Leftovers

• Mike Brock ☛ There Are Only Twenty-Four Hours in a Day

  The center must be held—not because it is easy, but because it is ours to hold. And holding it begins with this recognition: there are twenty-four hours in a day, and how we allocate our attention within them may determine whether our republic survives this moment of peril.

• Michael Burkhardt ☛ What’s in a Name?

  Generally, yes. Michael was the most popular male baby name in the US from every year (except 1960) from 1954 to 1998. 4,350,425 of us were named Michael in the 100 years ending 2023. Because of that, I didn’t love being one of five or six Michaels all through grade school. But that wore off and I’ve come to inhabit the name comfortably.

• Austin Kleon ☛ I can’t stop printing - Austin Kleon

  I’m getting many “what are you going to do with all these prints?!?” questions… so that might be the subject of next week’s newsletter…

• David Rosenthal ☛ Cliff Lynch RIP

  Last Tuesday Cliff Lynch delivered an abbreviated version of his traditional closing summary and bon voyage to CNI's 2025 Spring Membership Meeting via Zoom from his sick-bed. Last Thursday night he died, still serving as Executive Director. CNI has posted In Memoriam: Clifford Lynch.

  Cliff impacted a wide range of areas. The best overview is Mike Ashenfelder's 2013 profile of Cliff Lynch in the Library of Congress' Digital Preservation Pioneer series, which starts: [...]

• [Old] LOC ☛ Digital Preservation Pioneer: Clifford Lynch | The Signal

  Clifford Lynch is widely regarded as an oracle in the culture of networked information. Lynch monitors the global information ecosystem for cultural trends and technological developments. He ponders their variables, interdependencies and influencing factors. He confers with colleagues and draws conclusions. Then he reports his observations through lectures, conference presentations and writings. People who know about Lynch pay close attention to what he has to say.

  Lynch is a soft-spoken man whose work, for more than thirty years, has had an impact — directly or indirectly — on the computer, information and library science communities.

• AJ Bourg ☛ Greenhouse!

  They’re enclosed, so even on windy days it’s nice to be outside (helps keep it a bit warmer too when the wind has a bite)

• Science

  • The Register UK ☛ Politicians protest proposed cuts to NASA science

    The proposed cuts to NASA's budget are drawing sharp criticism from US lawmakers, with one saying: "If you cut this budget, you cut into the heart of America's leadership when it comes to space exploration."

  • Wired ☛ Proposed NASA Budget Cuts ‘Would Decimate American Leadership in Space’

    The approximate 20 percent budget cut could force the closure of the Goddard Space Flight Center and would see projects such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope scrapped.

  • IBM

    • Jonathan Dowland ☛ [IBM's] Jonathan Dowland's Weblog: submitted [Ed: He worked for Red Hat (IBM) at the same time. Hard to see what a PhD, if he gets it, will get him inside IBM. IBM does not value "Expensive" staff. It looks for ways to REPLACE them.]

      Today I submitted my PhD thesis, 8 years since I started (give or take). Next step, Viva.

• Career/Education

  • Associated Press ☛ Canadian university teachers warned against traveling to the United States

    Reports of foreigners being sent to detention or processing centers for more than seven days, including Canadian Jasmine Mooney, a pair of German tourists, and a backpacker from Wales, have been making headlines since Trump took office in January.

  • CBC ☛ Canadian university teachers warned against travelling to the United States

    The Canadian Association of University Teachers says it released updated travel advice Tuesday due to the "political landscape" created by the Trump administration and reports of some Canadians encountering difficulties while crossing the border.

  • Mira Welner ☛ How I got a Job in March of 2025

    I want to preface this by saying that this is NOT a guide on how to get a job. This is a recounting of my own personal experience in the job market in 2025 as a recent (2022) computer science and engineering graduate. This is what happened to me, a white 24-year-old living in Pittsburgh, PA. If these are not your demographics, your mileage may vary. And honestly, even if those are your demographics, your mileage may still vary; the market is a fiasco right now.

  • Justin Searls ☛ The Best Programmers

    Matthias Endler wrote up a list of traits he sees in great developers, which I read because Jerod linked to it in Changelog's newsletter. In his blurb, Jerod called back to the conversation he had with yours truly on a recent podcast episode, which is also the first thing I thought of when I read the post.

    As lists go, these traits are all great things to look for in developers, even if a lot of it is advice you've seen repeated countless times before. This one on bugs stands out: [...]

  • Robert Birming ☛ The value of a firm "No"

    That is one of the advantages of getting older: I feel secure in declining things. It's a great feeling!

• Hardware

  • Desktop/Laptop

    • Russell Coker ☛ What Desktop PCs Need

      It seems to me that we haven’t had much change in the overall design of desktop PCs since floppy drives were removed, and modern PCs still have bays the size of 5.25″ floppy drives despite having nothing modern that can fit in such spaces other than DVD drives (which aren’t really modern) and carriers for 4*2.5″ drives both of which most people don’t use. We had the PC System Design Guide [1] which was last updated in 2001 which should have been updated more recently to address some of these issues, the thing that most people will find familiar in that standard is the colours for audio ports.

      [...]

      Here are some of the things that I think should be in a modern PC System Design Guide.

      [...]

      For restricting noise of PCs we have industrial relations legislation that seems to basically require that workers not be exposed to noise louder than a blender, so if a PC is quieter than that then it’s OK. For name brand PCs there are specs about how much noise is produced but there are usually caveats like “under typical load” or “with a typical feature set” that excuse them from liability if the noise is louder than expected. It doesn’t seem possible for someone to own a PC, determine that the noise from it is what is acceptable, and then buy another that is close to the same.

      We need regulations about this, and the EU seems the best jurisdiction for it as they cover the purchase of a lot of computer equipment that is also sold without change in other countries. The regulations need to also cover updates, for example I have a Dell T630 which is unreasonably loud and Dell support doesn’t have much incentive to be particularly helpful about it. BIOS updates routinely tweak things like fan speeds without the developers having an incentive to keep it as quiet as it was when it was sold.

    • Russell Coker ☛ Storage Trends 2025

      It’s been almost 15 months since I blogged about Storage Trends 2024 [1]. There hasn’t been much change in this time (in Australia at least – I’m not tracking prices in other countries). The change was so small I had to check how the Australian dollar has performed against other currencies to see if changes to currencies had countered changes to storage prices, but there has been little overall change when compared to the Chinese Yuan and the Australian dollar is only about 11% worse against the US dollar when compared to a year ago. Generally there’s a trend of computer parts decreasing in price by significantly more than 11% per annum.

      Small Storage

      The cheapest storage device from MSY now is a Patriot P210 128G SATA SSD for $19, cheaper than the $24 last year and the same price as the year before. So over the last 2 years there has been no change to the cheapest storage device on sale. It would almost never make sense to buy that as a 256G SATA SSD (also Patriot P210) is $25 and has twice the lifetime (120TBW vs 60TBW). There are also 256G NVMe devices for $29 and $30 which would be better options if the system has a NVMe socket built in.

      The cheapest 500G devices are $42.50 for a 512G SATA SSD and $45 for a 500G NVMe. Last year the prices were $33 for SATA and $36 for NVMe in that size so there’s been a significant increase in price there. The difference is enough that if someone was on a tight budget they might reasonably decide to use smaller storage than they might have used last year!

• Proprietary

  • India Times ☛ Google layoffs may hit these teams in India

  • The Register UK ☛ OneDrive clients for Windows, Mac still broken 10 months on

    OneDrive users on both OSes complained that their shared folders no longer appeared in their local OneDrive directories and had instead been replaced with .url files linking to OneDrive's web interface. The change effectively broke offline access and syncing, with users reporting the issue to Microsoft through community forums and support channels.

  • The Register UK ☛ Fresh Classic Mac OS and PowerPC apps in 2025

    The first Intel-based Mac was 19 years ago, but new versions of apps for both Classic Mac OS and PowerPC Mac OS X still occasionally appear, and we are here for it.

  • Wired ☛ China Secretly (and Weirdly) Admits It Hacked US Infrastructure

    In public and private meetings, Chinese officials are typically firm in their denials about any and all accusations of offensive hacking. This makes it all the more unusual that the Chinese delegation specifically confirmed that years of attacks on US water utilities, ports, and other targets are the result of the US's policy support of Taiwan. Security researchers refer to the collective activity as having been perpetrated by the actor “Volt Typhoon.”

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • International Business Times ☛ Tesla Ordered To Replace Faulty 'Self-Driving' Computers In 4 Million Cars Or Pay Up

      Tesla, the electric vehicle titan, faces a monumental challenge that could reshape its future. A recent ruling mandates the company to replace the 'self-driving' computers in approximately 4 million vehicles or compensate their owners, following admissions that the hardware falls short of promised autonomous capabilities.

      This development, reported on 14 April 2025, has sent ripples through the automotive world, raising questions about Tesla's ambitious vision.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ New GenAI Supply Chain Threat: Code Package Hallucinations

      “An adversary can exploit package hallucinations, especially if they are repeated, by publishing a package to an open-source repository with the same name as the hallucinated or fictitious package and containing some malicious code/functionality,” they said. “As other unsuspecting and trusting LLM users are subsequently recommended the same fictitious package in their generated code, they end up downloading the adversary-created malicious package, resulting in a successful compromise. This compromise can then spread through an entire codebase or software dependency chain, infecting any code that relies on the malicious package.”

    • arXiv ☛ We Have a Package for You! A Comprehensive Analysis of Package Hallucinations by Code Generating LLMs

      In this work, we focus on a specific type of hallucination during code generation called package hallucination. Package hallucination occurs when an LLM generates code that recommends or contains a reference to a package that does not actually exist. An adversary can exploit package hallucinations, especially if they are repeated, by publishing a package to an open-source repository with the same name as the hallucinated or fictitious package and containing some malicious code/functionality. As other unsuspecting and trusting LLM users are subsequently recommended the same fictitious package in their generated code, they end up downloading the adversary-created malicious package, resulting in a successful compromise. This compromise can then spread through an entire codebase or software dependency chain, infecting any code that relies on the malicious package. This is a variation of the classical package confusion attack that has been enabled by code-generating LLMs

    • Pivot to AI ☛ H&M’s ‘AI models’ campaign makes impossible claims

      H&M is making some big promises with this pitch. But is any of this … real? It’s certainly not plausible. Think for one moment about these claims.

      Fashion images — or any ad for a particular object — have to be accurate to the object. I cannot overstate how important this is. The clothes, the belt, the watch, have to be represented accurately. You can’t use whatever approximation the diffusion model thinks is a bit like the object.

    • Futurism ☛ Called Out for AI Slop, Andrew Cuomo Blames One-Armed Man

      The excuse also doesn't quite add up. There's nothing wrong with using dictation software, but why would that cause blatant spelling errors or a reference to ChatGPT? And why wasn't someone else reviewing the document before pushing it out? All told, it sounds a lot like a fictional explanation crafted by a political campaign to deter critics by throwing a man with a disability under the bus.

    • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post - The Open Access – AI Conundrum: Does Free to Read Mean Free to Train? - The Scholarly Kitchen

      When the Open Access (OA) movement gained momentum in the early 2000s, its proponents envisioned a world where research findings would be freely available to all readers — breaking down paywalls that limited knowledge dissemination and hindered scientific progress. By the 2010s, an increasing number of countries began to mandate open access publications, arguing that publicly funded research should be freely available to the public. The readers envisaged by proponents of OA were obviously human (academics as well as the wider public). While text mining had been considered as one potential application, they could not foresee the development of large language models (LLMs) which would begin to rapaciously ingest large amounts of text. OA literature has become particularly attractive for AI training precisely because it lacks the legal and technical barriers that might protect traditionally published content.

    • Quanta Magazine ☛ To Make Language Models Work Better, Researchers Sidestep Language

      Here’s how these models typically work. When a user queries an LLM, an algorithm breaks that input text into a sequence of tokens. The model then converts each token into a string of numbers called an embedding, fodder for the underlying mathematical machinery. An input of 10 tokens results in 10 embeddings, for example. The transformer then processes these embeddings through its various components, called layers. Each layer feeds its results into the next layer, gradually connecting each embedding to every other embedding. The final layer puts all this information together to generate one final set of embeddings. The last embedding in this sequence is called a hidden state — “hidden” because it’s not exposed to the outside world. This hidden state contains all the relevant information needed for the model to predict the most likely next token, or word, to follow the initial input sequence of tokens.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Slopsquatting - Schneier on Security

    • Hidde de Vries ☛ Is “ethical AI” an oxymoron? | hidde.blog

      It depends who you ask. But the current wave of generative AI has unpleasant side effects that are hard to ignore: large-scale copyright infringements, environmental impact and bias.

  • Social Control Media

    • Futurism ☛ Zuckerberg Encourages Theatergoers to Use Their Phones While Movie Is Playing

      Using chatbot technology that Meta refers to as "Movie Mate" — a new spin, perhaps, on Zuckerberg's cringey push to get his subordinates to refer to each other as "Meta Mates" back when he was all-in on virtual reality — fans will be able to talk to an AI version of the iconic robot.

    • Variety ☛ Meta Launching Second Screen Theater Tech With 'M3GAN' Rerelease

      The “M3GAN” screening will also allow fans to communicate with the evil doll herself via a M3GAN chatbot. Meta is launching its Movie Mate technology with the screening, allowing moviegoers to second screen during the film to access exclusive content, trivia and behind-the-scenes info in real-time.

    • The Atlantic ☛ How Social-Media Sites Can Fight Hate Without Censorship

      All of these ideas are free-speech friendly. They do not involve top-down censorship, but bottom-up user choice. Letting people police the content on their own pages and feeds is the natural next step for platforms that want to empower users rather than constantly surveil and censor them. Such features are also just common sense. No one has an inherent right to graffiti another person’s real-world home; they shouldn’t have a right to vandalize a virtual one.

• Linux Foundation

  • I Programmer ☛ Linux Foundation Mentorship Program [Ed: PR slush funds]

    Applications are now open for Summer 2025 participation in the Linux Foundation Mentorship Program, a program that provides structured guidance and opportunities for newcomers to contribute to the Linux kernel and other open-source projects.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Times ☛ Whistleblower org says DOGE [sic] may have caused 'significant cyber breach' at US labor watchdog

      A whistleblower alleges Elon Musk's tech team caused a major cybersecurity breach at the NLRB, compromising sensitive labor case files. IT staffer Daniel Berulis claims unauthorized access, data exfiltration, and attempted Russian logins occurred. Efforts to alert authorities were blocked, and Berulis faced intimidation. Musk’s team has not commented.

    • The Register UK ☛ Meta set to resume training AI models on EU user posts

      At the request of the DPC, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) in December published an opinion about how the fundamental data protection rights recognized under Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can be reconciled with AI models and how they get trained.

      The decision looks at: The circumstances under which an AI model can be considered anonymous, how data controllers can show they have a legitimate interest in data as it applies to AI model training and deployment, and what are the consequences when an AI model is deemed to have unlawfully processed personal data.

    • The Register UK ☛ Report: EC issues burner phones for visits to US

      The European Commission is giving staffers visiting the US on official business burner laptops and phones to avoid espionage attempts, according to the Financial Times.

      The use of clean and locked-down hardware is common practice for anyone visiting China, Russia, and other states where aggressive electronic surveillance is expected. Apparently the European Union has added the United States to that list.

    • The Record ☛ EU confirms issuing ‘burner phones’ to top officials but denies practice caused by Trump

      A spokesperson for the European Commission confirmed on Tuesday that it does provide “burner phones” to top officials, but denied a report that the practice was new and connected to a recent security appraisal of the risks when visiting the United States.

    • Wired ☛ Suspected 4chan Hack Could Expose Longtime, Anonymous Admins

      “4chan is an anonymous message board that enables often offensive and hateful content. The content leaked, if genuine, would remove some of the anonymity from 4chan administrators, moderators, and janitors,” says Ian Gray, director of analysis and research at the security firm Flashpoint. The image board’s billing as an “anonymous” platform may have given users a “false sense of security,” Gray says. “Some users may have registered their email addresses years ago when they were less aware or concerned about their operational security.”

    • 404 Media ☛ 4chan Is Down Following What Looks to Be a Major Hack Spurred By Meme War

      Hackers claim to have obtained 4chan's code, emails of moderators, and internal communications.

    • EPIC ☛ EPIC Feedback to House Energy & Commerce Majority Privacy Working Group

      The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) appreciates the opportunity to provide feedback to the Privacy Working Group led by the Majority Leadership of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Federal privacy legislation must limit the collection and use of Americans’ personal data with rules that respect our human right to privacy, limit harmful discrimination and targeting, and support the beneficial evolution of the technologies and systems we rely on in our everyday lives. EPIC has long advocated for strong privacy laws at the federal and state levels and is ready and willing to be a resource to the Privacy Working Group as it seeks to provide comprehensive privacy protections to all Americans.

    • EDRI ☛ Civil society files DSA complaint against Meta for toxic feeds

      Today, Bits of Freedom, EDRi, Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, and Convocation Design + Research are filing a complaint under the Digital Services Act (DSA) against Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram. According to the complaint, Meta violates the DSA’s user protections by not offering easily accessible news feed options on its platforms that are not based on profiling of users.

      This alternative news feed must be directly and easily accessible for users.

    • EFF ☛ Privacy on the Map: How States Are Fighting Location Surveillance

      Last year, we sounded the alarm, urging lawmakers to protect individuals from the growing threats of location tracking tools—tools that are increasingly being used to target and criminalize people seeking essential reproductive healthcare.

      The good news? Lawmakers in California, Massachusetts, Illinois and elsewhere are stepping up, leading the way to protect privacy and ensure that healthcare access and other exercise of our rights remain safe from invasive surveillance.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Would You Give PornHub Your ID?

      A new study by researchers at Stanford, NYU, the University of Georgia, and Georgia State followed the implementation of a law in Louisiana that required any website publishing a substantial amount of pornographic content to take reasonable steps to verify the age of users before giving them access. The researchers found that while search traffic to Pornhub—which complied with the law—dropped by 51 percent, traffic to its noncompliant rival, XVideos, rose by 48.1 percent. This is a classic tale of tech regulation: lots of friction while the primary aim remains unfulfilled.

      But one of the researchers, Zeve Sanderson, the executive director of NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics, isn’t resigned to defeat. On today’s episode of Good on Paper, we discuss what governments can even do to regulate the internet on behalf of minors and what doing so might cost the rest of us. Also, he explains, Louisiana’s legislation shows that writing a law can be the beginning, not the end, of a policy process.

    • The Record ☛ 23andMe bankruptcy draws investigation from House panel over data concerns

      The company’s bankruptcy filing “raises significant concerns regarding potential transfers of customers’ and family members’ sensitive personal data to various interested entities,” including China’s government, says committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) in a letter to Anne Wojcicki, who initiated 23andMe’s bankruptcy proceedings in March and resigned as chief executive soon afterward.

    • The Register UK ☛ Hertz says personal, sensitive data stolen in Cleo attacks

      A smaller subset of customers may also have had more sensitive data stolen, including Social Security or other government identification numbers, passport information, Medicare or Medicaid ID, or injury-related information associated with vehicle accident claims.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Hindu ☛ Bengal govt must stop attacks on Hindus over Waqf Act protests: VHP

    Mr. Parande said the fleeing of Bengali Hindus from their homes in Dhulian area of Murshidabad district and taking shelter in adjacent Malda district to escape attack from “jihadi marauders”, is reminiscent of “the exodus of Kashmiri pandits from Jammu and Kashmir in the past”.

  • Techdirt ☛ Another IRS Commissioner Steps Down After Being Forced To Share Immigrant Tax Records With The DHS

    One acting commissioner — one with 38 years experience — has already resigned because of the DHS’s desire to use tax records as a migrant-hunting database. What began as a request for “only” 700,000 records has ballooned to a demand for seven million tax records — a number that would encompass nearly two-thirds of the eleven million immigrants currently living in the United States.

    Acting commissioner Melanie Krause has chosen to walk, rather than be a part of this horrific mass vanishing of migrants, despite initially showing some willingness to cooperate with the Trump administration’s demands.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Russia continues to throw troops into a meat grinder in Ukraine

    “Since 2022, Russia has suffered more than 700,000 casualties in Ukraine,” former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in January. “Now, that’s more than Moscow has endured in all of its conflicts since World War II — combined. Russian casualties in Ukraine now surpass two-thirds of the total strength of the Russian military at the start of Putin’s war of choice. In November 2024 alone, Russia lost nearly 1,500 troops a day.”

  • The Atlantic ☛ How the Trump Administration Is Taxing the IRS

    Sabotaging the agency’s work amounts to an inducement for the ultra-rich to treat taxes as a voluntary contribution.

  • The Atlantic ☛ What the Courts Can Still Do to Constrain Trump

    More accurately, the administration is defying the spirit, rather than the letter, of the Supreme Court ruling. What’s indisputable, though, is that it's daring the federal courts to take much more aggressive steps to block its immigration policies.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Phase two of military AI has arrived

    But the complexity of AI systems, which pull from thousands of pieces of data, make that a herculean task for humans, says Heidy Khlaaf, who is chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, a research organization, and previously led safety audits for AI-powered systems.

    “‘Human in the loop’ is not always a meaningful mitigation,” she says. When an AI model relies on thousands of data points to draw conclusions, “it wouldn’t really be possible for a human to sift through that amount of information to determine if the AI output was erroneous.” As AI systems rely on more and more data, this problem scales up.

  • Axios ☛ How judges can hold Trump admin accountable for defying court orders

    Some legal scholars are warning that Trump administration's reluctance — or outright refusal — to comply with court orders is setting the stage for a full-blown constitutional crisis.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ American-Russian rapprochement as a threat to Europe

    Analyzing long-term trends, we will see many reasons for the US-Russian rapprochement, which should make Europeans worry, because, after all, such a shift will occur at the expense of Europe.

  • ANF News ☛ Yazidi youngster kidnapped by ISIS from Shengal in 2014 freed by the SDF

    In a statement about the operation, the SDF Press Center said: “Our forces succeeded in rescuing the kidnapped Yazidi man, “Othman Khairu Khodi Da”, from the grip of the terrorist organization after more than eleven years of his abduction. Othman is originally from the village of “Al-Wardiya” in the Shengal region, which witnessed large-scale massacres committed by ISIS, where thousands of men, youngsters, and elderly were killed, and more than seven thousand women and girls were abducted. Othman was one of the victims of that massacre.”

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • USMC ☛ Pentagon senior adviser Dan Caldwell ousted in probe into leaks

    Caldwell, who served in the Marine Corps, was one of several senior advisers who worked closely with Hegseth. Caldwell’s ties to the secretary go back to Hegseth’s time as the head of Concerned Veterans for America, a nonprofit that fell into financial difficulty during his time there. Caldwell worked at CVA beginning in 2013 as policy director and later as executive director.

  • Wired ☛ Here’s What Happened to Those SignalGate Messages

    Attorneys suing the United States government over its use of vanishing Signal messages to coordinate military strikes last month in Yemen allege that new court filings by the government reveal a “calculated strategy” by Trump administration officials to evade transparency laws through the illegal destruction of government records.

  • The Verge ☛ Meta’s antitrust trial slide redactions aren’t actually hiding anything

    A PDF of Meta’s opening statement slides in its FTC antitrust hearing yesterday contains easy-to-remove redactions that make it possible to see everything the company didn’t want made public, The Verge has discovered.

    Thanks to the poor redactions, we can see sections comparing the use of Apple’s Messages app to Meta apps like Instagram and WhatsApp. The original slide displayed only a quote from Apple director of product marketing Ronak Shah describing an iMessage “core use case” allegedly similar to Facebook’s. Another, labeled “Snapchat in 2020: Competitors Are Succeeding and Not Just Meta Apps,” says that “Tiktok, Insta, FB, Messengers and YouTube” are “thriving.”

  • Nick Heer ☛ Meta’s Poor Prebuttal to “Careless People”

    It must have been a surprise as Meta’s preemptive response came in the form of a barely formatted PDF sent to Semafor, and it seems pretty clear the company did not have an advance copy of the book because all of its rebuttals are made in broad strokes against the general outline reported by the Post. Now that I have read the book, I thought it would be fun and educational to compare Meta’s arguments against the actual claims Wynn-Williams makes. I was only half right — reading about the company’s role in the genocide in Myanmar remains a chilling exercise.

• Environment

  • Reuters ☛ Trump exempts dozens of coal plants from mercury, air toxics limits

    The Trump administration has exempted 47 companies from regulations to curb mercury and air toxics for their coal-fired power plants for two years, according to a list of facilities published by the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday.

  • Seattle Times ☛ Trump exempts nearly 70 coal plants from Biden-era rule on mercury and other toxic air pollution

    A list quietly posted as of Tuesday on the Environmental Protection Agency’s website lists 47 power providers — which operate at least 66 coal-fired plants — that are receiving exemptions from the Biden-era rules under the Clean Air Act, including a regulation limiting air pollution from mercury and other toxins. The actions follow an executive order last week by President Donald Trump aimed at boosting the struggling coal industry, a reliable but polluting energy source that’s long been in decline.

  • Associated Press ☛ EPA offers industrial polluters a way to avoid rules on toxic chemicals

    Environmental groups denounced the administration’s offer, calling the email address a “polluters’ portal” that could allow hundreds of companies to evade laws meant to protect the environment and public health. Exemptions would be allowed for nine EPA rules issued by the Biden administration, including limits on mercury, ethylene oxide and other hazardous air pollutants. Mercury exposure can cause brain damage, especially in children. Fetuses are vulnerable to birth defects via exposure in a mother’s womb.

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Letter to the Editor: Honoring Earth Day has never been so urgent | Opinion

    And, so goes Vermont. Or not. Don’t despair! There are two ways many of us can change this tragic trajectory. First action: join your regional land trust. They are an express-train solution to save all our flowers, ferns, critters, forests, fields and streams in one fell swoop. Immediate, strategic, large scale land conservation can preserve southeastern Vermont’s natural beauty, drinking water, wildlife, agriculture, recreation, history, real estate values and the all-important flood/drought/fire resilience.

  • The Nature Conservancy ☛ Earth Day is April 22, 2025 | Ideas to celebrate and take action

    Every Earth Month and Earth Day action is meaningful and momentous. Here are four things you can do.

  • UN ☛ International Mother Earth Day 2025

    The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 22 April as International Mother Earth Day through a resolution adopted in 2009. The Day recognizes the Earth and its ecosystems as humanity's common home and the need to protect her to enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change, and stop the collapse of biodiversity.

  • International Earth Day Network ☛ Earth Day Poster - 2025 - Earth Day

    EARTHDAY.ORG is thrilled to announce that renowned artist Alexis Rockman has created the official Earth Day 2025 poster, marking our 55th anniversary.

  • Gannett ☛ When is Earth Day 2025? See the history of the annual celebration

    While it may seem strange to think of a world without ecological awareness, there was once a time when Americans were even less aware of their consumption's impacts on Earth.

    Following the publication of "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson in 1962, public concern began to grow for the environment and the links between pollution and health.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • International Earth Day Network ☛ Earth Day 2025 - Our Power, Our Planet

      As we approach this milestone, we celebrate a transformative reality: we already possess the solutions we need to create clean, inexpensive, and unlimited energy for the entire planet through renewable solar, wind and other technologies.

      This Earth Day 2025, let us commit to harnessing renewable energy to build a healthy, sustainable, equitable and prosperous future for us all, let us commit to Renewable Energy Now.

    • The Verge ☛ Google’s geothermal energy ambitions are growing

      Google is working toward climate goals of cutting the company’s planet-heating emissions in half and matching its electricity use with carbon-free energy purchases around-the-clock by 2030. Geothermal energy comes from heat emanating from within Earth, making it a renewable source of electricity that can help eliminate the fossil fuel pollution causing climate change.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • 404 Media ☛ The Ocean Spectacle that Has Entranced Sailors for Centuries

      Milky seas are produced by bioluminescent bacteria that can transform the nighttime ocean into a glowing white veneer. For centuries, seafarers have marvelled at the eerie beauty of these surreal displays, which sometimes last for months and can cover areas of 100,000 square kilometers (about the size of Iceland).

  • Overpopulation

    • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia’s Birth Rate Plunges to 200-Year Low

      The decline was even steeper in February alone, with births falling 7.6% year-over-year to 90,500 — 7,400 fewer than in the same month last year.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Dissenter ☛ The Trump Administration's Lie Detector Dragnet

  • Papers Please ☛ Withdrawal from REAL-ID gets a hearing in Maine

    A bipartisan proposal to withdraw the state of Maine from compliance with the Federal REAL-ID Act of 2005 had its first hearing today (archived video) before the Joint Standing Committee on Transportation of the Maine State Legislature.

    The REAL-ID withdrawal bill, LD 160, was presented to the Transportation Committee by state Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) and state Sen. Nicole Grohowski (D-Ellsworth), two of the six co-sponsors.

  • FAIR ☛ ‘They’re Doing Their Best to Turn People Who Have Not Committed Any Crime Into Criminals’: CounterSpin interview with Dara Lind on criminalizing immigrants

    Janine Jackson interviewed the American Immigration Council’s Dara Lind about the criminalization of immigrants for the April 11, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Hong Kong post office to stop shipping parcels to the US after Trump’s tariffs

    A government statement said Hongkong Post would not collect tariffs on behalf of Washington, and will suspend accepting non-airmail parcels containing goods destined for the U.S. on Wednesday, since items shipped by sea take more time. It will accept airmail parcels until Apr. 27.

  • The Strategist ☛ Australia can learn from Britain on cyber governance

    Australia needs to reevaluate its security priorities and establish a more dynamic regulatory framework for cybersecurity. To advance in this area, it can learn from Britain’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, which presents a compelling model for reforming our own cyber governance and standards.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Chinese law enforcement places NSA operatives on wanted list over alleged cyberattacks

    China has in recent years begun pointing the finger back at the United States, which has accused Beijing of backing a litany of cyberattack, but Tuesday’s allegations were more specific and aggressive than usual. Relations have soured further between China and the United States under the Trump administration as both nations escalate tariffs.

  • The Verge ☛ OpenAI names new nonprofit ‘advisors’ | The Verge

    OpenAI has revealed the “advisors” for its new nonprofit commission: Dolores Huerta, Monica Lozano, Dr. Robert K. Ross, and Jack Oliver. The company says the four advisors will help “inform OpenAI’s philanthropic efforts,” according to an announcement on Tuesday.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Surrender to China

    Make no mistake: this is how World War III is being lost—not with missiles and tanks, but with spreadsheets and trade policies. While we've been distracted by regional conflicts and culture wars, China has been methodically building alternative financial infrastructure, technological capabilities, and diplomatic relationships precisely to capitalize on this kind of American self-destruction.

    The truth is stark but must be faced: electing Trump was effectively surrendering to China. Every day this administration remains in power, irreversible damage occurs to America's economic foundations, diplomatic standing, and global influence. The Chinese Communist Party couldn't have designed a more effective strategy for American collapse if they had installed it themselves.

    This is why obsessing over Harris' Iran policy or other Middle East concerns ultimately missed the central geopolitical reality of our time. The Middle East, while important, is not the arena where global hegemony will be decided. That battle is economic and technological—and we're voluntarily conceding it.

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Funding Expires for Key Cyber Vulnerability Database

    A critical resource that cybersecurity professionals worldwide rely on to identify, mitigate and fix security vulnerabilities in software and hardware is in danger of breaking down. The federally funded, non-profit research and development organization MITRE warned today that its contract to maintain the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program — which is traditionally funded each year by the Department of Homeland Security — expires on April 16.

  • The Register UK ☛ Homeland Security funding for CVE program expires

    While the whole world's vulnerability management efforts aren't going to descend into chaos overnight, there is a concern that in a month or two they may. The lack of US government funding means that, unless someone else steps in to fill the gap, this standardized system for naming and tracking vulnerabilities may falter or shut down, new CVEs may no longer be published, and the program's website may go offline.

    Not-for-profit outfit MITRE has a contract with the US Department of Homeland Security to operate the CVE program, and on Tuesday the group confirmed this arrangement has not been renewed. This comes as the Trump administration scours around the federal government for costs to trim.

  • The Record ☛ MITRE warns of lapse with CVE program as contract with US set to expire

    The MITRE Corporation said on Tuesday that its stewardship of the CVE program — which catalogs all public cybersecurity vulnerabilities — may be ending this week because the federal government has decided not to renew its contract with the nonprofit.

  • Security Week ☛ MITRE Warns CVE Program Faces Disruption Amid US Funding Uncertainty

    In a letter to the CVE board, VP and Director at MITRE’s Center for Securing the Homeland Yosry Barsoum said the contract with the US government to manage the program will expire on April 16 and there’s no word on funding moving forward.

  • LWN ☛ MITRE Warns CVE Program Faces Disruption (Security Week)

    Security Week is one of several outlets reporting

    that the funding for the CVE program at MITRE disappears as of

    April 16.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Techdirt ☛ DeepSeek Is Already Being Applied Widely Across China’s Industries, And Used For Government Surveillance And Propaganda

      An article by Valentin Weber in the Journal of Democracy predicts that the “next step in the evolution of China’s surveillance state will be to integrate generative-AI models like DeepSeek into urban surveillance infrastructures.” Weber also warns that the rise of AI agents, recently discussed here on Techdirt, is likely to provide the Chinese authorities with even tighter control of their citizens: [...]

    • The Strategist ☛ To counter anti-democratic propaganda, step up funding for ABC International

      The ABC’s international media channels and the bespoke content we create, distribute and share with our media partners showcase an Australian society that is diverse, free and equal, with an independent media that holds power to account.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Harvard University ☛ ‘This is weakening the United States.’

    The funding, more than $2 billion of which was frozen hours after Harvard responded to the demands, supports research that “has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields,” according to a message President Alan Garber sent to the Harvard community Monday afternoon.

  • Reuters ☛ Students sue US Defense Department schools for book removals

    A dozen students in U.S. Defense Department schools sued, opens new tab the department and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday for book removals and curriculum changes following executive orders from President Donald Trump, an advocacy group said.

  • ACLU ☛ Students Sue Department of Defense Schools Over Curriculum Changes, Book Bans | American Civil Liberties Union

    Students in Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools on military bases sued today, arguing that DoDEA’s book removals and curricular changes following several executive orders from President Donald Trump violate their First Amendment rights. DoDEA operates 161 schools across 11 countries, seven states, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

  • ACLU ☛ Students Sue Department of Defense Schools Over Curriculum Changes, Book Bans

    “Learning is a sacred and foundational right that is now being limited for students in DoDEA schools,” said Natalie Tolley, a plaintiff on behalf of her three children in DoDEA schools. “The implementation of these EOs, without any due process or parental or professional input, is a violation of our children's right to access information that prevents them from learning about their own histories, bodies, and identities. I have three daughters, and they, like all children, deserve access to books that both mirror their own life experiences and that act as windows that expose them to greater diversity. The administration has now made that verboten in DoDEA schools.”

  • New Yorker ☛ Why Harvard Decided to Challenge Donald Trump

    The First Amendment protects speech we might hate, including racist, sexist, and antisemitic language. That is a cost of free expression in a free country. Consistent with that principle, Trump, in his first term, issued an executive order instructing agencies to insure that universities receiving federal grants “promote free inquiry” consistent with the First Amendment. But there is apparently an exception to the Trump Administration’s commitment to free speech: a broad category of ideas and expression that it has classified as antisemitic. A month before the 2024 Presidential election, on the anniversary of October 7th, the Heritage Foundation, which produced Project 2025, published Project Esther, “a blueprint to counter antisemitism,” to be deployed “when a willing Administration occupies the White House.” As my Harvard colleagues Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof and Daphna Renan explained last month, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Project Esther aims to render pro-Palestinian ideas, expression, and activity unacceptable, by convincing the public that they are equivalent to support for terrorism by Hamas. The document is explicit about the project’s goals: to make Jews feel that such expression is “a threat to their safety,” similar to how, when “most Americans hear ‘Klan,’ they immediately associate this homegrown American hate group with ‘bad.’ ”

  • Vox ☛ Trump vs Harvard: What the administration demanded

    Today I’m focusing on the Trump administration’s battle with Harvard University, in which a powerful university targeted by the president is pushing back.

    What’s the latest? The Trump administration last night froze $2.2 billion in federal funding for Harvard, punishment after the university said Monday it would not comply with the administration’s demands.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ St. Petersburg Woman Jailed Over Army Criticism After Neighbor’s Denunciation

    Saint Petersburg’s Pushkinsky District Court sentenced her to five years and two months in prison and banned her from using social media for three additional years, the court’s press service said on Telegram.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Harvard's challenge to Trump administration could test limits of government power

    On Monday, Harvard become the first university to openly defy the Trump administration as it demands sweeping changes to limit activism on campus. The university frames the government’s demands as a threat not only to the Ivy League school but to the autonomy that the Supreme Court has long granted American universities.

    “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” the university’s lawyers wrote Monday to the government. “Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.”

  • The Atlantic ☛ What Harvard Learned From Columbia’s Mistake

    Earlier this month, the Trump administration threatened to revoke $9 billion in federal grants and contracts if Harvard did not agree to a long list of demands, including screening foreign applicants “hostile to the American values and institutions” and allowing an external body to audit university departments for viewpoint diversity. (How screening international students for their beliefs would contribute to viewpoint diversity was not specified.) Today, Harvard announced that it would not agree to the Trump administration’s terms. “Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government,” the university’s lawyers wrote in a letter to administration officials. “Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle.”

    In making this decision, Harvard appears to have learned a lesson from the Trump administration’s tangle with another Ivy League school—just not the lesson the government intended.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Don't Like a Columnist's Opinion? Los Angeles Times Offers an AI-Generated Opposing Viewpoint

    Soon-Shiong, a medical innovator who bought the Times in 2018, blocked his newspaper from endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris for president last fall and said he wanted to overhaul its editorial board, which is responsible for researching and writing Times editorials.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Sentences Journalists to 5.5 Years in Navalny 'Extremism' Case - The Moscow Times

    Antonina Favorskaya, Artyom Kriger, Konstantin Gabov and Sergei Karelin were detained last year on accusations of gathering material and preparing and editing videos for Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and the NavalnyLIVE YouTube channel. All four have maintained their innocence, saying they were being prosecuted for their work as journalists.

    [...]

    The court also handed the journalists a three-year ban on administering websites.

  • RTL ☛ Sent to penal colony: Russia jails four journalists who covered Navalny

    Russia sentenced four journalists linked to late opposition leader Alexei Navalny to five and a half years in a penal colony on Tuesday, deepening its crackdown on dissent and press freedom amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.

  • Court House News ☛ Four journalists who were accused of working for Kremlin foe Navalny are convicted of extremism

    Antonina Favorskaya, Kostantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin and Artyom Kriger were found guilty of involvement with a group that had been labeled as extremist. All four had maintained their innocence, arguing they were being prosecuted for doing their jobs as journalists.

    The closed-door trial was part of an unrelenting crackdown on dissent that has reached an unprecedented scale after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

  • The Nation ☛ We Must Save Public Media to Change It

    Government attacks on public media are as old as Big Bird. Ever since Richard Nixon feuded with public broadcasting during its earliest days, every Republican administration, except Gerald Ford’s, has tried to cut public media funding. But the severity of today’s attacks is different. The ruthless savagery that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are inflicting against what’s left of the US public sector suggests that this time they might succeed where previous efforts fell short.

    With these existential threats looming, now is an opportune moment to reflect on why we created public media in the first place—and why it’s still needed today. Interrogating the history of US public media also brings into focus the structural problems that were present since its inception: Because we never provided it with adequate, permanent, and insulated funding, the US public media system has always been politically and economically vulnerable. This is a fixable problem that we must confront—after defending what we still have against trumped-up charges.

  • ANF News ☛ Released journalist: We will continue to amplify women’s voices

    Following a decision made during a hearing at Istanbul’s 23rd High Criminal Court, journalist Necla Demir Arvas was released from Bakırköy Closed Prison on Monday.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Trans women are not legally women, Supreme Court rules

  • BBC ☛ UK Supreme Court rules legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex

    The LGB Alliance charity, which provided a combined written submission in the case along with several other groups, says they are “delighted” with the ruling.

    "The ruling confirms that the words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ refer to same-sex sexual orientation and makes it absolutely clear that lesbians wishing to form associations of any size are lawfully entitled to exclude men – whether or not they possess a GRC (gender recognition certificate)," chief executive Kate Barker says.

    "It is difficult to express the significance of this ruling: it marks a watershed for women and, in particular, lesbians who have seen their rights and identities steadily stolen from them over the last decade."

    She adds: “This is a victory for biology, for common sense, for reality."

    [...]

    UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has congratulated For Women Scotland and says the ruling is a "victory".

    She says: "Saying 'trans women are women' was never true in fact, and now isn't true in law either.

    "This is a victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious.

    "Women are women and men are men: you cannot change your biological sex."

  • The Verge ☛ The Columbia student arrested at his USCIS interview knew it was coming

    It’s unusual — though not unheard of — for immigrants to be arrested during USCIS interviews. Matt Cameron, a Boston-based immigration attorney, says it has happened to a couple clients of his, but “always because they have previous immigration or criminal history which makes them deportable.” Mahdawi’s attorneys say he has no criminal record and is a “committed Buddhist” who “believes in non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion.” He doesn’t appear to have violated immigration law. But Mahdawi, who was born in the West Bank, was involved in Columbia University’s student protests against Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. He knew about the Trump administration’s efforts to deport any noncitizens — even those with green cards and visas — for their involvement in pro-Palestine activism under the auspices of a McCarthy-era immigration law.

  • The Atlantic ☛ What Porn Taught a Generation of Women

    What did growing up against this particular cultural backdrop do to me? What did it do to all of us? I didn’t start trying to process this particular initiation into adulthood until two decades later. A few months into the coronavirus pandemic, I gave birth to twins, and becoming a parent in almost complete isolation triggered a kind of identity crisis. I was too exhausted to read; I could no more sit through an entire movie than I could sprout wings and fly. When I went back to work, the #MeToo movement had many women parsing their own historical experiences of assault and abuse. All of the subjects I wrote about seemed to be circling the same theme: an environment that had been set up against women from the beginning.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Not Just Unions; Strike-Ready Unions. - by Hamilton Nolan

    This is even more true in the public sector, which represents about half of union membership in America today. Millions of federal, state, and local government workers are legally prohibited from striking. Their unions are primarily administrative entities that negotiate and oversee contracts. These unions, to varying degrees, are the embodiment of the premise that organized labor power can exist in the absence of the strike—that laws, contracts, and regulations are enough to guarantee workers their rights.

    That premise turns out to be false. We are now living through a brutal demonstration of its emptiness. The Trump administration, which cares only about power and not at all about the traditional niceties of law and public relations, has begun simply throwing union contracts in the trash and declaring that existing federal unions do not exist after all, because the boss says so. This is the worst thing that a boss could possibly do to a union. It should prompt the strongest response. If anything should cause a union to strike, it is this. Yet the unions in question have not struck. Why? On a surface level, because they are not legally allowed to strike. But on a more basic level, because they have been built from the ground up as entities that do not consider strikes to be within their purview. The law, in other words, is not their deepest weakness; their deepest weakness is the fact that they do not imagine themselves to be capable of striking and therefore have not done the constant organizing work that would enable them to strike and therefore have little capability of carrying out a strike even if they wanted to. This is true not just of AFGE, the federal union that has absorbed the brunt of Trump’s attacks so far, but of most (not all) public sector unions in most (not all) red states. It is also true of many major private sector unions that have leadership that is lazy and/ or unimaginative, who have accepted that their power rests mostly in politics and lawyers, and who, because of this, likewise fail to do the internal organizing and training and education and mobilization work necessary to create strike-ready unions.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • ARRL ☛ ARRL Files Comments on FCC

    In response to ARRL’s request, over 200 members submitted suggestions that were reviewed when considering what rules should be deleted or modified. ARRL will continue to engage with members and advocate for the Amateur Radio Service.

    In its filing, ARRL asked the FCC to delete or amend the following rules: [...]

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Techdirt ☛ With 3-0 GOP Majority And All Democrats Fired, The FTC Is Now A Total Trump Puppet Agency Pretending To Care About ‘Antitrust Reform’

  Back in March Trump illegally fired the Federal Trade Commission’s two Democratic Commissioners. With a captured Supreme Court and a 3-2 agency majority, Trumpism could have already done whatever it wanted at the FTC, so firing the two Democratic Commissioners was just scorched Earth; like applying napalm on the site of a nuclear strike. Real sociopath shit.

  With everything going on, the firings were about a four hour news cycle. But the two fired Commissioners (Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya) sued Trump, noting (quite correctly) that the firings were illegal under the precedent of Humphrey’s Executor, the 1935 Supreme Court case stating FTC commissioners can only be fired for clear cause. Not for simply… existing.

• India Times ☛ What if Mark Zuckerberg had not bought Instagram & WhatsApp?

  No one knew how these deals would turn out. But hindsight, it seems, is 20/20. On Monday, the government argued in a landmark antitrust trial that both acquisitions - now considered among the greatest in Silicon Valley history - were the actions of a monopolist guarding his turf. Zuckerberg, who was called as the first witness in the trial, has previously denied that buying Instagram and WhatsApp hurt competition.

• Silicon Angle ☛ Mark Zuckerberg tried to negotiate settlement with FTC in landmark antitrust trial but failed

  It seems the FTC wasn’t moved by Zuckerberg’s counteroffer of $1 billion, hoping the number might be closer to $18 billion. Meta has done everything in its power to avoid the trial, but here we are. The company is currently fighting to save its social media empire, which is valued at $1.3 trillion.

  Today, FTC lawyers asked Zuckerberg the simple question: Did you need to buy Instagram, and why didn’t you just build your own Instagram-type app? “I’m sure we could have built an app,” Zuckerberg replied. “Whether it would have succeeded or not I think is a matter of speculation.”

• New York Times ☛ At Trial, Mark Zuckerberg Avoids Explaining Takeovers of Instagram and WhatsApp

  In his second day on the stand in a landmark antitrust trial, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, on Tuesday defended the social media company’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram, describing the transaction as business as usual for a tech company.

  Businesses weigh the benefits and costs of developing new products themselves against buying start-ups with products they want to add, he said.

• The Verge ☛ Mark Zuckerberg once suggested wiping all Facebook friends lists to boost usage

  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a “potentially crazy idea” in 2022 to get people using Facebook more: deleting everyone’s friends’ lists. The possibility was discussed on Monday via internal emails shown by the FTC as Zuckerberg testified during Meta’s antitrust trial.

• The Verge ☛ Zuckerberg defends his empire during FTC antitrust trial

  Zuckerberg has so far testified for roughly nine hours. He’s expected to continue testifying on Wednesday, followed by Sheryl Sandberg. So far, the FTC has prodded him to confirm its theory of the market and understand his motivation for acquiring nascent rivals.

  The FTC’s theory of the case is that Meta gobbled up newer competitors by buying Instagram and WhatsApp in the early 2010s, when it feared they would grow to challenge its dominance. The agency is trying to show that Meta has monopoly power in a market it calls personal social networking services, which is focused on connecting with friends and family and includes the apps Snapchat and MeWe.

• Nick Heer ☛ The Acquisition of Instagram Made Sense to Facebook Even at the Time

  While Stewart’s bit remains funny, I must again note that many people with actual expertise in this area treated the acquisition as a reasonable cost to neutralize a surging competitor.

• Axios ☛ Meta's copycat strategy targeted in court

  Meta has a long history of acquiring or building copycat apps and features that have ultimately failed and shuttered in less than a few years.

  But the unprecedented success of two of its biggest bets have regulators concerned its tactics are anticompetitive.

• India Times ☛ ETtech Explainer: Why the US government wants to break up Meta

  Back in 2020, the FTC sued Meta (then known as Facebook), arguing that it had illegally maintained monopoly power by acquiring competitors before they could grow. Meta has strongly denied the allegations. Its lawyers argue that the FTC approved the Instagram and WhatsApp deals more than a decade ago, and trying to undo them now is both legally shaky and bad for business.

• The Independent UK ☛ Japan orders Google to stop pushing smartphone makers to install its apps

  The Japan Fair Trade Commission said on Tuesday Google had unfairly hindered competition by asking for preferential treatment for its search and browser from smartphone makers in violation of the country’s anti-monopoly law.

  The antitrust watchdog said Google, as far back as July 2020, had asked at least six Android smartphone manufacturers to preinstall its apps when they signed the licence for the American tech giant’s app store, Nikkei Asia reported.

• India Times ☛ Japan's anti-monopoly watchdog accuses Google of violations in smartphones

  Japanese regulators on Tuesday accused US tech giant Google of violating anti-monopoly laws, echoing similar moves in the US and Europe. Google Japan said in a statement that it found the action "regrettable." It said it has invested in Japan significantly to promote innovation as a technology leader.

  It's unclear if Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., based in Mountain View in the Silicon Valley, will take legal action to fight the order.

• India Times ☛ Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg testifying again in US antitrust trial

  Social media titan Mark Zuckerberg took the stand for a second day Tuesday in a landmark US antitrust trial where his conglomerate Meta is accused of taking over Instagram and WhatsApp before they could become competitors.

• India Times ☛ At US antitrust trial, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg admits he bought Instagram because it was 'better'

  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a key concession at a US antitrust trial on Tuesday, saying he bought Instagram because it had a "better" camera than the one his company was trying to build for flagship app Facebook at the time.

• The Verge ☛ Google must stop favoring Search and Chrome on Android in Japan

  Japan’s Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has ordered Google to stop making deals that give preference to Google Search and Chrome on Android devices. Nikkei Asia says that it’s the first time the regulator has issued a cease and desist order to a major tech company.

  The regulator found that Google had asked at least six different Android phone makers for such deals since July 2020, according to Nikkei. The article says the deals included Google sharing revenue with “five business partners”, with the condition that Chrome and Google Search services be “placed on the initial screen” and that other companies’ similar services not be installed at all.

• Baldur Bjarnason ☛ We're in for a rough ride as an industry

  There’s the not so small issue of the tech industry being quite invested in turning the US into an authoritarian dictatorship and seemingly succeeding. But even if you assume that the US will come out of this in four years’ time as a recovering democracy (an extremely unsafe assumption, I think), the web is likely to suffer as an industry either way.

  We have monopolies or oligopolies who control much of the software market and, of particular concern to the web sector, they control how people discover websites.

• Baldur Bjarnason ☛ An aside on proposed anti-trust remedies against Google

  The Democrats love to build or reinforce the mechanisms of authoritarianism, which they mistakenly think they can apply for good and moral purposes, but then become major building blocks for an authoritarian state.

  If the dominance of Chrome is a problem, then that won’t be solved by shifting it over to an equally large competitor. That solution only makes sense if your goal is to maintain the current oligopoly dynamic and that the biggest threat from Google isn’t their threat to the free market – none of these people seem to care about the actual economy – but Google’s size making them harder to control. They want to make Google more controllable, which is already problematic for a democracy, but a controllable Google is an outright gift to the rising fascists.

• India Times ☛ Google's spam policy hit by EU antitrust complaint from German media company

  A German media company has complained to EU antitrust regulators following Alphabet unit Google's crackdown against companies gaming its search algorithm to push up rankings for other sites.

  In its complaint to the European Commission, Hamburg-based Meraki Group GmbH urged immediate action against the policy, saying it penalises websites.

• Copyrights

  • EFF ☛ EFF Urges Court to Avoid Fair Use Shortcuts in Kadrey v. Meta Platforms

    Kadrey, however, attempts to side-step fair use. The plaintiffs—including Sarah Silverman and other authors—sued Meta for allegedly using BitTorrent to download “pirated” copies of their books to train Llama, a large language model. In other words, their legal claims challenge how Meta obtained the training materials, not what it did with them.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Nhentai Operators Ordered to Expose Themselves in U.S. Copyright Lawsuit

    The operators of Nhentai.net, a popular adult site with dozens of millions of monthly visits, have been ordered to identify themselves in a California court. Recent court rulings denied both the site's bid to dismiss the case early, and its request for a protective order to hide the identities of its operators. The case will now move forward, with all copyright claims intact.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Jack Dorsey Says We Should 'Delete All IP [sic] Law,' Elon Musk Agrees

    These responses touched on not only the income fallout for creatives, but differences between various types of (and protections for) IP [sic], the potential effect on medical research, and a whole lot else.