Distributions and Operating Systems

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu ☛ The Linux Foundation and OpenStack – a new chapter for cloud-native infrastructure

    As a long-standing and active member of both communities, Canonical is excited about this merger and the opportunities it brings. In this post, we share what this change means for our customers, the Ubuntu community, the Linux Foundation, and OpenStack.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Programming/Development

  • Java

    • Mark J. Wielaard: classpath.org domain is back!

      The classpath.org domain expired a couple of days ago and none of the subdomain, like planet, devel, icedtea resolved. Oops. It has been renewed for at least 5 years now.

Leftovers

• Andrew Kelley ☛ Renting is for Suckers

  The pattern here is a reverse Robin Hood effect: those without capital borrow stuff and then pay interest to the owners.

  This is managing your personal finances 101, really basic stuff.

  But what if I told you that we are in the midst of an entire upper-middle-class not only willingly giving up ownership, but gleefully bragging about it, while transferring massive amounts of wealth from smaller companies and individuals to approximately three large companies?

• Science

  • Robotic Systems LLC ☛ Correcting the encoder filter frequency

    Way back in 2021, I described the approach moteus uses for filtering encoder values and its derivation from the “all-digital phase locked loop”. What I did not realize until now was that the formulas used in that derivation operated based on the “natural frequency” of the filter, not the 3dB cutoff frequency as I had intended. They are related by a constant, but this resulted in the bandwidth of the encoder being higher than expected. Here, I’ll set the record straight, and document how that effects moteus going forward.

• Career/Education

  • David Gerrells ☛ why I quit my dream job

    I interviewed, passed, got an offer, and accepted the offer.

    I almost didn't accept the offer, even though it for more than I had ever made in my life. I had a small fear in the back of my mind that I wasn't the right fit. That I wasn't “cool” enough to hang with the kids. But, I silenced that voice and joined anyway.

    A month in, and I quit.

  • Stephen Kell ☛ Management hierarchy in academic research

    I “grew up” in a very flat department. Walking around the building, the corridors were a long sequence of office doors. Each door had one or more names on—names, but no titles. No matter how distinguished you were—and there were at least two Turing Award winners in the building—a name was all you got. And suddenly, as a lowly research assistant straight out of my Bachelor's, my name was one of those names! This breaks down barriers at a stroke. It is difficult to understate the feeling of citizenship that this creates.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ The Myth of the Academic Summer Break (And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves)

    I think this is true, not just for authors but across the board. In publishing, there is no “off-season.” Faculty members juggle multiple roles, and the absence of teaching duties provides little rest. They get replaced with everything that was postponed, for example, curriculum design, administrative work, research, writing, mentoring, and on a personal front if you are a parent, caregiving.

    Marketing and editorial offices utilize this time for website updates, tool migrations, author outreach, and issue planning. Editors in particular find themselves flooded with more submissions than usual and this leaves them scrambling for reviewers. Librarians, research support staff, and administrators use this time to implement new systems, rework processes that are outdated, revise onboarding material and so many similar tasks. Summer may look quiet on the surface, but it’s that time of the year that most invest in the deeply necessary, yet perpetually undervalued and invisible tasks.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Digital Learning Access Remains Undeveloped, Says Report

    The report, ‘From Vision to Reality’, draws insights from 165 higher education institutions in 21 states and three Union Territories. Although Telangana features in the review, southern states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Karnataka reported higher participation in reforms such as curriculum flexibility and innovation labs.

• Hardware

  • WCCF Tech ☛ Intel Plans to Lay Off Up to a Whopping 30% of Its Workforce, Cutting Over 15,000 Jobs as CEO Lip-Bu Tan Declares That There Won’t Be Anymore "Blank Checks"

    Intel is aggressively cutting its workforce, as the company now plans to lay off more than one-third of its workforce to combat losses.

  • Boiling Steam ☛ Aula WIN68 Hall-Effect Standard Edition Keyboard Review

    My main workhorse keyboard is an accountant-keyboard, with keypad attached to the right. Good if you are a touch typist or does not rely on a mouse. When a mouse enters in scene is where your ergonomic problems starts. I would move and tilt the keyboard to make room for the mouse during game sessions, but it was not comfortable. And I learned that prolonging this behaviour could lead to “mouse shoulder”.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ Psilocybin Extends Life of Human Cells by 50% in Wild New Study

    For the new study, scientists at Emory University and Baylor College of Medicine in the US tested it on cultures of human cells and on live mice. Both cases showed drastic extensions of lifespan – treated cells lived more than 50 percent longer than untreated ones, while treated mice were much more likely to survive the whole period.

  • Futurism ☛ The FDA Is Using an AI to "Speed Up" Drug Approvals and Insiders Say It's Making Horrible Mistakes

    It's a terrifying reality that could, in a worst-case scenario, lead to potentially dangerous drugs mistakenly getting the stamp of approval from the FDA.

    It's part of a high-stakes and greatly accelerated effort by the US government to embrace deeply flawed AI tech. Elsa, much like other currently available AI chatbots, often makes stuff up.

  • CNN ☛ FDA’s artificial intelligence is supposed to revolutionize drug approvals. It’s making up nonexistent studies.

    But it has also made up nonexistent studies, known as AI “hallucinating,” or misrepresented research, according to three current FDA employees and documents seen by CNN. This makes it unreliable for their most critical work, the employees said.

    “Anything that you don’t have time to double-check is unreliable. It hallucinates confidently,” said one employee — a far cry from what has been publicly promised.

    “AI is supposed to save our time, but I guarantee you that I waste a lot of extra time just due to the heightened vigilance that I have to have” to check for fake or misrepresented studies, a second FDA employee said.

• Proprietary

  • Lee Peterson ☛ I lasted 1/2 a day with iOS 26

    If the OS was officially released today I wouldn’t update and that is saying something for me as someone that is always on the beta train.

  • SchwarzTech ☛ SchwarzTech — Article: Mathing Out AppleCare One

    First, I knew that if I moved all devices to AppleCare One, I’d be paying $25.98 ($19.99 + $5.99) every month. If I had kept things as-is, I’d have to convert things to a comparable monthly rate, so let’s have some fun with division!

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft says China-based hackers exploiting critical SharePoint vulnerabilities to deploy Warlock ransomware — three China-affiliated threat actors seen taking advantage [Ed: The issue is not China; this is misdirection]

    Microsoft said that critical vulnerabilities in SharePoint are being exploited by a potentially China-linked threat actor, Storm-2603, to deploy ransomware.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ SharePoint zero-day attackers now using ransomware

    DHS’s cyberdefence arm, CISA, did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the reports. Microsoft did not immediately return a message seeking further details on the ransomware angle of the [cracking] or the reported government victims.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Microsoft Says Chinese Hackers Exploiting SharePoint Flaws

    Attackers have exploited the flaws in SharePoint since at least July 7, said Adam Meyers, senior vice president at CrowdStrike. Early exploitation resembled government-sponsored activity, and then spread more widely to include hacking that “looks like China,” Meyers said. CrowdStrike’s investigation into the campaign is ongoing, he said.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Microsoft Says Some SharePoint Server Hackers Now Using Ransomware

    The disclosure marks a potential escalation in the campaign, which has already hit at least 400 victims, according to Netherlands-based cybersecurity firm Eye Security. Unlike typical state-backed hacker campaigns, which are aimed at stealing data, ransomware can cause widespread disruption depending on where it lands. The figure of 400 victims represents a sharp rise from the 100 organizations cataloged over the weekend. Eye Security says the figure is likely an undercount. "There are many more, because not all attack vectors have left artifacts that we could scan for," said Vaisha Bernard, the chief hacker for Eye Security, which was among the first organizations to flag the breaches.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Chinese Hackers Now Exploiting SharePoint Zero-Days To Deploy Warlock Ransomware: MSFT - The Cyber Express

    In the next stage of execution, the attackers used Mimikatz, an open source tool, to extract plaintext credentials. They specifically targeted the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) memory, for this.

    The attacker further moved laterally using PsExec and the Impacket toolkit, whose commands were executed using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the researchers noted.

    In the final stage, Storm-2603 modified the Group Policy Objects (GPO) to distribute Warlock ransomware in compromised environments.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Microsoft SharePoint attacks ensnare 400 victims, including federal agencies

    The exploit dubbed “ToolShell,” which allows attackers to bypass multi-factor authentication and single sign-on, contains the newly discovered defects: CVE-2025-53770, a critical remote-code execution vulnerability, and CVE-2025-53771, a security-bypass vulnerability.

    The “ToolShell” exploit chain allows attackers to fully access SharePoint content and execute code over the network, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said. ESET Labs researchers said threat groups often chain all four vulnerabilities to intrude organizations.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft: SharePoint attacks now include ransomware

    These include "whoami," to enumerate user context and validate privilege levels, plus "cmd.exe," the default command-line interpreter for Windows operating systems, and batch scripts.

    "Notably, services.exe is abused to disable Microsoft Defender protections through direct registry modifications," Redmond wrote.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Bertrand Meyer ☛ More sizzle than steak? Using an LLM to produce verified bug fixes (new preprint)

      The paper’s contributions also include: the identification of 7 “personalities” of LLM use (the “collaborator”, the “copy-paster” etc.); practical advice on how best to use an LLM for debugging; the methodology that we used to assess the results.

      Two distinctive features are worth pointing out: [...]

    • Digital Music News ☛ AI-Generated Track Briefly Appears on Toto’s Official Spotify Page

      An AI-generated track recently surfaced on the official Spotify page for the iconic 80s band Toto. The appearance of AI tracks on official Artist Pages continues to raise questions in the industry about Spotify’s response to this emerging type of AI fraud.

    • Sedishj Authority for Privacy Protection ☛ National guidelines for generative AI in public administration are launched

      In January 2025, the Swedish Agency for Digital Government (Digg) together with the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY) launched guidelines to encourage the use of generative AI in public administration. The purpose of the guidelines is to enhance the ability to use generative AI in a safe, ethical and efficient way.

    • Cost Rica ☛ Why I Choose Real Life in Costa Rica Over the AI Hype :

      In its present form, AI is capable of acts of pure plagiarism, scanning cyberspace at warp speed to find chunks of information requested in a prompt. I saw this firsthand a couple months back. While reading an online article about declining tourism in Costa Rica from a site called TTW (Travel and Tour World), I recognized entire sections lifted verbatim from an article I had written for The Tico Times just two days earlier. The parts that weren’t mine were neatly categorized and given headlines, with everything arranged in a way that screamed: AI.

      I regularly scan numerous Facebook pages about Costa Rica. One page is nothing but made-up stories about fictional people—you can almost figure out the prompt they wrote in order to generate the story.

    • Hztime LLC ☛ Telcos are cutting jobs but not because of AI (2025)

      Scan through recent telco layoff announcements from major players like BT Group, Vodafone, or Telia. None cite AI automation as the core reason for large-scale job reductions. Instead, companies refer to “cost transformation,” “streamlining operations,” and “restructuring.” These are decisions rooted in financial strategy and market competition. If AI makes an appearance, it's buried deep in broader transformation language, not front and center as a job-cutting catalyst.

  • Social Control Media

    • Techdirt ☛ You Shouldn’t Have To Make Your Social Media Public To Get A Visa

      The administration is penalizing prospective students and visitors for shielding their social media accounts from the general public or for choosing to not be active on social media. This is an outrageous violation of privacy, one that completely disregards the legitimate and often critical reasons why millions of people choose to lock down their social media profiles, share only limited information about themselves online, or not engage in social media at all. By making students abandon basic privacy hygiene as the price of admission to American universities, the administration is forcing applicants to expose a wealth of personal information to not only the U.S. government, but to anyone with an internet connection.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Fortra LLC ☛ Free decryptor for victims of Phobos ransomware released

      Phobos first emerged in late 2018, as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation, working with affiliates to demand payment from victims after encrypting their files.

      Over the years, many organisations have found themselves in the unpleasant position of receiving ransom demands from Phobos blackmailers who not only demanded payment for a decryptor but could also threaten to publish exfiltrated files.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Open-source AI could provide ‘geostrategic value,’ Trump AI plan says

      “We need to ensure America has leading open models founded on American values,” the plan states. “Open source and open-weight models could become global standards in some areas of business and in academic research worldwide. For that reason, they also have geostrategic value.”

• Security/Scams

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Phishers Target Aviation Execs to Scam Customers

    KrebsOnSecurity recently heard from a reader whose boss’s email account got phished and was used to trick one of the company’s customers into sending a large payment to scammers. An investigation into the attacker’s infrastructure points to a long-running Nigerian cybercrime ring that is actively targeting established companies in the transportation and aviation industries.

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ How Solid Protocol Restores Digital Agency

      The current state of digital identity is a mess. Your personal information is scattered across hundreds of locations: social media companies, IoT companies, government agencies, websites you have accounts on, and data brokers you’ve never heard of. These entities collect, store, and trade your data, often without your knowledge or consent. It’s both redundant and inconsistent. You have hundreds, maybe thousands, of fragmented digital profiles that often contain contradictory or logically impossible information. Each serves its own purpose, yet there is no central override and control to serve you—as the identity owner.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Privacy International ☛ Update: Our case against UK Government's secret surveillance orders to be heard in 2026

    • Privacy International ☛ Update: Our case against UK Government's secret surveillance orders to be heard in 2026 | Privacy International

      The Tribunal declared that it will aim to hear much of Apple’s case, as well as PI and our co-claimants’, in public based on assumed facts. The Tribunal will convene a seven day hearing to be scheduled in early 2026. Its aim will be to hear Apple’s case and PI’s case during those seven days.

      This ‘case management order’ follows submissions from all parties and an application from WhatsApp to intervene in both Apple’s case and the challenge brought by PI, Liberty and two individuals.

    • NYOB ☛ noyb's Pay or Okay report: how companies make you pay for privacy

      So-called ‘Pay or Okay’ systems are on the rise in Europe. First introduced by newspapers in Austria and Germany, Meta adopted the approach for Instagram and Facebook in 2023. By now, many websites across Europe are using similar systems. Instead of giving users a genuine choice whether to accept or reject ad tracking, ‘Pay or Okay’ systems ask for a payment if you want to refuse “consent”. This leads to “North Korean consent rates” of 99.9%. Many news companies claim that the approach is necessary to finance quality media. In reality, digital advertising makes up at best 10% of the revenue of European press. Given the upcoming guidelines by the EDPB on this topic, this report analyses the industry’s arguments and the actual economic impact of ‘Pay or Okay’.

    • Kevin Boone ☛ Kevin Boone: FastMail – still good value in 2025?

      When I divorced Google from my life I had to find new providers for basic productivity services, like e-mail, calendar, and contact lists. Of course, many people think they’re getting these services for free from the tech giants – Google, Apple, Microsoft – but they’re not. They’re paying with their privacy. The rest of us are paying, too, because of the increased cost of advertising.

    • The Conversation ☛ Porn websites now require age verification in the UK – the privacy and security risks are numerous

      A strict separation between sites that do or do not have pornography means the definition of pornography, (not in itself illegal in the UK, becomes crucial. Tech companies are likely to use conservative algorithms (“overblocking”) in response. Historically this has affected sex education online, making it harder for young people to find sexual health advice or explore LGBT+ identities.

      The failure to implement the law in 2019 was blamed on an administrative error, but the problems with technological solutions also played a role. Technology in this area has barely progressed, but nevertheless the regulator Ofcom ghas now said that several methods are capable of being highly effective.

      The methods Ofcom suggests now come into two categories, which I will describe here as direct and indirect.

    • Wired ☛ A Premium Luggage Service’s Web Bugs Exposed the Travel Plans of Every User—Including Diplomats

      “Anyone would have been able to gain or might have gained absolute super-admin access to all the operations and data of this company," says Himanshu Pathak, CyberX9's founder and CEO. “The vulnerabilities resulted in complete confidential private information exposure of all airline customers in all countries who used the service of this company, including full control over all the bookings and baggage. Because once you are the super-admin of their most sensitive systems, you have have the ability to do anything.”

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ From fence-scaling to fatigued driving: AI cameras are watching - and acting

      On one hand, the use of AI has reduced operational overheads that logistics companies would have to invest into driver monitoring, which in the past included the use of spotters along a vehicle’s path that would report what they saw to a central command centre.

      This may give the impression that the technology is muscling in on work previously done by humans and threatening jobs, but the way in which fleet management providers are using it counters this narrative.

    • El País ☛ Coldplay’s semi-fascist ‘kiss cam’

      The ease with which we accept two summer lovers being exposed to the entire planet by a concert camera is impressive

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Israeli settlers burn West Bank’s last Christian town

    The Israeli settlers crept up to the ancient church perched above the West Bank’s last Christian-majority town.

    As they reached the outer walls, they crouched down to light a ring of fire. Then they revved the engines of their secret weapons brought to fan the flames: garden leaf blowers.

  • The Strategist ☛ The Taiwan scenarios 4: The catastrophe

    By any measure, China’s four main choices for forcing unification with Taiwan—subversion, quarantine, blockade, or invasion—would all have far-reaching consequences for Beijing and the wider Indo-Pacific. While the scenarios vary in intensity, they share outcomes: a breakdown in order in China, widespread economic harm and a shattering of regional peace.

    The notion of Taiwan giving up without a fight is improbable to anyone who understands the history of its people. Escalating coercion against Taiwan carries risks that are not easy to assess for China. For major Indo-Pacific economies, such as Australia, Japan and the United States, the clear imperative must be to ensure none of these scenarios ever eventuates—through deterrence, collective effort and early action.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Will Russia attack beyond Ukraine?

    As I wrote in a previous article, in the new world of the “right of force”, American, Russian and Chinese interests coincide. They would all like to see Europe divided and weak, incapable of making strong joint decisions. They want a Europe that is not an independent centre of power but only a set of markets in which they can trade profitably. This leads to steps that can even be seen as a certain American-Russian rapprochement.

    Thus, the Russian strategic goal is not to seize a part of European territory as was expected during the Cold War. It would be enough now to sow panic and chaos; create a humanitarian crisis; generate refugee flows; and collapse and overthrow governments. This could create a domino effect that could bring radical Eurosceptics to power, destroy European unity and (last but not least) cut support to Ukraine.

    To understand how this could happen, we need to look at the face of modern war.

  • Meduza ☛ Not a drop to drink Facing growing water shortages, civilians in occupied eastern Ukraine appeal to Putin for disaster relief

    Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the war Moscow unleashed in Donbas have severed these regions from crucial water infrastructure, creating acute shortages for residents and industry. This crisis has only grown worse since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The city of Donetsk has endured three years of water scarcity, despite the construction of a new canal developed under former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, who was later jailed for corruption. Water is rationed according to a schedule, arrives dirty, and frequently fails to reach the upper floors of buildings, even during designated supply hours.

  • RFERL ☛ Is Russia Outpacing NATO In Weapons Production?

    RFE/RL and the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), an open-source intelligence group, analyzed Russian and Western weapons production to assess whether Russia really has such a large production advantage over the US and its allies and in which categories of weapons -- artillery, ammunition, tanks, aircraft, missiles, and drones, and air defense -- each side has the upper hand.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Osbourne's 'War Pigs' is the anthem of Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

    “War Pigs” was aimed at Vietnam but rang through all 20 years of the Global War On Terror, as the war machine just kept turning.

  • Garry Kasparov ☛ The Next Move Will Do What the Political Establishment Won’t

    The camp that’s nominally pro-democracy refuses to learn how to win.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ First, Kill The News

    The Speaker of the House shut down the House of Representatives early in order to avoid allowing votes on matters about the President’s involvement with a convicted sex criminal. This the matter that the President’s own attorney general told the President he is implicated in, right before that attorney general decided not to release the files, in order to protect the President. That’s a pretty crazy thing, no? I mean, I don’t think you need to be hyperpartisan to say that such a thing seems scandalous enough to taint the entire power structure that enabled it—White House, party leadership, and funders alike.

  • Truthdig ☛ What Did Trump Know, and When Did He Know It?

    Will the scandal around Jeffrey Epstein's list prove to be Trump's Watergate or will it simply find a way to conveniently disappear?

  • Vox ☛ Epstein files: Why didn’t Biden release them?

    Reports of Donald Trump’s name repeatedly appearing in the Jeffrey Epstein files, coupled with the unearthing of a suggestive birthday card that the president sent the convicted sex offender, have renewed scrutiny of their relationship.

    But if the government really had damning information about Trump’s entanglements with Epstein in its possession for years, then why didn’t his Democratic predecessor and political rival, President Joe Biden, ever release the files?

  • France24 ☛ Ghislaine Maxwell to meet with US Justice Department amid Epstein probe

    The US Department of Justice is set to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's convicted accomplice, amid mounting political pressure on President Donald Trump over his administration's handling of the Epstein case. The meeting comes as fresh media reports tie Trump to Epstein and intensify demands for transparency.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Trump’s Epstein Denials Are Ever So Slightly Unconvincing

    Having failed to prevent the article from being published, Trump shifted into distraction mode. In a transparent attempt to offer his wavering loyalists the scent of fresh meat, Trump began to attack their standby list of enemies. On Friday, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, renewed charges that the Obama administration had ginned up the Russia scandal to damage Trump. None of the facts she provided supported this claim remotely. The entire sleight of hand relied on conflating the question of whether Russia had hacked into voting machines (the Obama administration said publicly and privately it hadn’t) with the very different question of whether Russia had attempted to influence voters by hacking and leaking Democratic emails (which the Obama administration, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and a subsequent bipartisan Senate-committee investigation all concluded it had done).

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Tumult over Epstein files dogs Trump in both DC and Florida • Michigan Advance

    “The Senate deserves to hear directly from senior administration officials about Donald Trump’s name appearing in these files and the complete lack of transparency shown to date,” Schumer said.

• Environment

  • The Revelator ☛ Trump’s NOAA Cuts Put Coastal Communities at Risk • The Revelator

    But unfortunately, NOAA — and the CWPPRA program specifically — is among the victims of this administration’s slash-and-burn tactics. And I’m one of thousands of NOAA employees who’ve lost their jobs since the president took office in January.

    Without my financial expertise, money isn’t getting out the door to rebuild South Louisiana. Cuts to FEMA loom on the horizon. And soon, hurricane season will ramp up ferociously. I worry about my hometown in Florida, the people of South Louisiana, and everyone in states affected by hurricanes.

  • BIA Net ☛ Fires caused by human activity spread to much larger areas

    “Mega-fire” is a technical term used for fires that have burned areas of 40,000 hectares or more. It refers solely to the size of the burned area, regardless of the type of ecosystem in which it occurred or its socio-economic impact. For example, the fires in Çeşme (İzmir) at the beginning of July covered approximately 26,000 hectares. This comparison clearly shows why the Manavgat Fire is such an important case.

    Each phase of the Manavgat Fire (the fires in Manavgat on July 28, Saraçlar on July 29, Gündoğdu on August 1, and Taşağıl on August 2) could serve as an example in terms of both prevention of and respose to the fires we witnessed this summer in Bilecik, Çeşme, and Tekirdağ.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ DOE terminates $4.9B funding for critical interregional transmission line

      The Department of Energy (DOE) announced the Loan Programs Office (LPO) has terminated its conditional commitment for the Grain Belt Express (GBE) Phase 1 project, a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line intended to transport renewable energy, namely wind and solar, across Kansas and Missouri.

      The conditional commitment, which would have provided a loan guarantee of up to $4.9 billion, was issued by the Biden administration in November 2024. President Trump’s DOE now argues that it was “rushed out the door in the final days of the Biden administration.”

    • Mike Brock ☛ The Bitcoin Coup: How Crypto Accelerationists Engineered America’s Financial Collapse

      There are conspiracies that sound too outrageous to believe, and then there are conspiracies so brazen that they hide in plain sight, documented in government filings and boasted about on podcasts. What I’m about to expose falls into the latter category: a systematic effort by some of America’s most powerful tech billionaires to accelerate the collapse of the American financial system because they believe they’ll profit from the chaos that follows.

      This isn’t speculation. This isn’t connecting dots that don’t exist. This is based on direct conversations with people inside this movement, people who have explicitly told me that they view the destruction of the dollar as both inevitable and desirable, who see the suffering of ordinary Americans during financial collapse as an acceptable cost for achieving their vision of a Bitcoin-dominated economy, who have positioned JD Vance as their primary vehicle for implementing policies they know will undermine American monetary stability.

    • European Commission ☛ (Draft act) Vehicle safety – cybersecurity requirements for L-category vehicles

      The scope of UN Regulation No 155 on cybersecurity and the cybersecurity management system has been extended to include cybersecurity requirements for L-category vehicles (two- and three-wheel vehicles and quadricycles).

      This initiative aims to amend an existing Commission delegated regulation by: [...]

• Finance

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Tech industry layoffs hit 100,000 for 2025 — defective chip maker Intel leading the pack with over 12,000 personnel cut, so far

    Intel has laid off 12,000 positions all over the globe, Abusive Monopolist Microsoft has cut 10,000 workers, and Meta has reduced its workforce by 8,000 people.

  • Perl ☛ Proxmox Donates €10,000 to The Perl and Raku Foundation

    The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF) is delighted to announce a generous €10,000 donation from Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, supporting the critical Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund. Corporate partnerships play a critical role in enabling TPRF to fulfill its mission.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Bert Hubert ☛ Europe's Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis

    Given that most government (and other vital) services still run without US cloud support, let us relearn how we did that, and use those skills to maintain sovereignty from where we are. Because we’ve done that for decades, and we can continue to do so, if only we stop to take a look at what is possible with what we have here.

    This will allow us to not hand over our governments and societies to US control, even though we were previously sold the idea that this is the only possible action. And meanwhile, by doing business in Europe, our local clouds could offer more of the services that are now exclusively available from the US. (I’m fond of actual industry initiatives like EuroStack).

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft CEO feels weighed down by job cuts

    In Microsoft's fiscal 2024, which ended June 30 of last year, it reported $245 billion in annual revenue, up 16 percent year-over-year, and over $109 billion in operating income, up 24 percent. Yet this calendar year, the software giant has cut more than 15,000 jobs, including 9,000 in July.

  • APNIC ☛ Further consultations on APNIC By-law reforms to be held at APNIC 60

    The APNIC Executive Council (EC) extends its sincere thanks to the community for its engagement and feedback during the recent consultation process on proposed changes to the APNIC By-laws. The insights shared in April 2025 have been invaluable in guiding our discussions and decisions. For background on the consultation, please refer to the following resources: [...]

  • TMZ ☛ FCC Approves Paramount-Skydance Merger After Stephen Colbert Show Canceled

    Paramount and Skydance, a Hollywood studio, have been trying to merge under one umbrella for a while now ... and there was a bunch of politics involved, including a narrative that Trump used his power to get CBS to cancel Stephen Colbert's late-night TV show.

    Trump's FCC approved the $8 billion deal a week after Colbert's show, which was super critical of Trump, was canned. CBS' parent company is Paramount Global.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Donald Trump’s Gift to AI Companies

    The White House is clearly deferring to the private sector, which has close ties to the Trump administration. On his second day in office, Trump, along with OpenAI CEO Scam Altman, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, announced the Stargate Project, a private venture that aims to build hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of AI infrastructure in the United States. Top tech executives have made numerous visits to the White House and Mar-a-Lago, and Trump has reciprocated with praise. Kratsios, who advises the president on science and technology, used to work at Scale AI and, well before that, at Peter Thiel’s investment firm. Sacks, the White House’s AI and [cryptocurrency] czar, was an angel investor for Facebook, Palantir, and SpaceX. During today’s speech about the AI Action Plan, Trump lauded several tech executives and investors, and credited the AI boom to “the genius and creativity of Silicon Valley.”

  • Wired ☛ The Great [Cryptocurrency] Re-Banking Has Begun

    [Cryptocurrency] founders have long traded similar stories in which US banks either refuse to supply them with loans or checking accounts, or they withdraw their accounts suddenly. Without a banking partner, [cryptocurrency] firms are hamstrung: They cannot readily accept dollars in exchange for services, store and earn interest on funds raised from investors, nor pay employees or vendors. “All around, it was an understood thing,” says Khan.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Vox ☛ Columbia settles with the Trump administration: What to know

    What are the implications of the deal? Columbia’s settlement might spell the end of the university’s months-long clash with the Trump administration — but it almost certainly won’t mark the end of President Donald Trump’s efforts to attack American higher education. The administration’s war with Harvard is ongoing, and a number of other research universities, including Princeton, Brown, Cornell, and Northwestern, have had research funding frozen.

  • Dhole Moments ☛ Against the Censorship of Adult Content By Payment Processors - Dhole Moments

    The weaponization of payment processors to enact target censorship is not a new tactic. It was famously used by the US government against Wikileaks in 2010, and more recently against SciHub (for daring to make academic papers freely available online).

    This is a problem that technologists have been acutely aware of for decades.

    Separately, organizations like Collective Shout (the one behind the recent Steam and itch.io censorship waves) and Exodus Cry (who went after Pornhub) have adopted the tactic of targeting payment processors to enforce their weird brand of Christianity onto the rest of us.

  • 404 Media ☛ Credit Card Companies Are Hurting the Future of Video Games

    Payment processors are rapidly changing what types of content can and can’t be easily accessed online. Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, Stripe, and other major players that process most of the money people earn on the internet have always had this power, and have long discriminated against sexual content and sex work, but they have been forcing more change recently.

  • Meduza ☛ Russia bans Andrei Sakharov Institute as ‘undesirable’ organization

    Founded by human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev after he fled Russia in 2022, the Sakharov Institute describes its mission as “supporting Russian civil society under conditions of repression,” “assistance to Russian political refugees and deserters,” and “creating a platform for expert discussion on ending the war, reducing the nuclear threat, uniting the forces of Russian civil society and building the foundations of a strong democracy in Russia.”

  • [Repeat] Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Declassified files show UK plan to evacuate Hongkongers post-Tiananmen

    The UK drafted plans to evacuate millions of people in Hong Kong in an “Armageddon scenario,” following China’s Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, according to newly declassified documents.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • FAIR ☛ Paramount Sells Out Journalism to Secure Purchase by Skydance

    The media production company Skydance is acquiring Paramount Global. The deal may be thought largely to be an entertainment merger, as Paramount owns Comedy Central, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, Showtime and the Paramount film studio. But Paramount owns broadcast network CBS and its news programming, which means that the deal has enormous implications for journalism—particularly given that it requires federal approval.

  • Press Gazette ☛ BBC and news agencies sound alarm over ‘threat of starvation’ for journalists in Gaza

    Major news outlets have expressed concern about food supplies reaching journalists in Gaza.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Third-party scrapers are stealing publisher content to order for Hey Hi (AI) companies

    Unscrupulous companies are ignoring Robots.txt warnings and bypassing paywalls.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Courts to notify journalists of reporting restrictions so they can be challenged

    Courts in England and Wales will be required to notify journalists in advance when discretionary reporting restrictions are being considered.

    The amendment to the Criminal Procedure Rules takes effect on 6 October 2025 and will see the press receive a notification when reporting restrictions are applied for.

    The change is expected to see an increase in transparency within the media industry, with journalists claiming they have previously been unable to challenge reporting restrictions due to not being notified of them or being given limited time.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Reach Scotland editor-in-chief David Dick to lead nationals in print

    Dick has been appointed head of print (nationals) after leading Reach’s titles in Scotland, including the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, for seven years. He will also be developing a podcast while in his new role.

  • Wired ☛ A New Era for WIRED—That Starts With You

    Our goal is to wake up every day and unearth what we describe as “Story Zero”: the story before anybody even knows there’s a story to tell. We endeavor to do that work in a way that’s conversational and accessible, fearless and definitive, and ultimately helps you understand what’s changing, why, and how it’ll affect your present and your future.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ 'E! News' is shutting down after more than three decades

    The Comcast-owned network informed “E! News” staff Thursday the program will tape its final episode on Sept. 25. The channel’s news operation will continue to provide coverage online where it has a robust presence.

    The staff was told the E! news audience prefers breaking entertainment coverage throughout the day on social media platforms instead of showing up at 11 p.m. Eastern for a live nightly show on traditional TV. About 20 jobs will be eliminated with the cancellation.

  • RFERL ☛ Brother Of Imprisoned RFE/RL Journalist Ihar Losik Escapes Belarus After Trial

    Losik said he took several photos and submitted them to Belaruski Hajun, a popular online monitoring channel reporting on military activities across Belarus.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Elizabeth Warren Calls Out Paramount, Trump Settlement as Corrupt

    In May, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter to Shari Redstone, the chair of Paramount Global, raising questions about the lawsuit and its potential influence on a planned merger between Paramount and Skydance Media. A similar letter was sent to Skydance CEO David Ellison on Monday, expressing concerns that a seperate side deal involving Skydance and the Trump administration had been attatched to the P:aramolunt settlement. The merger’s approval has for months been caught in Federal Communications Commission purgatory, only seeming to regain momentum following the settlement earlier this month, and CBS News’ decision last week to ax the late night show of longtime Trump critic Stephen Colbert.

    “People settle lawsuits all the time, but obviously there’s a problem when they’re seeking a favor and offering millions of dollars directly to the person who can grant the favor,” Warren told Rolling Stone on Wednesday. “It’s all happening right out in public for people to see, and that’s why it is so important to connect the dots and do two things: One is to call it out while the deal is still forming, so that all the parties understand that they may be subject to criminal laws. The second reason to call it out is that we have to speak out to preserve a free and independent press.”

  • Hindustan Times ☛ ‘Buying CNBC could be tricky’: Insider on Jeff Bezos's new interest in cable network

    Jeff Bezos is reportedly interested in buying CNBC to add to his media empire, which also includes The Washington Post. The New York Post cited sources to report on Wednesday that the Amazon boss has signaled to buyout of the cable network after it is spun off by NBCUniversal parent Comcast later this year.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Register UK ☛ UN World Court declares countries must curb emissions

    While Wednesday's opinion has no immediate and binding jurisdictional power, its international authority and legal arguments may well have the power to sway more specific international litigation in the areas of damage compensation, regulations, insurance availability, mitigation funding, and the like. Possibly ... Maybe ...

    This blockbuster finding was released by the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ), known more colloquially as the World Court, in a 133-page Advisory Opinion [PDF] entitled Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change — or, in proper ICJese, Obligations des États en Matière de Changement Climatique.

  • Wired ☛ The ICJ Rules That Failing to Combat Climate Change Could Violate International Law

    In a landmark ruling, the International Court of Justice declared that failure to act on climate change can be an “internationally wrongful act”—meaning countries could face legal consequences for harming the planet.

  • EcoWatch ☛ UN’s Top Court Rules That ‘Clean, Healthy’ Environment Is a Human Right

    In a landmark finding, the United Nations’ top court on Wednesday issued an advisory opinion stating that a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” is a human right.

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling supports the obligation of UN member states to tackle the climate crisis and outlines the consequences they could face if they fail to do so.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Sends Medicaid Data To ICE, Turning This Service Into Another Weapon For His Racist ICE Goon Squads

    I mean, you can see the cleansing from here. The Trump administration doesn’t actually care about Medicaid enrollees unless it can find some way to kick them off the service. The juice here is this: “home addresses and ethnicities.” No one actually believes the “worst of the worst” are also availing themselves of limited medical assistance offered by the US government, but there’s a slim possibility ICE might pick off a migrant or two by performing biased searches.

    No, the only thing anyone given access to this data will be searching for is “ethnicity,” which means ICE and the DHS will be doing the sort of thing they’re not supposed to be doing under the Constitution: pretending being not-white is the same thing as reasonable suspicion. This point was made particularly (and almost insultingly) clear by a federal judge earlier this month: [...]

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Michigan House Democrats introduce bill to ban masked, unidentified law enforcement officers • Michigan Advance

    The “Justice Needs No Mask” bill comes in response to growing public concern over masked, unidentified federal agents conducting immigration raids and detentions across the country.

    Coffia, who represents a largely rural district in Northern Michigan with a strong agricultural presence, said that the fear among migrant farmworkers and their families was just one factor behind the legislation, which is expected to be introduced Thursday.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Privatize or downsize the USPS? Rural customers worry either hurts them

    “It’s never going to make financial sense,” said McDonald, 61, from the driver’s seat of his preferred delivery vehicle, a Dodge Caravan. “But that’s a big reason why the universal pricing system was generated. Because we knew we had to service every American’s home, not just the Americans’ homes that provide us a profit.”

  • Atlantic Council ☛ An open wound, a fading light: Marking eleven years since the Yezidi genocide

    The Yezidi community remains shattered eleven years since the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) launched its genocidal assault against our community in Iraq. As the Middle East continues to experience shockwaves from ongoing conflict and an evolving geopolitical landscape, the priorities of the United Nations (UN), Western states, and Iraq have shifted.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • AccessNow ☛ Comments on June 2025 draft rules to amend Telecommunications (Telecom Cyber Security) Rules, 2024

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Trump’s FCC abandons the future

    The corollary of "you treasure what you measure," is "you don't give a shit about what you stop measuring," which is why Trump's FCC has decided to stop measuring the speed of the broadband it subsidizes with billions in public funds: [...]

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Bruce Lawson ☛ Bruce Lawson's personal site  : CMA designates Google and Apple, proposes measures

  Yesterday (23 July 2025), the UK’s monopoly regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), announced that it was proposing to designate Apple and Google as having “Strategic Market Status” (SMS) as they hold an “effective duopoly” over the UK mobile ecosystem, and published proposed roadmaps of changes required to the way they operate to “promote competition in digital markets while protecting UK consumers and businesses from unfair or harmful practices”.

  This comes after investigations stemming back four years, a halt caused by Apple arguing procedural nonsense, and an Act of Parliament (the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024) to give powers of investigation and impose sanctions.

• Copyrights

  • Software Freedom Conservancy ☛ FOSS Community Invited to Historic Copyleft Trial

    Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) welcomes applications from members of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community to attend the state court trial in the SFC v. Vizio case. The trial will take place in Santa Ana, Orange County, California from September 22–30, 2025. If you are interested, please follow the instructions below to apply for a travel grant to attend the trial. These grants are limited and will be awarded on a competitive basis.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Nobody clicks past Google’s AI Overviews

    Google claims the AI Overview on every search result — a frequently-wrong summary of other people’s work — sends a ton of clicks back to the original publishers they ripped off.

    This is false. Pew Research tracked browser usage for 600 people during March 2025. Pew didn’t just ask questions, they measured on the test subjects’ devices.

    When a search result has an AI overview, only 1% of searchers click on any of the supposed links to the original sources next to the overview. 99% just go right on past.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ President Trump: It's Not Doable for AI Companies to Pay for All Copyrighted Input

    During yesterday's "Winning the AI Race" summit, President Trump weighed in on the debate surrounding AI and copyright, noting that it is "not doable" for AI companies to pay for all copyrighted content used in model training. This stance, shared amidst ongoing AI copyright lawsuits, aims to keep the U.S. competitive in the global AI landscape, especially against countries like China.

  • Axios ☛ What's in Trump's AI Action Plan and AI executive orders?

    Zoom out: Most of the 23-page Action Plan gives a green light to the tech industry, focusing on accelerating AI innovation rather than addressing concerns such as model safety, environmental risks and the potential for wealth concentration and job loss.