Leftovers

• Science

  • Spiegel ☛ Thomas Südhof on America's Crisis in Academia: "The Goal of the Trump Administration Is to Destroy the Elite"

    In recent months, the Trump administration has massively cut public funding to American universities, suspended the granting of visas to foreign students and fired vaccination experts from positions in government agencies. In late May, he issued an executive order calling for a "gold standard” in science, which would then be monitored by the state. Trump has justified these attacks on academic independence in part by pointing to mistakes made in laboratories run by renowned researchers.

    In Südhof’s laboratory at Stanford University in California, such a mistake took place in studies about the functioning of the brain. In a lecture delivered at Lindau entitled "What Can Go Wrong?”, the Nobel laureate addressed the accusations. Prior to the presentation, he published the data from his laboratory.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Machine learning uncovers 10 times more earthquakes in Yellowstone caldera

    A key finding in the study is that more than half of the earthquakes recorded in Yellowstone were part of earthquake swarms—groups of small, interconnected earthquakes that spread and shift within a relatively small area over a relatively short period of time. This is unlike an aftershock, which is a smaller earthquake that follows a larger mainshock in the same general area.

  • Aeon Media Group Ltd ☛ Is it time to chart a new path for xenolinguistics through sci-fi?

    The problem is that the extraterrestrials that xenolinguists claim to seek are often beings imagined to have technologies, minds or languages similar to ours. They are projections of ourselves. This anthropomorphism risks blinding us to truly alien communicators, who are radically unlike us. If there are linguistic beings on planets such as TOI-700 d or Kepler-186f, or elsewhere in our galaxy, their modes of communication may be utterly incomprehensible to us. How, then, can xenolinguistics face its deficit of imagination?

  • Jeremy Kun ☛ Frequently Asked Questions about FHE || Math ∩ Programming

    I work on homomorphic encryption (HE or FHE for “fully” homomorphic encryption) and I have written a lot about it on this blog (see the relevant tag). This article is a collection of short answers to questions I see on various threads and news aggregators discussing FHE.

• Career/Education

  • Robert Birming ☛ Beginner's mind

    Maybe we need to embrace the approach of a beginner’s mind, to borrow a Zen term. A childlike way of seeing the world and our place in it. A world where curiosity and knowledge walk side by side.

• Hardware

  • The Moscow Times ☛ ‘A Revolution in Drone Warfare’: As Russian Fiber-Optic Drones Flood the Battlefield, Ukraine Scrambles to Catch Up

    “Thanks to a fiber-optic cable, which can extend up to 10-20 kilometers, we can maintain the connection between the drone and its pilot,” he explains.

    “Having that connection makes the drone undetectable — and above all, completely invulnerable to any form of electronic warfare,” adds Volodymyr Makhitko, Technohawk’s chief engineer.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Vibrio bacteria: How to swim in European waters and survive

  • [Old] David A Tinapple ☛ Silence is a Commons by Ivan Illich

    Computers are doing to communication
    what fences did to pastures
    and cars did to streets.

• Proprietary

  • Notebook Check ☛ Nintendo touts high employee retention rate after loss of Microsoft jobs rocks Xbox Game Studios

    Workers should feel more secure in their Nintendo jobs than with positions at Xbox Game Studios. Statistics confirm that Nintendo's employee turnover rate is well below industry averages. Analysts believe that the company's rigid control over the development of Switch 2 games leads to the stability.

  • Riccardo Mori ☛ The cost of selfishness | Riccardo Mori

    That’s why I always chuckle bitterly when I hear people say We should vote with our wallet, meaning we can sort of change the course of a company’s success by refusing to buy whatever said company shoves in our faces. It’s not going to happen. Because, deep down, we don’t care. When we take the stance of I only care about what are the best tools for me, I don’t care about the companies that make them, it’s this not caring and this selfishness what makes these companies ‘win’, and what makes these companies too big to fail. And ultimately what makes the status quo so hard to change.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Uwe Friedrichsen ☛ Thoughts on AI and software development - Part 5

      In the previous post, we completed our analysis of the projection Steve made by looking at some unresolved side effects and questions that would come with such a future.

      In this final post of this series, we will look at how we can hedge our options with such a scenario on the possible horizon and maybe tweak it a bit in our favor. Finally, I will wrap up with a few thoughts on how to deal with such sometimes grim and discomforting looking developments.

      But before we start looking into our options, let us briefly recapitulate what we have discussed so far from a bit different point of view.

    • Shrivu Shankar ☛ Assistants Aren't the Future of AI

      Today’s most popular vision for the future of AI is also the least imaginative one. The perfect AI assistant feels like the end-game, but it's just the prelude to a much more significant shift in design: the move from AI Assistants to AI Orchestrators.

    • Evan Hahn ☛ Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

      This made me wonder: how do the sizes of local LLMs compare to the size of offline Wikipedia downloads?

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Google Veo fails week 4: the final faildown

      AI shills keep claiming that AI video generators, such as Veo 3, can make professional quality work, and they are lying. But talk is cheap – we’ve got the fails!

      Most of this last selection fails in the same ways it failed in previous weeks. One thing we saw a couple of times is that if you do four clips in a row, it pixelates badly: [...]

    • Futurism ☛ Leaked Document Reveals Troubling Details About How AI Is Really Being Trained

      Fueling the multi-billion dollar AI industry is a vast army of remote contract workers, often from less wealthy countries like the Philippines, Pakistan, Kenya, and India. Most data labelers are typically overworked and underpaid, and have to contend with the mental impact of repetitive work, punitive bosses, as well as exposure to hate speech, violent rhetoric, or other harmful and desensitizing material.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Influencer who went viral at Wimbledon is actually AI

      Mia Zelu looked every inch the tennis-adjacent celebrity except for one detail: she doesn’t exist

    • The Verge ☛ Delta is using AI to set the maximum price you’re willing to pay

      “They are trying to see into people’s heads to see how much they’re willing to pay,” Justin Kloczko of Consumer Watchdog told the publication. “They are basically hacking our brains.” Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego described it as “predatory pricing” that’s designed to “squeeze you for every penny.”

    • Fortune ☛ Delta moves toward eliminating set prices in favor of AI that determines how much you personally will pay for a ticket | Fortune

      While differential pricing is not illegal per se, federal laws prohibit charging different rates to people based on their sex or ethnicity, and the use of some identifiers like ZIP codes have been shown to have a disparate impact on protected classes. Without a public record of all fares, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine if Delta is charging vastly different fares to people based on their membership in a protected class.

    • Forbes ☛ Will Delta Airlines' AI Pricing Trigger A Customer Trust Crisis?

      The person sitting next to you may have paid much more or much less for the same flight. Prices varied based on when you booked, or whether your fare was fully refundable. Booking early was usually cheaper. Booking at the last minute might be far more expensive if few seats remained, or even cheaper if the flight was still half empty. Prices varied continuously based on bookings and predicted demand. The system could result in major fare discrepancies, but it still felt fundamentally fair. The rules applied equally to everyone.

      Delta’s AI pricing destroys this perception. When an algorithm determines your personal price based on masses of data unique to you but with no transparency, you’ll likely feel cheated.

    • EWeek ☛ Delta Uses AI to Set Personalised Prices for Some Flights

      “We’re in heavy testing phase,” he said. “We like what we see. We like it a lot and we’re continuing to roll it out.” This isn’t a huge surprise, given a 2022 study from Yale University found that personalised pricing increased profits for airlines by up to 5%.

      Typically, Delta’s Pricing team defines the fare levels available for a flight, and then the Revenue Management team determines the number of seats available at each price point, based on static factors such as previous demand and booking pace. But, as AI can take into account dynamic factors in real-time, it can continuously adjust fares and seat availability, leading to more profitable pricing decisions.

    • The Independent UK ☛ Delta’s AI pricing — good or bad? Experts give their verdicts (and it’s not great news for business-class fliers)

      Sean Cudahy from The Points Guy explains: "We've all searched a flight, found a price, and come back the next day to see that it's spiked by $100. Or, maybe, you got lucky and it dropped by $50. Expect more of that.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Netflix uses generative AI in one of its shows for first time

      Ted Sarandos, a co-chief executive of Netflix, said the Argentinian science fiction series El Eternauta (The Eternaut) was the first it had made that involved using generative AI footage.

  • Social Control Media

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Mikayla Raines Cause of Death Confirmed: New Details about YouTuber's Suicide Emerges

• Security

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-15 [Older] CISA Releases Six Industrial Control Systems Advisories

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-15 [Older] Hitachi Energy Asset Suite

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-15 [Older] ABB RMC-100

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-15 [Older] LITEON IC48A and IC80A EV Chargers

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-14 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] CISA Releases Thirteen Industrial Control Systems Advisories

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Siemens SINEC NMS

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Siemens Solid Edge

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Siemens TIA Administrator

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Siemens TIA Project-Server and TIA Portal

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Siemens SIPROTEC 5

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Delta Electronics DTM Soft

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Advantech iView

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] KUNBUS RevPi Webstatus

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] End-of-Train and Head-of-Train Remote Linking Protocol

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Microsoft can't protect French data from US government access

      Microsoft’s disclosure that it can’t protect French data from being silently accessed by its US business is in apparent tension with the GDPR but in compliance with the US CLOUD Act: [...]

    • EFF ☛ Amazon Ring Cashes in on Techno-Authoritarianism and Mass Surveillance

      Ring founder Jamie Siminoff is back at the helm of the surveillance doorbell company, and with him is the surveillance-first-privacy-last approach that made Ring one of the most maligned tech devices. Not only is the company reintroducing new versions of old features which would allow police to request footage directly from Ring users, it is also introducing a new feature that would allow police to request live-stream access to people’s home security devices.

      This is a bad, bad step for Ring and the broader public.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Landlines less popular than Facebook for making phone calls

      Landline use has been in steady decline over recent years as Britons rely more on smartphones and as voice calls go out of fashion. Ofcom data last year showed the majority of UK households now no longer have a landline.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] Myanmar's armed rebel groups lose edge in drone warfare

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] Nigeria rejects US pressure to accept deported Venezuelans

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] Outrage in Brazil as Donald Cheeto Mussolini threatens tariffs of 50%

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] Pakistan: Gunmen kill 9 Punjabis in Balochistan bus attack

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] PKK fighters begin handing over weapons at ceremony

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] Tunisia president's far-reaching clampdown targets opponents

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Turkey: Istanbul mayor Imamoglu hit with new jail term

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-07-15 [Older] Ahmet Dikmen remains in prison in Spain, risks extradition to Turkey

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-07-14 [Older] Kurdish activist detained in Spain faces deportation to Turkey

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Druze people appeal to the international community: "Save Suwayda"

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Suwayda crisis: Israel gives order to strike Damascus forces

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] YPJ condemns attacks on the Druze people: We are ready to confront all dark forces that target women

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Israeli army says it hit Syria's military HQ in Damascus

  • The Age AU ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Israel steps up Syria strikes, hitting military headquarters in Damascus

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Blast Heard in Syrian Capital Damascus, Reuters Witness Says

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Israel Launches Heavy Airstrikes in Damascus, Vowing to Shield Druze

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Israeli Drones Target Syria's Sweida City, State News Agency Says

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Israel Strikes in Damascus as Clashes Between Government and Druze Minority Rage On

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Syria's Druze Reach New Ceasefire Deal With Government in Sweida, Religious Leader Says

  • ANF News ☛ 2025-07-15 [Older] At least 37 killed in clashes in Suwayda

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-14 [Older] Syria: Dozens killed in sectarian clashes

  • Truthdig ☛ 2025-07-14 [Older] Lifting Sanctions on Syria Exposes Their Cruel Intent

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-14 [Older] At Least 30 People Killed in Armed Clashes in Syria's Sweida, Interior Ministry Says

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-14 [Older] Here's What Triggered the Latest Deadly Sectarian Clashes in Syria, and Why It Matters

  • Scheerpost ☛ 2025-07-13 [Older] US Envoy: Disarm Hezbollah or Israel, Syria Will Conquer Lebanon

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-13 [Older] More Than 30 Killed in Sectarian Clashes in Syria's Sweida, Interior Ministry Says

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] Kidnapped, abused: Reports of missing Alawite women in Syria

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] Satellite Photos Suggest Iran Attack on Qatar Air Base Hit Geodesic Dome Used for US Communications

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ How far-right social media impacted Germany's highest court

    Researchers say a far-right social media campaign — that painted a respected law professor as extremist — caused the suspension of the election of judges to Germany's highest court.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ How the TikTok algorithm created new words like 'unalive'

    A Harvard graduate with a linguistics degree, he has now published a book called “Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language,” which explores in depth some of his more fanciful and fascinating theories. We chatted with Aleksic about edutainment, brainrot and President Trump as influencer in chief.

  • The Nation ☛ “This Is the Biggest Threat to Our Democracy That Nobody’s Talking About”

    Casar spoke to The Nation about what’s at stake for voting rights in Texas—where, as he notes, GOP gerrymandering is already severe: “Right now, it is 12 Democrats and 35 Republicans, with one vacancy, in a state that [Republican Senator] Ted Cruz couldn’t even get 51 percent of the vote in in 2018.” Casar warns that if Republicans get away with radically redrawing Texas congressional districts to favor the GOP and protect Trump even more, this model for assaulting voting rights will quickly move to other red states.

  • The Record ☛ UK sanctions Russian cyber spies accused of facilitating murders

    “GRU spies are running a campaign to destabilise Europe, undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and threaten the safety of British citizens. Putin’s hybrid threats and aggression will never break our resolve. The UK and our Allies support for Ukraine and Europe’s security is ironclad,” added Lammy.

  • The Record ☛ Singapore accuses Chinese state-backed [crackers] of attacking critical infrastructure networks

    In a speech, Singapore’s Coordinating Minister for National Security K. Shanmugam highlighted the activity of UNC3886, an espionage group that has previously targeted routers and network security devices to infiltrate critical entities.

  • Mike Brock ☛ A United Opposition For America

    The philosophical foundation for this unity is simple: we share a nation. Not by choice, not by ideology, not by agreement on what that nation should become, but by the basic fact that we are bound together by the consequences of collective choices whether we like it or not. Democracy isn't just a political preference—it's the framework that makes peaceful coexistence possible for people who fundamentally disagree about how life should be lived.

    Consider what we're actually fighting for. We're not fighting for our policy preferences anymore—we're fighting for the constitutional framework that makes policy preferences matter. The arena where democracy happens. The institutional architecture that transforms political disagreement from violent conflict into productive competition.

  • National Interest ☛ Why the Muslim Brotherhood Should Be Designated as a Terrorist Organization

    The Muslim Brotherhood, since its founding in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, has never been merely a religious or charitable organization. It is a political project with a singular purpose: to install Islamist regimes across the world through a combination of propaganda, infiltration, and, when necessary, violent jihad. This is not hyperbole. This is documented history.

    The Muslim Brotherhood is the ideological forefather of Hamas, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and much of the international community. Hamas is not simply an affiliate—it is the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood. Its charter explicitly states that it is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.”

  • Hindustan Times ☛ ISIS-style religious conversion: UP Police arrest 10, trace funding to US, UK, Dubai

    “Few shocking things have come to light — international ‘jihadi’ funding for ‘jihad’ was received, radicalisation and unlawful religious conversion with the intention of hampering national security,” he said. “In this connection, 10 people across 6 states have been arrested,” he added.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Under Russia’s shadow, Finland makes national security a society-wide effort

    For an awakening Europe, and a world seemingly stuck in chronic crises, the Finnish approach to security holds potentially transformational lessons. This year, a great rearming of the continent is underway as European officials conclude they can no longer depend on the United States to help defend them from potential Russian aggression.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Secrets about Russia's Influence Operation that Tulsi Gabbard Is Still Keeping from Us

    There are a number of things that either did not exist in the public version or remain significantly redacted. For example: [...]

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Pam Bondi Reportedly Created 1,000 Witnesses to the Jeffrey Epstein File

    Remember: Trump’s appointees have fired two people who would know details of this: the head of the NY Field Office, James Dennehy, who was forced to retire amid allegations the NYFO was sitting on the files, and Maurene Comey, who has been involved in FOIA responses regarding these files.

    Either could now give protected whistleblower statements to Durbin.

• Environment

  • India Times ☛ Their water taps ran dry when Meta built next door

    Meta's data center in Newton County, Georgia, is linked to water problems. Beverly and Jeff Morris faced dry taps and sediment issues. Local wells are damaged, and water costs are soaring. Newton County may face a water deficit by 2030. Data centers consume vast amounts of water. The county is upgrading recycling facilities.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • BIA Net ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Turkey prepares to open olive groves for mining to ‘feed power plants’

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] Lufthansa CEO's wife investigated over fatal accident

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ US: Trump signs law paving way for dollar-based stablecoins

      The industry donated more than $245 million (€210 million) in last year's elections to boost pro-[cryptocurrency] candidates such as Trump.

    • Henrique Dias ☛ Tracking Train Rides With Viaduct

      I have recently discovered viaduct, a web app where I can track my train trips. And the best part is: it integrates with the train schedules of some countries. I’m not exactly sure which, but all countries in Europe I tried to add, I had a schedule for.

    • Futurism ☛ Cybertruck Sales Are Dead in the Water

      In numbers, the Elon Musk-owned automaker sold just 4,306 Cybertrucks in the second quarter of 2025, according to the latest data from Cox Automotive's Kelley Blue Book — a stunning 50.8 percent nosedive from the same period last year.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Four questions (and expert answers) on the new US cryptocurrency legislation

      These three bills aim to provide regulatory clarity for the cryptocurrency industry, which has long been operating in a gray area, with unclear agency oversight and undefined consumer protection and compliance requirements. With these three bills, the Trump administration and Congress aim to fill these regulatory gaps and propel a broader agenda for innovation and US competitiveness in digital assets.

    • Futurism ☛ In Court for Fatal Crash, Tesla Admits It Wasn't Even Tracking Autopilot Crashes for the First Three Years of the Program

      In a taped deposition shown to jurors in the federal case against Tesla, which stems from a wrongful death lawsuit involving a young woman who was killed by a distracted driver who'd been using Autopilot, software engineer Akshay Phatak admitted that keeping such records was not part of the company's early compliance practices.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ The Emerging Challenges of AI Energy Growth

      AI growth, the advent of “hyperscalers”, and plans for new power-hungry data centers dotting the country from coast to coast have overturned previous assumptions of a stable US energy demand growth outlook. One state in particular is at the epicenter of America’s AI revolution: In 2024 alone, Virginia connected fifteen new data centers and anticipates adding another fifteen by the end of 2025. These are not isolated occurrences: already an established hub for US data centers, a recent WoodMackenzie report showed that Virginia lags only Texas as the top destination for newly announced data centers since January 2023 (boasting over 23,000 MW of capacity in the pipeline). Much of this development has been driven by Northern Virginia’s long-standing “Data Center Alley” concentrated around Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the state’s primary utility company, Dominion Energy, has suggested that the average Virginia ratepayer could see their power bills increase by 50 percent over the next fifteen years driven largely by power-hungry new data centers coming online.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] UK GDP unexpectedly falls for second month in a row

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft likely to sign EU AI code of practice, Meta rebuffs guidelines

    Microsoft is likely to sign the EU’s voluntary AI code of practice, supporting compliance with the bloc’s new AI rules, while Meta has rejected it, citing legal uncertainties and overreach. The code requires transparency on training data and adherence to copyright law, and forms part of the EU's AI Act.

  • The Register UK ☛ Laid off AWS employee describes cuts as 'cold and soulless'

    Regardless of who was cut, we're told AWS gave workers no warning. A former employee described the process as "cold and soulless" as it involved just an unheralded email announcing their position had been eliminated.

    "From what we can tell, decisions were based largely on titles and high-level optics rather than a nuanced understanding of roles, skills, or actual overlap in responsibilities," the employee claimed.

  • [Old] Epstein Becker & Green, PC ☛ Microsoft to Eliminate Noncompetes for Most Employees - a Harbinger of Things to Come?

    This is certainly an interesting decision, and it raises the question of why now?

    As readers of this blog will know, Washington State enacted a new noncompete law effective January 1, 2020, that, among other things, rendered unenforceable noncompetes signed by employees earning less than $100,000 and independent contractors earning less than $250,000 annually. On January 1, 2022, those income floors were raised to $107,301.04 and $268,252.59, respectively. That said, according to internal Microsoft documents the average salary of a software engineer at Microsoft is around $185,000, with employees in the highest-earning band making as much as $500,000. Even entry level engineers at Microsoft earn around $132,000 according to the Microsoft documents. According to Glassdoor, the average salary for a software engineer at Microsoft is slightly lower, closer to $150,000, but that is still above the minimums set forth in the Washington law. As such, that law and its increasing income floors may have had an impact on Microsoft’s decision.

  • Nikola Kotur ☛ On new opportunities — Journal from Kotnik

    Google is not a cool company it used to be. I know people that have quit their job 10 years ago to take a stab at getting hired at Google, and it used to be sign of exceptional engineering to be there, but that's not the case anymore. You see, software code is not main thing companies are built around. Not even close. The main thing are the people, the knowledge they share and the culture they build. And I think that nowdays people at Google just don't care. I really can't blame them.

  • The Register UK ☛ Meta declines to abide by voluntary EU AI safety guidelines

    The General-Purpose AI (GPAI) Code of Practice focuses on general-purpose AI models trained with computing resources that exceed 10^23 FLOPs – almost any recently trained large‐scale model. It asks for voluntary transparency and copyright commitments from those offering such models, as well as extra safety and security commitments from those distributing models that present systemic risk – "general-purpose AI models that were trained using a total computing power of more than 10^25 FLOPs."

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] Pakistan Court Suspends Order Seeking YouTube Ban on Government Critics

  • RFERL ☛ Central Asia’s Evolving Censorship: From Physical Threats To Algorithmic Purges

    These incidents highlight a growing tactic in Kazakhstan’s digital crackdown targeting influential voices of dissent using technical removals and opaque copyright claims, rather than overt censorship.

    It's part of a broader trend across Central Asia, where freedom of expression continues to erode under government pressure.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Exclusive: HK indy bookshops, publishers face simultaneous tax probes

    The pro-democracy politician-turned-entrepreneur has been running Hunter Bookstore, an independent bookshop in Sham Shui Po, since 2022. About two years later, in early 2024, the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) began investigating her company’s taxes.

    In addition to the company’s financial reports, Wong had to submit monthly statements of her personal bank accounts to the IRD. Later, she had to report dozens of personal transactions dating back several years before the company was founded.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ 2025-07-15 [Older] CPJ, partners: Tunisian authorities must release Sonia Dahmani, end misuse of cybercrime Decree-Law 54

  • The Dissenter ☛ Minnesota Supreme Court Rules Against DAPL Company's Anti-Press Subpoenas

  • RFERL ☛ US District Court Orders USAGM to Pay RFE/RL for Rest of Fiscal Year

    “As far as this Court is aware, it is unprecedented for an agency to demand that entirely new terms govern its decades-old working relationship with a grantee entity and then stop responding, particularly when the agency is statutorily obligated to grant yearly congressional appropriations to that specific entity by name,” he wrote.

    The threat to the broadcaster’s funding has sparked a wave of global support from media watchdogs, analysts, and democracy advocates, as well as the audiences in the 27 languages and 23 countries in which RFE/RL broadcasts.

  • [Repeat] BIA Net ☛ bianet receives fake court orders demanding removal of news articles

    Both fake orders, sent via email on June 19 and July 4, appear to show separate rulings by two different judges based on a complaint filed by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) MP Ahmet Gündüz.

    Neither ruling has a record in Turkey’s official judicial database. The verification code listed on the document does not correspond to any entry in the National Judiciary Informatics System (UYAP).

  • TruthOut ☛ Trump Sues Wall Street Journal Over Epstein Report

    On Friday, the president — a well-documented liar — sued the Journal in a federal court in Miami, Florida for assault, libel, and slander, according to CNN. In addition to the newspaper and its parent company News Corp, Politico reported, “the suit names WSJ reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo. It also names Rupert Murdoch.”

  • TMZ ☛ President Trump Sues WSJ, News Corp for $10 Billion Over Alleged Epstein Letter

    In the suit, Trump says the story was published "at the direction of" Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson ... who are both named as defendants, as well as the 2 WSJ reporters who wrote the story.

  • New Yorker ☛ Behind Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein Problem

    Trump is vulnerable to the Epstein case, and not only because the two men were photographed partying together, or because Trump praised Epstein in a quote that was widely circulated, or because Epstein had told the reporter Michael Wolff that, for ten years, he had been the President’s “closest friend.” (Trump eventually said that they had had a “falling out.”) On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that, for Epstein’s fiftieth birthday, Trump, among others, sent him a “bawdy” birthday letter, which Trump denied, saying that he would sue the Journal, “just like I sued everyone else.” Liberals, taking all this in, might suspect that it’s a simple comeuppance for Trump’s political choices: if you build a following on the internet fringe, you can become beholden to its obsessions. But the uproar also has to do with the ways in which the Trump movement has evolved.

  • JURIST ☛ Trump threatens Wall Street Journal lawsuit amid Epstein transparency controversy

    Asked about the case during his presidential campaign in 2024, Trump indicated that if reelected, he would release the Epstein files. Shortly after Trump’s reelection, the US Justice Department quoted Attorney General Pamela Bondi as having said: “This Department of Justice is following through on President Trump’s commitment to transparency and lifting the veil on the disgusting actions of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators.”

  • Matt Birchler ☛ I may have gotten this one wrong

    Maybe it is all CBS said it is, and it's weird they would give him 10 more months on the air if they were just trying to get him out for any recent comments, but it absolutely doesn't look good for CBS here. It sure looks like it's because he's a massively well-known personality who openly mocks Trump every night on national TV and his parent company wants to appease the President, who they need to bless the merger they want to get done this year. Maybe that's not it, but if it was, this is exactly what it would look like.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Cancelling Colbert, bribery, an $8bn deal: what’s going on at Paramount?

    There are reasonable grounds for suspicion. Earlier this month CBS’s owner, Paramount Global, reached a $16m settlement with Trump over an interview on its current affairs strand 60 Minutes, removing a potential obstacle to the company’s $8bn sale to the Hollywood studio Skydance Media.

    If the mega-merger goes ahead, a friend and ally of the US president, the billionaire Larry Ellison, could wield huge influence over the CBS news division as well as programmes ranging from South Park to Star Trek. The Late Show is sure to be seen by some as an example of obeying in advance.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-07-11 [Older] Kenyan Women’s Gulf Jobs Begin With Hope and End in Horror [Ed: Slaves of Saudi Barbaria]

  • Vanity Fair ☛ “Even God Cannot Hear Us Here”: What I Witnessed Inside an ICE Women’s Prison

    It wasn’t until late afternoon on March 26 that we arrived at a “detention center,” roughly 24 hours since I had been grabbed off the street. While waiting to be processed alongside dozens of other women in a stark white cell, I felt utterly exhausted, lying on the hard floor from time to time. As someone who learned English later in life, the lines between prison and detention centers blurred in my mind. I had a lot of questions: Who are the people staying here? How many are there? What are the living conditions like? What kinds of offenses have brought them here? How long have they been here?

  • New Left Review Ltd ☛ Caitlín Doherty, Everything Else — Sidecar

    I went to Dubai wrongheaded. I learnt nothing and left nauseated. I had thought it would be fun – funny, even – to experience the disorientation of standing at the pivot point between two world systems. Instead, it was merely disorientating – sickeningly so. There are hells on earth and Dubai is one: an infernal creation born of the worst of human tendencies. Its hellishness cannot be laid solely at the feet of the oligarchs, whose wealth it attracts, nor the violent organised criminals who relocate there to avoid prosecution. It is hellish because, as the self-appointed showtown of free trade, it provides normal people with the chance to buy the purest form of the most heinous commodity: the exploitation of others. If you want to know how it feels to have slaves, in the modern world – and not be blamed openly for this desire – visit Dubai. But know that you will not be blameless for doing so. Every Instagram post, every TikTok video, every gloating WhatsApp message sent from its luxury is an abomination. A PR campaign run by those who have already bought the product, and now want only to show you that they can afford it.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Conspiratorialism and neoliberalism

    It's also an extremely convenient political philosophy if you are getting rich by stealing from people, or even murdering them. If you offer me a payday loan with a ten heptillion percent APR and I accept it, that's voluntary, it's the market, and there's absolutely no reason for anyone to pass comment on the fact that 100% of the people who take those loans are poor and 100% of the people who originate them are rich: [...]

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • LWN ☛ Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration

    Linux users who have Secure Boot enabled on their systems knowingly or unknowingly rely on a key from Microsoft that is set to expire in September. After that point, Microsoft will no longer use that key to sign the shim first-stage UEFI bootloader that is used by Linux distributions to boot the kernel with Secure Boot. But the replacement key, which has been available since 2023, may not be installed on many systems; worse yet, it may require the hardware vendor to issue an update for the system firmware, which may or may not happen. It seems that the vast majority of systems will not be lost in the shuffle, but it may require extra work from distributors and users.

    [...]

    For systems where the vendor provides no updates, disabling Secure Boot may be the only option to allow a new install. In a few short months, all existing installation images and media will not be installable with Secure Boot—that may already be true for systems that only have the new key. Secure Boot installation just got that much more complicated.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Register UK ☛ EU cloud gang wins licensing concessions from Microsoft

  Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) said the agreement meant that members could offer Microsoft software to their customers on a pay-as-you-go basis via Microsoft's Cloud Solution Program (CSP-H), allowing stronger privacy for customers of European cloud providers.

  However, the agreement has failed to remove the technical tie-in between Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) and Microsoft 365, restricting users in their choice of ID management when deploying Microsoft software in the cloud.

• Copyrights

  • CBC ☛ Ottawa weighs plans on AI, copyright as OpenAI fights Ontario court jurisdiction

    OpenAI also argued the Copyright Act doesn't apply outside of Canada.

    OpenAI is asking the court to seal some documents in the case. The court is scheduled to hold a hearing on the sealing motion on July 30, according to a schedule outlined in court documents.

    It asked the court to seal documents containing "commercially sensitive" information, including about its corporate organization and structure, its web crawling and fetching processes and systems, and its "model training and inference processes, systems, resource allocations and/or cost structures."

  • The Washington Post ☛ Book authors asked Congress for help in their fight against AI

    Baldacci is among a group of authors suing OpenAI and Microsoft over the companies’ use of their work to train the AI software behind tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot without permission or payment — one of more than 40 lawsuits against AI companies advancing through the nation’s courts. He and other authors this week appealed to Congress for help standing up to what they see as an assault by Big Tech on their profession and the soul of literature.

  • EFF ☛ California A.B. 412 Stalls Out—A Win for Innovation and Fair Use

    EFF opposed this bill from the start. A.B. 412 tried to regulate generative AI, not by looking at the public interest, but by mandating training data “reading lists” designed to pave the way for new copyright lawsuits, many of which are filed by large content companies.

    Transparency in AI development is a laudable goal. But A.B. 412 failed to offer a fair or effective path to get there. Instead, it gave companies large and small the impossible task of differentiating between what content was copyrighted and what wasn’t—with severe penalties for anyone who couldn’t meet that regulation. That would have protected the largest AI companies, but frozen out smaller and non-commercial developers who might want to tweak or fine-tune AI systems for the public good.

  • EFF ☛ EFF to Court: The DMCA Didn't Create a New Right of Attribution, You Shouldn't Either

    Amid a wave of lawsuits targeting how AI companies use copyrighted works to train large language models that generate new works, a peculiar provision of copyright law is suddenly in the spotlight: Section 1202 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Section 1202 restricts intentionally removing or changing copyright management information (CMI), such as a signature on a painting or attached to a photograph. Passed in 1998, the rule was supposed to help rightsholders identify potentially infringing uses of their works and encourage licensing.