Leftovers

• Stefano Marinelli ☛ Why I'm Expanding My Blogging Presence

  I've decided to start writing on a personal blog again. Not just on IT Notes, where I'll continue to publish technical content as I've been doing, but also on a more personal and general blog. And this for a number of reasons.

  One above all: too many things I've written on social media have disappeared into nothingness after a few days. Content there is meant to be momentary, ephemeral. It's not for nothing that we talk about microblogging: posts appear in timelines and then vanish in the continuous flow of new content. After six days, six months, six years... it's as if they never existed.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Stefano Marinelli is expanding his blogging presence

  I’ve got another post coming up soon comparing a few different blogging tools for people who want to dip their toes into this wonderful form of self-expression (present writer notwithstanding), but in the meantime I’m so happy to add Stefano’s blog to Clara’s and my RSS reader.

  And yes, that was a not-so-thinly-veiled push for you to start one as well, dear reader, if you haven’t already.

• Justin Vollmer ☛ Operating Rules for Email Collaboration

  I’ve slowly been improving my email usage over time, since my tendency left unchecked is to be verbose. However, I’ve learned that verboseness should not be the norm when communicating via email, as it can cause your thoughts to be lost in the weeds. And now that I am using email much more than earlier in my career, learning to use it well is important.

• [Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ Brolific

  R.L. Dane enquired about how one maintains a regular blogging habit, and counted my number of posts with a simple bash script.

  I wouldn’t say I have a specific recipe for a successful blog, though there are always a few points to keep in mind: [...]

• Elliot C Smith ☛ Is retention is the only real measure of product market fit?

  So, is retention the only measure of PMF? Strictly speaking, no, but it is probably the most telling. If you can’t keep your customers happy and around for the long term you can’t really claim to have a strong fit.

• Standards/Consortia

  • ARRL ☛ World Amateur Radio Day – International Amateur Radio Union Formed 100 Years Ago

    April 18th is honored as World Amateur Radio Day, when we celebrate the founding of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU). The organization was born out of a meeting in Paris on April 17, 1925. ARRL took a leadership role in its founding, with ARRL Founder Hiram Percy Maxim, then 1AW, serving as the first President of IARU.

    As reported by Kenneth B. Warner, 1BHW, in the June 1925 edition of QST: [...]

  • [Repeat] Silicon Angle ☛ US extends contract to fund the CVE vulnerability database

    Launched in 1999, CVE provides information about cybersecurity vulnerabilities in software products. The database has more than 170,000 entries and counting. By storing vulnerability details in one place, it removes the need for cybersecurity professionals to piece together information about an exploit from multiple sources.

  • Techdirt ☛ US Government Almost Kills Critical Cybersecurity Database

    In what appears to be the latest move in this administration’s total incompetence with regards to critical government tech infrastructure, MITRE announced yesterday that funding had run out for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system, the fundamental framework that basically everyone in cybersecurity relies on to keep computer systems safe. After the entire cybersecurity world freaked the fuck out, one of the remaining unfired people at the the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced that they had extended the funding for another 11 months.

• Science

  • The Local SE ☛ 'Never waste a good crisis': How Sweden wants to attract US talent fleeing Trump

    “We say you should never waste a good crisis,” he tells The Local. “With the Trump administration withdrawing funding to research and development and also changing the agenda in the US, we think that many people are now rethinking where they should be situated to have the best possibility for their businesses to try and thrive and grow.”

  • Futurism ☛ Oops! It Appears There's a Striking Flaw in That Claim About Detecting Alien Life

    But the situation may not be so clear cut. While dimethyl sulfide is an organic material on our planet, there's a body of evidence suggesting that nonbiological processes elsewhere in the cosmos could produce the compound, notes science writer Corey S. Powell in a Bluesky thread.

  • Wired ☛ Thousands of Urine and Tissue Samples Are in Danger of Rotting After Staff Cuts at a CDC Laboratory

    The NIOSH researchers collected the tissue samples as part of experiments to determine how Americans may be impacted by chemicals and other substances they are exposed to at their jobs. Some of the samples are stored in a refrigerator that needs to be kept at -112 Farenheit at all times, while others are stored in liquid nitrogen. Unless someone inside the federal government continues to ensure the liquid nitrogen doesn’t totally evaporate, the samples will eventually defrost and begin to rot, according to three staff researchers who work with such materials.

  • Bob Monsour ☛ The personal effects of NIH funding cuts

    It's difficult to overstate the importance of the NIH to the development of scientific breakthroughs that affect our health and that of our loved ones.

    Here are just a few recent articles (all are 'gift links') from the Washington Post and the New York Times about the funding cuts to the NIH that are being proposed and already underway by the current administration: [...]

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post: Preprints Serve the Anti-science Agenda – This Is Why We Need Peer Review

    Yes – there are benefits to more freely and quickly sharing science. But preprints join predatory publishers and paper mills to fuel a growing challenge for our society: distinguishing credible science from inaccurate, biased, and misleading work. This is encouraging a race to the bottom, where good science can carry the same weight as bad science, ‘alternative facts,’ and ‘truthiness’ – which is actually no weight at all.

    So it should be alarming when preprints are cited like fully-reviewed articles and used in the news media when their lack of legitimacy is often buried in fine print easily missed or misunderstood by the average reader. (As well as the informed reader — I’ve interviewed dozens of scientists who don’t know how to evaluate preprints, what they can trust, or what they can use in their own research.)

• Career/Education

  • University of Michigan ☛ On keeping a college notebook

    My most prized possession is probably one of my most beat-up, but I’ve never believed in saving the things you love. It’s an olive-green Leuchtturm1917 with dotted note paper because I had a bullet journal for a few months in high school and realized I could never go back to line-ruled paper.

  • Alex Ewerlöf ☛ Staff+ self-onboarding questions

    In a previous post we have covered what your manager can do to facilitate your onboarding:

    This post is about what YOU can do as a senior IC to self-onboard. More specifically: how to ask questions as a senior technical leader.

  • Yilei Yang ☛ On What Drives Me

    I’m starting a new career chapter soon, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m sure the company mission alone will motivate me for a long time, even leave me little to no time for Mango. Still, I hope to find old and new interactions, in or outside of the company, to have a sustained impact in me.

• Hardware

  • CNX Software ☛ Cervoz M.2 SFP Ethernet expansion modules support long cables (up to several kilometers) for robotics

    Cervoz M.2 MEC-LAN-2001-SFP and MEC-LAN-2002-SFP are M.2 SFP Ethernet expansion modules delivering gigabit Ethernet speed over long distances for robotics using an defective chip maker Intel i210-IS controller compliant with IEEE 802.3x and 802.3z standards.

  • CNX Software ☛ LaserPecker LP5 Review – A 20W diode & fiber laser engraver tested with LDS software, rotary extension, safety enclosure

    We have already checked the specifications, done an unboxing, and shown how to assemble the LaserPecker LP5 2-in-1 fiber & diode laser engraver along with its safety enclosure and rotary extension in the first part of the review.

  • CNX Software ☛ Radxa Dragon Q6A – A Qualcomm QCS6490 Edge Hey Hi (AI) SBC with GbE, WiFi 6, three camera connectors

    Radxa Dragon Q6A is an upcoming credit card-sized SBC powered by a Qualcomm QCS6490 octa-core SoC with a 12 TOPS Hey Hi (AI) accelerator, up to 16GB LPDDR5 memory, and the usual ports found on Raspberry Pi-like single board computers such as gigabit Ethernet, four USB ports, HDMI video output, and a 40-pin GPIO header.

  • CNX Software ☛ LaserPecker LP5 Review – Part 2: A 20W diode & fiber laser engraver tested with LDS software, rotary extension, safety enclosure

  • CNX Software ☛ Axelera Metis Compute Board pairs Rockchip RK3588 SoC with 214 TOPS Metis Hey Hi (AI) accelerator

    Axelera Metis Computer Board is a Rockchip RK3588 mini-ITX motherboard equipped with a Metis AIPU (AI Processing Unit) capable of delivering up to 214 TOPS, 16GB LPDDR4 memory for the CPU, and 4GB LPDDR4x RAM for the Hey Hi (AI) accelerator.

  • Axios ☛ TSMC to make 30% of top chips in U.S.

    Why it matters: Chairman and CEO CC Wei told investors the scope of the company's Phoenix investment will create "an independent leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing cluster in the U.S."

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Lawmakers demand answers from Nvidia over suspected GPU diversions to China, company denies any wrongdoing

    A U.S. congressional investigation suspects that Chinese AI company DeepSeek has trained its large language model using tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, many covered by U.S. export controls. As Nvidia's hardware was central to China's AI progress, the House Select Committee on the CCP this week sent a formal letter to Nvidia asking to provide extensive records amid suspicions that its GPUs ended up at DeepSeek through Singapore despite export restrictions.

    Nvidia denies any wrongdoing and says its clients use billing addresses in Singapore, but want their GPUs developed elsewhere.

  • India Times ☛ Chip giant TSMC sees net profit rise 60.3% in March quarter

    TSMC chairman and chief executive C.C. Wei said the company had not detected "any change in customer behaviour" so far. Demand for chips has soared in recent years on demand for AI technology, but there are fears US President Donald Trump's far-reaching tariffs could drive up consumer prices and hurt chipmakers.

  • Tedium ☛ Tech-Buying In A Time Of Tariffs: The Case For Buying Used

    Here’s the thing about tariffs that may not be clear to folks just hearing numbers: They have a cascading effect.

    Depending on how a good gets manufactured, it could be getting hit by tariffs multiple times over—as raw materials, components, and finished products may all get hit with tariffs at different parts of the manufacturing process.

  • The Register UK ☛ TSMC prepping for tariff turmoil, denies JV talks with Intel

    TSMC's top brass insist it is not entertaining a joint venture with beleaguered chip biz Intel, though it is steeling itself for potential effects from the Trump administration's ever-changing tariff schemes.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • NYPost ☛ They’re sick of ‘SkinnyTok’ — dangerous Fentanylware (TikTok) trend glorifies starvation, experts warn

    It’s sending vulnerable users down a dangerous spiral.

  • Axios ☛ Luigi Mangione indicted in NY as death penalty sought in health CEO killing

    A federal complaint against Mangione was unsealed in December but he had not been indicted on those charges until Thursday.

  • The Independent UK ☛ UnitedHealthcare killing suspect Luigi Mangione indicted as prosecutors push for death penalty

    Mangione’s lawyers have argued that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's announcement this month ordering prosecutors to seek the death penalty was a “political stunt” that corrupted the grand jury process and deprived him of his constitutional right to due process.

  • Futurism ☛ You Might Not Want to Touch Receipts After Seeing This Horrifying Research

    According to new research from the Center for Environmental Health, the tiny paper documents used by major US retailers contain alarmingly high levels of Bisphenol S (BPS), an industrial chemical used in plastics manufacturing — high enough to be dangerous even in the brief period it takes you to stuff one into your pocket.

  • Center for Environmental Health ☛ ‘Touching 1 Receipt for 10 Seconds’ Results in Exposure to the Chemical BPS Above the Safe Limit - Center for Environmental Health

    BPS, like BPA, is a hormone-disrupting chemical that mimics estrogen and can disrupt the normal functioning of the body, including metabolism, growth and development, and reproduction. Studies show that BPS can be absorbed through skin when handling receipt paper–even for short periods.

    “Based on these studies and testing by an independent lab, the concentrations were so high that touching only 1 receipt with BPS for 10 seconds resulted in exposure above the safe harbor level which requires a clear and reasonable warning to consumers,” said Mihir Vohra, Science Lead at CEH.

  • Air Force Times ☛ Nurses rally outside VA hospitals to highlight staff cuts, vacancies

    “All of those things affect our time and our ability to care for our veterans.”

    Johnson, a seven-year employee of VA, was one of dozens of department nurses rallying outside the California hospital Wednesday to protest an array of moves by President Donald Trump’s administration that they say unnecessarily threatens the health of veterans and federal workers.

  • Carlo Zottmann ☛ Carlo Zottmann - Sarcasm is poison

    When life gets rough, it’s easy to become sarcastic or cynical, but I long ago I came to realize that’s not healthy at all. In a way it’s like really having to pee while being in a swimming pool with others (bear with me). You could be blasé about it, and every time there’s a bitter laugh about the situation, you pee a tiny bit. It’s a big pool, right? No harm done. And the others do it, too! Easy.

    Yet do it often enough, and you’re submerged in piss.

  • Matan Abudy ☛ My iPhone’s Screen Time is gaslighting me | Matan Abudy

    Then the results came in. Although I managed to cut my screen time by about 10-20%, it was nothing compared to my friends. While I was still around 4-5 hours a day, they were usually in 3-4 hour range, some even reached 2.

    But here is the strange part: when I looked at the breakdown Screen Time gave me, the numbers didn’t add up.

• Proprietary

  • Qt ☛ QML Debugging in Visual Studio Code [Ed: Why does Qt shill proprietary spyware of Microsoft again?]

    We’re excited to announce a major step forward for QML development workflows...

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft warns of Outlook Classic bug that can crank CPU use up to 50% when typing

    Microsoft has confirmed that Outlook Classic is plagued by a bug causing high CPU usage spikes, triggered whenever you're typing a message.

  • WhichUK ☛ How to stop scam pop-ups on backdoored Windows – according to a tech expert [Ed: Delete Windows? Use something better?]

    Scammers desperate to make a quick profit are tricking unsuspecting users into calling fake support numbers

  • Medium ☛ Restore MSSQL Database file .bak on a Linux Server [Ed: MSSQL does not really run on Linux. It's a lie.]

  • The Register UK ☛ Google, AWS say it's too hard for customers to use Linux to swerve Azure

    The issue stems from changes to Microsoft's cloud licensing practices some years back. Customers used to be able to use regular software licenses to host Microsoft server software on outsourced hardware. But in 2019, Microsoft began requiring new, separate licenses to host virtualized versions of these servers within Amazon, Google, and Alibaba's clouds – three businesses Microsoft classified as "listed providers."

  • India News ☛ Amid layoffs at Infosys, Google, Microsoft, bad news for Flipkart employees as it asks them to work..

    Flipkart is among the last new-age firms, especially in the e-commerce space, to end its WFH policy. Most of the employees at rival firms such as Meesho, Amazon, Blinkit and Zepto have been working from the office for five days a week.

  • Macworld ☛ Tariffs aren't the only reason why your next Apple device might be more expensive

    According to a report by Digital Chat Station on Weibo, Apple will “definitely use TSMC’s 2nm process” in its chips next year. That’s exciting for buyers who want the latest and greatest tech, but not for the price tag. The 2nm process is reportedly a lot more expensive than 3nm, which means prices might be going up.

    It’s been reported that the cost of a 2nm wafer is $30,000, versus $18,000 for 3nm chips.

  • Tedium ☛ Windows 10 End-Of-Life: Are Non-Techies Screwed?

    The mom spoke for a certain population segment that often gets neglected in society: The person who thinks that what we have is already good enough, who isn’t convinced by things like whiz-bang graphics or cool accessories.

    “I’m going to say no, and I’m going to explain to him how people market things to make you spend more money,” she said at the time.

  • The Register UK ☛ GoDaddy mistake took Zoom offline for about 90 minutes

    Cisco’s ThousandEyes observability outfit analyzed the incident and picked it as a DNS problem that meant top-level domain nameservers did not have the records for zoom.us.

    “The issue had a cascading effect that impacted Zoom's services, particularly their main webpage, zoom.com,” ThousandEyes added. “This indicates that the content delivery network (CDN) serving Zoom was unable to connect to the backend services hosted on zoom.us.

    That assessment was correct, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Amazon partners with GitLab to bring Q Developer to DevSecOps workflows

    Amazon Web Services Inc. today announced a partnership with DevSecOps tooling provider GitLab Inc. that will integrate it with agentic artificial intelligence development assistant Q Developer.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ I stopped sticking to FOSS but immediately regretted that decision

    After getting the iPad I immediately regretted that. It was so much worse than I could’ve ever imagined.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Lost It on a Call With the Government After Autopilot Killed a Tesla Driver

      The entire front of the vehicle was ripped off, sending the SUV spinning. Huan was pronounced dead hours after being taken to the hospital.

      According to details released years later, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) confirmed that the software Huang had been using Autopilot, and had informed both his brother and his wife that it had previously swerved toward the exact road barrier into which he ultimately crashed.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Why Brazilian DJ Alok wants to ‘keep art human’

      The 33-year-old electronic artist acknowledged that certain software tools have helped him extract vocals, samples and instruments necessary to form creative beats. Yet he doesn’t believe AI should replace artistic sensibility, “because to create art, you need to touch the soul.”

    • 404 Media ☛ This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops

      Massive Blue is helping cops deploy AI-powered social media bots to talk to people they suspect are anything from violent sex criminals all the way to vaguely defined “protesters.”

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Hello fellow kids! Doing crimes is TIGHT!

    • The Independent UK ☛ Seattle crosswalk audio buttons hacked to imitate Jeff Bezos’ voice pleading not to tax the rich

      It wasn’t immediately clear how many crosswalk buttons were impacted.

      The Seattle Department of Transportation said it was responding to “several locations which have been altered to play fake audio messages.” The department said in a statement on Wednesday evening: “We have corrected walk signal messages in multiple locations, and will continue to respond to tampered push buttons if we learn of them.”

    • Michael Burkhardt ☛ Chats with Claude: On Fascism - Michael Burkhardt's Whirled Wide Web

      In light of the recent news that the Trump administration is using the IRS to target a private university, I wondered: what has to happen before we can legitimately use the term fascism? So I had a short chat with Claude. Here’s the transcript: [...]

  • Social Control Media

    • Thibault Martin: Social media affect me more than I thought

      I've struggled with focus earlier this year. I felt pulled in all directions, overwhelmed by the world, and generally miserable. I decided to abstain from using social control media for a week to see if anything would change.

      The Joy of Missing Out was so strong that I ended up staying off social control media for 3 whole weeks. I realized that engaging with social control media harmed my mental health, and I could develop strategies to improve my relationship with it.

    • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Is Secretly Building a Social Network

      If it goes ahead, it sounds reminiscent of how X directly integrates Musk's Grok AI model into the website, where it operates both as a standalone chatbot, while also being capable of responding directly to users' posts at their request.

    • The Nation ☛ A Disgraced Hunter Biden Informant Had Ties to Trump Social Media Bid

      Last year, Smirnov pleaded guilty to multiple federal charges—including making a false statement about the Bidens—and was sentenced to six years in prison, so it’s difficult to discern, based on the new DOJ filing, what might cast fresh doubt on his conviction. (The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment on this piece; Smirnov’s lawyer declined to comment.)

      The intrigue here deepens in view of continued revelations about Smirnov’s dealings with Trump’s business empire. Trump’s own personal business associates paid Smirnov under unclear circumstances via a mysterious American firm in 2020—the same year he was providing false statements about the Bidens to the FBI. But Smirnov had other, unreported ties to Donald Trump and his businesses, via a convoluted group of linked companies, one of which came close to building a Trump-branded social media platform, like the firm that later became known as Truth Social, even though Smirnov reportedly had little direct involvement in the plan.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • The New Stack ☛ Kelsey Hightower, AWS's Eswar Bala on Open Source's Evolution

      “The origins of open source came from fighting against the big vendors,” said Hightower. “So, when you see a big vendor do something in open source, you naturally question the motives. Like, you can’t ignore that particular truth.”

      So what does it mean when we use “AWS” and “open source” in the same sentence?

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Simon Josefsson ☛ Verified Reproducible Tarballs

      How do you know that the XZ release tarballs was actually derived from its version control sources? The same for Gzip? Coreutils? Tar? Sed? Bash? GCC? We don’t know this! I am not aware of any automated or collaborative effort to perform this independent confirmation. Nor am I aware of anyone attempting to do this on a regular basis. We would want to be able to do this in the year 2042 too. I think the best way to reach that is to do the verification continuously in a pipeline, fixing bugs as time passes. The current state of the art seems to be that people audit the differences manually and hope to find something. I suspect many package maintainers ignore the problem and take the release source tarballs and trust upstream about this.

      We can do better.

    • The Register UK ☛ Tesla fudged odometer to defraud me, owner claims

      After the last visit to the shop, he claimed he noticed something odd: He was burning through a lot more miles for the same trips. A normal commute for him averaged 55.54 miles a day between December and February, but by March the odometer was registering 72.35 miles a day for the same journey, he reckons.

      By July he'd passed the 50,000-mile limit. He then discovered that Tesla had issued a recall for faulty suspension systems, so in January 2024 he went to store for a sixth time to fix his suspension again, and was told he had to pay because the warranty had expired and the recall didn't apply to him.

    • Terence Eden ☛ That’s Not How A SIM Swap Attack Works

      I realise it is in the consumer rights section of the newspaper, not the technology section, and I dare-say some editorialising has gone on, but that's nonsense.

      Here's how a SIM swap works.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EDRI ☛ Civil society files DSA complaint against Meta for toxic, profiling-fueled feeds

      Civil society organisations Bits of Freedom, Convocation Design + Research, European Digital Rights (EDRi), and Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF) are filing a complaint against Meta for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA).

    • JURIST ☛ Europe rights court rules Netherlands violated privacy right for long-term maternal separation

      The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that the Netherlands violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to respect for private and family life, in a case involving the long-term separation of a mother from her daughter following the mother’s loss of parental authority.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Congressmen sound alarm over data privacy following 23andMe bankruptcy

      The Republican representatives — Brett Guthrie from Kentucky, Gus Bilirakis from Florida and Gary Palmer from Alaska — sent a letter to 23andMe interim Chief Executive Joe Selsavage on Thursday requesting answers to several questions by May 1.

      The questions revolve around the fate of 23andMe’s genetic database, which includes DNA information from more than 15 million people. The congressmen asked the company how it would protect the data in an event of a sale and how it would vet potential buyers.

    • Wired ☛ How Americans Are Surveilled During Protests

      There have been a number of protests in the past few months pushing back against President Trump’s most recent policy changes, and we're likely to see more. Today on the show, WIRED’s senior editor of security and investigations, Andrew Couts, talks us through the technology being used by law enforcement to surveil protests, how surveillance tech has evolved over the years, and what it means for anyone taking to the streets or posting to social media to voice their concerns. Plus, we share WIRED tips on how to stay safe, should you choose to protest.

    • Wired ☛ New Jersey Sues Discord for Allegedly Failing to Protect Children

      The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, comes after a multiyear investigation by the New Jersey Office of Attorney General. The AG’s office claims it has uncovered evidence that, despite Discord’s policies to protect children and teens, the popular messaging app is putting youth “at risk.”

      “We’re the first state in the country to sue Discord,” Attorney General Matthew Platkin tells WIRED.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Age Verification Using Facial Scans

      I look forward to all the videos of people hacking this system using various disguises.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Electric cars threaten national security, defence chiefs warn

      A report by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) found that there were concerns Beijing – which dominates the market – could effectively eavesdrop on conversations using the vehicles, which are to be introduced for all ministers and officials by the end of 2027.

      The warning in the report, which was delivered to the previous Tory government, contributed to fears at senior levels in Rishi Sunak’s administration that electric cars were “basically mobile spying platforms” and even those made in the West using Chinese parts were susceptible.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Palantir, Anthropic, Google deepen ties on government AI use with Claude partnership

      In a press release announcing the collaboration Thursday, the companies revealed that they are now working together through FedStart, a Palantir program meant to aid compliance with FedRAMP. Google Cloud is also a major partner.

      As they increasingly attempt to sell their technology to the federal government, AI companies are currently figuring out how best to approach FedRAMP, FedScoop previously reported. The General Services Administration-housed program oversees security standards and benchmarks, and is focused on reducing the need for multiple agencies to conduct redundant reviews of cloud technology.

    • NYOB ☛ EU pledged to improve GDPR cooperation - and made it worse

      As of 2018, the GDPR is supposed to ensure that Europeans enjoy privacy rights throughout the entire EU. However, when people's rights are violated by companies based in another EU/EEA Member State, complaints are dealt with through a complex "cooperation mechanism" between the Data Protection Authority (DPA) in the users' Member State and the DPA in the company's Member State. This enforcement mechanism is at the core of the generally acknowledged enforcement failure of the GDPR. Complaints get lost, decisions take years and there is virtually no possibility to act against inactive DPAs. The EU has ventured to solve this through a "GDPR Procedural Regulation". But it becomes clear now, that it is about to fail miserably. The final so-called “trilogue” negotiations between the European Parliament, the Member States and the European Commission has led to a legislative mess that will likely make procedures more complex, slower and prone to legal challenges. noyb has been closely following the dossier and is now issuing a public warning. The file needs intensive additional work. The current approach seems to make things worse overall.

    • The Verge ☛ Discord is verifying some users’ age with ID and facial scans

      The new face and ID scanning requirements only apply to Discord users who haven’t previously verified their age on the platform. Discord says this is a “one-time process” that will be triggered in two situations: when users are exposed to nude or sexually explicit content that’s been flagged by Discord’s sensitive media filter, or when users attempt to change filter control settings to prevent such content from being blurred or blocked.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New York Times ☛ Assad Defaced: Syrians Destroy a Dictator’s Icons

    Images of Bashar al-Assad and his family were emblematic of the dynasty’s grip on Syria. Though remnants linger after the regime’s ouster, the removal of the once ubiquitous relics has offered catharsis.

  • France24 ☛ Two years of war in Sudan triggered the “world's worst humanitarian crisis”

    Once allies, they're now enemies. In 2019, the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces worked together to oust former strongman Omar al-Bashir from power. But after a failed transition to civilian rule, the Sudanese army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces commander, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, worked together again in 2021 to overthrow the government. For a time, Sudanese expected a peaceful return to civilian rule. Then came April 2023 and two years of civil war. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 13 million uprooted, with reports of rape being used as a weapon of war across the country. The UN also says it's the world's biggest crisis of hunger and displacement. And the effects of the war are spreading beyond Sudan's borders.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Contributor: The constitutional crisis is real

    Is the U.S. facing a constitutional crisis? The answer, unequivocally and emphatically, is yes. But it also could get much worse.

  • RFA ☛ Beijing, Manila at odds over Google Maps update on South China Sea

    It’s unclear why Google made the change, but a spokesperson told Agence France-Presse: “The West Philippine Sea has always been labeled on Google Maps. We recently made this label easier to see at additional zoom levels.”

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Big Banks Look for Profits Amid Global Temperature Rise

    “We now expect a 3°C world” amid setbacks to global decarbonization efforts, Morgan Stanley told clients, in a forecast that SciAm says was “tucked into a mundane research report” on the bright future of air conditioning stocks. JPMorgan told investors it evaluates climate risks against “baseline” scenarios that assume global warming of 2.7°C to over 3°C by 2100.

  • The Register UK ☛ Whistleblower describes how DOGE [sic] tore through NLRB IT system

    Democratic lawmakers are calling for an investigation after a tech staffer at the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) blew the whistle on the cost-trimming DOGE [sic]'s activities at the employment watchdog – which the staffer claims included being granted superuser status in contravention of standard operating procedures, exfiltrating data, and seemingly leaking credentials to someone with a Russian IP address.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ 35 countries use Chinese networks for transporting mobile user traffic, posing cyber risks

    “A major issue lies in the fact that these providers operate under the direction of the Chinese government, raising the risk of global surveillance, data interception, and exploitation for state-sponsored cyber espionage,” the analysis reads. “Their role in the mobile interconnect system grants them access to critical functions, including device authentication, call setup, SMS delivery, location updates, and data session management — making them prime channels for exploiting network vulnerabilities.”

  • Crooked Timber ☛ The point of no return:Only days left to stop a totalitarian state in the US — Crooked Timber

    Back in November, when I concluded that Trump’s dictatorship was a fait accompli lots of readers thought I was going over the top. In retrospect, and with one exception, I was hopelessly over-optimistic. I imagined a trajectory similar to Orban’s Hungary, with a gradual squeeze on political opposition and civil society, playing out over years and multiple terms in office,.

    The reality has been massively worse, both in terms of speed and scope. Threats of conquest against friendly countries, masked thugs abducting people from the street, shakedowns of property from enemies of the state, concentration camps outside the reach of the legal system, all happening at a pace more comparable to Germany in 1933 than to the examples I had in mind.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Russia jails four journalists for 5.5 years over alleged ties to Navalny's team, including past Reuters and AP contributors — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Journalists Handed Prison Terms For Alleged Ties To Navalny

      Four Russian journalists have been sentenced by a Moscow court to 5 1/2 years in prison each for their activities linked to the late opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which Russian authorities have designated as an "extremist organization."

• Environment

  • EcoWatch ☛ Climate Change Will Increase Arsenic Levels in Rice, Study Finds

    The researchers found that temperatures above two degrees Celsius and rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to higher inorganic arsenic (iAs) concentrations in rice, which could increase the lifetime health risks of populations across Asia by 2050, a press release from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health said.

  • Michigan News ☛ US Army engineers decide to fast-track Great Lakes tunnel permits under Trump energy emergency order

    “The only energy ‘emergency’ the American people face is Trump’s efforts to disregard clean air and water safeguards in order to rush through dirty, dangerous fossil fuel projects,” said Mahyar Sorour, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Fossil Fuels Policy.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Earth Day events planned across Michigan; find one in your area

    Earth Day is coming up on Tuesday.

    While plenty of events are happening on the day itself, many are also scheduled for the weekends before and after.

    The holiday can be a good excuse to get out and enjoy the Michigan outdoors. Whether you live in Augusta or Alpena, there’s probably something Earth Day-related happening near you.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Vintage Everyday ☛ Inside the Cockpit of a Concorde

      Although Concorde’s small dimensions effectively created the sense of a packed-in bank of instruments, there wasn’t much more on this busy flight deck than you’d find on any other airliner at the time.

    • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ AI Electricity Demand Could Mean Grid Strain or Gain

      A new report this week from the International Energy Agency (IEA) confirms that the rapid spread of data centres, driven by soaring demand for artificial intelligence technologies, is one of several factors putting pressure on electricity systems around the world.

      “A typical AI-focused data centre consumes as much electricity as 100,000 households, but the largest ones under construction today will consume 20 times as much,” the IEA writes. Poor planning could worsen their impact, but AI also has the potential to improve how power grids function.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • New York Times ☛ The ‘Great Moose Migration’ Livestream Captivates Sweden

      Moose fans are following the weekslong moose migration, which airs live on the national broadcaster. “This is reality TV at its finest,” a moderator of a zealous Facebook (Farcebook) group said.

    • Science Alert ☛ When The Pandemic Came, Zoos Closed, And The Animals Started to Act Differently

      When the humans go away...

    • LRT ☛ Cherry blossoms draw crowds in Vilnius – photos

      The 200 cherry trees were planted in 2001 to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who saved about 6,000 Jews from Lithuania, Poland and Germany during World War Two. A monument at the park’s entrance notes that the trees were a gift from the people of Japan to Lithuania.

  • Overpopulation

    • European Commission ☛ Commission invests €86 million to improve climate resilience and water security

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ Chinese official says US tariff aims to ‘take away Hong Kong’s life’

    Mr Xia Baolong made the comments in a televised speech on Hong Kong’s National Security Education day.

  • New York Times ☛ Biden Condemns Convicted Felon Over Social Security in First Speech Since Leaving Office

    In Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first extensive speech since he left office, he accused the Convicted Felon administration of “taking a hatchet” to the Social Security Administration.

  • New York Times ☛ Amazon Sellers Struggle with Convicted Felon’s Tariff Plans

    An Illinois couple who sell party supplies on Amazon have been frantically trying to understand and adapt to new costs caused by Hell Toupée’s tariffs.

  • France24 ☛ Viral TikTok’s from Chinese manufacturers falsely claim that luxury handbags are made in China

    In response to The Insurrectionist’s trade war, Chinese factories are flooding Fentanylware (TikTok) with viral videos claiming to ‘expose’ the truth behind the manufacturing process of luxury handbags, including Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada…allegedly, they’re all ‘made in China!’ We debunk these claims in this edition of Truth or Fake.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Press Gazette ☛ Global ad spend against news down by a third since pre-Covid

    Professionally-produced content being overtaken for ad spend by creators and influencers.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ OpenAI in Talks to Acquire AI Coding Tool Windsurf for $3 Billion: Report

    This acquisition would position OpenAI to better compete with companies offering AI coding services, including Anthropic, Microsoft’s GitHub, and Anysphere. Windsurf, founded in 2021, would join the list of startups acquired by OpenAI, which currently includes vector database company Rockset and Multi.

  • Techdirt ☛ The “De” In “Decentralization” Stands For “Democracy”

    There’s a certain dark irony in watching tech billionaires who built their empires on the “democratizing power of technology” now actively working to dismantle democratic institutions. The same figures who once championed connection and openness are now the architects of the most dangerous centralization of power in modern history.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Activist seeks CEO change at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

    HPE’s board is expected to meet in coming days to discuss whether to replace CEO Antonio Neri, a Hewlett Packard lifer who has run the company since 2018, following a proposal from activist investor Elliott Management to do that, according to people close to the company.

  • Molly White ☛ Trump’s newest grift: Building a cryptocurrency empire while destroying its regulators

    The benefits to these companies have been substantial: at least eight SEC enforcement cases against cryptocurrency firms have been dropped with prejudice or stayed pending resolution. Many have also been invited to shape the new rules for their industry, giving them a priceless opportunity to establish a profitable environment without burdensome financial oversight, legal compliance, and consumer protection requirements.

  • Carl Svensson ☛ Honest and Elitist Thoughts on Why Computers Were More Fun Before

    Built-in gatekeeping for nerds is now long gone, usurped by the lowest common denominator in economies of scale. Consumerist convenience, walled gardens, corporate risk-adversity and shallow aesthetical homogenization have replaced the sprawling hobbyist collective that once made up the bulk of personal computers and their users.

    I have a hard time blaming the users upon which all of this was forced. They probably, in their heart of hearts, wanted this development every bit as little as I did. But the genie is out of its bottle, and the good old days aren't coming back.

    It's not that there aren't computer nerds anymore. They're just much harder to spot, since most people who own a computer nowadays care very little about their machines. This, I think, is a rarely discussed reason for why so many of us old geeks seek refuge in retro computing. Nobody in their right mind would buy a second hand Amiga today - unless they have aficion for using computers for the sake of using computers.

  • Futurism ☛ Zillionaire Girlbosses Astonished by Backlash to Their Frivolous Trip to Space

    The vacuous publicity stunt — which claimed to make the crew [sic] of mostly uber-wealthy media personalities "astronauts" after a mere two days of basic safety training — drew plenty of criticism.

    After all, apart from spending an obscene amount of money and rattling off cringeworthy statements about "making space for future women," the crew [sic] had little to contribute to science, discourse, or meaningful feminism.

  • The Cyber Show ☛ Freedom Fighters (Part 3)

    As we've been saying here for a while cybersecurity is a political struggle. If the US is growing hostile to cybersecurity, what does this mean?

    It is hard not to be in a state of denial around recent events. What's happening in the USA is simply bizarre. One expects to wake up any moment and find it was all a bad dream or test of public credulity?

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Axios ☛ Trump tariffs inspire Chinese manufacturer TikTok trend

      Even if the products are real, it's often unclear from the videos how to make a purchase.

      Reality check: As attractive as it might sound to avoid markups, it's often not advisable or not possible to buy directly from Chinese factories.

    • Tracy Durnell ☛ Ceding the work of interpretation

      All together, I see these pieces adding up to an avoidance of making our own decisions, exercising our own judgment, trusting our own interpretations. And, fair — we’re all overwhelmed, drowning in content.

    • Axios ☛ MAGA-friendly outlets reshape White House press briefings

      The increased access comes as part of the Trump administration's push to elevate "new media," which includes nonpartisan digital outlets like Axios and Semafor but also Trump-aligned outlets.

      The new approach yields more supportive questions, fortifying the MAGA media ecosystem from the inside out.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Russia seeds chatbots with lies. Any bad actor can game AI the same way.

      Russia is automating the spread of false information to fool artificial intelligence chatbots on key topics, offering a playbook to other bad actors on how to game AI to push content meant to inflame, influence and obfuscate instead of inform.

      Experts warn the problem is worsening as more people rely on chatbots rushed to market, social media companies cut back on moderation and the Trump administration disbands government teams fighting disinformation.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • China detains Tibetans for sharing photos of late Buddhist leader

    Officials place monastery of Tulku Hungkar Dorje under strict surveillance, forbid public memorials.

  • Citizen Lab ☛ JUICYJAM: How Thai Authorities Use Online Doxxing to Suppress Dissent

    A sustained, coordinated social control media harassment and doxxing campaign – which we codenamed JUICYJAM – targeting the pro-democracy movement in Thailand has run uninterrupted, and unchallenged, since at least August 2020. Through our analysis of public social control media posts we determined that the campaign was not only inauthentic, but the information revealed could not have been reasonably sourced from a private individual.

  • FAIR ☛ Fox News Can’t Admit Jewish Identity of Anti-Israel Protesters

    AP (3/13/25): “Demonstrators from [Jewish Voice for Peace] filled the lobby of Trump Tower…to denounce the immigration arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist who helped lead protests against Israel at Columbia University.” In its coverage of Jewish Voice for Peace’s Trump Tower protest, Fox News obscured the Jewish identity of protesters—while echoing antisemitic conspiracy theories and racist tropes.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ All India Muslim Jamaat Issues Fatwa Against Vijay Over Iftar Party

  • Techdirt ☛ Library Study Shows It’s Just Politicians And Activist Groups Trying To Get Books Banned

    The latest report [PDF] on censorship efforts compiled by the American Library Association makes it clear this isn’t a groundswell movement by personally offended parents to protect their kids from certain content. This is an activist movement that is determined to eliminate access to this content by whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, these groups are being helped along by legislators who believe their personal beliefs should be the only ones protected by the Constitution.

  • The Record ☛ Chris Krebs leaves SentinelOne after Trump memo, saying ‘this is my fight’ | The Record from Recorded Future News

    “It’s about the government pulling its levers to punish dissent, to go after corporate interests and corporate relationships,” Krebs told the Wall Street Journal in his first interview since Trump’s move. Reuters noted last week that other large cybersecurity companies have been largely silent about Trump’s memo.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Chris Krebs resigns from SentinelOne to focus on fighting Trump’s executive order

    The executive order targeting Krebs and another former Department of Homeland Security official, Miles Taylor, have come under scathing criticism from both the left and the right.

    Conservative legal scholar J. Michael Luttig described them as “constitutionally corrupt,” “a travesty of justice” and “shameful.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Krebs resigns from SentinelOne after Trump memo targets him

    Krebs, a Republican who Trump appointed to lead US cybersecurity operations in 2017, was famously fired via tweet five years ago after he publicly contradicted Trump's false claims of election fraud. Krebs declared the 2020 US presidential election "the most secure in American history."

  • Reuters ☛ Ex-CISA chief Chris Krebs leaving SentinelOne following Trump pressure

    Trump fired Krebs from CISA in November 2020 following his refusal to endorse the president's false claim that the election had been rigged by his then-opponent, former President Joe Biden. Last week, Trump signed an order that stripped Krebs and employees of the firm of their security clearances. The rationale for targeting SentinelOne, whose products are used to fight hackers and cybercriminals, was never publicly explained, but the move fits within Trump's wider campaign to use the might of the U.S. government to crush his political opponents.

  • The Fediverse Report ☛ Bluesky, censorship and country-based moderation

    In response to the censorship requests, users on X started to move towards Bluesky, to avoid the restrictions. The censorship requests from the Turkish government quickly extended to Bluesky, and Bianet reported on April 5th that 44 Bluesky accounts had been ordered to be blocked by the Turkish judicial system, citing concerns over national security and public order. Bianet noted that at that time, Bluesky PBC (the company behind Bluesky) had not yet blocked any of these accounts, and that they remained accessible from Turkey.

  • Axios ☛ Trump wants to assert control at Harvard, other elite colleges

    Why it matters: The administration's recent demands of Harvard and other elite institutions show the government's playbook to influence and reorient the priorities of universities through federal funds.

    While the demands revolve around institutional policies, the freezes and cuts largely threaten scientific research.

  • Techdirt ☛ Otherwise Objectionable: How 230 Let US Internet Companies Win

    We discuss how other places regulate the internet, including Europe, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Brazil and more. And how each of their approaches created real burdens — the exact kinds of burdens that Chris Cox and Ron Wyden were trying to avoid while drafting Section 230.

    What’s particularly striking is how Section 230 functioned as a kind of incubator. The early freedom from crushing legal uncertainty allowed companies to build services compelling enough that international users demanded access to them, creating pressure on foreign regulators to accommodate these platforms rather than block them entirely. This explains what seems like a contradiction: how platforms built under Section 230’s protection can operate in jurisdictions with much stricter liability regimes. They succeeded not despite Section 230, but because of the head start it provided, reinforcing the idea that Section 230’s biggest value is in protecting smaller, newer platforms.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Trial of 5 journalists who covered Turkish protests set to open

    “This trial has been invented as a scare tactic to intimidate and deter all journalists in Turkey from reporting from the field. Experienced journalists should not be forced to explain in court why they were photographing Turkey’s biggest protests in a decade, in its biggest city,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Authorities should drop the charges against the five photojournalists who already suffer enough in trying to capture images of historic events while repeatedly being beaten, tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets.”

  • CPJ ☛ Kazakh journalist Temirlan Yensebek sentenced to 5 years of restricted freedom

    “Yensebek’s conviction is a clear example of how Kazakh authorities use such measures to intimidate and silence critical journalists,” said CPJ Chief of Programs Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “We call on the authorities in Kazakhstan not to contest any potential appeal of his conviction and to ensure that journalists in the country can carry out their work without fear of criminal prosecution.”

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ TechCentral acquired in significant boost for ICT publishing

    TechCentral, South Africa’s most powerful B2B technology news and information platform, has a new owner.

    TechCentral’s long-serving business partner, Publishared – founded by digital publishing industry veteran Michelle Losco – has acquired NewsCentral Media, TechCentral’s publisher, for an undisclosed sum.

  • CPJ ☛ 4 Russian journalists sentenced to 5 ½ years in prison

    “The sentencing of four journalists at once to 5 ½ years in prison is blatant testimony to Russian authorities’ profound contempt for press freedom,” said CPJ Chief Programs Officer Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Russian authorities should immediately release Antonina Favorskaya, Artyom Krieger, Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin, drop all charges against them, and stop jailing journalists in retaliation for their work.”

    The court also banned them from publishing any content on the [Internet] for three years after they complete their prison sentences.

  • CPJ ☛ Upholding and Expanding the Rule of Law in the EU: Joint Recommendations Towards a Strongera and More Effective 2025 Rule of Law Report [PDF]

    The profound political shifts witnessed in 2024, a year marked by electoral upheavals and changing political landscapes across Europe and the world, are testing the resilience of democratic institutions, highlighting the need for continued and coordinated action in protecting the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights in the EU. Upholding the rule of law is a top priority, and strengthening the Rule of Law Report is essential to this effort. Making it more effective requires closer collaboration with all key actors committed to the rule of law in the EU, including civil society organisations (CSOs), journalists, and academics.

  • [Old] Buttondown LLC ☛ What is "media"? A primer for Americans.

    Just in time for a massive transformation in the way we use and consume media in the United States, I’ll be sending you a lot of letters. They’re based on an introductory media studies course I taught in the spring of 2024 at the University of San Francisco.

    I owe a lot to my USF colleagues and students, who taught me how to teach media in the twenty-first century. My students asked unexpected questions and spurred me to rethink my approach and the topics I covered. They also introduced me to pop culture and perspectives I never would have discovered on my own, outside the classroom. With these letters, I hope to extend that classroom experience to you, my reader.

  • YLE ☛ Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle to begin second phase of restructuring talks

    These cuts — the biggest in Yle's nearly 100-year history — are as a result of initial plans by the two main government parties, the National Coalition Party and the Finns Party, to reduce Yle's annual funding by more than 100 million euros.

    Instead, an all-party parliamentary working group agreed in September last year to cut Yle's budget by 66 million euros over a three-year period.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ Adobe Scaling Back DEI, Dropping Diversity Quotas

    The Photoshop maker appears to be dramatically reducing their focus on Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion - which is making some Adobe employees very grumpy.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Texas sex toy law could lead to more civil rights restrictions, advocates warn

    To explore the potential impacts of these laws, LoneStarLive.com spoke to Ricci Levy, president and CEO of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, a human rights organization that advocates for sexual freedom.

    This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ What is stopping Trump from exiling you to a foreign prison?

    The legal world has been on notice for a constitutional clash ever since Trump resumed office in January, meticulously analyzing a series of court rulings that challenge the White House and following the administration’s reluctant, often defiant, response.

    But constitutional scholars see no ambiguity in the consequences of the president’s latest threat. Trump’s plans to forcibly remove U.S. citizens abroad — under any circumstances — is the bright red line they have been waiting for.

  • 404 Media ☛ Leaked: Palantir’s Plan to Help ICE Deport People

    Internal Palantir Slack chats and message boards obtained by 404 Media show the contracting giant is helping find the location of people flagged for deportation, that Palantir is now a “more mature partner to ICE,” and how Palantir is addressing employee concerns with discussion groups on ethics.

  • El País ☛ Sly Stone, the artist who changed music history and disappeared: ‘He had everything and almost deliberately threw it away’

    The documentary ‘Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)’ explores the meteoric rise and dramatic fall of Sly & The Family Stone — a band that defined a new era in the 1960s, led by a frontman as brilliant as he was erratic

  • Wired ☛ This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops

    American police departments near the United States-Mexico border are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an unproven and secretive technology that uses AI-generated online personas designed to interact with and collect intelligence on “college protesters,” “radicalized” political activists, and suspected drug and human traffickers, according to internal documents, contracts, and communications that 404 Media obtained via public records requests.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • RTL ☛ Netflix earnings top forecasts despite economic turmoil

    The streaming television service declared itself "off to a good start in 2025" with a profit of $2.9 billion on revenue of $10.5 billion in the first quarter of the year.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• New York Times ☛ Why Antitrust Breakups of Surveillance Giant Google and Meta Could Be Difficult

  For the first time since the late 1990s Abusive Monopolist Microsoft case, federal trials are weighing antitrust breakups, a tactic that harks back to Standard Oil.

• KOL459 | Ex-Twitter Spaces: Jack Dorsey, MElon, Libertarian Property Rights, and the Case for Abolishing Intellectual [sic] Property [sic]

  Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 459.

  In response to lots of froth on Ex-Twitter related to Jack Dorsey's call to "delete all IP law," which was echoed by MElon (Musk and Dorsey: “delete all IP law”) I decided to attempt to host an impromptu Ex-Twitter Spaces about this. After overcoming some technical glitches, here is the result (and thanks to @Brunopbch, @NotGovernor (Patrick Smith), and @TrueAmPatriot86 for assists).

• RTL ☛ Antitrust suit: Google has illegal monopoly in ad tech, US judge rules

  The federal government and more than a dozen US states filed the antitrust suit against Alphabet-owned Google, accusing it of acting illegally to dominate three sectors of digital advertising -- publisher ad servers, advertiser tools, and ad exchanges.

• CBC ☛ Google has illegal monopoly in online ad tech, U.S. judge rules

  Although antitrust regulators prevailed both times, the battle is likely to continue for several more years as Google tries to overturn the two monopoly decisions in appeals while forging ahead in the new and highly lucrative technological frontier of artificial intelligence.

  The next step in the latest case is a penalty phase that will likely begin late this year or early next year.

• Los Angeles Times ☛ 'The anti-trust tides have turned.' What a judge's ruling over Google's 'monopoly' on ad-tech means

  Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a decision that Google illegally maintained and acquired a monopoly in two markets for advertising technology — publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges.

  But in a partial win for Google, antitrust enforcers failed to prove that the company held a monopoly in advertiser ad networks, the judge found.

• Deseret Media ☛ Google holds illegal monopolies in ad tech, US judge finds

  A U.S. judge ruled Google illegally monopolized two online ad tech markets.

  Judge Brinkema found Google maintained monopoly power in publisher ad servers and exchanges.

• Vox ☛ Will the courts break up Google? The company’s anti-trust problems, briefly explained

  Google just lost a huge antitrust case. A federal judge in Virginia ruled on Thursday that the search giant illegally maintained a monopoly in the online advertising market, leveraging its position to make more money and squash competition. The Justice Department, which initiated the case along with several states, has called for Google to be broken up.

• Common Dreams ☛ Google’s Illegal Internet Ad Monopoly Blunts America’s Competitive Edge in Tech

  “Our nation has grown prosperous and powerful because of competition and Google’s illegal monopolies are blunting our competitive edge in the tech industry. The company’s near-total dominance of the online advertising market hurts media companies, rival search engines, social media companies and anyone who consumes media on the internet. As one of the richest, most powerful companies in the history of humanity, a mere fine or slap on the wrist won’t cut it. For the good of our nation and the health of our tech and media industries the government must force Google to sell its advertising technology division.”

• Wired ☛ Google Is Once Again Deemed a Monopoly, This Time in Ad Tech

  Judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia determined that Google illegally monopolized parts of its advertising technology business to dominate the programmatic ad market, a major source of revenue for the company. Google generated nearly $30.4 billion in worldwide revenue last year from placing ads on other apps and websites. Now, a substantial portion of those sales are threatened by penalties that may follow Brinkema’s ruling. A best-case scenario for US consumers is a browsing experience filled with fewer ads and paywalls and more content choices.

• Axios ☛ Google loses online advertising monopoly case

  How it works: The federal government and 17 states who brought the suit seek to force Google to sell off part of its "network" ad business, which sells ads on other publishers' inventory.

  That accounts for roughly 12% of Alphabet's overall business. Google argues spinning it out would actually hurt publishers, because it would force them to buy ads through more expensive rival networks.

• The Verge ☛ Google loses ad tech monopoly case

  The US Department of Justice has won its antitrust case against Google, which accused the company of operating a monopoly in the advertising technology industry. The ruling, which marks Google’s most recent antitrust loss following its Search case, says the tech giant’s anticompetitive practices in two key markets “substantially harmed” publishers and users on the web.

• Patents

  • Unified Patents ☛ $4,000 for Polaris PowerLED memory controller patents prior art

    Unified Patents added two new PATROLL contests, each with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on the list below. The patents are owned by Polaris PowerLED Technologies, LLC, an NPE. The patents generally relate to various nonvolatile memory technologies. The ‘085 patent monopoly has been asserted against Western Digital and is involved in a declaratory judgement action with Micron.

    The contests will expire on May 1, 2025. Please visit PATROLL for more information and to submit an entry for these contests. PATROLL researchers are required to use Pearl to generate claim charts.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Jurassic Patent: How Colossal Biosciences is attempting to own the “woolly mammoth”

    Colossal Biosciences not only wants to bring back the woolly mammoth—it wants to patent monopoly it, too. MIT Technology Review has learned the Texas startup is seeking a patent monopoly that would give it exclusive legal rights to create and sell gene-edited elephants containing ancient mammoth DNA.

  • Unified Patents ☛ $8,000 awarded for Dominion Harbor entity, Arlington Technologies, networking patents prior art

    Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winners below totaling $8,000 in cash prizes. The patents are owned by Arlington Technologies LLC, an NPE and entity of Dominion Harbor Group. The patents relate to various technologies and two of the patents have been asserted against Comcast.

  • Unified Patents ☛ Ascend Innovation entity, Accessify, communications patent monopoly prior art found

    Unified is pleased to announce prior art has been found on U.S. Patent 7,197,640, owned by Accessify LLC, an NPE and entity of Ascend Innovation Management, LLC. The '640 patent monopoly relates generally to the use of identification codes in the handling and management of communications.

    We would also like to thank the dozens of other high-quality submissions that were made on this patent.

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • JUVE ☛ UPC rules on product-by-process claims in Knaus Tabbert campervan dispute [Ed: UPC is illegal, so any "rules" are just abuse on top of existing abuses]

      The proceedings between Yellow Sphere and Knaus Tabbert related to EP 3 356 109 B1. They centred on the interpretation of product-by-process claims. EP 109 covers a new type of frame for campervans that is particularly light yet strong. Erwin Härtwich and Alexander Christ are listed as inventors in the EPO register.

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ TTAB Partially Grants GUIDEON Cancellation Petition but Rejects Zone-of-Natural-Expansion Claim

    The Board granted in part this petition for cancellation of a registration for the mark GUIDEON for, inter alia, providing online employment information (class 35) and educational services (class 41) to veterans and military families, finding confusion likely as to the class 35 services with the identical mark registered for "Computer application software for smartphone operating systems, namely, software for a directory of listings with corresponding location primarily on military installations." Registrant's class 41 services, however, were deemed not related to Petitioner Streeter's services, nor did the zone-of-natural-expansion apply. Katharine Lee Streeter v. GuideOn Education Consulting LLC, Cancellation No. 92077751 (April 11, 2025) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge David K. Heasley).

  • TTAB Blog ☛ CAFC Upholds TTAB Dismissal of "fleur-de-lis" Cancellation Petition Due to Lack of Standing

    Michel J. Messier of Rutland, Vermont, petitioned to cancel a registration for the mark shown below, owned by the New Orleans Saints football team, for "entertainment services in the form of professional football games and exhibitions." Mr. Messier alleged that he is a "direct descendant of the Kings of France (Scotland, Aragon, and Castille)” and that he and his family own “intellectual property rights to the Fleur de Lys, Orleans and Saints marks." Not good enough, said the CAFC. Michel J. Messier v. New Orleans Louisiana Saints, LLC, Appeal No. 2024-2271 (April 14, 2025) [not precedential].

• Copyrights

  • Public Domain Review ☛ Sea Monsters Unmasked and Sea Fables Explained by Henry Lee (1883)

    Pamphlets on sea beasts produced for the International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Alleged Anna's Archive Operator Dropped from U.S. 'Scraping' Lawsuit

    Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for shadow libraries that allows users to find pirated books and other related resources.

    In late 2023, the search engine Anna’s Archive expanded its offering by making data from OCLC’s proprietary WorldCat database available online.

    Anna’s Archive scraped several terabytes of data over the course of a year and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free.

    These records contain no copyrighted books or articles. However, they can help to create a to-do list of all missing shadow library content on the web, with the ultimate goal of making as much content publicly available as possible.

  • The Verge ☛ Wikipedia is giving AI developers its data to fend off bot scrapers

    Wikimedia says the dataset hosted by Kaggle has been “designed with machine learning workflows in mind,” making it easier for AI developers to access machine-readable article data for modeling, fine-tuning, benchmarking, alignment, and analysis. The content within the dataset is openly licensed, and as of April 15th, includes research summaries, short descriptions, image links, infobox data, and article sections — minus references or non-written elements like audio files.