor, among others.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ British WWII code-breaker 'Betty' Webb dies aged 101

    Charlotte "Betty" Webb worked at Bletchley Park, the famous British code-breaking center just north of London, where she would sort and index Nazi communications which had been intercepted and deciphered.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Eritrea's conflicts also being fought out in Germany

    Security authorities have classified the German branch of Brigade N'Hamedu as a terrorist organization, and believe members of the group organized violent attacks at various Eritrean festivals in Germany in 2022 and 2023. In recent years, exiled Eritreans are also thought to have been responsible for massive outbreaks of violence in the Netherlands and Sweden.

    According to the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, the Brigade N'Hamedu is "an internationally networked group whose stated goal is to overthrow the government in Eritrea."

    "Some members" also consider "violence against German state institutions and representatives of state power" to be "legitimate."

  • USMC ☛ How the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal escalated into an all-out slugfest

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ The WWI aviators who gave their lives to help the ‘Lost Battalion’

    Only four airmen were awarded the Medal of Honor during the First World War, with two aviators, 1st Lt. Harold E. Goettler and 2nd Lt. Erwin R. Bleckley, earning the honor during one of the most dramatic battles fought within the Argonne Campaign: that involving the “Lost Battalion.”

  • The Record ☛ Exclusive: Gen. Paul Nakasone says China is now our biggest cyber threat

    But this time, more than a year out of the job, he told us we could ask him anything. So we did. About China. About AI. And about what the current Trump administration might mean for America’s digital defenses.

    The interview took place before the Atlantic magazine published its article about being included in a Signal chat with national security officials who were discussing military operations in Yemen.

    The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

  • Wired ☛ Federal Judge Allows DOGE [sic] to Take Over $500 Million Office Building for Free

    The building, with an estimated value of $500 million, has become the latest focal point in a weeks-long standoff between former institute board and staff and members of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. On March 14, the Trump administration fired the USIP’s 10 voting board members. When USIP staffers barred DOGE [sic] employees from entering their headquarters in Washington, DC, the DOGE [sic] team returned a few days later with a physical key they had gotten from a former security contractor.

  • LRT ☛ Finland to quit Ottawa Convention, Vilnius welcomes ‘regional solution’

    On Tuesday, Finland decided to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention, which was welcomed by Vilnius.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Elon Musk threatens ‘generals’ who he claims are ‘paying’ for Tesla protests after shelling out millions for Wisconsin election

    The world’s wealthiest man and his allies have spent more than $20 million to boost a conservative judge’s campaign in a race that could determine the ideological balance of the state’s highest court, among the first high-stakes elections during Donald Trump’s presidency.

  • Axios ☛ Democrats, nonprofits sue Trump over elections executive order

    They argue in the suit that names the president and multiple government departments and officials that Trump supporters would also likely be impacted by the effort, which they said would "make it harder to register to vote, to cast a ballot, and to administer fair elections."

  • RFERL ☛ Germany's Baerbock Warns Of Putin Stalling Tactics During Kyiv Visit

    "He is feigning a willingness to negotiate, but not deviating an inch from his goals," she said.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ US must see through Russian 'stalling tactics,' Germany's Baerbock says

    "At the upcoming meeting of NATO foreign ministers, we will make it clear to the American side that we should not engage with Putin's stalling tactics," she said in a statement after arriving in Kyiv for a visit.

  • Techdirt ☛ Lawyers Last Chance To Pick Which Side Of History They Want To Be On

    Here’s what we know so far about fighting back: it works. When Perkins Coie challenged these orders a few weeks ago, they got their TRO. When Jenner & Block and WilmerHale followed suit, they got theirs too. Three for three. The pattern is clear: when law firms actually defend the Constitution, courts still protect it.

    Which makes the capitulation of some firms even more puzzling. They’re not just choosing the path of least resistance — they’re choosing a path that demonstrably leads nowhere good.

    Basically: if you challenge these orders, you’re likely to win relief, and fast.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ This New Book Reveals the Daredevil Lives of Four Italian Women Who Stood Up to Hitler and Mussolini

    By delivering newspapers, munitions and secret messages to resistance groups, among many other incredible tasks, the brave fighters strove for a freer world

  • The Register UK ☛ Student pleads guilty to smuggling software out of GCHQ

    Hasaan Arshad, 25, speaking at the Old Bailey in London, admitted that on August 24, 2022, he took his phone into a highly secure area of GCHQ, the UK's intelligence and security branch, and downloaded top secret information – including some staff names – then returned home and transferred it to a hard drive connected to his PC.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ As TikTok ban looms, Substack launches short video content

    As the deadline for the TikTok sale approaches, the San Francisco-based publishing platform Substack hopes to capitalize on the loss by releasing a short video feature in its app.

  • Wired ☛ DOGE [sic] Is Trying to Gift Itself a $500 Million Building, Court Filings Show

    Former USIP officials have since filed a lawsuit against Jackson, DOGE [sic], Donald Trump, and other members of the Trump administration, seeking an immediate intervention “to stop Defendants from completing the unlawful dismantling of the Institute,” according to the complaint. While US district judge Beryl Howell declined the USIP request for a temporary restraining order that would reinstate the institute’s board on March 19, she sharply criticized DOGE [sic]’s conquest in court.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ “I’d like to see TikTok remain alive.” President Trump expects a TikTok deal to save the app from going dark (again) on April 5

    During an interview aboard Air Force One, Trump indicated that the app had several interested buyers. A law passed in 2024 required the short-form video app to sell to an owner outside of China by January 19 or face a ban for the 170 million users in the US. An executive order signed on January 20 gave the company until April 5 to meet those requirements.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Real Cost Of DOGE [sic]: Musk’s Government Cuts Creating Massive New Expenses

    The results are exactly what you’d expect when someone treats government operations like an ExTwitter poll: lots of dramatic announcements, very little actual improvement, and some spectacularly costly fuckups.

    Rather than trying to understand the complex mechanisms of government operations, Musk’s DOGE [sic] crew has taken a slash-and-burn approach that’s clearly designed more for headlines and memes, than anything around actually improving the government.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Musk Is Still Paying for Political Influence

    Until about a decade ago, dark money was the most apt phrase to discuss a range of shady, financially motivated political tactics. But Musk is carrying out his plans in broad daylight. His bold flouting of norms is a point of pride for him, not a secret. His PAC ran similar lotteries in swing states, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, last year, and so far, state courts have yet to rule that he’s breaking election law. And in Wisconsin’s case, by helping mold the court, he also seems to be ensuring his own future success. As CNN noted, Musk’s beleaguered electric-vehicle company Tesla happens to be fighting a Wisconsin law that would keep car manufacturers from running company-owned dealerships in the state.

  • New York Times ☛ As Bangladesh Reinvents Itself, Islamist Hard-Liners See an Opening

    As Bangladesh tries to rebuild its democracy and chart a new future for its 175 million people, a streak of Islamist extremism that had long lurked beneath the country’s secular facade is bubbling to the surface.

    In interviews, representatives of several Islamist parties and organizations — some of which had previously been banned — made clear that they were working to push Bangladesh in a more fundamentalist direction, a shift that has been little noticed outside the country.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • American Oversight ☛ Our Lawsuit Prompted a New Policy from DOGE [sic] — But Major Concerns Remain About the Administration's Preservation of Government Records - American Oversight

    Our lawsuit argues that DOGE [sic] is an agency subject to FOIA and the Federal Records Act (FRA). The March 25 guidance claims DOGE [sic] is “subject to certain records retention obligations under the Presidential Records Act (PRA),” echoing claims DOGE [sic] made to us last month, just two days after a federal judge had ruled DOGE [sic] is likely subject to FOIA. This posture means DOGE [sic]’s records are in danger of being deleted or destroyed, leading American Oversight to file a motion seeking a court order to preserve DOGE [sic] records potentially responsive to the FOIA requests at issue in our lawsuit.

  • Techdirt ☛ Sorry, You Don’t Get To Declare ‘Case Closed’ On War Crime Planning Over Signal

    The contrast is striking. Clinton’s email server triggered multiple congressional investigations, FBI probes, and years of lawsuits. Yet when it comes to senior officials casually discussing military targeting plans over a consumer messaging app, we’re told there’s nothing more to see here.

    And this isn’t just about partisan hypocrisy from the “lock her up” crowd, though that’s certainly on display. This is about national security officials casually planning military operations over a consumer messaging app — operations that may constitute war crimes in their targeting of civilian objects. The only reason we even know about this massive security breach is their stunning incompetence in adding Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to their illegal chat group.

  • Axios ☛ Democrats urge Signal investigation: White House says case "closed"

    Why it matters: There have been growing calls from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for an investigation into the Signal scandal, with Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee the latest to call for an independent probe in a letter Monday to director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ April Fool's Day: Why the press is now avoiding pranks

    Today, with news going viral via social media, there's the risk of jokes being mistaken for fact and making global headlines, only to later backfire on a media already accused of proliferating fake news.

    For instance, Futurism.com posted an article in 2017 with the headline "Pluto Has Been Officially Reclassified As A Planet!" and credited the status change to the International Astronomical Union. Despite being an April Fool's joke, this "news" was carried by other websites without any fact-checking.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Xiaofeng Wang Disappears After FBI Raids On His Homes

    Xiaofeng Wang, a well-respected computer scientist and professor at Indiana University, has suddenly vanished along with his wife, Nianli Ma. The couple’s disappearance has raised a multitude of questions after their profiles were removed from the university’s website and their homes were raided by the FBI.

    Wang, a prominent figure in the field of cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity, had a distinguished career spanning over two decades. As a professor at Indiana University’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, he held academic and research roles, including serving as associate dean for research.

  • The Register UK ☛ Indiana security prof and wife vanish after FBI raid

    On Friday, the FBI with help from the cops searched two properties in Bloomington and Carmel, Indiana, belonging to Xiaofeng Wang, a professor at the Indiana Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering - who's been with the American university for more than 20 years - and Nianli Ma, a lead library systems analyst and programmer also at the university.

    The university has removed the professor's profile from its website, while the Indiana Daily Student reports Wang was axed the same day the Feds swooped. It's said the college learned the professor had taken a job at a university in Singapore, leading to the boffin's termination by his US employer. Ma's university profile has also vanished.

  • Gannett ☛ FBI department homeland security agents search house in Bloomington IN

    Monroe County property records list the homeowners as Xiaofeng Wang and Nianli Ma. Wang is listed as computer science professor and Director of the Center for Security and Privacy in Informatics, Computing, and Engineering (SPICE) at Indiana University in Bloomington.

  • The Bloomingtonian ☛ Federal Agents Conduct Operation at Home on Xavier Court Friday in Bloomington

    A reader tip led The Bloomingtonian to the scene, where at least nine unmarked vehicles—mostly black or gray sedans, minivans, and SUVs—were observed. All vehicles visible had license plates registered in Marion County (code 49), and there were no obvious markings identifying them as belonging to a specific agency such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

  • Wired ☛ Cybersecurity Professor Mysteriously Disappears as FBI Raids His Homes

    In recent weeks, Wang's email account, phone number, and profile page at the Luddy School were quietly erased by his employer. Over the same time, Indiana University also removed a profile for his wife, Nianli Ma, who was listed as a lead systems analyst and programmer at the university's Library Technologies division.

• Environment

  • YLE ☛ Helsinki's energy firm says goodbye to coal as it shuts down the Salmisaari power, heating plant

    The company said the closure will cut the firm's carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent this year, compared to 2024, and will reduce the City of Helsinki's carbon emissions by 30 percent.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Research: Top Scientists Issue Urgent Warning on Fossil Fuels

    The review highlights that fossil fuels account for about 90% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, heating the climate, acidifying oceans, and fueling unprecedented climate disasters. Air pollution from fossil fuel combustion is responsible for millions of premature deaths worldwide and hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in the United States every year. The climate crisis causes additional deaths and physical and mental health harms from escalating climate disasters, disease transmission, food insecurity, and displacement of people.

  • EcoWatch ☛ ‘Fossil Fuels Are Killing Us’: Major Study Details How Fossil Fuels Are Driving Climate, Health and Biodiversity Crises

    “The science can’t be any clearer that fossil fuels are killing us,” said lead author of the report Shaye Wolf, the Center for Biological Diversity’s climate science director, in the press release. “Oil, gas and coal will continue to condemn us to more deaths, wildlife extinctions and extreme weather disasters unless we make dirty fossil fuels a thing of the past. Clean, renewable energy is here, it’s affordable, and it will save millions of lives and trillions of dollars once we make it the centerpiece of our economy.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • University of Michigan ☛ U-M engineers addressing EV battery shortcomings in cold weather

      Lithium-ion EV batteries made this way can charge 500% faster at temperatures as low as 14 F (-10 C). The structure and coating demonstrated by the team prevented the formation of performance-hindering lithium plating on the battery’s electrodes. As a result, batteries with these modifications keep 97% of their capacity even after being fast-charged 100 times at very cold temperatures.

    • YLE ☛ Swedish firm OX2 to spend €700m on two wind farms in Finland

      Swedish energy development firm OX2 has announced plans to construct onshore wind farms with a total capacity of 472 megawatts (MW) in South and Central Ostrobothnia, Finland.

    • Futurism ☛ It's Never Been More Over For Tesla

      BYD is the Shenzhen-based EV company quickly replacing Tesla as the world's foremost seller of electric and hybrid vehicles. It just released its earnings results for the first quarter of 2025, showing sales up 58 percent sold in the same period of 2024, from around 400,000 vehicle sales to nearly a million.

    • The Register UK ☛ Arm targets 50 percent of datacenter CPUs this year

      The Brit chip designer has long touted the AI credentials of chips based on its architecture and is gradually gaining ground in the server market, but Arm's infrastructure chief, Mohamed Awad, now claims that he expects its share of the global market for datacenter processors to surge to 50 percent by the end of the year.

      In an interview with Reuters, Awad claimed that Arm's technology typically offers lower power consumption than processors made by rivals such as Intel and AMD. As a result, it was argued, Arm-based products have become increasingly popular even with the big cloud computing companies, which are concerned about the power drain of their massive bit barns.

    • Heliomass ☛ Station Stories - Barrington

      I’m really confused by all this. Let’s just rate this station on the Tier List before any other weird things happen around here.

    • The Conversation ☛ How a new wave of fighter jets could transform aerial combat

      As with previous generations, the sixth will incorporate major advances in aircraft design, onboard electronics (avionics) and weapon systems.

    • The Register UK ☛ Nuclear power no panacea for AI's growing thirst for energy

      Atomic energy is becoming the preferred solution to address the projected bump in megawatts needed to charge AI in the future, but it simply won't come soon enough in many cases.

      Much has been written about infrastructure and the electricity required to keep feeding the AI beast. Recent research from Goldman Sachs estimated that datacenter energy use will more than double by the end of the decade – just five years away.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Scotsman ☛ 'Extinction alarm' as UK butterfly species in long-term decline after numbers collapse

      Wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation has sounded the alarm following the release of data from its Big Butterfly Count, which showed the average number of butterflies spotted per count had fallen to just seven - a drop of nearly 50 per cent from last year’s average of 12.

    • The Conversation ☛ Dogs see their world through smell – and scientists are starting to translate it like never before

      Dogs are primed to detect smells. The average dog’s nose has more than 10 million scent receptors in their nose, compared to humans, who only have about 6 million.

    • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Elephant Herd Crosses Into Zambia, Prompting Caution From Wildlife Officials

      A herd of more than 150 elephants, including several juveniles, has crossed into Zambia’s Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park from neighboring Zimbabwe, prompting a warning from wildlife officials about the animals’ heightened protective instincts.

• Finance

  • Michael Lynch ☛ My Book's Pre-Sale Just Barely Succeeded

    I never expected such a dramatic end to the pre-sale. The project came within a hair of failing, and the only thing that saved it was Hacker News picking up that longshot sample chapter.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Matt Birchler ☛ You have got to be kidding me

    It's honestly exhausting to have spent the last few decades having Republicans claim that all efforts from those on the left to organize are funded by George Soros (were you guys getting paid? I still haven't gotten a check), but when their guy does it out in the open they're all chill with it.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Gets Booed Right to His Face

    Not long after, people began pointing out that what Musk was suggesting — that Soros and his ilk were paying people to protest — is what the Tesla and SpaceX owner was actually doing in Wisconsin by paying $1 million to a lucky petition signer during the state's court elections.

    "Every accusation," tweeted political personality Mehdi Hassan, "is a confession."

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Tech billionaires need a break from their reality distortion fields

    The book chimed with what I previously heard from former Meta executives about the company’s hypocrisy, its obsessive drive for growth and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s fixation on developing a fanbase. But Wynn-Williams’ vantage point in his inner orbit and that of and former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, detailing the power they wielded, also highlighted a dire need for limits to some tech leadership tenures.

  • The Register UK ☛ CISPE pumps €1 million of Microsoft's money into Fulcrum

    According to CISPE, the project marks "a significant step towards European cloud sovereignty" and is designed to "enable European cloud providers to pool and federate their infrastructures, offering a scalable and competitive alternative to foreign-controlled hyperscale cloud providers."

  • Wired ☛ Yuval Noah Harari: ‘How Do We Share the Planet With This New Superintelligence?’

    A rising trend of techno-fascism driven by populism and artificial intelligence has been visible since the US presidential election in November. Nexus, which was published just a few months earlier, is a timely explainer of the potential consequences of AI on democracy and totalitarianism. In the book, Harari does not just sound the alarm on singularity—the hypothetical future point at which technology, particularly AI, moves beyond human control and advances irreversibly on its own—but also on AI’s foreignness.

  • Digital Music News ☛ OpenAI Announces $40B Funding Round At $300B Valuation [Ed: Valuation which is fraudulent]

    As for SoftBank’s debt-bankrolled contribution, the Stargate stakeholder is expected to forward $10 billion worth of borrowed capital to OpenAI in April; assuming OpenAI realizes its privatization goal, the remaining $30 billion is tentatively set to arrive before early 2026.

  • CNBC ☛ OpenAI closes $40 billion funding round, record for private tech deal

    The $40 billion financing values the ChatGPT maker at $300 billion, including the fresh capital. It's nearly three times the amount previously raised by a private tech company, according to PitchBook.

  • The Verge ☛ OpenAI just raised another $40 billion funding round | The Verge

    OpenAI is set to receive $10 billion up front (SoftBank will invest $7.5 billion along with $2.5 billion “from an investor syndicate,“ according to Bloomberg). The remaining $30 billion is slated to arrive by year’s end, CNBC reported — but only if it officially converts into a for-profit company by then. If not, it reportedly stands to lose a quarter of the deal.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Atlantic Council ☛ DeepSeek shows the US and EU the costs of failing to govern AI

      However, according to reports, R1 appears to censor and withhold information from users. Thus, democracies not only risk the loss of the AI technological battle; they also risk falling behind in the race to govern AI and could fail to ensure that democratic AI proliferates more widely than systems championed by authoritarians.

      Therefore, the United States must work with its democratic allies, particularly the European Union (EU), to set global standards for open-source AI. Both powers should leverage existing legislative tools to initiate an open-source governance framework. Such an effort would require officially adopting a definition of open-source AI (such as OSI’s) to increase governance effectiveness. After that, the United States and EU should accelerate efforts to ensure democratic values are embedded in open-source AI models, paving the way for an AI future that is more open, transparent, and empowering.

    • RTL ☛ Newsmax shares surge more than 2,000% in days after IPO

      The right-wing media company has long been a cheerleader for US President Donald Trump, and is now among the most-watched cable news channels in the United States.

    • [Old] Market Watch ☛ Media misinformation watchdog says right-wing channel Newsmax frequently traffics in Jan. 6 falsehoods - MarketWatch

      Newsmax has broadcast at least 40 false claims or conspiracy theories about the attack since June, when a House committee began televising its evidence about the role former President Donald Trump and his allies played in the day’s events, according to NewsGuard, a tech firm that monitors misinformation and rates the reliability of media outlets.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • US News And World Report ☛ Naval Academy Removes Nearly 400 Books From Library in New DEI Purge Ordered by Hegseth's Office

    Academy officials were told to review the library late last week, and an initial search had identified about 900 books for a closer look. They decided on nearly 400 to remove and began doing so Monday, finishing before Hegseth arrived for a visit Tuesday that had already been planned and was not connected to the library purge, officials said. A list of the books has not yet been made available.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Man who designed James Dolan shirt banned from Madison Square Garden venues

    Miller said he suspected that Madison Square Garden Entertainment linked him to that event and added social media photos of him to its facial recognition technology, which has a history of spotting people the company doesn’t want in its venues.

    “I found it a little comical that, you know, this shirt that I designed many, many years ago was so irritating, then or now, that I was added to a ban,” Miller, 44, told The Washington Post.

  • The Nation ☛ Fossil Fuel Companies Are Silencing Us All

    Free speech and civil liberty organizations have been sounding the alarm for months about how this decision could chill speech in the United States for everyone. The jury’s verdict, which awarded damages far beyond what Energy Transfer sought, sends an unequivocal message: Public protest can result in crushing financial consequences.

    The implications for peaceful civil disobedience are profound.

    The decision also prompts the question: Who can a corporation silence? Virtually everyone, apparently. In the 21st century, censorship is not just a governmental threat—it’s a corporate threat. And it’s not a left-wing or right-wing crisis—it’s a planetary crisis.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • RFERL ☛ EU Lawmakers Debate Support For RFE/RL Amid US Funding Freeze

    European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos has emphasized the “need to protect Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL),” warning that "if we don’t, we hand a gift to autocrats the world over."

  • RTL ☛ Detained on terrorism charges: Swedish journalist jailed in Turkey kept 'isolated': employer

    It published a photo taken by the lawyer of a piece of paper on which Medin had written: "Journalism is not a crime, in any country."

    Medin was arrested last Thursday when he arrived in Turkey to cover massive street protests sparked by the detention and jailing of Istanbul's opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu -- the main political rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

  • CPJ ☛ Georgia set to pass restrictive broadcast bills

    “Together with a revamped ‘foreign agent’ law nearing enactment, repressive amendments to Georgia’s broadcast law look tailor-made to muzzle the country’s vibrant and defiant independent press,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s programs coordinator. “Georgian authorities should withdraw these restrictive media laws and reverse their deepening press freedom crackdown.”

  • CPJ ☛ Dear Chairman Risch, Mast, Grassley and Jordan and Ranking Members Shaheen, Meeks, Durbin and Raskin: [PDF]

    We, the undersigned, are writing to bring to your urgent attention the perilous plight of journalists who have worked for the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM)-funded entities, such as Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). These journalists, both in the United States and abroad, are at grave risk of harassment, threats, and even imprisonment due to their association with these independent media outlets, and we are writing for your assistance to ensure they are protected

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ, partners urge Congress to protect USAGM-affiliated journalists from deportation

    USAGM-affiliated journalists face serious threats, imprisonment, and persecution in their home countries due to their reporting on politically sensitive issues. The situation has been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s move to dismantle USAGM and by delays in immigration processing. The letter calls on Congress to press the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to prevent deportations and to secure the legal status of these journalists. Protecting them, the letter emphasizes, is a moral obligation and a vital stand for press freedom and democratic values.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Photographer who took iconic Trump assassination attempt photo opts to FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! AP White House ban | Digital Camera World

    CNN reported that the AP photographer testified on March 28 as part of the news outlet’s legal challenge, quoting Vucci as stating: “It’s hurting us big time (...) We’re basically dead in the water on major news stories.”

  • CNN ☛ AP photographer testifies on White House’s ban: ‘We’re basically dead in the water on major news stories’

    Pressed by Tobin on what he knows about how the White House is now choosing which photographers can now attend certain White House events, Vucci said he was “clueless.”

    “There’s no rhyme or reason,” he said. “I don’t think anyone knows.”

  • The Walrus ☛ Journalism’s Reinvention Is Happening—Just Not Where You Think

    When more federal cutbacks came ($127 million in 1996, with up to 2,500 jobs lost shortly after), they hit radio and local newsrooms just as hard as network TV. But the CBC survived, like a turtle flipped right side up. The death-star threat fizzled once the internet evolved. In 1993, CBC News began the long, bureaucratic march to “digital first,” another buzz phrase that signalled old media, like radio and television, were on their way out. As things stand, the CBC plans to be fully digital in twenty years, if it survives that long under an expected Conservative government.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Normalization Of Autocracy

    Let’s be absolutely clear about what happened: A comedian called members of an administration implementing policies that deport people to face torture without due process “murderers” who aren’t “human beings.” The administration demanded she be removed. And instead of defending the principle of free expression—supposedly the cornerstone value of a press organization—the WHCA unanimously backed down.

  • JURIST ☛ US federal judge orders temporary halt to Voice of America shutdown

    USAGM is a federally funded, independent executive agency created by Congress that oversees the broadcast networks VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Radio Free Asia (RFA). First broadcast in 1942, VOA was established to combat Nazi propaganda and has since reached audiences worldwide in 50 different languages. VOA remains an independent news source, free from government interference under the 1994 US Broadcasting Act.

  • CPJ ☛ Swedish journalist imprisoned in Turkey; accused of insulting president, terrorism

    Medin, a reporter for the Swedish newspaper Dagens ETC, was immediately taken into police custody upon his arrival in Istanbul to cover civil unrest amid the government’s crackdown on the city’s opposition municipalities.

  • JURIST ☛ Trump defunding global media leaves human rights violations unchecked: Amnesty International

    Amnesty also asserted that authoritarian regimes in Asia have celebrated RFA’s impending closure. The organization cited a statement from a Chinese state-run newspaper that claimed that the RFA and its counterpart Voice of America (VOA) were being “discarded by its own government like a dirty rag.” Additionally, a Cambodian politician said the order was a “big contribution to eliminating fake news.”

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Journalists consider briefing room sit-in as Trump clashes with White House press corps

    The Trump administration’s proposal to take over the seating arrangement within the White House press briefing room has rattled the journalists who cover the president and left them mulling how exactly to push back.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Newspapers, stations turning to 'citizen journalists' to help fill reporting void

    Reporters attended multiple other governmental meetings and community gatherings, said Mason, who worked as a news videographer at the station in the 1980s.

    But those days are gone, she said, with her old newsroom now about one-third the size.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Mike Brock ☛ An Administrative Error

    When officials claim they cannot correct this “error” because it would interfere with “a unified course of conduct for the United States' foreign affairs,” that is not statecraft. It is stagecraft—the elevation of abstract policy aesthetics over concrete human consequences.

    When our vice president broadcasts demonstrable falsehoods about a man's criminal history and legal status, that is not communication. It is performance—playing to an audience that values theatrical cruelty over factual accuracy.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Lawless Evil Of Denying Due Process

    The U.S. government just demonstrated exactly why due process matters. In what should be a shocking admission, the Trump administration revealed in court that it had made a bit of an oopsie (they call it an “administrative error”) — one that resulted in trafficking a Maryland father with protected legal status to a Salvadoran prison. Their response to this horrific mistake? Not contrition or attempts to fix it, but rather an argument that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction to help bring him back.

    This is what happens when you replace due process with authoritarian expediency. And it’s exactly what the MAGA movement is deliberately pushing for, as evidenced by Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan, who sneered at the very concept of due process during an ABC interview last week: [...]

  • JURIST ☛ US judge rules Pennsylvania rejecting undated mail-in ballots violated First Amendment

    US District Court Judge Susan Paradise Baxter ruled Monday that Pennsylvania must count undated or misdated mail-in ballots, finding that rejecting such ballots violated the First Amendment.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Norwegian Route Out of Tradwife Hell

    In 1878, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen described his country as “an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine from a masculine point of view.” Today Norway is tied with Finland for second place in the Global Gender Gap Index, surpassed only by Iceland. The index measures economic participation, educational opportunity, political representation, and health and survival. Norway is particularly strong on women’s employment — and on men’s corresponding helpfulness in the home. It has one of the highest rates of female workforce participation in the world and gets top marks for how much unpaid household labor men perform.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Cell Phone OPSEC for Border Crossings - Schneier on Security

    We need answers for both iPhones and Android phones. And it’s not just the US; the world is going to become a more dangerous place to oppose state power.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ U.S. Indigenous Nations Walk Away from Talks on Line 5 Pipeline

    The tribal nations have been involved with the permitting process since 2020, when Enbridge applied to build the underground tunnel for the pipeline, but have grown increasingly dissatisfied with negotiations they say ignored tribal expertise, input, and concerns, and undermined treaty rights.

  • EFF ☛ EFF Urges Third Circuit to Join the Legal Chorus: No One Owns the Law

    The Third Circuit should affirm the ruling, preferably on the alternative ground that standards incorporated into law are necessarily promoted to the public domain. The [Internet] has democratized access to law, making it easier than ever for the public —from journalists to organizers to safety professionals to ordinary concerned citizens —to understand, comment on, and share the myriad regulations that bind us. That work is particularly essential where those regulations are crafted by private parties and made mandatory by regulators with limited public oversight and increasingly limited staffing. Copyright law should not be read to impede it.

  • Techdirt ☛ Indiana Court: Finding Drugs On One Person Means Everyone On A Bus Can Be Searched

    So, Deputy Wallace started dicking around, running the license and warrant check and “readying his warning book.” Then he called another deputy to the scene for supposed “officer safety reasons.” Completely not coincidentally, the backup he called for was a K-9 unit featuring Deputy John Samuelson and his drug dog, Bosco.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Washington Post ☛ Rural [Internet] program on hold as Musk’s satellites get new consideration

    Now Disher is worried that a long-promised push for rural access will be upended, leaving Louisianans desperate for [Internet] waiting.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Benchmarks from M2 Pro to M4 Pro

    And while I don't have a recording of the exact tests that generated the 6x and 11x results in the charts above, I did compare doing 100 names which give you an idea of the performance gap I was seeing. The M2 Pro seemed to get off to a decent start, but it quickly ran into some bottleneck that brought it to a crawl.

  • Six Colors ☛ My unsuccessful journey into Netflix’s ad tier

    This is a big deal because I’ve been a Netflix subscriber since the very beginning—back when it was all DVDs and no streaming. I checked in with my kids because I was worried Netflix was more popular with the youths than with people like me. But even my kids didn’t care and thought there wasn’t much to watch on Netflix.

    So, I canceled it, figuring I’d pick it back up again on a case-by-case basis. “When there’s something to watch, I’ll resubscribe for a month, watch what I want, and then cancel again,” I thought.

  • Austin Kleon ☛ A Satisfied Mind - Austin Kleon

    Here’s another monthly mixtape made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I taped over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I taped over the music and then I taped over the artwork.

  • India Times ☛ Movie theatres are never coming back: Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos

    Sarandos pointed out that the theatrical box office is down 40-50% from pre-COVID levels and 8% lower this year. “...so the trend is not reversing. You’ve gotta look at that and say, ‘What is the consumer trying to tell you?’”

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Register UK ☛ How have 50 years of Microsoft been for you?

  There was a time when Microsoft's wares were nearly impossible to avoid. MS-DOS and then Windows were ubiquitous. Although the megacorp's strategy with Windows Mobile and Windows Phone ceded the smartphone market to rivals, Microsoft still dominates the enterprise with its productivity suite despite some spirited efforts from Google and others.

  Selecting milestones and millstones for the Redmond-based biz is tricky since there are so many. The operating systems would have to take prominence, as well as the productivity applications. Also worth noting are the programming languages. Although Microsoft did not invent BASIC, its particular dialect proved popular.

• JURIST ☛ France antitrust watchdog fines Apple $162M for violating privacy laws

  The French competition regulator, Autorité de la Concurrence, fined Apple on Monday $162 million over its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) tool. The regulator found that the ATT framework was unnecessarily complex and biased, violating French and EU privacy laws.

• Nick Heer ☛ French Competition Authority Fines Apple Over App Tracking Transparency – Pixel Envy

  They also seemed to disagree with how Apple defines tracking. German regulators are also interested in what amounts to self-preferencing, even if that is not Apple’s intent. The authority has not yet published the text of the decision, which will hopefully answer many of the questions I have.

• [Old] Erik Wintr ☛ SSO, yet another way of Google bullying users into using Chrome

  My work requires me to do things on the Google Cloud Platform. So this morning I made some coffee, booted my computer and started thinking about the things I wanted accomplish there today. First step: log into the Google Cloud Console. I let my password manager fill in the details and...

• Trademarks

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Aylo Uses Cybersquatting Complaint to Take Out Pirate Site Domains

    In a rare legal move, Aylo subsidiary Licensing IP used a cybersquatting lawsuit to take out pirate websites infringing on its trademarks. The 'in rem' approach allowed the court to order the direct transfer of domains including mydirtyhobby.to without requiring personal jurisdiction over the site operators. The ruling, issued last week, requires the .to registry to transfer the trademark-infringing domains.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Premier League Subpoena Requires Cloudflare to Unmask Streaming Pirates

    Piracy poses a major threat to the Premier League's broadcast rights, prompting it to take continued action against rogue streaming sites. Hoping to unmask the anonymous operators behind dozens of pirate sites, the league has obtained a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare in the United States. While Cloudflare is expected to comply, the usability of the information it holds remains uncertain.

  • Sean Monahan ☛ the return of mass memes et cetera

    I’m not going to give a full rundown of the recent spate of ChatGPT-generated Studio Ghibli memes. Max does an excellent and thorough job of it at the link and avoids the hysteria that colors the digital debate surrounding AI and art. No ChatGPT has not 'democratized' art. And no ChatGPT is not making artists 'obsolescent.'

  • Digital Music News ☛ Despite Combining With xAI, X Still Faces Music Publishers Suit

    Elon Musk unveiled the purchase in a post on the relevant social service. “The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt),” he noted, emphasizing as well X’s “more than 600M active users” and the combined entity’s “immense potential.”

  • Techdirt ☛ Mariah Carey Defeats Ridiculous Copyright Suit Over ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’

    The $20 million copyright suit appeared destined for failure several months ago, when the judge signaled publicly that she was leaning Carey’s way. The only real question appeared to be whether Stone was going to be forced to pay Carey’s legal fees for wasting her time with this. In her summary judgment ruling, the judge presiding over the case both finds in Carey’s favor and, indeed, orders Stone to pay her legal fees.