FSF

• FSF ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] FSF News: Org Mode, GNU Guix, Mattermost, and more projects to participate in the FSF's hackathon

Science

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-18 [Older] How Estonia outpaced the rest of Europe at digitalization

• Omicron Limited ☛ NASA says it will lose about 20 percent of its workforce

  In an emailed statement, NASA said around 3,000 employees took part in the second round of its deferred resignation program, which closed late Friday.

• Mert Deveci ☛ The AI Replaces Services Myth - by Mert Deveci

  Schopenhauer basically talked about himself. Not the world. His prior conclusions on how the world works influenced his work. However, you and I know this is not the correct scientific method to apply.

  You have to start from how the reality works and then derive your work.

  We fall victim to this everyday.

• Bartosz Milewski ☛ (Weak) Factorization Systems

  An average function between sets, f \colon A \to B is neither surjective nor injective. We can however isolate the two “failure modes” if we insert a third set X in between. We can, for instance, pick this set to be the subset of B that is the image of A under f. We then define s \colon A \twoheadrightarrow X to be the surjective part of f. This way s deals just with all the non-injectivity of f. We can then follow s with an injective function i \colon X \hookrightarrow B. We get the (Surj, Inj) factorization of an arbitrary function into a surjection followed by an injection: [...]

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-18 [Older] German farmers give asparagus and strawberries the ax

• [Old] Declan Chidlow ☛ Allegedly I Have The Mark of the Beast

  To be clear, I’m against privacy-eroding mass surveillance, microchips or not. That said, microchips are not a good tracking tool. Even at super close proximities (skin touching reader) under ideal conditions it can be iffy to get a good reading from them. Any which way, implants such as mine have been implanted in people, pets, and wildlife for years, and I’m yet to be thrown into a lake of fire.

  In summary, I don’t have the mark of the beast, and neither does anyone else. If you think that you’ve been implanted with a microchip against your will, I’d recommend reading this advisory from Dangerous Things.

Proprietary

• Henrique Dias ☛ Finding a Good Search Engine

  Until Kagi. Kagi is a paid-for search engine. You pay a specific amount of money per month, and then you can do… well… searches. The argument is that if you’re paying for it, you’re not the product anymore. And I must say: Kagi actually gave me good results time and time again. And my habit of appending a Google bang to the query faded away.

  Until two weeks ago. I was reading Kevin’s post about changing technologies and he mentioned he had canceled his Kagi subscription and replaced it with DuckDuckGo. He mentions the results have been good. So I decided to try, because, why not? I agree that paying around 10$/m for Kagi is too much, considering I don’t use any of their other services.

• [Old] Bob Frankston ☛ Implementing VisiCalc [PDF]

  I'm writing this in preparation for the Computer History Museum's The Origins and Impact of VisiCalc panel on April 8th 2003. This is basically a draft and I hope to do some more editing as time permits and you should expect many typos until then. I'm also going to continue to edit and change this as I remember details.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

  • Privacy International ☛ 2025-07-18 [Older] Do early steps into agentic AI respect our needs for privacy and security?

  • Futurism ☛ The AI Boom Is Creating Housing Costs in the Bay Area That You'll Think You Must Be Hallucinating

    Housing costs are already notoriously high in the San Fran area, but the AI boom has ratcheted up numbers to eye-watering figures while startup workers are forced to bunk up in small but costly rooms that are the spendy equivalent of flophouses, the publication reports.

  • The San Fancisco Standard ☛ San Francisco's AI boom means rent costs are skyrocketing

    For about $2,300 a month, he is posting up in an Airbnb near 16th and Mission streets. His bedroom, the size of a large table, also serves as an office. He shares a bathroom with a dozen other people.

  • The Register UK ☛ Congress introduces bill to ban AI surveillance pricing

    Nevertheless, the use of AI sparked an outcry, and politicians took interest. The new legislation, the Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act, wants to ban the use of advanced AI systems to analyse personal data in setting prices and wages.

    "Giant corporations should not be allowed to jack up your prices or lower your wages using data they got spying on you," said Casar. "Whether you know it or not, you may already be getting ripped off by corporations using your personal data to charge you more. This problem is only going to get worse, and Congress should act before this becomes a full blown crisis."

  • Annie Mueller ☛ Hey, I care about you, but I do not care what the robot says about you

    I care about you but I do not care about the hallucinating robot and I do not care what specific combination of words it glommed up from the dark reaches of Scrapelandia and cobbled together into seeming-sense and bracketed between the servile, saccharine phrasings of a pretend personality and spewed onto the screen at you.

    I like your personality. I like the stuff you make and do. I like how you see the world. I care about your thoughts and feelings. I want to see your imperfect output and your unfinished projects. I’m into your insights and your mundane observations. I care about your art and I enjoy your dumb jokes and I’m curious about your music taste and I want to hear your hot takes.

    But I do not care about the plagiarizing pretend bot or what it told you about your personality or ideas or business or art or future or whatever.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Google AI Overview is just affiliate marketing spam now

    What’s the real purpose of Google’s AI Overview? It’s affiliate marketing spam! That’s what it’s for.

  • Daniel Miller ☛ The State-of-the-art in AI Is No Longer About the Models, It Is About the Tooling Available Around the Models

    Memory and managing memory in an LLM tool stack is going to be critical as we build business systems that incorporate generative AI. The above shows how this feature, designed to improve outputs in a general-use consumer application of GenAI, can actually degrade the UX under certain circumstances.

• Social Control Media

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-18 [Older] How far-right social media influenced judges' election to Germany's highest court

  • Ava ☛ scaldingly hot tea

    I don’t want to use the products of people who saw a grift and wanted to get in on it out of FOMO and greed, who don’t use their own products and have no interest in them beyond pressing a button that makes them. Who feel no responsibility about what the user ends up doing with it.

  • US News And World Report ☛ The Tea App Was Intended to Help Women Date Safely. Then It Got Hacked

    A surge in social media attention over the past week pushed Tea to the No. 1 spot on Apple's U.S. App Store as of July 24, according to Sensor Tower, a research firm. In the seven days from July 17-23, Tea downloads shot up 525% compared to the week before. Tea said in an Instagram post that it had reached 4 million users.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Sailors looking at smartphones blamed for surge in ship collisions

    Capt Moll said: “We’re seeing more and more cases where a vessel has set off and a watch-keeper has turned up on the bridge, but they are not looking where the ship is going, and as a consequence it runs into something.”

  • New Scientist ☛ Social media is dead – here’s what comes next

    Some, like economist Paul Krugman and technology researcher Molly White, have created successful, crowdfunded newsletters for their work. But most journalists don’t want to go solo: good reporting and analysis often require a solid team. That is why many are forming worker-owned co-operatives to start new publications, where they get institutional perks like lawyers, editors and helpful colleagues. This model is also good for consumers, who don’t want to search out and subscribe to dozens of individual newsletters just to catch up on current issues.

• Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

  • The Record ☛ NASCAR confirms data breach after March cyberattack

    NASCAR did not respond to requests for comment in April when the Medusa ransomware gang added the company to its leak site and demanded a $4 million ransom. The company also did not respond to inquiries on Friday.

Security

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • Privacy International ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Meta and Yandex break security to save their business model

  • Simon Willison ☛ Official statement from Tea on their data leak

    Storing and then failing to secure photos of driving licenses is an incredible breach of trust. Many of those photos included EXIF location information too, so there are maps of Tea users floating around the darker corners of the web now.

  • OpenRightsGroup ☛ ORG calls for age assurance industry to be regulated

    Users are given no choice over how they verify age, with platforms such as Reddit, Bluesky and Grindr choosing providers with problematic privacy policies.

    Data protection law is not enough to protect users.

    There are growing threats to free expression, as platforms increasingly place features and content, such as direct messaging behind age gates, going beyond the Act’s intended focus on restricting access to adult content.

  • EFF ☛ Zero Knowledge Proofs Alone Are Not a Digital ID Solution to Protecting User Privacy

    Age verification measures are having a moment, with policymakers in the U.S. and around the world passing legislation mandating online services and companies to introduce technologies that require people to verify their identities to access content deemed appropriate for their age. But for most people, having physical government documentation like a driver's license, passport, or other ID is not a simple binary of having it or not. Physical ID systems involve hundreds of factors that impact their accuracy and validity, and everyday situations occur where identification attributes can change, or an ID becomes invalid or inaccurate or needs to be reissued: addresses change, driver’s licenses expire or have suspensions lifted, or temporary IDs are issued in lieu of obtaining permanent identification.

  • Nick Heer ☛ The U.K. Begins Enforcing Age Verification

    The age verification mandated by this British law, however, is worrisome, especially if it becomes a model for similar laws elsewhere. The process may be done by a third-party service and can require sensitive information. These services may be specialized, meaning they may have better security and privacy protections, but it still means handing over identification to some service a user probably does not recognize. What is a “Yoti” anyway? And, because website operators are liable if they do not adequately protect youth, they may choose to take broader measures — just in case. For example, the law requires age verification for “material that promotes or encourages suicide, self-harm and eating disorders”. Sounds reasonable, but it also means online support groups could be age-restricted as a precautionary measure by their administrators. Perhaps that is reasonable; perhaps young people should only participate in professional support groups. But it is a notable compromise.

  • Don Marti ☛ Do you have a license for that robot bookie?

    The problem with big, do-everything state privacy laws is they have oversized impact on smaller and more honest companies, while the larger and more criminally inclined have the lawyer budgets to just throw "compliance" paperwork at the problem. It’s time for a new approach to state privacy laws: start with known surveillance harms and look for places where the state has some leverage to address them. We need more, but shorter, privacy laws.

  • PC Mag ☛ Who Are You? Online Age Verification Starts in the UK: Here's How It Works

    Many people in the UK have today been greeted by notifications from social networks asking them to prove they are over 18. This isn't your normal check, where it asks for an easily faked date of birth. By law, you now need to provide ID or an alternative method of verification.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • The Cyber Show ☛ #051 | S6 | Live | Civic Cybersecurity and Digital Self-Defence [Ed: The Cyber Show ☛ MP3 link]

      A public presentation in Swindon Old Town, at Fringe Arts Festival in the Ecology track. We discuss how e-waste (WEEE), environmental and other societal harms are linked to monopoly and BigTech domination. How can we all help counter these harms as part of a civic cybersecurity public programme?

Defence/Aggression

• US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-18 [Older] China Protests to Philippines Over Taiwan, Maritime and Security Issues

• Task And Purpose ☛ Pentagon shifts $200 million from services for border wall

  The documents reference four notifications from the Army, Navy, Air Force secretaries and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, who “determined that this project is vital to national security” and have identified $50 million each for the project, bringing it to a total of $200 million. The funding is also broken down into four separate projects that would go towards five miles worth of barrier, each.

• The Kyiv Independent ☛ EU considering proposals to speed Russian gas phaseout by 1 year, Reuters reports

  The European Parliament is considering proposals to speed up the planned phaseout of Russian gas by one year, moving the start date to January 2027, Reuters reported on July 25, citing documents viewed by the outlet.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-17 [Older] Chinese firm helps supply Myanmar junta with bombs — report

• Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-17 [Older] Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko: 'Putin only understands force'

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• The Verge ☛ MAGA influencer cope is now Congressional strategy

  But for everyone else, it’s been difficult to have it both ways. Loomer’s attempt to pin the blame on Attorney General Pam Bondi, for instance, failed when Trump refused to fire Bondi, while influencers who attempted to convince their audience to move onto different topics saw their audience revolt (particularly if those influencers, such as Benny Johnson, cited their conversations with government officials as reason enough).

Environment

• Maine Morning Star ☛ Former EPA officials say Trump proposal will gut agency’s power to curb emissions

  “It’ll be the most decisive step taken to make the agency totally irrelevant, which then will become an excuse to just get rid of it,” Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA administrator from 2001 to 2003 under President George W. Bush, said in a phone interview.

  Whitman said she thinks “the long-term goal of all of this is to ensure that the agency can’t do regulations.”

• Science Alert ☛ Almost 50% of Microplastic Pollution Comes From Cars. Here's Why.

  In Oxford, Mississippi, we identified more than 30,000 tire wear particles in 24 liters of stormwater runoff from roads and parking lots after two rainstorms. In heavy traffic areas, we believe the concentrations could be much higher.

• Wired ☛ The Texas Floods Were a Preview of What’s to Come

  These are the same elements that could trigger a Kerr County type of catastrophe in every state in the country. It’s a reality that has played out numerous times already in recent years, with flooding in Vermont, Kentucky, North Carolina and elsewhere, leaving grief and billions of dollars in destruction in its wake.

• 404 Media ☛ Scientists Report Surreal Scenes In the World’s Most Northern Town

  The team concludes with a sentiment that is becoming more common in this field: It may be worse than we think. It’s not an uplifting thought, but one that should be confronted, especially since few people are able to travel to these remote communities to experience the changes for themselves.

• Energy/Transportation

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Oil and Gas ‘Running Out of Road’ as Renewables Cover 92.5% of New Power Demand

    The three cheapest electricity sources globally last year were onshore wind, solar panels, and new hydropower, according to an energy cost report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Solar power now is 41% cheaper and wind power is 53% cheaper globally than the lowest-cost fossil fuel, the reports said. Fossil fuels, the chief cause of climate change, include coal, oil, and natural gas.

  • Deseret Media ☛ How much water do data centers use and are we prepared?

    If the projections of data center load growth from the region's major utilities become reality, these new facilities in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah could have annual water use of 21,600 acre-feet (7 billion gallons) by 2035, according to the data. This amount of water serves the annual needs of up to 194,000 people.

  • Western Resource Advocates ☛ Data Center Impacts in the West: WRA's Policy Solutions

    Left unaddressed, data centers’ loads threaten Western states’ air quality, climate, and water supplies, while risking utilities’ ability to meet statutory, corporate, and science-based emissions reductions goals. With the right policies in place, however, data centers can catalyze investments in innovative clean energy resources while driving broader system transformation.

  • Dr molly tov ☛ biiicycle...biiicycle (I bought a bicycle)

    I can't write an unbiased review of this bicycle. I haven't had a bike that fit me in decades, maybe ever in my life. The only comparison in my adult life is the bike that was too big. I can only write a biased review.

• Overpopulation

  • Vox ☛ Beyond Jeffrey Epstein: 4 stories that actually matter more for America’s future

    When it comes to long-term, world-changing trends, climate change gets most of the attention (if not necessarily the action). But there’s another challenge unfolding in nearly every country in the world that will be just as transformative — and for which we may be even less prepared.

  • Deseret Media ☛ The US fertility rate reached a new low in 2024, CDC data shows

    The new statistic is on par with fertility rates in western European countries, according to World Bank data.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] In Germany, summer vacation is grounds for interstate spats

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-17 [Older] UK to lower voting age to 16 before next general election

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-17 [Older] The Smurfette principle: 99 boys and one girl. Is the new Smurfs movie empowering girls or just another gender-imbalanced trope?

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-17 [Older] Germany and UK sign historic post-Brexit friendship treaty

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-17 [Older] Iraq: Fire engulfs new shopping mall, killing dozens

• Techdirt ☛ The Good, The Bad, And The Incredibly Stupid In Trump’s AI Action Plan

  The plan reflects the deep influence of the venture capital crowd that has cozied up to the administration, while simultaneously embracing culture war rhetoric that undermines its own stated goals. Like Biden’s approach, it’s deeply flawed—though in different and possibly more damaging ways. Still, the plan could have been much worse (indeed, I expected it to be much worse).

  Let me break this down into the good, the bad, and the incredibly stupid.

• International Business Times ☛ 'Put America First': Trump and JD Vance Slam Tech Giants for Hiring Indian H-1B Workers Over Americans

  JD Vance issued a strong warning about H-1B visas, criticising companies like Microsoft for dismissing employees while continuing to hire overseas. He criticised US companies for prioritising H-1B visas over employing Americans, stating he doesn't believe the 'absurd' claim that these companies cannot find suitable workers within the US.

• India Times ☛ 'Makes no sense': JD Vance gives H-1B warning to Microsoft, Indians say he's not revealing that....

  'Makes no sense': JD Vance gives H-1B warning to Microsoft, Indians say he's not revealing that.... JD Vance issued a stern H-1B warning and slammed companies like Microsoft for laying off people while continuing overseas hiring. Vice president JD Vance slammed US companies prioritizing H-1Bs instead of giving jobs to Americans and said he does not believe in the bulls**t story that these companies can't find workers in America. Speaking at a bipartisan event co-hosted by the Hill and Valley Forum, Vance questioned the ethics and economic logic behind mass layoffs by companies like Microsoft which is followed by an increase in H-1B applications.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Techdirt ☛ New Russian Law Will Criminalize Internet Searches For ‘Extremist Content’

  Laws were passed in the wake of the invasion aimed at clamping down providers and promoters of so-called “extremist content.” Those laws themselves were ripe for abuse by the government, as the vague language allowed for extreme censorship. But at least they reserved for those promoting the content itself. But now, as a sneaky amendment to a completely unrelated bill, Russia has passed a law that will criminalize searching for any content the Russian government decides is verboten.

• BoingBoing ☛ Pushed by payment processors, game sites remove adult material

  Remember, though, that it's the financial institutions making the decisions here, and those decisions are made because they're afraid of the reactionaries threatening them. Anyone can play that game.

• Wired ☛ Steam and Itch.io Are Pulling ‘Porn’ Games. Critics Say It’s a Slippery Slope to More Censorship

  Payment processors hold a great deal of power over the companies that use them. When companies like Mastercard or Visa pull support, it impacts that platform’s ability to receive payments. Conservative groups sometimes use these financial institutions to put pressure on companies to change their services. Insiders in the adult entertainment industry, which has seen similar campaigns lobbied against platforms like PornHub and OnlyFans, call these tactics a form of censorship that can hurt, not help, vulnerable creators. Itch’s mass removals, which are being enforced on a widespread scale with apparently little consideration of context, have already affected some developers who are queer, female, or people of color, even for award-winning projects.

• The Telegraph UK ☛ My chilling decade on the front line of university culture wars

  A distinguished female scientist told me that the worst revelation for her was the need for self-censorship: “The scientific evidence is that biological sex is immutable, and that is scientific orthodoxy, but there was a time when I just didn’t feel that I could say that.”

• Rolling Stone ☛ Stephen Colbert’s Cancellation Should Scare You

  Stephen isn’t expensive. He’s a threat. A wildly popular, truth-telling comic with moral clarity is dangerous in this moment. Especially when he’s white, male, and too influential to be dismissed as fringe.

  But here’s the thing. For many of us who’ve been doing political comedy for decades, this doesn’t come as a shock. It’s just rare to see it happen to someone with that kind of power and platform.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• The Dissenter ☛ Media Silence Helped Bring Starving Gaza Journalists To The Brink Of Death

• Digital Music News ☛ Donations 'Surge' As $1.1 Billion NPR & PBS Cuts Become Law

  Nevertheless, some lawmakers and reports have pointed to possible fiscal fallout and corresponding operational obstacles for local affiliate stations. Time will, of course, reveal the precise impact here.

• Buttondown LLC ☛ In praise of zines

  Out of little more than enthusiasm, Sniffin’ Glue became the defining punk rock zine. 50 painstakingly-assembled first-issue copies grew to a final print-run of 15,000 copies a year later, propelled a teammate to journalism fame, and led Perry to form his own band.

  And the world was left with a template for indie publishing, as the Xerox machine gave way to BBS, blog posts, and email newsletters. When one has something to say, you can do worse than to let it all out, authentically, in the best continuation of the spirit of the zines.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Jacobin Magazine ☛ Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man

  From here things only get worse. Hulk Hogan is a snitch — he, personally, is why professional wrestlers have never been able to form a union. Hulk Hogan is why we lost Gawker and served as the tip of the spear for the Paypal Mafia’s aggressive media ambitions. And in one of his final public acts, Hulk Hogan endorsed Donald Trump at the 2024 Republican National Convention.