Leftovers

• Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Revisiting my digital security model

  Someone politically exposed or dealing with sensitive third-party data, for example, needs a more robust security apparatus. Someone like me? Not so much.

• El País ☛ The Grateful Dead: A story of hippies, LSD and Lithuania’s iconic basketball uniforms

  They also hold the record for the most albums charted in their home country, being one of the major social and cultural phenomena that defined 20th-century North America. Closely tied to the birth of the 1960s counterculture, The Grateful Dead have been the subject of numerous essays and academic studies, and arguably possess the most loyal fanbase ever.

• Sightline Media Group ☛ Army will end most of its ceremonial horse programs

  The U.S. Army’s history is closely tied to its cavalry units, those soldiers who rode into battle on horseback. But the service announced Tuesday that it’s moving toward a future without the ceremonial horses and will put most of them up for adoption.

  The Army, however, will keep operating the Old Guard ceremonial caisson units at Joint Base San Antonio and Arlington National Cemetery for burial honors.

• ARRL ☛ Amateur Radio Volunteers Serving During Texas Floods

  The trained ham radio operators were activated starting on Friday, July 4, 2025. Radio amateurs are providing communications capabilities to agencies whose primary systems were damaged in the flooding event or where they suffer poor connectivity due to the terrain.

• Science

  • The Register UK ☛ Space traffic control is vital, industry tells Congress

    The letters argue that safe space operations "in an increasingly congested space domain" are critical for modern services like broadband satellite [Internet] and weather forecasting, but that's not all. "Likewise, a safe space operating environment is vital for continuity of national security space missions such as early warning of missile attacks on deployed US military forces," the letters added.

  • The Register UK ☛ Thousands of NASA staff likely to quit before getting fired

    The US space agency is facing massive funding cuts that would put it back to pre-Apollo levels of budgets and staffing. A report in Politico based on internal documents says over 2,000 senior staff are planning to leave under the deferred resignation program (DRP), but people within the organization have said that there's no official count on the cuts and won't be until the end of the month.

    "There is no set target number for the DRP. This program is a voluntary opportunity available to NASA employees," a spokesperson told The Register.

  • Bjoern Brembs ☛ Embrace the uncertainty

    One such microbehavior that had been extensively studied in Tübingen before Martin Heisenberg arrived was optomotor behavior. Like most animals, flies attempt to stabilize their visual field when confronted with moving stimuli. For example, a tethered fly on the torque meter would generate right-turning torque when presented with vertical gratings rotating from left to right (clockwise from above) around the fly. Earlier research had shown that control theory could reasonably predict the dynamics of these optomotor responses, including rise times and amplitudes. The prevailing conclusion was that these control loops were innate steering mechanisms, allowing flies to maintain a straight trajectory. If visual input indicated an unintended drift, the optomotor response would automatically and predictably correct the displacement.

  • The Register UK ☛ Former reality TV star appointed NASA Interim Administrator

    Duffy has little experience in the space arena. Before entering politics, he starred in The Real World: Boston in 1997, the sixth season of the MTV reality television show, and Road Rules: All Stars in 1998, an MTV Winnebago driving event where he met his future wife, Rachel Campos. He resigned from Congress in 2019, later becoming a Fox Business host in 2022 before being appointed Secretary of Transportation in 2025.

• Career/Education

  • David Rosenthal ☛ The Festschrift For Cliff Lynch

    Source The festschrift that includes the edited version of the draft we posted back in April entitled Lots Of Cliff Keeps Stuff Safe has been officially published as Networking Networks: A Festschrift in Honor of Clifford Lynch, an open access supplement to portal: Libraries and the Academy 25, no. 3. Joan K. Lippincott writes: [...]

  • Futurism ☛ You'll Never Guess Why OpenAI Is Pouring Money Into the Second Largest Teachers' Union

    Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic — three leading AI chatbot makers — have poured $23 million into the second largest teachers' union in the US, the New York Times reports.

    The union, the American Federation of Teachers, revealed its tech patrons on Tuesday, when it announced that it was using the funding to launch an AI training center for educators, which is being called the National Academy for AI Instruction.

  • Coalition for Networked Information ☛ Networking Networks: A Festschrift Honoring Clifford Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information, 1997-2025

    Joan K. Lippincott, ed. “Networking Networks: A Festschrift Honoring Clifford Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information, 1997-2025.” Supplement to portal: Libraries and the Academy 25, no. 3 (July 2025), https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/55108.

  • Sergio Visinoni ☛ New Leader's First Move: Make Their Life Easier

    This approach is the opposite of being passive, though it might look as such on a narrow time horizon. It's a deliberate approach that helps you make the right first impression, which will become your main lever going forward.

    Let's look at how it applies in a few common scenarios that we've been recently discussing in the Sudo Make Me a CTO Community.

  • Ness Labs ☛ Intellectual Self-Doubt: The Psychology Behind Questioning Your Competence - Ness Labs

    Here’s one of my favorite quotes: “I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people.” This comes from the diary of John Steinbeck, who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.

    This kind of intellectual self-doubt is common among high achievers. The smarter they are, the more acutely they seem to question their own competence.

• Hardware

  • The Register UK ☛ Intel CEO reportedly comes to terms with chipmaker's fall

    "Twenty, 30 years ago, we are really the leader," he's reported as saying. "The world has changed. We are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies."

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Trump bill will have major impact on health care cybersecurity, experts warn Congress

    But during the hearing, multiple witnesses warned that the Republican-passed law will have a devastating impact on cybersecurity and basic services in a health care sector that is already plagued by digital threats. Others decried what they see as a general pullback from the federal government in supporting health care and health care cybersecurity under the Trump administration.

  • EDRI ☛ Online platforms use manipulative design

    New research by Bits of Freedom investigated social media platforms Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok, and e-commerce platforms Shein, Zalando and Booking.com for their use of manipulative design. The worrying findings indicate that these platforms continue to nfluence the choices of users to their detriment despite being prohibited by laws.

  • CS Monitor ☛ An enslaved Black botanist makes a key discovery in 'The Rarest Fruit'

    Five weeks later, Edmond enters the nursery to find a freshly sprouted vanilla pod. “So this is the rarest fruit in the world!” he cheers. But his jubilation soon wilts. Ferréol – one part incredulous, three parts jealous – refuses to accept that a Black enslaved preteen engineered the vanilla breakthrough.

  • The Nation ☛ America Is Sliding Into the Abyss

    And in public health, God forbid we have another pandemic, because we’re shutting down critical programs to monitor and respond to imminent threats like H5N1, while the bozos at Health and Human Services and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices are taking an axe to immunization in the US and giving once-vanquished plagues a new chance at a run on ordinary Americans. Thanks to the destructiveness of these anti-vaxxers, we already have more measles cases than at any time in the past 33 years. The crisis is already here.

    To use the coarse military acronym, it’s all FUBAR—fucked up beyond all recognition.

  • Wired ☛ Scientists Succeed in Reversing Parkinson’s Symptoms in Mice

    The results showed that the mice treated with the placebo experienced a deterioration in their motor skills. In contrast, those that received the copper supplement showed no alterations in their movement. It appears the treatment corrected the dysfunctions of SOD1 and restored its protective properties. In the mice receiving the copper treatment, dopamine neurons were preserved in an area of the brain called the substantia nigra, an area essential for the control of movement, coordination, learning, and certain cognitive functions.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ CISA agrees that CitrixBleed 2 is under exploit

    The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added its weighty name to the list of parties agreeing that CVE-2025-5777, dubbed CitrixBleed 2 by one researcher, has been under exploitation and abused to hijack user sessions.

    On Thursday, CISA added the critical security flaw to its catalog of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities. The agency cited "evidence of active exploitation" in its alert.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Talking about Apple again

    I know I court a readership of BSD and Linux people—hi!—who would argue that Apple have always been like this. But I need you to understand that… no, no they weren’t. This is a whole other level. Apple’s marketing may have always had a streak of the reality distortion field, but for a time they made the best computer GUIs around. Then they made the best UNIX workstations around. People like me used them because their tastes and priorities closely matched ours. Then the pundits said we were disgruntled because they went for the mass market, thanks to the iPhone (pardon, “thanks to iPhone”). Their stuff “wasn’t for us” anymore. Okay, but now I’d argue nobody benefits from what they’re doing.

  • John Calhoun ☛ Almost Fired

    To keep a long story short, I did get it sorted out — I rewrote the assembly code in straight C (a language I was familiar with) and the PowerPC was happy to display the HSL color wheel. The PPC chips were so much faster than the 68K ones that in fact some assembly was not required.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft Outlook outage stretches past 11 hours

    The troubles, according to Microsoft's service status page, began at 2220 UTC on July 9 when it confirmed "users may be unable to access their mailbox using any connection methods."

    This included Outlook.com, Outlook Mobile, and the Outlook desktop client.

  • The Register UK ☛ Google Cloud keeps AI data in UK, but not the support

    The option is an acknowledgment of local data (if perhaps not operational) sovereignty and compliance needs. Having data heading offshore for AI is a big no-no for many sectors, such as financial services. However, UK support calls will be routed to Google's global support personnel, while EU customers can receive support from personnel located in the bloc.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘The vehicle suddenly accelerated with our baby in it’: the terrifying truth about why Tesla’s cars keep crashing

    Over the next two years, we spoke with crash victims, grieving families and experts around the world. What we uncovered was an ominous black box – a system designed not only to collect and control every byte of customer data, but to safeguard Musk’s vision of autonomous driving. Critical information was sealed off from public scrutiny.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Grok’s Antisemitic Meltdown Was Entirely Predictable

      Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, started spewing antisemitic conspiracy theories this week. It’s not the first time something like this has happened — and a reminder that LLMs aren’t truth-telling machines but aggregators of undifferentiated online scribblings.

    • Wired ☛ Elon Musk Unveils Grok 4 Amid Controversy Over Chatbot’s Antisemitic Posts

    • Simon Willison ☛ Grok: searching X for “from:elonmusk (Israel OR Palestine OR Hamas OR Gaza)”

      If the system prompt doesn’t tell it to search for Elon’s views, why is it doing that?

    • Nathaniel Snelgrove ☛ Artificial intelligence and mastery

      “Neither of them would accept unclear explanations as understanding” sums up the entire situation: each time we use AI, we are essentially saying we are fine with somebody else doing this work inside a black box. The tools reveal our priorities. If we rely on AI, we don’t become masters. At some point, the reliance on the tool masters us.

    • The New Leaf Journal ☛ On Forcing AI Where It Does Not Belong

      Yet despite agreeing with Mr. Gioia that a perfect boycott of AI is most likely impractical if not impossible, I venture that his position, as presented, is unduly extreme. There may be cases where one has no choice but to use a product with unwanted and ever-encroaching AI features. Some products may be required for professional work. In other cases, there may be no non-AI infested alternative to a product. But for people who are irritated with AI finding its way into their computers and phones, I would recommend carefully considering the following: [...]

    • Matt Webb ☛ AI-operated vending machines and business process innovation (sorry) (Interconnected)

      Hey the song of the summer is autonomous AI and vending machines.

      And I feel like people are drawing the wrong lesson. It is not oh-ho look the AI can kinda run a shop.

      The real lesson, which is actionable by businesses today, is about governance.

    • Brian Merchant ☛ AI Killed My Job: Tech workers

      But the question remains: What’s actually happening on the ground, right now? There’s no doubt that lots of firms are investing heavily in AI and trying to use it to improve productivity and cut labor costs. And it’s clear that in certain industries, especially creative ones, the rise of cheap AI-generated content is hitting workers hard. Yet broader economic data on AI impacts suggests a more limited disruption. Two and a half years after the rise of ChatGPT, after a torrent of promises, CEO talk, and think pieces, how is—or isn’t—AI really reshaping work?

    • Pivot to AI ☛ ‘AI is here to stay’ — is it, though? What do you mean, ‘stay’?

      Remember that a lot of these people were super convinced by just one really impressive demo that blew their minds. We have computers you can just talk to naturally now and have a conversation! That’s legit amazing, actually! The whole field of natural language processing is 80% solved!

      The other 20% is where the computer is a lying idiot — and it probably can’t be fixed. That’s a bit of a problem in practice. Generative AI is all like that — it’s genuinely impressive demos with unfixable problems.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Boasts of Grok's Incredible Cognitive Power Hours After It Called for a "Second Holocaust"

      But there's one glaring problem: Musk's bragadocious statements glossed over the fact that Grok had spent most of this week spewing mind-bogglingly racist and antisemitic talking points. The unhinged algorithm even started referring to itself as "MechaHitler," targeting Black and Jewish people with shocking vitriol.

      It went as far as to call for a "second Holocaust" — in lockstep with the disturbed beliefs of current-day Nazis calling Musk's social media platform their home.

    • India Times ☛ EU in touch with X over Musk's chatbot posts praising Hitler

      The EU's digital affairs spokesman, Thomas Regnier, confirmed Poland sent a letter urging an investigation into Grok. The EU will carefully look at it and "respond in due course," he said. "We take this extremely seriously". X has been under investigation since December 2023 under the European Union's landmark content law regarding how it tackles the spread of illegal content and information manipulation.

    • Futurism ☛ Genius Zuckerberg Poaches Guy Responsible for [Checks Notes] the Disastrous Apple Intelligence

      Things got so bad that Apple halted the AI news summary feature in January of this year, and it soon emerged that Apple engineers published a paper warning of how buggy the tech was before its launch — but the Tim Cook-run company decided to release it anyway.

    • The Register UK ☛ Chinese TV translations into sign language aren't going well

      In interviews, viewers reported “they generally couldn’t understand the avatars’ movements and noted that they seemed to have a limited vocabulary, while struggling to handle words with multiple meanings.”

      Zheng thinks the AIs did badly because “Chinese words cannot be found for the meanings expressed by 50 percent of gestures in Chinese sign language.”

    • The Guardian UK ☛ AI-generated child sexual abuse videos surging online, watchdog says

      In the first six months of 2025, the UK-based [Internet] safety watchdog verified 1,286 AI-made videos with child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that broke the law, compared with two in the same period last year.

      The IWF said just over 1,000 of the videos featured category A abuse, the classification for the most severe type of material.

    • New York Times ☛ A.I.-Generated Images of Child Sexual Abuse Are Flooding the Internet

      A new flood of child sexual abuse material created by artificial intelligence is hitting a tipping point of realism, threatening to overwhelm the authorities.

  • Social Control Media

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ If I ran X

      “After two incredible years,” Linda Yaccarino tweeted, “I’ve decided to step down as CEO of 𝕏.” It was the day after the company’s AI chatbot, Grok, began calling itself MechaHitler and started spewing antisemitic slurs and advocating for Adolf Hitler in public until the company eventually had to remove them. Many of the users still posting to X greeted the antisemitism warmly; some tweeted, “finally”.

    • US Navy Times ☛ Navy spouse sues base officials over free speech after Facebook ban

      Sergio Rodriguez, an Army veteran and military family advocate who was named 2022 Navy Spouse of the Year by Armed Forces Insurance, alleges his First Amendment rights were violated when officials banned him from the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay’s Facebook page and deleted all his comments in August 2024.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Krebs On Security ☛ UK Arrests Four in ‘Scattered Spider’ Ransom Group

      Scattered Spider is the name given to an English-speaking cybercrime group known for using social engineering tactics to break into companies and steal data for ransom, often impersonating employees or contractors to deceive IT help desks into granting access. The FBI warned last month that Scattered Spider had recently shifted to targeting companies in the retail and airline sectors.

    • The Register UK ☛ NCA arrests four in connection with UK retail cyberattacks

      All four were charged with offences under the Computer Misuse Act, and for alleged offences related to blackmail, money laundering, and participating in the activities of an organized crime group.

    • The Record ☛ Four arrested by UK police over ransomware attacks on M&S, Co-op and Harrods | The Record from Recorded Future News

      Four individuals in Britain were arrested early on Thursday morning by the National Crime Agency on suspicion of involvement in a range of ransomware attacks targeting the British retail sector earlier this year.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • European Commission ☛ Qualified certificates for website authentication

      To ensure trust and transparency in online transaction and that the qualified certificates for website authentication include the required information in a verifiable and structured format, this implementing act sets out a reference standard and, where necessary, specifications and procedures for qualified certificates for website authentication.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Register UK ☛ Privacy activists unmoved despite Met's 1,000 LFR arrests • The Register

    • Thomas Rigby ☛ Not owning a phone is privilege

      In a world increasingly "digital" having a phone is bordering on a necessity. As White himself points out he "can’t listen to my music in my car, can’t park at a parking lot by myself because of QR codes, etc. etc.". Which means that someone else has been doing that for him.

    • EFF ☛ EFF Tells Virginia Court That Constitutional Privacy Protections Forbid Cops from Finding out Everyone Who Searched for a Keyword

      But as EFF and the ACLU explained in our amicus brief on appeal, reverse keyword warrants simply cannot be conducted in a lawful way. They invert privacy protections, threaten free speech and inquiry, and fundamentally conflict with the principles underlying the Fourth Amendment and its analog in the Virginia Constitution. The court of appeals now has a chance to say so and protect the rights of Internet users well beyond state lines.

    • EDRI ☛ What the final GDPR Procedural Regulation could cost us

      After years of debate, the GDPR Procedural Regulation has been finalised. Despite some improvements, the final text may entrench old problems and create new ones, undermining people’s rights and potentially opening the door to weakening the GDPR itself.

    • EFF ☛ Data Brokers are Selling Your Flight Information to CBP and ICE

      For many years, data brokers have existed in the shadows, exploiting gaps in privacy laws to harvest our information—all for their own profit. They sell our precise movements without our knowledge or meaningful consent to a variety of private and state actors, including law enforcement agencies. And they show no sign of stopping.

      This incentivizes other bad actors. If companies collect any kind of personal data and want to make a quick buck, there’s a data broker willing to buy it and sell it to the highest bidder–often law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Swedish PM’s bodyguards accidentally reveal location on Strava

      Members of Ulf Kristersson’s security detail kept their Strava profiles open, meaning that the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter could track his movements, including going for a run with the leaders of Norway and Finland in the Norwegian town of Bodø.

    • International Business Times ☛ Apple To Warn FaceTime Users During Phone Sex: 'You May Be Showing Something Sensitive'

      This rather direct alert from Apple reflects upon the new development, underscoring the evolving landscape of digital privacy and the distinct challenges posed by video communication.

    • [Old] Micah F Lee ☛ Using Signal groups for activism

      Given this, activists use and trust Signal over other messaging apps for a few reasons: [...]

    • [Repeat] Bruce Schneier ☛ Yet Another Strava Privacy Leak - Schneier on Security

      This time it’s the Swedish prime minister’s bodyguards. (Last year, it was the US Secret Service and Emmanuel Macron’s bodyguards. in 2018, it was secret US military bases.)

  • Confidentiality

    • RIPE ☛ How Secure Are My Sessions?

      TLS session security isn't just about encryption - it’s about where and how that encryption is terminated. This article explores common risks in TLS deployments and how to align them with modern security principles like Zero Trust.

    • SANS ☛ Setting up Your Own Certificate Authority for Development: Why and How.

      There are several reasons why one would set up an internal certificate authority. Some are configured to support strong authentication schemes, some for additional flexibility and convenience. I am going to cover the second part. In particular, it can be helpful for developers to have an internal certificate authority to issue certificates for development purposes. Websites used for development and internal testing are usually only used by a few individuals and are generally only accessible via internal networks or VPNs. Often, these sites do not even use TLS. But there are a few reasons why you should consider running TLS on all sites, including internal development sites: [...]

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Register UK ☛ Ex-ASML engineer who stole chip tech for Russia gets 3 years

    The Rotterdam District Court convicted an unnamed 43-year-old defendant of computer hacking and violating EU sanctions by illegally providing technical assistance to Russia.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Reactionary Coup of America Continues Apace

    This coup succeeds only if we remain passive spectators to our own democracy’s dismantling. Americans going about their lives, worried about putting food on the table, getting their kids ready for a new school year, simply cannot bring on board these existential realities. The gap between the magnitude of what is happening and our capacity to feel its significance represents one of the most dangerous disconnects in American history. But gravity is real. We are falling fast. And history will not wake Americans gently. The psychological trauma approaches whether we prepare for it or not.

  • Garry Kasparov ☛ New Podcast with The Atlantic Launching Tomorrow: Autocracy in America

    Every fresh insult to American institutions—whether from the White House or a seemingly impotent political opposition—drives home the need to talk about authoritarianism in this country. But the parade of outrages also means it’s difficult to parse what’s really important. It makes the abnormal normal. It numbs our senses, reducing our physiological feedback over each successive crisis to a dull pain.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Dispatch from Svalbard: Tensions are simmering in the High North

    Russia has been dusting off Soviet nostalgia by hosting Victory Day parades in Barentsburg, an isolated and nearly defunct Russian mining town located more than an hour by boat from Longyearbyen. Russian residents there have been observed wearing Soviet-era coal mining uniforms. Through binoculars, we saw a tattered Soviet flag flying; another Soviet flag has reportedly been placed atop a mountain peak at the nearly abandoned Russian settlement of Pyramiden. All these acts are intended both to antagonize the Norwegian hosts and to cultivate evocative messaging back home in Russia. While Russia does have a limited history in Svalbard, some observers we spoke with felt that Moscow has been contriving deeper cultural and historical connections than are reflected by the facts. It is hard to imagine that these are simply isolated examples of nostalgic revivalism rather than an intentional and coordinated initiative by the Kremlin.

  • SBS ☛ Afghan refugee facing deportation pleads with Australian government

    Ahmad had been working as a social activist at an NGO promoting universal human rights, including the right for women and girls to be educated, and supporting efforts to peacefully oppose the Taliban's extreme interpretation of Islamic law.

  • USMC ☛ Lejeune Marines run first live munition drop from fielded drone

    Marines used weaponized small drones, which included the SkyRaider and Neros Archer.

  • US DOD ☛ Marines Conduct Live-Fire Test of Lethal Drone Munitions at Camp Lejeune

    The event marked the first time a program-of-record (meaning a system formally fielded and sustained by the Marine Corps) UAS delivered a live lethal munition on Camp Lejeune, with a SkyRaider, a quadcopter used by Marines for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) dropping the Mjölnir munition onto a designated target followed by mortar fire and a Javelin strike in a simulated company-level assault.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ TikTok faces fresh European privacy investigation over China data transfers

    “The purpose of the inquiry is to determine whether TikTok has complied with its relevant obligations under the GDPR in the context of the transfers now at issue, including the lawfulness of the transfers,” the regulator said, referring to the European Union’s strict privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation.

    TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, has been under scrutiny in Europe over how it handles personal user information amid concerns from Western officials that it poses a security risk.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Plans USAID-Inspired Development Model in Bid to Extend Global Influence

    The initiative reflects Russia’s broader push to assert its presence on the global stage amid Western sanctions and growing competition for influence in developing regions, particularly in the Global South.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Latvia's path to becoming Europe’s drone powerhouse

    Motivation remains high in Latvia to continue efforts to aid Ukraine, with the country’s small size encouraging specialization. This is best seen in the recently announced Drone Coalition, which will see Riga lead allied efforts to deliver much-needed unmanned systems to Kyiv.

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Canada Yanks Sponsorships—Juno Awards, MusiCounts, ADISQ

    TikTok has also worked with TIFF since 2022, sponsoring its Short Cuts and Special Presentations programs and supporting panels featuring Canadian creators. The company is also ending its partnership with ADISQ, Quebec’s music industry association and the organizer of the province’s biggest music awards gala.

  • Digital Music News ☛ A Separate US-Based TikTok Has Been In The Works for Months

    The separation means U.S.-based artists may see increased domestic visibility at the expense of their global reach. International creators could face challenges in accessing the American market, potentially affecting cross-border collaborations and music discovery for Americans.

  • India Times ☛ EU opens new probe into TikTok data transfer to China

    The DPC on Thursday said it had been informed by TikTok in April that "limited EEA user data had in fact been stored on servers in China," contrary to evidence presented by the company.

  • Reuters ☛ Exclusive: TikTok prepares US app with its own algorithm and user data 

    Over the past several months, TikTok employees have been working under tight deadlines to build a new, U.S.-specific version of TikTok by transferring and duplicating the application's codebase — including AI models, algorithms, features, and user data — from the global platform, current employees at the company told Reuters, who requested anonymity while discussing private matters.

  • Air Force Times ☛ Fighter pilots integrate drones into air combat training

    Pilots of an F-16C Fighting Falcon and an F-15 Strike Eagle controlled two Valkryie drones each while flying, wielding them while performing combat maneuvers. The pilots successfully used their skills in harmony with the unmanned aerial vehicles in realtime.

  • US News And World Report ☛ TikTok Faces Fresh European Privacy Investigation Over China Data Transfers

    The Data Protection Commission opened the inquiry as a follow up to a previous investigation that ended earlier this year with a 530 million euro ($620 million) fine after it found the video sharing app put users at risk of spying by allowing remote access their data from China.

  • Vox ☛ TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are full of little vertical videos. It’s cooking our brains.

    In the near future, the [Internet] may not only be wall-to-wall little videos. Those little videos may also be filled with slop, the term for AI-generated garbage content that is perhaps even more insidious in robbing us of our attention.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Nation ☛ Does Trump’s Biggest [Cryptocurrency] Backer Really Exist?

    It’s unclear where the real money powering this deal originated. Cryptocurrency allows for a degree of discretion and pseudonymity, if not total privacy, in financial transactions. Someone can spin up a website and press release and send $80 million worth of [cryptocurrency] to the US president’s associates without leaving the couch. It’s possible that Aqua 1 Foundation is a real Emirati company, but it’s just as possible that it could be a front for any number of foreign financial or political interests seeking favors from Trump.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Of Course Trump Doesn’t Want to Release the Epstein Files

    Not only was Trump intimately close to Jeffrey Epstein, but there is a wealth of reporting tying the billionaire pedophile to intelligence circles. Trump is once again protecting the elites he claimed he would fight on the campaign trail.

  • The Washington Spectator ☛ Trump and Epstein Secret Connections | Washington Spectator

    Happily we can thank The Court of History—one of the best of the new online interview shows—for shedding light on this boiling pot. The program is hosted by author, journalist and political savant Sidney Blumenthal together with the prolific Princeton historian Sean Wilentz. The featured guest for the Epstein episode is Michael Wolff, one of the foremost chroniclers of the Trump era, who has a lot to report about Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein.

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Environmental impact of common pesticides seriously underestimated, finds research

    Global use of pesticides has doubled since 1990, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, raising concerns about the potential impact on health and the environment. In light of their new findings, the research team argues that regulatory frameworks governing the human and environmental safety of these pesticides should be urgently updated.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft says regulations are cramping its Euro expansion

    Microsoft intends to more than double its European datacenter capacity by 2027, but suspects this won't be easy because of all the red tape and environmental safeguards it faces.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Climate Disasters Like Texas Floods Moving Faster Than Science Can Keep Up

    Winkley said moisture from the Gulf of Mexico created the storm that led to about 25 to 38 centimetres of rainfall on Kerr County alone. According to Climate Central, “large amounts of moisture in the air fueled the storm that moved slowly—dumping what is estimated to be more than 100 billion gallons of water, more than the daily flow over Niagara Falls.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Atlantic ☛ The End of Airport Shoe-Screening Is Populism Theater

      The TSA’s mandate to go shoeless, like the volume limit on toiletry items (to thwart the assembly of explosives from liquids) and the need to remove laptops from carry-on bags (to better examine them for hidden threats), came to give the mere appearance of vigilance: not security but security theater. From the start, it provided newly federalized and uniformed TSA agents with stuff to do at every moment, and government officials with the chance to embrace “an abundance of caution,” a stock idea that can transform almost any inconvenience into leadership. Now, by closing the curtain on the shoe requirements, Noem has indulged in a rival form of spectacle: populism theater. Her new policy gives citizens something they actually want, and something that has until this point been reserved for upscale travelers who pay for premium airport-security-hopping services. But with this week’s change, the system hasn’t really been democratized so much as made indifferent. In this case, the fact of the TSA’s doing less—and caring less—just happens to be helpful.

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Minnesota regulators approve over 475 MW of new solar and storage projects

      The Iron Pine Solar Project received a site permit for a 325 MW solar energy facility in Pine County, along with a route permit for a 1-mile, 230 kilovolt (kV) generation tie-line that will connect the project to the grid. The project represents one of the largest single-site solar installations approved in the state. The Iron Pine project was submitted by Iron Pine Solar Power, LLC (Iron Pine Solar), a wholly owned subsidiary of Swift Current Energy

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ China’s energy dominance in three charts

      China is the dominant force in next-generation energy technologies today. It’s pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into putting renewable sources like wind and solar on its grid, manufacturing millions of electric vehicles, and building out capacity for energy storage, nuclear power, and more. This investment has been transformational for the country’s economy and has contributed to establishing China as a major player in global politics.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Light at the end of the tunnels: classic rail routes through the Alps reopen

      After serious floods and landslides, some of the great trans-Alpine routes have reopened – with new services added – offering unforgettable train journeys from Austria to the Adriatic

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ The Architect Who Designed the Iconic Entrances to the Paris Métro Is Finally Getting the Attention He Deserves

      Today, Paris’ Art Nouveau Métro station entrances are iconic fixtures of the French capital. But when they were unveiled in the early 1900s, locals weren’t impressed. Many of the controversial designs were destroyed, and only 88 of the original 167 survive today.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Freedom of Voice: A Newcomer’s Guide to Safe and Effective Protesting

    • New York State Parks & HIstoric Sites Blog ☛ Dark Skies for Fireflies: Searching for New York’s Rare Nighttime Wonders    | New York State Parks and Historic Sites Blog

      They found that there are large data gaps. Over half of the firefly species assessed in the US and Canada are threatened with extinction or lacking enough information for a determination of their conservation status. According to the IUCN Red List Assessments based on global conservation concern, 12 percent of New York’s firefly species are threatened with extinction or are species of conservation concern. The conservation status for 33 percent of New York’s fireflies is “Data Deficient,” so there isn’t enough information to understand how well or how poorly they are doing.

  • Overpopulation

    • Breach Media ☛ What water can teach us about resistance and survival

      She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning in Deninde. Her accolades are too long to list here, but she is the author of eight books, including the recently released Theory of Water, and she joins me today from her home in Peterborough.

    • France24 ☛ Baby bust: Why the French want fewer children – or none at all

      Last year, 12.2 percent of French people said they didn’t want to have children, more than twice the number from 2005, according to a study released on Wednesday by national demography institute INED.

      The figure is even higher in the 18-29 age group, roughly equivalent to “Gen Z”, with 15% percent of men and 13.3 percent of women saying they do not want to be parents.

• Finance

  • Tor ☛ Our commitment to donor privacy at Tor

    Since 2013, the Tor Project has been using CiviCRM as part of our stack to accept donations, manage donor profiles, and facilitate donor communications. As the only true open source CRM, CiviCRM and the Tor Project share a commitment to open and transparent technology. Choosing open source technology like CiviCRM allows us to fully control our systems and securely handle your personal information. This approach minimizes the risk of a system hack and prevents third-parties from accessing your data.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Rise and Fall of the Knowledge Worker

    What he meant by this was that since the 1970s, supporters of globalization assumed that while some workers in places like the United States might lose manufacturing jobs, most would adapt. They would, to use a phrase that became a meme in the 2010s, “learn to code.” By swapping coalfaces for laptops, workers in the United States, where high-value jobs would be concentrated, would occupy a higher position in the global value chain than their counterparts in the Global South. What happened instead, Vance lamented, was that “as they got better at the low end, they began catching up at the high end too.”

  • The Register UK ☛ EU explains how to do AI without breaking the law

    The European Commission announced the publication of the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice on Wednesday with the goal of helping folks comply with the AI Act. Parties subject to the Act will be able to sign on to the Code to indicate that they're in compliance, but it's purely voluntary.

    Broken into three parts, the Code has two brief chapters outlining responsibilities AI companies face regarding transparency and obeying copyright, as well as a much longer section on safety and security that the Commission noted is "relevant only to a limited number of providers of the most advanced models."

  • Futurism ☛ CEO of Twitter Suddenly Departing After Grok's "MechaHitler" Crisis

    In other words, Yaccarino, brought on as a fixer of broken relationships, had her work cut out to encourage advertisers to return to Musk's hate speech incubator.

    Mere months into her stint as the company's CEO, colleagues from the advertising industry were already privately advising Yaccarino to jump ship to save herself following Musk's hateful outbursts.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Anthropic makes generative AI widely available at major national lab

    Anthropic is making the enterprise version of its chatbot Claude available to the entire staff of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the artificial intelligence company announced Wednesday.

  • European Commission ☛ General-Purpose AI Code of Practice now available

    The Code consists of three chapters: Transparency and Copyright, both addressing all providers of general-purpose AI models, and Safety and Security, relevant only to a limited number of providers of the most advanced models.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ AI gold rush propels Nvidia to record $4-trillion market cap

    Nvidia notched a market capitalisation of US$4-trillion on Wednesday, making it the first public company in the world to reach the milestone and solidifying its position as one of Wall Street’s most-favoured stocks.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ What Steve Jobs feared is now the tech industry's reality

    “There was no question they were colluding,” recalled economist Orley Ashenfelter, who testified as a witness in one of the civil cases. The legal fallout “sent a lesson to the human resources people in the various companies as to what is really appropriate to do. The question is: how long does that lesson last?”

  • EFF ☛ It's EFF's 35th Anniversary (And We're Just Getting Started)

    Throughout EFF’s year-long 35th Anniversary celebration, our dedicated activists, investigators, technologists, and attorneys will share the lessons from EFF’s long and rich history so that we can help overcome the obstacles ahead. Thanks to you, EFF is here to stay.

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ Sorry, FFRF — IRS says churches can give political endorsements from the pulpit — Freedom From Religion Foundation

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Nation ☛ Has the Climate Movement Been Too Polite? This Senator Thinks So.

      “The fossil fuel industry has run the biggest and most malevolent propaganda operation the country has ever seen,” the Rhode Island Democrat said in an interview Monday with the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “It is defending a $700-plus billion [annual] subsidy” of not being charged for the health and environmental damages caused by burning fossil fuels. “I think the more people understand that, the more they’ll be irate [that] they’ve been lied to.” But, he added, “Democrats have not done a good job of calling that out.”

    • Techdirt ☛ Oklahoma Sued Again For Mandating Students Be Taught Election Conspiracy Theories, Bible Stories

      Like far too many states in the current Trump era, Oklahoma has also decided the Constitution is meaningless and that whatever the government wants, it can have. In this case, it means mandating every school classroom contain a Bible that must be “taught” from, as well as expanding the concept of “social studies” to include election and COVID conspiracy theories espoused by Trump and his supporters.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Texas Flood Conspiracies Theories Are Being Pushed by Right-Wingers

      For years now, virtually every national tragedy — natural or manmade — is accompanied by a barrage of right-wing conspiracy theories. The deadly and devastating floods that ravaged central Texas over the Fourth of July weekend are no different.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Nation ☛ The Trump Administration Is Airbrushing History

    Identified from a database obtained by the Associated Press, the targeted subjects included Brooklyn Dodgers baseball star Jackie Robinson, pictured during his Army service before becoming the first Black to reach the major leagues in 1947; the Tuskegee Airmen, who were the nation’s first Black military pilots during World War II; and the Navajo Code Talkers, a Native American Marine Corps unit who used their tribal language on the radio for top-secret communications during the war against Japan. Other banned photos showed women who broke significant gender barriers like Major Lisa Jaster, the first woman to graduate from the Army’s Ranger School, and Colonel Jeannie Leavitt, the Air Force’s first female fighter pilot.

  • Wired ☛ DHS Tells Police That Common Protest Activities Are ‘Violent Tactics’

    DHS is urging law enforcement to treat even skateboarding and livestreaming as signs of violent intent during a protest, turning everyday behavior into a pretext for police action.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Death by Falling: A Timeline of Cases Across Russia and Abroad - The Moscow Times

    A growing number of Russian officials, business executives and public figures have died under strange or violent circumstances since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Many were said to have fallen from windows and balconies.

  • Greece ☛ Turkey detains hundreds of Erdogan opponents in pursuit of ‘octopus’ of corruption

    The investigation, which began in Istanbul but has spread across the country, has targeted only municipalities run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, the party of modern Turkey’s secularist founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

  • France24 ☛ Mahmoud Khalil sues Trump administration for $20 million over detention

    "The administration carried out its illegal plan to arrest, detain, and deport Mr. Khalil 'in a manner calculated to terrorise him and his family,' the claim says," according to the Center for Constitutional Rights which is backing Khalil.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Asks Analyst Pointing Out Tesla Issues to "Shut Up"

    It's unclear which aspect of Ives' three-part suggestion list the billionaire took the most affront to, but if we had to wager a guess, we'd say that he is amply opposed to the idea of there being any outside control over his politicking.

  • Techdirt ☛ Idaho AG Office Forces Schools To Take Down ‘Everyone Is Welcome’ Signs For Being ‘Political’

    It’s been interesting to watch the current administration and its GOP backers contort themselves into logical pretzels to explain to Americans why their policies, which are clearly either steeped or tinged with racist elements, are not in fact racist. Immigration policies and practices that are conducted without such annoyances as due process are waved off as the mere enforcement of the law, ignoring just how selective that enforcement is. Facilities that are plainly echoing the practices of the Third Reich, or at least the practice of Japanese concentration camps, are laughed off as though they were exaggerations when they absolutely are not. Instances of fascism, up to and including the military marching the streets of our cities and deployed against our own people, are described not for what it is, but through Orwellian euphemisms to shrug at what should be a scandal.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Colonel restricted whistleblowing soldier's rights after Red Hill leak

    “[McAdams’] rank and position of authority, combined with apparent reference to congressional engagement being the source of negative actions and display of a dismissive attitude and demeanor toward concerns, would deter a reasonable service member from lawfully communicating with a member of Congress or an IG,” the IG found on Feindt’s interactions with McAdams.

    The actions of McAdams that the IG found to constitute illegal interference came in a meeting between the two officers in early 2022. Feindt was in touch with at least one member of Congress at the time of the meeting and continued to be after the meeting.

  • BIA Net ☛ Turkish court orders ban on Grok over profane responses

    The ban is linked to the AI tool's offensive responses targeting Atatürk, Erdoğan and the Prophet Muhammad.

  • The Verge ☛ Iranian dissident hunters

    “Iran has been a persistent perpetrator of transnational repression for decades. It changes depending on the political situation,” says Marcus Michaelson, an Iran expert at the Toronto-based Citizen Lab. “The scale and scope has widened… so it has intensified.” Iran’s government has become more hard-line and aggressive in the last decade. The violent treatment of the opposition in exile has escalated, as well. To capture dissidents abroad, the regime outsources espionage and hitmen to corrupt local authorities and organized crime.

    “It’s easier for them to deny the operation and have other people doing the dirty work for them,” Michaelson says.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ US Senate GOP under pressure on Trump demand to defund NPR, PBS, foreign aid

    But objections from several GOP senators could stop the legislation in its tracks, or change it substantially, requiring another House vote in a very short time frame. Rejecting the plan would represent a loss for the Trump administration after passage of the “big, beautiful” tax and spending cut law earlier this month.

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., appears optimistic he can secure the votes needed to begin debate, though he hasn’t said publicly if he thinks the bill can actually pass.

  • CPJ ☛ X accuses India of press censorship after it blocks news outlets’ accounts

    “This incident once again underscores the serious lack of transparency and accountability in how the Indian government issues and enforces orders for the removal of social media content and the blocking of accounts,” said Kunāl Majumder, CPJ’s India representative. “Any action affecting journalists or news organizations must be based on clear legal grounds, be subject to independent judicial oversight, and not infringe on press freedom. India still lacks a credible mechanism to review or challenge these opaque and arbitrary orders.”

  • ANF News ☛ Seven journalists and two politicians face prison sentences over protest for Nazım and Cihan

    Two days later, on 21 December, press associations based in Turkey wanted to make a public statement in Istanbul against the murder of their colleagues. However, the police forcibly prevented the gathering and detained almost 60 people. One day later, a court of emergency ordered the imprisonment of seven journalists and two local politicians from the DEM Party.

  • Northwestern University ☛ Journalist Deserts

    In their research that creates the Local Journalist Index, they found that more than 1,000 (of the 3,141) U.S. counties do not have even one full-time local journalist, and the shortage isn’t limited to rural areas. Even in densely populated cities like Los Angeles, there are very few local journalists, proportional to the city’s population.

    The decline is such that less than 25 years ago, there were roughly 40 local journalists per 100,000 residents. Now, that ratio is just 8.2 per 100,000. Only 4% of counties in the United States have about the same ratio of local journalists relative to population as they did in the early 2000s, according to the report.

  • Northwestern University ☛ Meeting Your Audience Where They Are – Literally

    Like other local news organizations, these outlets are operating in a rapidly changing environment as social media algorithms and the use of AI tools sharply curtail digital traffic.

    As these evolving consumer behaviors affect their readership and bottom lines, many local news leaders are moving aggressively to strengthen their direct, one-to-one relationship with their audience. And some of them are turning to events as one way to build trust, relevance and revenue for their news organizations.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • US News And World Report ☛ German Foreign Minister Expresses Concern About Human Rights Under Taliban

    "There are serious concerns about the humanitarian situation there, the human rights situation in Afghanistan, and particularly the situation of women and girls, and we, as the federal government, will continue to make these clear to the Taliban's de facto regime," said Wadephul in Vienna.

  • EFF ☛ No Face, No Case: California’s S.B. 627 Demands Cops Show Their Faces

    This is a necessary move. The right to record police, and to hold government actors accountable for their actions, requires that we know who the government actors are in the first place. The new legislation seeks to cover federal officers in addition to state and local officials, protecting Californians from otherwise unaccountable law enforcement activity.

  • EFF ☛ EFF Letter of Support on CA S.B. 627

    The public has a legal and constitutional right to record police officers in public spaces, a right that becomes hollow if there is no way to identify the officers being recorded. Without identification, even the most damning video footage cannot support a proper investigation, lawsuit, or public accountability effort. Existing California law already requires that officers wear visible identification, and police transparency reforms passed in 2018 (S.B.1421, 2018) opened personnel files in serious misconduct cases. S.B. 627 is a necessary and logical extension of those reforms.

    For these reasons, we support S.B. 627 and respectfully urge your "aye" vote. Thank you.

  • Techdirt ☛ Despite A Flood Of New State Laws, Most Industries Still Suck On ‘Right To Repair’

    But according to a new report by U.S. PIRG, most industries and companies aren’t really changing their ways. U.S. PIRG graded 25 products, five each in five different categories: dishwashers, phones, tablets, laptops and gaming devices. The manufacturers were graded as to how readily they provided customers with the parts and manuals needed to repair products.

    The results were… not good: [...]

  • PIRG ☛ Leaders and Laggards II

    A scorecard of 25 products to assess how easily and thoroughly consumers can access repair documentation and spare parts

    Some one-third of Americans live in a state with a Right to Repair law that requires manufacturers to provide fair access to repair materials including spare parts and service manuals. But our report finds that, despite these requirements, many manufacturers do not provide the things people need for repairs

  • CBC ☛ Will a 'Free Tibet' die with the Dalai Lama?

    The Dalai Lama has spent almost his entire adult life as a refugee from his homeland of Tibet. Fleeing Chinese persecution in the 1950s, he has built a nation in exile, striving to preserve Tibetan culture as not just the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, but as a global ambassador for his people's cause.

  • Techdirt ☛ U.S. Consumer Protection Is Dead: Lobbyists And Lawyers Kill New FTC Rule That Would Have Made It Easier To Cancel Subscriptions

    The FTC revamp of the FTC’s 1973 “Negative Option Rule,” required companies be transparent about the limitations of promotions, prohibited them from making cancelling services difficult or impossible, required clearer consumer consent, and generally made cancelling a service as easy as signing up.

    But just as the basic and popular new rule was poised to take effect this week, it was summarily executed by the 8th Circuit court of appeals, thanks primarily to several key Trump appointees. The court sided with gym companies, marketing firms, and insurance companies who sued to stop the rule.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Precarious Position of Iranian Jews

    Some of these Jewish Iranians have reportedly now been released—but some, also reportedly, remain in custody. My emphasis on reportedly is because a climate of fear inside the country makes full information difficult to obtain. Publicity is the last thing Iran’s Jews need: Their entire survival strategy has been to lead the most inconspicuous lives possible—and news of detentions is more attention than the community wants.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Royal Mail to save up to £425m as it slashes second-class post

    The announcement comes after Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky completed his £3.6bn takeover of Royal Mail, which has led to the departure of the company’s chief executive in recent weeks.

    The deal marks the first time the postal service has fallen into foreign ownership in its 500-year history.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Verge ☛ Ikea’s latest speaker lamp ditches Sonos for Spotify and inexpensive Bluetooth

    To illustrate that point, Granath showed The Verge an unannounced battery-powered Bluetooth speaker with a flat circular design. It hovers on a stand above a small tray that looks like it could be used for keys, wallet, and a phone, or even some mixed nuts if you prefer. It’s these types of dual-use smart home integrations — speakers inside lamps and shelves, air purifiers and wireless chargers built into tables — that I particularly enjoy from Ikea.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Nick Heer ☛ Apple Formally Appeals DMA Penalty

  If regulators have taken on such an involved role in App Store policy, one has to wonder when that started. Was it the result of the April penalty, or has it been an ongoing conversation? If it is the latter, it suggests many other questions.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ FBI Seizes Gaming Piracy Domains Including 'Pre-Release' Target NSW2U

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has seized the domain names of several gaming-related pirate sites, including NSW2U.com, which has been Nintendo's nemesis for years. The operation was carried out in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, including the Dutch fiscal police. It is not immediately clear whether the action is linked to any arrests or indictments.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ True Confessions - My Life on the High Seas

    In 1999, I was one of the first people on the beta installation of broadband in my community, having signed up two years prior on the waiting list. As a reward for waiting, I got my first six months free. At this point, I became the biggest outlaw I have ever been in my life. I lived an existence of pure piracy. Napster was just getting started, and I was in love with it. I downloaded every single one of Rolling Stone's top 500 albums I didn't already own. Then I made sure I got every one of the top 500 songs too. Then I started on discographies. 42 Fleetwood Mac albums. 39 Van Morrison albums. Johnny Cash had close to 75 albums, and I went after them all. It was glorious, the Wild West, and a time we will never see again.

  • US Library of Conggress ☛ Are You a Visual Learner? Our New Copyright Registration Toolkit is for You! | Copyright

    The U.S. Copyright Office recently released the Copyright Registration Toolkit: a highly visual guide that breaks down key steps and concepts to help creators navigate the copyright system. The toolkit was designed for authors, artists, musicians, and others as they manage their own creative works as well as for business and legal advisors who support creators in copyright registration.

    The project was led by Attorney-Advisor Jessica Chinnadurai, who I sat down with to explore this new resource.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Sci-Hub's Crypto Coin Aims to Power a New Era of 'Open' Science

    Sci-Hub has launched its own SCI token through which it hopes to unlock more paywalled research. The controversial shadow library, which is used by millions of researchers around the globe, sees this as the next step to decentralize science and reward knowledge sharing. Whether this pirate 'tokenomics' works in practice has yet to be seen.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ This tool strips away anti-AI protections from digital art

    These artists got some potential defenses in 2023, when researchers created tools like Glaze and Nightshade to protect artwork by “poisoning” it against AI training (Shawn Shan was even named MIT Technology Review’s Innovator of the Year last year for his work on these). LightShed, however, claims to be able to subvert these tools and others like them, making it easy for the artwork to be used for training once again.