Leftovers

• Lou Plummer ☛ Tiny Little Acts of Resistance

  As a certified, card carrying, paid up member of the resistance, my days are spent with an eye towards doing something, anything to retain my sanity in a world seemingly going mad. I am always on the lookout for whatever I can do to bolster my faith in humanity and to connect with those who feel much the same way about the world as I do.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] Who gets to be called an astronaut? Private space travel has reignited debate over use of prestigious title

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] How dogs and cats are evolving to look alike and why it’s humans’ fault – new research

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] Chinese research isn’t taken as seriously as papers from elsewhere – my new study

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-05-07 [Older] Bronze-age Britain traded tin with the Mediterranean, shows new study – settling a two-century debate

  • Scoop News Group ☛ NSF announces RIF plans, in-person policy and equity division elimination in staff memo

    Details of the agency’s workforce reduction plans come after its termination of hundreds of grants that don’t align with President Donald Trump’s policies, such as those that included diversity, equity and inclusion activities. Amid those actions, Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned his position as NSF’s director. Panchanathan had been appointed by Trump during the president’s first term.

  • Harvard University ☛ Know how those tech moguls want us to go to Mars? Ignore them.

    Astrophysicist says they may have more money than you, but they don’t know anything more about future than anyone else

  • The Nation ☛ Inside the Bloodbath at the NIH

    Just a little over 100 days later, it is clear that Russell Vought was just getting started on dismantling biomedical research in the United States. The NIH, when Vought gets through with it, will be a shell of its former self. It’s clear that for the Voughts, gratitude or even any sense of Christian charity is trumped by political sadism. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in private talks, recorded on video in 2023 and 2024, and uncovered by ProPublica and Documented, “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down.… We want to put them in trauma.”

    Vought outlined his plans in Project 2025 and is clearly the brains behind many of the savage attacks on the public sector in the US, including the NIH. But who are his foot soldiers? Who is doing the dirty business at the agency level? While Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are the chaos agents in chief, useful idiots for turbo-charging Vought’s vision, who is inside a place like the NIH, who is doing the day-to-day work in the destruction of our nation’s biomedical research infrastructure? To put it bluntly, who is responsible?

• Career/Education

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Germany considers smartphone ban in schools

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas families and kids will pay the real cost of gutting the U.S. Department of Education

    Perhaps the most devastating move is the gutting of the Institute for Education Sciences and its statistical branch, the National Center for Education Statistics — the backbone of education research in this country. These agencies don’t deal in politics; they deal in facts. They provide data on which states have the highest testing scores on our only national test. They fund research on trends in student outcomes, understanding which innovations work with struggling readers and which do not, and how our bilingual students fare after they exit an English learning program.

    Without them, education policy will be based on guesswork instead of evidence.

  • ARRL ☛ Johns Hopkins University to Hold ARRL Teachers Institute

    A session of the ARRL Teachers Institute on Wireless Technology (TI) is being hosted this summer by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland. This marks the first time a major research university has hosted the ARRL program.

  • Sean Goedecke ☛ How projects fail at large tech companies | sean goedecke

    How do projects fail at large tech companies? As I’ve said many times, failure means executives aren’t happy with how the project turned out. At healthy companies, that typically means that a sensible engineer wouldn’t be happy either, because the project didn’t work or users hated it. But what actually causes the projects to fail? I’ve seen a lot of projects go wrong - both up close and at a distance - in the last ten years. Here are the main reasons why.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] Red Bull's plans spark water scarcity fears near Berlin

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] Nigeria: Autistic teenager sets world painting record

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Being outdoorsy indoors: How Slow TV brings us closer to nature

  • EcoWatch ☛ Living Near Golf Courses Linked to Higher Parkinson's Disease Risk, Possibly From Pesticide Exposure

    Researchers determined that living within one mile of a golf course posed the greatest risks, with a 126% increase in chance of developing Parkinson’s disease compared to people living six or more miles from a golf course. Anyone living within three miles of the golf course also had elevated risks of developing the disease, but the risk became less notable after three miles.

• Proprietary

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Ubiquity UniFi Protect Flaws: CVE-2025-23123 Patch Urged

    The more severe of the two issues, CVE-2025-23123, affects UniFi Protect Cameras running firmware version 4.75.43 and earlier. This vulnerability allows a remote attacker with internal network access to trigger a heap-based buffer overflow, enabling the execution of arbitrary code. The flaw is classified as a Remote Code Execution (RCE) threat and poses cybersecurity risks for enterprise environments.

  • The Record ☛ Three Russians, one Kazakhstani charged in takedown of Anyproxy and 5socks botnets | The Record from Recorded Future News

    The four created the botnets by infecting older-model wireless internet routers in the U.S. and abroad. A malware campaign allowed the men to reconfigure the routers and offer them for sale as proxy servers through the Anyproxy and 5socks sites.

    The 5socks.net website offered more than 7,000 proxies for sale and allowed users to pay monthly fees of up to $110 for access.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Botnet Made Up Of 7,000 End-Of-Life Routers Taken Down

    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announcement came two days after an FBI alert warning about the Anyproxy.net and 5socks.net botnets and urging users to replace vulnerable [Internet] routers or disable remote administration.

  • Bitdefender ☛ [Crackers] hit deportation airline GlobalX, leak flight manifests, and leave an unsubtle message for "Donnie" Trump

    According to the anonymous hacker. The data was accessed after they found a GlobalX developer's token and used it to uncover access and secret keys for the firm's AWS buckets.

    In addition to exfiltrating data and defacing the website, the hacker says that they were also able to send internal messages to pilots via a flight ops tool, and even access the company's GitHub.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ What is Quality of Service, and how does it matter? – The Eclectic Light Company

    In computing, the term Quality of Service is widely used to refer to communication and network performance, but for Macs it has another more significant meaning, as the property that determines the performance of each thread run on your Mac, most importantly in Apple silicon chips.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Europe sets the rules, India writes the code

      It’s called the EU AI Act. Very simply put: it tells companies what kinds of AI are okay, what kinds are risky, and what rules they need to follow before launching anything new in the European market.

      Already in force since six months, the next part of the Act will start to get implemented beginning next month. That may still sound like someone else’s problem. But here’s the twist. A lot of the AI used by companies in Europe is built in India. By Indian engineers. Working in Indian offices. Writing code that now needs to pass Europe’s toughest rules.

    • Futurism ☛ Deranged Video Shows AI Job Recruiter Absolutely Losing It During an Interview

      The incident — and the way it affected the young woman who endured it — is a startling example not only of where America's abysmal labor market is at, but also of how ill-conceived this sort of AI "outsourcing" has become.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Shocked to hear ‘prompt engineer’ is not a real job

      “Prompt engineer” is out. The new titles are “AI trainer,” “AI data specialist” or “AI security specialist.” You might think those are just “trainer,” “data specialist” or “security specialist” but you also have to put up with your boss thinking the chatbot does anything.

      “Prompt engineer” was a promotional claim for chatbots that no-one could verify. Every scam needs one.

  • Social Control Media

    • BoingBoing ☛ Latest idiotic social media trend has kids setting their laptops on fire

      Pulling the fire alarm to get out of class has been replaced by setting actual fires. Students are setting their Chromebooks on fire while participating in a viral TikTok trend. Schools across Connecticut have had to evacuate due to the smoke and fire caused by students inserting conductive objects like graphite pencil leads or paperclips into the USB ports of their Chromebooks.

    • Manton Reece ☛ On moving to Micro.blog

      In the end, Kev’s post is also a testament to the work the Mastodon team has done on account portability. You can easily imagine a future where it will be fairly normal to switch between Micro.blog, Mastodon, Ghost, and WordPress, with your identity and content intact. And that means each platform can lean into what makes it unique.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • James G ☛ Extending my edit web page bookmarklet

    I have a bookmarklet called “Edit” which, when clicked, takes me to the editing page of GitHub that corresponds to the page on my website that I am viewing.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • GDPRhub ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] DPC (Ireland) - TikTok

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] TikTok faces €530 million EU fine over China data transfers

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-04 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says Would Extend TikTok Deadline if There Is Still No Deal

    • EFF ☛ How Signal, WhatsApp, Apple, and Google Handle Encrypted Chat Backups

      What happens after the messages are sent and received is entirely up to the sender and receiver. If you’re having a conversation with someone, you may choose to screenshot that conversation and save that screenshot to your computer’s desktop or phone’s camera roll. You might choose to back up your chat history, either to your personal computer or maybe even to cloud storage (services like Google Drive or iCloud, or to servers run by the application developer).

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Airlines Are Selling Your Data to ICE

      A massive aviation industry clearinghouse that processes data for twelve billion passenger flights per year is selling that information to the Trump administration amid the White House’s new immigration crackdown, according to documents reviewed by the Lever.

      The data — including “full flight itineraries, passenger name records, and financial details, which are otherwise difficult or impossible to obtain” for past and future flights — is fed into a secretive government intelligence operation called the Travel Intelligence Program and provided to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies, records reveal.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Google Search And Chrome Get Smarter At Spotting Scams

      Google has released new details on how artificial intelligence (AI) is being used across its platforms to combat a growing wave of online scams. In its latest Fighting Scams in Search report, the company outlines AI-powered systems that are already blocking hundreds of millions of harmful results daily and previews further enhancements being rolled out across Google Search, Chrome, and Android.

    • 404 Media ☛ Well, Well, Well: Meta to Add Facial Recognition To Glasses After All

      On Wednesday, The Information reported that Meta is working on facial recognition for the company’s Ray-Ban glasses. This sort of technology—combining facial recognition with a camera feed—is something that big tech including Meta has been able to technically pull off, but has previously decided to not release. There are serious, inherent risks with the idea of anyone being able to instantly know the real identity of anyone who just happens to walk past their camera feed, be that in a pair of glasses or other sort of camera.

    • Wired ☛ US Customs and Border Protection Plans to Photograph Everyone Exiting the US by Car

      United States Customs and Border Protection plans to log every person leaving the country by vehicle by taking photos at border crossings of every passenger and matching their faces to their passports, visas, or travel documents, WIRED has learned.

  • Confidentiality

    • The Conversation ☛ Quantum computers could crack the security codes used by satellites

      Quantum computers are not just faster versions of today’s computers. They work in a completely different way, using the peculiar rules of quantum physics. While they have not yet reached their full capabilities, quantum computers are expected to be game changing provided that the technological hurdles can be overcome.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Doctors Without Borders hospital bombed in South Sudan

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Gabon ex-junta chief Brice Oligui Nguema becomes president

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Greece: Woman dies after device explodes in her hands

  • New Yorker ☛ Brazil’s President Confronts a Changing World

    Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Convicted Felon, Putin, and a collapsing global order.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] US criticizes Germany for labeling AfD 'extremist'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] India bans imports from Pakistan over Pahalgam attack

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] India: Six killed, dozens injured in Goa temple stampede

  • Futurism ☛ This DOGE [sic] Operative Got a Huge Surprise Once He Was Actually Inside the Government

    In an interview with Fast Company, tech founder Sahil Lavingia was candid about his experience working for the billionaire's Department [sic] of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will continue its work despite Musk's rumored exit at the end of this month.

  • Harvard University ☛ Era of U.S. dollar may be winding down

    It looks like the end of an era for the U.S. dollar.

  • The Nation ☛ A GOP Scheme to Steal a North Carolina Supreme Court Seat Has Been Foiled

    A Trump-appointed federal judge rejected a bizarre GOP attempt to disenfranchise voters after they cast their ballots.

  • Wired ☛ Trump, Cryptocurrency, and the Real Winners and Losers

    in the days before his inauguration, President Trump announced his own cryptocurrency, TRUMP coin, a move that could stand to make the Trump family significantly wealthier. And now, Trump has offered investors something else—access to him, when he recently announced he’ll hold a private dinner with the largest investors in TRUMP coin. In this week’s episode, we talk about Trump's venture into cryptocurrency and the giant web of ethical concerns it presents.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ “Russia has lost sensitivity to death. Death validates it now”

    Interview with Andrey Makarevich on Putin’s fetish for May 9th, the death cult of Homo Putinus, and how Russia became a retro-state. Interviewer Vazha Tavberidze.

  • Meduza ☛ 27 million lives lost Meduza takes a closer look at the Soviet Union’s official death toll in World War II

    Military historians typically look at “irrecoverable losses,” a concept used to assess the strength of the different parties involved at a particular stage in a given war. Irrecoverable losses include not only soldiers killed on the battlefield, but also those who died from injuries, went missing in action, were captured as prisoners of war, were discharged due to injury, or deserted. Irrecoverable losses can also be divided into combat and non-combat losses, with the latter including those who succumbed to illnesses or injuries, or died by suicide. However, this classification does not include civilians, even if they were killed during a battle. As such, irrecoverable losses don’t offer a complete picture of the scale of the damage caused by a war.

    To estimate the real “cost of war” in terms of human lives, researchers Bethany Lacine and Nils Petter Gleditsch suggest breaking down the statistics into three distinct categories: combatant deaths, battle deaths (including both soldiers and civilians), and war deaths (that is, all deaths caused by the war).

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • RFERL ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Calls For 30-Day Cease-Fire After Ukraine Accuses Russia Of Breaking Its Own Truce

      Ukraine's top diplomat dismissed a Russian-declared cease-fire as a "farce," accusing Moscow's forces of committing hundreds of violations along the entire front line on the first day of the 72-hour truce on May 8.

    • Now ‘friends of steel’: Pooh-tin and Putin meet in Moscow

      Leaders of China and Russia seek a deeper partnership on eve of World War II anniversary.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China vows to stand with Russia in face of ‘hegemonic bullying,’ Pooh-tin tells Putin

      Beijing will stand with Moscow in the face of “hegemonic bullying”, Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping told Russian leader Vladimir Putin during a visit to the Kremlin on Thursday.

    • France24 ☛ Victory Day: A show of strength and alliances by Putin

      For the 80th anniversary of Victory Day on May 9, Vladimir Putin invited world leaders to Moscow to showcase Russia's international alliances. Brazilian and Mongolian leaders emphasized the importance of multilateralism and global cooperation, underlining the need for peace and dialogue in a tense world. This event is particularly significant for Putin, as Russia faces increasing isolation due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

    • France24 ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man reiterates call for unconditional 30-day Ukraine ceasefire

      US President The Insurrectionist on Thursday renewed calls for a 30-day unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, pressing Russia to halt hostilities or face fresh sanctions. The appeal followed a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as Convicted Felon seeks to position himself as a broker for peace amid growing frustration with both Kyiv and Moscow over the stalled conflict.

    • France24 ☛ Putin to host world leaders at lavish army parade amid Ukraine war

      Russian President Vladimir Putin will host a major Victory Day parade in Moscow on Friday, marking 80 years since Nazi Germany’s defeat. With over 20 foreign leaders attending, including China’s Pooh-tin Jinping, the Kremlin aims to showcase strength as its war in Ukraine continues. A holiday truce was announced.

    • New York Times ☛ Putin and Pooh-tin Rebuke U.S. and Vow to Strengthen Ties

      The two leaders, meeting in Moscow, rejected what they described as Washington’s attempt to contain them. They also hailed their friendship.

    • CBC ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] As Russia rallies the troops to mark Victory Day, it's using the past to try to justify its war on Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] Russia: Instrumentalizing Soviets' victory over Nazi Germany

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia's temporary ceasefire begins

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] Xi in Moscow: China's role in Russia's economic survival

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] Ukraine to Host Foreign Ministers to Endorse 'Special Tribunal' for Russian Leadership

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] Russian President Putin Tells New Pope He Trusts in Constructive Dialogue

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-07 [Older] Why the EU's push to cut Russian energy ties is so difficult

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-07 [Older] Vance Says Russia Was 'Asking for Too Much' in Its Initial Ukraine Peace Offer

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-07 [Older] EU Spokesperson Says China Is Key Enabler of Russia's War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-07 [Older] Lithuania Closes Airspace to Slovak and Serb Leaders on Route to Russia, President Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-07 [Older] Russian Air Defences Down Four More Ukrainian Drones En Route to Moscow, Mayor Says

    • HRW ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] Rights Groups Spotlight Russia’s Abuses in Crimea

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] European Commission Proposes 17th Russia Sanctions Package

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] Kremlin Says Russia Still Plans to Cease Fire in Ukraine From May 8-10 but Will Respond if Attacked

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] Oil Price Crucial for Russia, but National Interests Come First, Kremlin Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] Russia and Ukraine Exchange 205 Prisoners of War Each, Russian Military Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] Russia and Ukraine Exchange 205 Prisoners of War Each

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] Russian Missile Kills One Child, Injures More in Ukraine's Sumy, Governor Says

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-05-05 [Older] Netherlands, Poland to sign military pact amid Russian threat

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-05 [Older] Can Cheeto Mussolini's secondary sanctions on Russia force Putin's hand?

    • HRW ☛ 2025-05-05 [Older] Torture, Death of a Ukrainian Journalist in Russian Custody

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-05 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says He Has Had Good Discussions on Russia and Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-05 [Older] EU Seeks to Cut Remaining Russian Gas Ties, but Legal Options Limited

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-05 [Older] Kremlin Says Russia Concerned by India-Pakistan Tensions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-05 [Older] Ukraine Attacks Russia's Kursk Region, Russian War Bloggers Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-05 [Older] Ukraine Says It Shot Down 42 Drones From Russia but Two Regions Hit

    • CBC ☛ 2025-05-04 [Older] After 2024 results voided, hard-right Romanian presidential candidate wins 1st round redo

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-04 [Older] Between propaganda and reality: Russians in Kursk speak up

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-04 [Older] China’s Xi Jinping to Pay Official Visit to Russia, Alongside Victory Day Celebrations

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-04 [Older] Xi to Visit Russia for Victory Day and Talks With Putin

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-04 [Older] Russia Says Willing to Help Resolve India-Pakistan Differences Over Kashmir

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-04 [Older] Ukraine Destroys Electrical Equipment Factory in Russia's Bryansk Region, Governor Says

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Pro-Russian hacker group targets over 50 Dutch websites in coordinated attack

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Keeping Russian control of Crimea? Crimean Tatars respond

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Russia strikes Ukraine's Kharkiv injure nearly 50

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Russia strikes Ukraine's Kharkiv, injuring nearly 50

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Russia Declares State of Emergency at Port After Ukrainian Drone Attack on Novorossiisk

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Russian Drone Attack on Kyiv Injures 11, Causes Fires in Housing Blocks, Ukraine Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Russian Drone Attack Wounds 47 in Ukraine’s Second City of Kharkiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Russia's Medvedev Says Nobody Can Guarantee Kyiv's Safety if Ukraine Attacks Moscow on May 9

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Russia's Medvedev Says Cheeto Mussolini's Statement About US World War Two Role Was 'Pretentious Nonsense'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Ukraine Says It Shot Down Russian Fighter Jet From Sea Drone for First Time

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] Exclusive-US Readies Russia Sanctions Over Ukraine, Unclear if Cheeto Mussolini Will Sign, Sources Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] Russian Drones Hit Apartment Block in Ukraine's Kharkiv, 46 Hurt

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] Almost all of the Dutch F-16s promised to Ukraine have already been delivered

    • Spiegel ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] Resistance in Ukraine: The Show Must Go On (Underground) in the Kharkiv Opera House

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says Rare Earth Deal With Ukraine Concluded

    • Vox ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] The surprising trend shaking up the Cheeto Mussolini administration

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-07 [Older] Ukraine updates: Vance calls for direct Moscow-Kyiv talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-07 [Older] Factbox-Putin and Xi to Mark WW2 Victory Amid War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-07 [Older] France and Germany in Close Contact to Work on a 30-Day Ceasefire in Ukraine, Macron Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] Ukraine: Moscow drone attacks force airport closures

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-05 [Older] Ukraine Targets Moscow With Drones for Second Straight Night, Officials Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-04 [Older] Putin Says He Hopes There Will Be No Need to Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-04 [Older] Ukraine Launches Drone Attack Targeting Moscow, Mayor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-04 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy to Meet Czech President in Prague on Sunday

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] The Post-Politics Behind Romania’s Rising Far Right

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Kremlin Calls Ukrainian Response to Putin's Ceasefire Offer Ambiguous, Calls for Clarity

    • USDOJ ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] Ukrainian National Extradited from Spain to Face Conspiracy to Use Ransomware Charge

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] Ukraine: What are the benefits of the minerals deal with the US?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] Ukrainian Forces to Join UK Military Procession for Victory in Europe Anniversary

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] US State Dept OKs Possible Sale of F-16 Training, Sustainment for Ukraine

• Environment

  • EcoWatch ☛ NOAA Will Stop Tracking Costs of Climate Crisis-Fueled Disasters in Wake of Trump Cuts

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — which has been experiencing massive staff layoffs and funding cuts by the Trump administration — has announced it will stop tracking the cost of climate crisis-fueled weather disasters, including heat waves, floods and wildfires.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ DRC, Zambia flagged as hubs for abuse in mining sector

    According to the report, 40% of all recorded mining deaths in 2024 were in DR Congo, Guinea, and Zambia.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] Fact check: Was the Iberian blackout caused by too much solar power?

    • FAIR ☛ Bartlett Naylor on Meme Coin Grift, Ashley Nunes on Public Land Selloff

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ ‘Active Management’ Harms Forests — And It’s About to Get a Whole Lot Worse

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Warren Buffett to step down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

  • Vox ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] Why prices on some of Americans’ go-to shopping sites are suddenly spiking

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] As Cheeto Mussolini Pushes Privatization of USPS, Amazon May Be Preparing to Take Over

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • France24 ☛ Stockholm is latest city to refuse 'bizarre' US request to abandon diversity

    The Stockholm City Council has rejected the US embassy's demand that it adopt the Trump administration's anti-diversity policies, with Stockholm’s vice-mayor for planning calling the request "bizarre". Several European nations and cities have slammed US efforts to force its anti-DEI policies on the continent.

  • UNIXdigest ☛ Evilness is when profit is the sole concern

    When a company is small it's easy to care about the good and the evil it does, but when a company gets big, typically profit becomes the sole concern and that is when evilness takes root and starts to spread.

  • Dan Q ☛ What If the EU Never Existed?

    It’s worth remembering that for the last half-millenium or more, the default state of Europe has been to be fighting one another: if not outright war then at least agressive economic and political rivals. Post-WWII gave Europe perhaps its longest ever period of relative peace, and that’s great enough that all of the other benefits of a harmonised and cooperative union are just icing on the cake.

  • FAIR ☛ ‘Black History Is American History’: CounterSpin interview with Tanya Clay House on erasing history

    Janine Jackson interviewed the African American Policy Forum’s Tanya Clay House about erasing history for the May 2, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Hungary’s defence minister signals shift from peace policy, leaked audio reveals

    A secretly recorded audio clip released by Péter Magyar, the leader of Tisza Party, has shaken the Orbán government’s carefully crafted image as a pro-peace actor in the Ukraine war, 444 reports. In the one-minute recording, Defence Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky is heard saying: “We are ending our previous efforts towards peace,” marking what he called “phase zero of the path to war.”

    The clip, allegedly recorded in April 2023—just over a year after Russia invaded Ukraine—suggests a decisive internal policy shift that contradicts public messaging. “The fifth Orbán government has decided to build a truly effective, combat-ready Hungarian army,” the minister says, linking the transformation to Hungary’s military rejuvenation programme and the appointment of Lieutenant General Gábor Böröndi as chief of staff.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Mali: Junta continues to undermine democracy

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Mexican president says she turned down Cheeto Mussolini troops offer

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Serbia's President Vucic hospitalized, cuts short US visit

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Singapore's long-ruling PAP wins another election landslide

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Singapore votes amid Cheeto Mussolini tariff turmoil

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] South Korea: Kim Moon Soo wins conservative nomination

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Fact check: No, these videos don't show fires in Israel

    • The North Lines IN ☛ Pak propagating blatant lies, India’s unity a challenge for it: Foreign Secretary

      Addressing a special joint briefing here, Misri said, “Pakistan is propagating blatant lies. Their claim that the Indian attacked its own cities is nothing short of a deranged fantasy. This is a country (Pakistan) well-versed in such acts, and they now imagine others would stoop to the same level. Let me state for the record — it was Pakistan that attacked cities in Punjab, it was their drones that violated our airspace, and it was their artillery that killed our civilians.”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Vox ☛ Rümeysa Öztürk: Tufs student is ordered freed after being arrested for an op-ed

    What’s the background? Öztürk — a Tufts University PhD student and a Turkish national — was whisked off the streets of Massachusetts by ICE agents in late March. Her arrest was part of the Trump administration effort to revoke visas from students who protested Israel’s war in Gaza.

    Her detention stood out as particularly shocking because there was no indication she had ever engaged in any disruptive or lawbreaking protests. She had merely co-authored an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper last year that criticized the war and urged school administrators to acknowledge students’ concerns about it.

  • CPJ ☛ The Wire’s website, 8,000 X accounts blocked in India amid conflict with Pakistan

    The [Internet] block coincides with a significant escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan, which have traded fire across their frontier in disputed Kashmir this week. India blames its neighbor for the April 22 killing of 26, mostly Hindu, tourists.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Voice of America could be back on air next week — watchdog

  • US News And World Report ☛ Press Freedom Stifled in Greece, Reforms Needed, Says Human Rights Watch

    At least 15 journalists said they had at some point faced a lawsuit or legal threat for their reporting, the global rights group said in a 101-page report based on interviews with 34 journalists, academics, legal and media experts.

  • RFA ☛ Radio Free Asia layoffs delayed: RFA President Bay Fang – Radio Free Asia

    In light of the D.C. Circuit Court’s recent ruling, RFA has decided to delay layoffs of our journalists and staff. While we have thankfully avoided a drastic situation, for RFA to come back in full force, the government must disburse our Congressionally appropriated funds on a timely and consistent basis. As this process drags on, it is clear that China is wasting no time to fill a void left by America’s retreat from the information space in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Trump again tries to defund NPR and PBS, sparking a new congressional battle • Michigan Advance

    The Corporation for Public Broadcasting allocates funding to National Public Radio, or NPR, and the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, as well as more than 1,500 local radio and television stations throughout the country.

    Trump’s renewed focus on public media — in his budget proposal, an executive order and an expected rescissions request — has led the organizations that benefit from the CPB to start talking more than they have in recent years about their funding and their journalism.

  • CPJ ☛ Russian journalist sentenced to 13 days administrative detention after filming anti-Putin protest

    Orlova, a reporter with the independent news outlet SOTAvision, was in Moscow to cover a Supreme Court hearing and was walking near Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge when she began filming a rescue boat where activist Grigory Saksonov was earlier detained after jumping into the river with a sign that read “Putin–Hitler.” The police detained her 15 minutes later.

  • CPJ ☛ Azerbaijan arrests two more journalists, increasing crackdown tally to 25

    The arrests bring the total number of journalists jailed in Azerbaijan since late 2023 to at least 25, with several others facing major criminal charges. Most are from some of Azerbaijan’s last remaining independent outlets and have been detained over alleged funding from Western donors amid a decline in relations with the West and surge in Azerbaijani authoritarianism following the country’s military recapture of the Nagorno-Karabakh region in September 2023.

  • CPJ ☛ Turkish Cypriot journalist threatened, source murdered after reporting on alleged government corruption

    Akın said she received a threatening phone call a day before whistleblower Cemil Önal, her main source in the series, was murdered in the Netherlands on May 1, according to multiple reports. Önal, the former finance director for an alleged crime lord, made allegations of blackmail, extortion, bribery and money laundering against authorities in Turkey and Turkish occupied Cyprus.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-02 [Older] UK court jails Ugandan judge over slavery conviction

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-03 [Older] Bangladeshi Islamists protest proposal for women's rights

  • ANF News ☛ Female prisoners punished for 'hugging and singing'

    Nine female prisoners were given disciplinary punishments for 'hugging and singing' during the open visits held on 21 April at Şakran Women’s Closed Prison in Izmir.

  • The Nation ☛ The Jim Crow Origins of National Police Week

    Despite the potent propaganda function of National Police Week and the NLEOMF, journalists, historians, and activists have failed to scrutinize the origins and significance of either. Having built the Judiciary Square memorial and its adjacent National Law Enforcement Museum, the NLEOMF is a powerful public relations machine that bolsters police solidarity through a steady drumbeat of messaging that theirs is an unfairly maligned and martyred profession. Both the museum and the group’s online stores sell all manner of merchandise stamped with the “Thin Blue Line” American flag—a controversial emblem decried by many as a white supremacist symbol.

  • 404 Media ☛ Man ‘Disappeared’ by ICE Was on El Salvador Flight Manifest, [Breached] Data Shows

    Ricardo Prada Vásquez was not on a government list of people sent to a mega prison in El Salvador. But [exfilttrated] data shows he was booked on a flight to the country.

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ Letter to Governor re: Right to Repair Bills

    I saw EFF had a call to action for two Right to Repair bills that are on the Washington governor’s desk. They had a prewritten letter to sign onto, but since I have experience in the industry I decided to write my own through the direct contact form. I haven’t followed these particular bills but I figure if EFF is supporting them they’re probably decent.

    I’m writing to urge the governor to sign the Right to Repair bills HB 1483 and SB 5680.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Resilience in the RPKI

    What measures have been taken to harden RPKI against potential service disruptions?

  • Thomas Rigby ☛ Internet versus Web

    The [Internet] is a network of cables and satellites that allow data transfer from computer to computer.

  • Techdirt ☛ Greek Authorities Fail In Their Attempt To Make VPN Founder Personally Responsible For The Action Of An Unknown User

    Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are not a privacy panacea, but they do empower Internet users in important ways. Proof of that can be found in the constant attempts by governments around the world to control who can use VPNs and for what purpose, most recently in Italy and Brazil. Hackread reports on another such move to bring a VPN operator to heel: [...]

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Pointer Sisters' 'Hot Together' Takes Off After GTA Trailer Feature

    While the popularity surge is impressive, “iconic” might be a bit of a stretch here. The 182,000% consumption hike stemmed in part from a relatively low initial stream count on the track, which didn’t appear at all on 2017’s 36-song The Essential Pointer Sisters.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ US vs Google: What both sides argued in a hearing to fix its search monopoly

  On Friday, that hearing in the US District Court for the District of Columbia is expected to conclude. To fix the monopoly, the government has proposed aggressive measures that include forcing Google to sell its popular Chrome web browser and share proprietary data with competitors. Google has argued that small tweaks to its business practices would be more appropriate.

• India Times ☛ The 2006 Zuckerberg quote at the center of Meta's antitrust trial

  Two decades later, that description is at the center of a landmark antitrust trial against Zuckerberg's social networking empire, now called Meta, and whether it illegally stifled competition. In essence, the trial has raised the question of whether social networking is simply about connections to friends and family, or whether it is something more.

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] What is a hoodless hoodie? At least not registerable as a trade mark

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] UKIPO applies SkyKick in Unite the Union opposition

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-05-06 [Older] An imaginative sign for smart houses qualifies for EU trade mark registration

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-05-08 [Older] Of tables and other furniture: AG Szpunar advises CJEU on originality (but also proposes adoption of recognizability test for infringement)

  • Right of Publicity

    • Futurism ☛ The Judge's Reaction to an AI-Generated Victim Impact Statement Was Not What We Expected

      Ultimately, the video was accepted in the sentencing hearing, the first known instance of an AI clone of a deceased person being used in such a way.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Family uses AI video in court to allow deceased victim to give impact statement

      To create the video, Pelkey’s family used AI technology to use his likeness and to give him a voice, according to an article in ABC News. It was generated using a single photograph and audio from a YouTube video where he discussed PTSD. It displayed his head and torso, showing him facing the camera, wearing a hoodie and a ball cap.

    • ABC ☛ After a deadly shooting, AI allowed a man to deliver his own victim impact statement

      Using AI to generate victim impact statements marks a new — and legal, at least in Arizona — tool for sharing information with the court outside the evidentiary phases.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate IPTV Owner and 7 Associates "Stole TV Signals" From Bell & Rogers

    Law enforcement officers of the Sûreté du Québec (SQ – Quebec Provincial Police) escorted Grenier to the SQ police station in Shawinigan. Police had carried out an operation in February 2024 which targeted Grenier and several individuals linked to the current prosecution. Grenier, who was outside Canada at the time, avoided arrest and remained at large for more than a year.