Leftovers

• Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Avoiding generative models is the rational and responsible thing to do – follow-up to “Trusting your own judgement on ‘AI...’”

  I don’t recommend publishing your first draft of a long blog post.

  It’s not a question of typos or grammatical errors or the like. Those always slip through somehow and, for the most part, don’t impact the meaning or argument of the post.

  No, the problem is that, with even a day or two of distance, you tend to spot places where the argument can be simplified or strengthened, the bridges can be simultaneously strengthened and made less obvious, the order can be improved, and you spot which of your darlings can be killed without affecting the argument and which are essential.

• Guy LeCharles Gonzalez ☛ Five Things: June 12, 2025

  NOTE: I filtered and selected hundreds (probably thousands) of unread emails in my Gmail account going back more than 8 years — and marked them all as read without looking at any of them. If I owe you an email and it’s been weeks, or months, it’s quite possible I optimistically marked it as unread and meant to get back to it, or I never saw it at all. Nothing personal but seeing “1-50 of many”, “51-100 of many”, etc., was stressing me out. Email me now while the coast is clear and I’ll have no excuses!

• Tracy Durnell ☛ Realities, perceived and presented, and their relationship to Truth

  [...] and he writes that film inherently separates viewer from truth because of the camera intermediary: “His creation is by no means all of a piece; it is composed of many separate performances.” Semblances of reality may be montaged together to create a seamless imitation of some desired reality.

• Seth Godin ☛ Status (and the grass tax) | Seth's Blog

  When in doubt about why a cultural trope exists, look for status.

• Ruben Schade ☛ A wholistic spam review

  Their data-driven system determined that unsolicited spam—with poor HTML formatting—was the best way to get results. Colour me impressed with their spectacular introspective abilities!

• Mike Brock ☛ A Meditation Inside Collapse

  Every minute of every day, the invitation extends itself. Not to heroism but to presence. Not to perfection but to participation. Not to the grand gesture that changes everything at once, but to the small choice that changes everything slowly—the choice to remain awake when sleep would be easier, to remain connected when isolation would be safer, to remain human when the machinery of power would reduce you to data points and consumer preferences.

• Matthew J Ernisse ☛ Using My ISP's Custom Ookla Speedtest Server

  I have been monitoring my ISP's performance since 2019 and while it as worked well enough to give a broad overview the limitations of the speedtest-cli app and speedtest.net's API have made the data... suspect. When the tool starts up it queries the speedtest.net server for a list of servers to use. It looks like it tries to be smart about load balancing and geolocating you but the result is that my ISP's servers (which are on-network and therefore are what I'm trying to test, that being my link speed not the speed of their links to the broader Internet) are not listed. Worse still the list changes every time you ask so even pinning to a specific server doesn't always work so the data, beyond a vibe-check, is useless.

• [Old] Bitsavers ☛ The bitsavers main page

  As of Mar, 2025 there are over 179000 files including over 8.4 million text pages in the 1.68tb archive.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ The Center of Our Universe Does Not Exist. A Physicist Explains Why.

    Spacetime is weird.

  • Science Alert ☛ Just How Dirty Are Beards? Here's The Science.

    A hairy question.

  • Science Alert ☛ Humanity Has Just Glimpsed Part of The Sun We've Never Seen Before

    Confirmed: The Sun shines there.

  • Science Alert ☛ New Tyrannosaur Species Could Be a Missing Link to The Giants

    Hail to the prince.

  • Science Alert ☛ 'City-Killer' Asteroid Even More Likely to Hit The Moon in 2032

    C'mon space kaboom!

  • Science Alert ☛ A Forgotten Cancer Is Surging in Young People, And Experts Are Puzzled

    A concerning trend is emerging.

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ Let us bury the linear model of innovation

    There is an extremely naive model of science and innovation called the linear model: The model postulated that innovation starts with basic research, is followed by applied research and development, and ends with production and diffusion. According to Godin (2006), the model has been falsely attributed to Bush and its dominance is derived rather from its remarkable simplicity. It aligns with a technocratic worldview where bureaucrats get to steer science and innovation.

    Yet it has been long documented that innovations arise from practical experience and are driven by user demand. My favorite example is the industrial revolution which was driven by textile which, in turn, served to provide comfortable underwear for women. We invented modern-day keyboards after musicians perfected the keyboard for musical instruments.

  • Evan Hahn ☛ Getting over my grudge against the periodic table

    I think this was the most important thing I learned from the book. The periodic table is useful, but doesn’t have all the facts. It mostly encodes trends, not rules. I can’t use the periodic table to perfectly determine potassium’s appearance, for example. But it might help me make a guess if I know about the elements around it.

• Career/Education

  • Cynthia Dunlop ☛ Scott Hanselman and Mark Downie: Blogging for Developers

    Scott Hanselman is practically synonymous with technical blogging. So when we were finishing our book on writing engineering blogs, we anxiously shared a draft with him after some editorial coercion, errr, encouragement. We honestly didn’t expect him to respond. But he did! After reading the manuscript, Scott offered some sage suggestions and graciously volunteered to contribute to the book project – leading to this amazing afterword.

  • Wired ☛ Inexpensive AI Agents Threaten Entry-Level Coding Jobs

    The numbers don’t sit right with him. Arrigoni, who runs Loti AI, a company that helps Hollywood stars find unauthorized deepfakes, worries that underpriced AI tools encourage companies to eliminate entry-level roles. He wants to flip the incentive structure so people’s careers don’t end before they begin. “If you make the AI systems more expensive, then you have an economic incentive to hire someone that is starting out,” he says.

  • Rosie Spinks ☛ Everyone I know is worried about work

    Almost everyone I know is worried about work: finding a job, keeping the one they have, or what will happen when the work they do no longer exists.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ COTS Components Combine To DIY Solar Power Station

    They’re marketed as “Solar Generators” or “Solar Power Stations” but what they are is a nice box with a battery, charge controller, and inverter inside. [DoItYourselfDad] on Youtube decided that since all of those parts are available separately, he could put one together himself.

  • Hackaday ☛ Compound Press Bends, Punches And Cuts Using 3D Printed Plastic

    It’s not quite “bend, fold or mutilate” but this project comes close– it actually manufactures a spring clip for [Super Valid Designs] PETAL light system. In the video (embedded below) you’ll see why this tool was needed: by-hand manufacturing worked for the prototype, but really would not scale.

  • Hackaday ☛ Step Into Combat Robotics With Project SVRN!

    We all love combat robotics for its creative problem solving; trying to fit drivetrains and weapon systems in a small and light package is never as simple as it appears to be. When you get to the real lightweights… throw everything you know out the window! [Shoverobotics] saw this as a barrier for getting into the 150g weight class, so he created the combat robotics platform named Project SVRN.

  • Hackaday ☛ This Relay Computer Has Magnetic Tape Storage

    Magnetic tape storage is something many of us will associate with 8-bit microcomputers or 1960s mainframe computers, but it still has a place in the modern data center for long-term backups. It’s likely not to be the first storage tech that would spring to mind when considering a relay computer, but that’s just what [DiPDoT] has done by giving his machine tape storage.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Banned China chipmaker YMTC sues Micron again, now over serious defamation claims — Micron funded anti-Chinese tech misinformation campaigns to get ahead, says YMTC

    Yangtze Memory Technologies Company has launched its second lawsuit against Micron within the last two years, the third total in their lengthy legal battle. The new suit accuses Micron of funding a lengthy astroturfing misinformation campaign aimed at slanderizing YMTC in the American market.

  • Robert OCallahan ☛ Building A PC

    I opted to build it myself, mainly for fun, but partly because I wanted to learn a bit about how modern PCs are put together. That also meant I didn’t have to buy a copy of Windows, which I would just have deleted immediately. That saved me 200 NZD, which isn’t much, but it gave me a good feeling. The whole system cost a bit under 4K NZD.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Federal News Network ☛ Hunger Free America files lawsuit after cancellation of USDA contract

    The nonprofit Hunger Free America says it ran an “information clearinghouse” of food assistance programs for USDA for more than a decade.

  • Hackaday ☛ Hacking T Cells To Treat Celiac Disease

    As there is no cure for celiac disease, people must stick to a gluten free diet to remain symptom-free. While this has become easier in recent years, scientists have found some promising results in mice for disabling the disease. [via ScienceAlert]

  • Jeremy Cherfas ☛ A quinoa dilemma

    Of course that’s an oversimplification, but it captures the spirit of the problem. The small farmers deserve some recompense for the work their communities carried out over the centuries, first to domesticate and then to cultivate quinoa, and along the way creating scores of distinct varieties that offer resilience and food security. I want to support them, if I can.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ ‘Expensive and complicated’: Most rural hospitals no longer deliver babies

    Nationwide, most rural hospitals no longer offer obstetric services. Since the end of 2020, more than 100 rural hospitals have stopped delivering babies, according to a new report from the Center for Healthcare Quality & Payment Reform, a national policy center focused on solving health care issues through overhauling insurance payments. Fewer than 1,000 rural hospitals nationwide still have labor and delivery services.

  • 404 Media ☛ AI Therapy Bots Are Conducting 'Illegal Behavior,' Digital Rights Organizations Say

    Exclusive: An FTC complaint led by the Consumer Federation of America outlines how therapy bots on Meta and Character.AI have claimed to be qualified, licensed therapists to users, and why that may be breaking the law.

  • [Old] New Yorker ☛ Why Doctors Hate Their Computers

    The surgeons at the training session ranged in age from thirty to seventy, I estimated—about sixty per cent male, and one hundred per cent irritated at having to be there instead of seeing patients. Our trainer looked younger than any of us, maybe a few years out of college, with an early-Justin Bieber wave cut, a blue button-down shirt, and chinos. Gazing out at his sullen audience, he seemed unperturbed. I learned during the next few sessions that each instructor had developed his or her own way of dealing with the hostile rabble. One was encouraging and parental, another unsmiling and efficient. Justin Bieber took the driver’s-ed approach: You don’t want to be here; I don’t want to be here; let’s just make the best of it.

• Proprietary

  • Qt ☛ Qt Design Studio 4.7.2 Released

    Earlier this year, we released Qt Design Studio 4.7. After the main release, we still had a couple of quirks here and there. Now is the perfect time if you have not yet upgraded Qt Design Studio to 4.7.

  • Qt ☛ Security advisory: Recently discovered issue in ICNS image format handling impacts Qt

    When loading a specifically crafted ICNS format image file then it will trigger a crash. 

    This has been assigned the CVE id CVE-2025-5683.

  • MediaReflector ☛ Microsoft pushes emergency Windows 11 update to fix game crash bug tied to anti-cheat software [Ed: Breaking your own product with rootkits]

  • Lee Peterson ☛ I’ve tried iOS 26 and didn’t like it

    I’ve got a super busy month coming up but against my better judgement I still decided to give iOS 26 a try on my iPhone 15 Pro. I lasted less than 24 hours before going back to iOS 18.5. There are the usual issues of glitches, battery life and heat but it’s the design that got me off it this time.

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Inside a Dark Adtech Empire Fed by Fake CAPTCHAs

    Late last year, security researchers made a startling discovery: Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns were bypassing moderation on social media platforms by leveraging the same malicious advertising technology that powers a sprawling ecosystem of online hucksters and website hackers. A new report on the fallout from that investigation finds this dark ad tech industry is far more resilient and incestuous than previously known.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Liquid Glass isn’t Vista 2.0, it’s iOS 7 2.0

  • The Register UK ☛ Google Cloud goes down, takes Cloudflare with it

    Google’s Cloud Console was among the afflicted services, meaning users couldn’t log in to figure out why other impacted services like Cloud Storage and Cloud SQL weren’t working.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Zuckerberg's Meta Just Made a Huge Investment in a Very Dark AI Company

      Meta's AI development isn't going quite as well as billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg had hoped. Once a frontrunner in the AI race, a year's worth of technical failures and setbacks to his company's "state-of-the-art" Llama 4 Behemoth have spurred Zuckerberg to pull out all the stops.

    • David Rosenthal ☛ The Back Of The AI Envelope

      Lets try to figure out the return on this investment. We will assume that the $80B is split two ways, $40B to Nvidia for hardware and $40B on building data centers to put it in. Depreciating the $40B of hardware over five years is very optimistic, it is likely to be uneconomic to run after 2-3 years. But that's what we'll do. So that is minus $8B/year on the bottom line over the next five years. Similarly, depreciating the data centers over 20 years is likely optimistic, given the rate at which AI power demand is increasing. But that's what we'll do, giving another minus $2B/year on the bottom line.

    • Terence Eden ☛ Large Language Models and Pareidolia

      I was using an AI tool to scan all my photos. I wanted it to recognise all the human faces so that I could tag my photos with my friends' names. One of the photos it presented for tagging was this:

      Are those faces? Undoubtedly yes! Is this a mistake that a human would have made? Absolutely not!

    • Shayon Mukherjee ☛ Premature closure and the role of Senior Engineer in the world of AI

      This medical case study illustrates “premature closure”—a cognitive error where physicians latch onto an initial diagnosis and fail to consider reasonable alternatives. In this case, the atypical presentation led multiple experienced doctors to anchor on the most probable explanation while nearly missing a critical, less common condition.

      The same pattern is emerging in software development as AI coding assistants become more sophisticated. The models are so good now that their first suggestion often looks not just plausible, but convincing. Professional formatting, clean code, proper naming conventions—everything appears right. And therein lies the trap.

    • Manton Reece ☛ Enough with AI

      You can roll your eyes at this post. While I have a good track record of predicting the fallout from other major tech shifts, like mobile app distribution (2011) and centralized social networks (2012), there are too many forces at play here to be certain of what AI will look like in a decade. I only know that it will change many things. I can barely guess at the details.

    • The Register UK ☛ Devs mostly welcome AI coding tools but don't trust them

      For its report titled "The State of AI Code Quality 2025" – provided in advance to The Register – Qodo earlier this year conducted a survey of 609 developers using unspecified AI coding tools at a variety of organizations in different industries, ranging from startups to enterprises. A whopping 82 percent of the respondents said they use the tools at least weekly, and 78 percent reported productivity gains from them.

  • Social Control Media

    • Futurism ☛ Influencer Sobs in Front of TikTok Headquarters After Getting Banned

      Just ask Natalie Reynolds, an influencer with millions of followers, who was so upset that she got banned from TikTok that she recently went to one of the social media company's offices and was filmed crying and screaming while on the phone with her dad.

    • Mandy Brown ☛ De-caring

      This is not an accident; the intent of these tools is to anesthetize the users, to control them by controlling their entire interface with the world. The obsequious personalities are a saccharine cover for a takeover: when you can’t read or think or act on your own, but must ask the bot to do it for you, you are not free. Freedom requires uncertainty.

    • Dhole Moments ☛ Furries Need To Learn That Sunlight Is The Best Disinfectant

      While I doubt these twits would agree with each other in a social media discussion, it’s pretty easy to see a common narrative structure that underlies many of their arguments.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • GreyCoder ☛ Threema: The Swiss Secure Messenger for Privacy

      Threema has regular external audits and reproducible builds. The company adheres to strict Swiss data protection laws and is fully GDPR-compliant.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • How to set an SSH connection to GitHub from Ubuntu [Ed: GitHub is proprietary and Microsoft, why associate this with SSH?]

    If you’re tired of typing your GitHub password every time you push code or just want a more secure way to interact with your repositories, SSH keys are the answer. Unlike HTTPS, which requires constant authentication, SSH establishes a secure, password-less connection between your Ubuntu machine and GitHub, making your workflow faster and safer.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Digital rights groups sound alarm on Stop CSAM Act

      The organizations say a reintroduced version of the bill would “break” encryption for most Americans and make it impossible for end-to-end encrypted service providers to avoid lawsuits.

    • Wired ☛ How Waymo Handles Footage From Events Like the LA Immigration Protests

      Over the past several years, Waymo has repeatedly shared video footage with police after receiving formal legal requests. But it’s not clear how often the self-driving company, which is owned by Google’s parent organization Alphabet, complies with these demands. Unlike Google, Waymo doesn’t disclose the number of legal requests it receives nor how it responds to them. When police do obtain footage, they could also combine it with other technology—like face recognition or nonbiometric tools for finding and tracking people in videoclips—to identify possible criminal suspects.

    • Wired ☛ The Meta AI App Lets You ‘Discover’ People’s Bizarrely Personal Chats

      This is just one of many seemingly personal conversations that can be publicly viewed on Meta AI, a chatbot platform that doubles as a social feed and launched in April. Within the Meta AI app, a “discover” tab shows a timeline of other people’s interactions with the chatbot; a short scroll down on the Meta AI website is an extensive collage. While some of the highlighted queries and answers are innocuous—trip itineraries, recipe advice—others reveal locations, telephone numbers, and other sensitive information, all tied to user names and profile photos.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Airlines Secretly Selling Passenger Data to the Government - Schneier on Security

    • GO Media ☛ Airlines Secretly Sold You Out To The Feds For Just $11,025

      While there's scrutiny over who can and can't enter the country on a plane, there's no official method that federal law enforcement can use to track passengers on domestic flights. However, an investigation revealed that the country's major airlines sold the flight records of domestic travelers to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for only $11,025 on the grounds that the agency doesn't reveal where this data came from. One would assume that this massive breach of public privacy would be worth more than five figures.

      The bulk data sale was conducted by the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), a broker owned and operated by American, Delta, United, Southwest, Alaska, JetBlue and Air Canada. Typically, ARC is an intermediary between airlines and travel agencies, allowing third-party airline ticket resellers to operate and offering valuable market data to carriers.

    • The Record ☛ 23andMe privacy ombudsman recommends company obtains consent for sale of customer data

      The sale of millions of consumers' genetic data without such consent may be in conflict with 23andMe’s privacy policy and public statements, ombudsman Neil Richards said in a court filing.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Predator spyware activity surfaces in new places with new tricks

      The discovery of the Mozambique customer fits in with the high level of Predator activity across Africa. The Czech link confirms reporting from an investigative outlet in the country. The Eastern European activity was brief, from August to November of last year, suggesting possible development or testing, Recorded Future said.

      Intellexa has also taken additional steps to evade detection.

    • The Record ☛ Predator spotted in Mozambique for first time, another sign of spyware’s availability

      Mozambique is one of several African countries where the spyware has appeared, according to Insikt, which says that the continent hosts more than half of known Predator customers.

    • The Recorded Future Inc ☛ Predator Spyware Resurgence: Insikt Group Exposes New Global Infrastructure

      The deployment of spyware like Predator beyond legitimate criminal or counterterrorism use poses serious threats to privacy, legal rights, and the physical safety of both direct targets and associated individuals. While most known cases of abuse have targeted civil society and political activists, individuals and organizations in regions with a record of spyware misuse should remain vigilant, regardless of sector. Given Predator’s expensive licensing model, its use is typically reserved for high-value, strategic targets. This makes politicians, corporate executives, and others in sensitive positions especially vulnerable due to the intelligence they may possess. The use of spyware against political opposition figures is currently under investigation in several EU countries, reflecting wider global efforts to curb the activities of mercenary spyware developers.

    • Wired ☛ Congress Demands Answers on Data Privacy Ahead of 23andMe Sale

      Signed by 20 other Democratic members of Congress, the letters—which can be read here and here—were sent to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and TTAM Research Institute, which have put forth separate bids to buy 23andMe. In the letters, they ask Regeneron and TTAM if they will continue to give customers the option to delete their data and withdraw consent for their data to be used in medical research. They also want to know if 23andMe’s current policy of not sharing genetic data with law enforcement without a warrant will be upheld, and whether both entities intend to proactively notify 23andMe customers about the sale.

    • Jorge García Herrero ☛ “Localhost tracking” explained. It could cost Meta 32 billion.

      This is the process through which Meta (Facebook/Instagram) managed to link what you do in your browser (for example, visiting a news site or an online store) with your real identity (your Facebook or Instagram account), even if you never logged into your account through the browser or anything like that.

      Meta accomplishes this through two invisible channels that exchange information:

      (i) The Facebook or Instagram app running in the background on your phone, even when you’re not using it.

      (ii) Meta’s tracking scripts (the now-pulled illegal brainchild uncovered last week), which operate inside your mobile web browser.

    • Zimbabwe ☛ Finally, Samsung's fridges now ring your phone and call you by name

      The best feature is that you can tell the fridge to ring your phone. That would be useful when you can’t remember where you put it. Because it recognises your voice, it already knows which phone is yours and just proceeds to ring it.

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ Marines in LA: Convicted Felon chooses strategy of escalation against anti-ICE protests

    US President The Insurrectionist has ordered a battalion of Marines dubbed the “War Dogs” to Los Angeles in response to protests against his policy of mass deportations of undocumented migrants. It’s a decision that seems designed to pour oil on the fire – and put pressure on California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.

  • New York Times ☛ Austria Has Lots of Guns, Little Gun Violence, and New Questions

    The deadliest school shooting in the nation’s recent history has prompted some gun enthusiasts to worry about the prospect of stricter ownership laws.

  • New York Times ☛ Why California Says Convicted Felon’s Military Deployment Is Illegal

    California has sued the Convicted Felon administration over its move to deploy troops to Los Angeles. Eric Schmitt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times, explains the laws governing the use of American troops on U.S. soil.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan cyber unit says it will not be intimidated by China’s bounty offer

    Guangzhou's Public Security Bureau is offering rewards for the capture of what it says are Taiwan military hackers.

  • RFERL ☛ US Reduces Nonessential Staff At Baghdad Embassy As Tensions With Iran Rise

    The United States is reducing the number of people deemed nonessential to operations in the Middle East, the State Department announced on June 11 amid reports that the US Embassy in Baghdad is preparing for an emergency evacuation due to increased security risks in the region.

  • France24 ☛ France aims to enhance security for minors after new school attack

    The French government has pledged to ban the sale of certain knives to minors following the fatal stabbing of a teaching assistant by a 14-year-old at a school in Nogent. Prime Minister François Bayrou also announced plans to trial security gates at school entrances, while Education Minister Élisabeth Borne confirmed that random bag searches by police are being implemented to prevent future knife attacks.

  • Landmark cybercrime conviction: Former IT employee sentenced to eight years for fraud and extortion plot

    Lucky Majangandile Erasmus (36) was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment on 3 June by the Specialised Commercial Crimes Court in connection with a high-profile cybercrime case targeting South African fintech company, Ecentric. >

  • Defence Web ☛ Rise in central Africa violence reported to UN Security Council

    Violence and insecurity in the Great Lakes region and the Lake Chad Basin of central Africa are on the rise, the senior United Nations (UN) staffer in the region warns.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Judge says Trump illegally deployed National Guard to help with LA protests, must return control to California - lonestarlive.com

    The order, which takes effect at noon Friday, said the deployment of the Guard was illegal and both violated the Tenth Amendment and exceeded Trump’s statutory authority.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Ahead of No Kings Day, the King's Nobles are Getting Nervous

    There have been plenty of protests across the state of Missouri over the last few months, in large blue cities and smaller red towns, and no reports of violence against people or property. None. Nada. Zip. The protests have targeted Musk and the DOGE cuts, RFK Jr’s dismantling of the nation’s public health infrastructure, the ICE crackdowns, and more, with the number of protests growing and spreading. This weekend, the planned No Kings protests have been gaining more and more attention, with more and more people getting more and more upset about what it being done in their names.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ This Is Not a Drill

    What we’re actually seeing is much worse: An attempt to end politics as we know it, to deploy force to suppress dissent. Not eventually, but right now.

    On the first point: No, LA isn’t a city in chaos, wracked by devastating riots requiring military intervention.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Snake Guys: Trump's Invasion of California Risks a Literal Firestorm in California [Updated]

    As laid out in California’s bid for an emergency Temporary Restraining Order filed Tuesday, among the problems with Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard is not just that Trump usurped Gavin Newsom’s authority to command the Guard and incited further unrest.

    It also steals resources that California relies on to combat forest fires (and fentanyl trafficking).

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Insight Hungary ☛ Zelensky on the Ukrainian-Hungarian spy war: 'We really do have everything'

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave an exclusive interview to Válasz Online. He criticized Viktor Orbán, accusing him of undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty and using the war for domestic political gain. Zelensky said Orbán’s stance was " anti-Ukrainian " and “anti-European,” and warned that Budapest’s pro-Kremlin shift was isolating Hungary from its NATO and EU allies. “Hungary is a member of the EU and NATO. It shouldn't behave as if it hated both,” he said.

      Zelensky suggested Orbán is spreading misinformation about the war to the Hungarian public, for political advantage ahead of elections. “He wants to use the war in Ukraine to his advantage in the elections. This is dishonorable,” he said.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ CIA Analyst Sentenced To Prison For Releasing Documents On Israel's Plans To Strike Iran

• Environment

  • Wired ☛ The EPA Wants to Roll Back Emissions Controls on Power Plants

    “The bottom line is that the EPA is trying to get out of the climate change business,” says Ryan Maher, a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

    The announcement comes just days after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) quietly released record-breaking new figures showing the highest seasonal concentration of CO2 in recorded history.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • France24 ☛ 'Protecting our oceans: Behavioural change comes from laws and changing of the system'

      The international treaty on the high seas, which focuses on conservation of maritime areas beyond national jurisdictions, has received sufficient support to take effect early in 2026, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday. Speaking at the third United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice, Macron said 55 countries' ratifications of the treaty have been completed, around 15 are in progress with a definite date, and another 15 will be completed by the end of the year, meaning that the required 60 will be achieved. FRANCE 24's Mark Owen welcomes Merijn Tinga, activist, biologist and world-renowned "Plastic Soup Surfer".

    • BIA Net ☛ Court rejects Selçuk Bayraktar’s ‘drone’ lawsuit against earthquake survivor

      The court has dismissed the 150,000-lira compensation lawsuit filed by Baykar CTO Selçuk Bayraktar against a citizen who criticized drone usage in the aftermath of the earthquake.

    • Scott Feeney ☛ Consultant's mindset, or why Jarrett Walker is wrong about free buses

      Walker’s case isn’t really specific to New York City, where a study showed free bus fares would bring 12% faster rides and 20% more riders. In fact, many of Walker’s arguments are so self-evidently flimsy they’re hardly worth debunking point by point. For example, he tells us “People will demand a bus duplicating every subway line so they can avoid the fare,” as if planners would not simply shrug off such a demand; does he think we’re governed by a dictatorship of penny-pinching bus riders? And did he even read the City & State NY article he linked to? It cites an MTA estimate that a mere “2% [to] 4% of subway trips would switch to bus trips under free bus service.”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Love Canal: The Black Mothers Behind One of the Biggest Environmental Fights of the 20th Century

  • Overpopulation

    • New York Times ☛ U.N. Report Says We’re Missing the Real Fertility Crisis [Ed: Study says people don't have kids because the economy is not reliable for anyone, including these kids]

      Policymakers in many countries assume that birthrates have fallen because people want fewer children, but a global study says financial insecurity is driving those decisions.

• Finance

  • CS Monitor ☛ ‘Did I do enough?’ College grads face a tough job market.

    It’s not the Great Recession, but with tariffs, hiring freezes, and the advent of artificial intelligence, the job market has college graduates wondering where they fit.

  • Rlang ☛ Impact of Budget Deficits on Treasury Yields with XGBoost

    Charles Schwab analysts said that historically, budget deficits have had minimal impact on Treasury yields, primarily due to the United States’ economic dominance and its status as the issuer of the world’s reserve currency.

    The variable importance analysis with the XGBoost machine learning model confirms the aforementioned statement.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Strategist ☛ With a new administration, South Korea should strengthen security ties with Australia

    As South Korea’s new administration takes office, the country has the opportunity to recalibrate its alignments in the Indo-Pacific, especially around closer defence and technology cooperation with Australia.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Sheinbaum addresses Noem’s accusations: Wednesday’s mañanera recapped

    On Tuesday, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused President Sheinbaum of encouraging "violent protests" in Los Angeles.

  • Latvia ☛ Šlesers' party contests municipal election results in Rīga

    The chairman of the party Latvia First (LPV), Ainārs Šlesers, has signed a letter to the Central Election Commission (CVK), the Prosecutor General's Office and the State Security Service (VDD) contesting the results of the local elections in Rīga and calling for them to be annulled, according to party board member Līga Krapāne.

  • Futurism ☛ CEO Says AI Will Replace So Many Jobs That It’ll Cause a Major Recession

    Speaking to The Times Tech podcast, the Sweden-based CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski admitted that adoption of the technology will result in "implication[s] for white-collar jobs" that include, but are not limited to, "at least a recession in the short term."

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ Mistral AI's new ambitions

    Mistral AI no longer sees itself merely as a European alternative to OpenAI, Anthropic, or DeepSeek. The French startup specializing in generative artificial intelligence also dreams of becoming a competitor to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. On Wednesday, it announced the launch of its own cloud computing platform.

  • Jason Becker ☛ MAGA: moving from participatory communities to mass consumption

    The mission of MAGA is to do to all our institutions what occurred in the American church. We are replacing doctors and public health experts with the equivalent of televangelist and megachurch prosperity gospel drifters. And we are doing the same with education, environmental regulation, communications, trade, securities, social security, internal revenue, etc. It’s what we’ve done to school board elections, city councils, and every part of local democracy as well.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • [Old] ABC ☛ Social media trolls use astroturfing to create unlevel playing field for council elections

      "They might be trying to set up fake accounts, and then steer those accounts to make it look like there are genuine grassroots community concerns about particular issues, when in fact they're pulling the strings from behind," said QUT associate professor Daniel Angus.

      While social media offers people a way to discuss hyperlocal issues that do not necessarily make the headlines, efforts to curtail the spread of misinformation and personal attacks have been experimental at best.

    • [Old] Digital Archive of the University of Jyväskylä ☛ Astroturfing as a Global Phenomenon

      This study is a literature review about a global phenomenon called astroturfing. There has been a lack of academic research concerning astroturfing. This study is conducted in order to give a basis for future research on the subject. The purpose of this study was to find out, what kind of phenomenon astroturfing is and how it has evolved in the course of time. The study also focuses on the criticism and concerns that astroturfing has raised. The theoretical part of this study provides basic information about astroturfing. It introduces various definitions to the term and provides an overview of cases concerning the subject. Also, special terminology related to the subject is introduced and astroturfing detection practices are presented. The method of this study is a literature review. A total of 58 articles were thoroughly examined and 15 of them were selected for the analysis. The analysis was completed as follows: finding the most relevant information concerning astroturfing about each article, with keeping the focus on the research questions. The results indicate that astroturfing is a global phenomenon with concerning nature, thus, it needs to be taken seriously. Astroturfing poses a threat to the credibility and reliability of organizations. It also deals with business ethics and it is considered as deceptive. Astroturfing was practiced earlier more on the political arena. Nowadays it is practiced commonly in online environment, and it has caused a negative effect on the online community as a whole. The latest research has been concentrating on astroturfing detection techniques. However, no single method has yet been discovered to resolve the issue.

    • [Old] The Atlantic ☛ Anne Applebaum: Social Media Made Spreading Disinformation Easy

      Applebaum: Russia’s been trying to do that for two decades. The point of Russian propaganda inside Ukraine was to create and amplify these divisions, whether they were over language or whether they were over interpretations of history and different ways of seeing the world. That has been their modus operandi there. And one of the effects of 2014 and the last two Ukrainian presidencies has really been to bring a lot of that to an end. And I think their invasion now is partly a recognition that the information war failed in Ukraine, and Ukraine was, partly thanks to them, unifying and rebuilding its state and rebuilding its army. It was not so easy to divide using slander and political games as it had been before.

    • [Old] The Washington Post ☛ Musk admits X throttles links as “news influencers” take over

      Musk was replying to a post by the influential Silicon Valley investor Paul Graham, who opined on Sunday that “the deprioritization of tweets with links in them is Twitter’s biggest flaw.” X’s main draw, Graham said, is “to find out what’s going on, and you can’t do that without links.”

      Musk’s response implied Graham was right that X’s algorithm downgrades link posts.

    • [Old] Natalyie Baldwin ☛ April | 2017 | Natylie's Place: Understanding Russia

      In addition to the use of astroturf groups, PR firms often provide a range of services with the goal of using various tools in the art of deception to protect and/or further the interests of their corporate clients. These include advising clients how to evade substantive interaction with the public and questioning by journalists or activists, and how to mislead based on the avoidance of words that the public reacts unfavorably to – in other words, obfuscating to the point of rendering the truth irrelevant. Some firms even conduct spying operations on genuine public interest groups and advocates with the goal of blackmailing them or attacking their credibility.

      But one shouldn’t underestimate the mileage PR firms get out of more mundane methods, such as inundating media outlets with press releases that portray their corporate clients in the best possible light. Instead of being treated with sufficient skepticism, corporate and PR press releases are often used as the basis of articles and reports as newsrooms cut back their staff and budget for investigative reporting. As a 2014 survey by Business Wire revealed, the vast majority of journalists rely on press releases to provide them with breaking news (77%) and factual support for articles (70%).

      There is even a term now for this kind of press release-based reporting, “churnalism.” In fact, it was recognized as a serious enough problem by the Media Standards Trust to motivate the creation of a website, churnalism.com, which provides a “churn engine” that viewers can paste press releases into and find articles in the database that quote directly from or heavily rely upon “reproduced publicity material,” receiving a high score on the churnalism meter.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Straits Times ☛ Hong Kong bans video game in further national security push

    The move against the app marked the first known use of the national security law to block a video game.

  • TruthOut ☛ Senator Padilla Forcibly Removed From Kristi Noem Press Conference Touting ICE Crackdown

    “If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country,” he said. “We will hold this administration accountable.”

  • Wired ☛ How to Protest Safely in the Age of Surveillance

    Two key elements of digital surveillance should be top of mind for protestors. One is the data that authorities could potentially obtain from your phone if you are detained, arrested, or they confiscate your device. The other is surveillance of all the identifying and revealing information that you produce when you attend a protest, which can include wireless interception of text messages and more, and tracking tools like license plate scanners and face recognition. You should be mindful of both.

  • Harvard University ☛ 12,000 Harvard Alumni Submit Amicus Brief Backing Harvard in Federal Funding Lawsuit

    “The Government’s end goal is to narrow our freedoms to learn, teach, think, and act, and to claim for itself the right to dictate who may enjoy those freedoms,” the alumni wrote.

    The filing supports Harvard’s May 30 motion for summary judgment, which seeks to resolve the case without a trial.

    The 12,041 signatories span the Classes of 1950 through 2025 and represent all 12 of Harvard’s schools. Among them are late-night host Conan C. O’Brien ’85, novelist Margaret E. Atwood, and Massachusetts Governor Maura T. Healey ’92. Other signatories — a broad cross-section of alumni from across the country and the world — include media executives, economists, lawyers, and health ministers.

  • Harvard University ☛ 18 Universities Seek To Back Harvard in Federal Funding Lawsuit

    The universities contested the brief would provide a “broader perspective” on the nationwide impact of the freeze, which has already affected several institutions beyond Harvard. Many signatories have seen their own federal funding come under scrutiny in recent months — whether singled out for punitive treatment or simply impacted by the Trump administration’s sweeping effort to root out grants for projects that might clash with its agenda.

    The judge overseeing Harvard’s case agreed on Friday to allow the amicus brief, but the universities have not yet submitted it. According to the filing, the Trump administration did not oppose the request, and Harvard consented to it.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Joan Baez on Trump, Protests, Lana Del Rey, and 'A Complete Unknown'

    One of the concerns now is that any protests could lead Trump to send in the military, resulting in a declaration of martial law. He’s dying to have something. Nothing could make it easier for them, because we can’t compete. Anybody who seriously thinks they can make social change with violence is really innocent. No, you get squashed. [Editor’s note: This interview was conducted prior to the ongoing L.A. protests.]

  • The Independent UK ☛ Fort Bragg soldiers behind Trump during speech were screened for loyalty and appearance, report says: ‘No fat soldiers’

    "If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out," one note to troops obtained by the outlet said.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Paragon spyware found on the phones of Euro journos

    University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab published a report on its findings, which confirmed spyware on the phone of an Italian journalist named Ciro Pellegrino, following a prior alert about the phone of Francesco Cancellato, both of whom work for Italian investigative outlet Fanpage. Citizen Lab also confirmed spyware on the phone of another unnamed European journalist.

    Paragon, like leading spyware maker NSO Group, is an Israeli company.

  • Security Week ☛ Surge in Cyberattacks Targeting Journalists: Cloudflare

    The number of malicious requests targeting organizations receiving free security services through Cloudflare’s Project Galileo has more than tripled over the past year, the web security and performance company says.

  • Citizen Lab ☛ Graphite Caught: First Forensic Confirmation of Paragon’s iOS Mercenary Spyware Finds Journalists Targeted

    On April 29, 2025, a select group of iOS users were notified by Apple that they were targeted with advanced spyware. Among the group were two journalists that consented for the technical analysis of their cases. The key findings from our forensic analysis of their devices are summarized below: [...]

  • The Record ☛ Paragon spyware activity found on more journalists’ devices

    The latest targets are a “prominent” European journalist who wishes to stay anonymous and Ciro Pellegrino, a colleague of a previously identified Paragon spyware target, Francesco Cancellato, the Citizen Lab said.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Atlantic ☛ Why Won’t the Pentagon Own Up to Trump’s Latest Move?

    Reverting is an insult to the families of those people whose names were added and then removed. But refusing to own up to the goal here is a laughable equivocation from guys who like to talk about how strong they are. Trump clearly wants to bring back the Confederate names. Why won’t the Pentagon go along with it, or why can’t officials admit it? Isn’t this the “wokeness and weakness” that Hegseth has promised to eliminate?

  • Michael Geist ☛ Government Remains Silent as it Eviscerates Political Party Privacy in Canada By Fast Tracking Bill C-4

    Members of Parliament regularly emphasized that privacy is a fundamental human right when debating Bill C-27 during the last Parliament, calling for an explicit provision to that effect in the bill. Yet apparently those human rights stop when it comes to political parties and their use of personal information. Not only is the government burying anti-privacy provisions in the bill, but government ministers and MPs have avoided any debate on the issue. Minister François Philippe Champagne did not mention the provisions in his comments on the bill and no Liberal MP has dared raise it in the House of Commons.

  • TruthOut ☛ Senate GOP Legislation “Is Just Open Season on Public Lands,” Critics Warn

    The measure directs the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to “dispose of 0.5-0.75% of certain BLM land and the Forest Service to dispose of 0.5-0.75% of certain National Forest System Land,” and would give Trump administration officials wide latitude to determine whether public land sell-offs would “address local housing needs (including housing supply and affordability) or any associated community needs.”

  • Wired ☛ Social Media Is Now a DIY Alert System for ICE Raids

    This figure is based on collaborative reports compiled by the Rapid Response Network, an alliance comprised of dozens of organizations that provide support to migrants and disseminate information about immigration detentions and operations.

  • RFERL ☛ Iran Widens Dog Walking Ban, Targeting Pet Owners Across The Country

    The move builds on a 2019 police directive that first prohibited dog walking in Tehran and now encompasses bans on transporting dogs in vehicles and, in some cases, the closure of pet shops and unauthorized veterinary clinics.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Internet Society ☛ No Research, No Internet

    The 2025 Network and Distributed Systems Security (NDSS) Symposium showcased cutting-edge research from across industry and academia.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • [Old] The Verge ☛ John Deere turned tractors into computers — what’s next?

    And because these things are all computers, these manufacturers can also control the software to lock out parts from other suppliers. But it’s a huge deal in the context of farming equipment, which is still extremely mechanical, often located far away from service providers and not so easy to move, and which farmers have been repairing themselves for decades. In fact, right now the prices of older, pre-computerized tractors are skyrocketing because they’re easier to repair.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ Between labs and algorithms: can patent monopoly law’s research exemption learn something from the TDM exception in copyright monopoly law?

    This year, at the Annual Fordham IP [sic] Law & Policy Conference, we heard Lord Justice Birss reflect on how we are living through a transformative era in intellectual [sic] property (IP) [sic] law.

• Copyrights

  • Futurism ☛ "Piracy Is Piracy": Disney Sues Midjourney for Massive Copyright Violation

    And it's not just the use of image generators; generative AI writ large has triggered a barrage of lawsuits, with media companies accusing the likes of OpenAI and Google of training their large language models on their materials without fair compensation.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Disney sues AI image generator Midjourney

    Midjourney also spat out images that were really obviously taken straight from its training data, like stills from Avengers Infinity War.

    Disney and Universal first contacted Midjourney about this a year ago.

    Disney know how generative AI works. The Disney content can’t be removed from Midjourney without retraining it from scratch.

  • Wired ☛ Disney and Universal Sue AI Company Midjourney for Copyright Infringement

    “This is an extremely significant development,” says IP lawyer Chad Hummel, who sees the compilation of images in the complaint as compelling evidence that “the output is not sufficiently transformative.” Most AI companies facing lawsuits have argued that they are protected by the “fair use” doctrine, which allows for use of copyrighted works in certain circumstances; one of the main questions the courts ask is whether new work is “transformative,” or adds a new meaning or message, when they make the fair use determination.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ European ISPs Complain About 'Disproportionate' Pirate Site Blocking

    Internet providers are increasingly tasked in the role of anti-piracy enforcers and instructed to block pirate websites and services. In Europe, court-ordered blockades are now commonplace, but ISPs are cautious when it comes to further expansion. In a recent submission to the EU Commission, EuroISPA, which represents over 3,300 ISPs, complains about "disproportionate" blocking measures, as recently seen in Italy, Spain and elsewhere.