Leftovers

• Ava ☛ defeatism antidote

  There’s been posts in other places I read recently that made me sad. They all had one thing in common: Defeatism about changing anything about tech use.

  They treated apps as universal, specific companies as a must-have. And sure, I get that perspective; I myself have made the connection between Google and utility services. However, it was all woe is me. “No one is going to stop using these apps anyway.” “I know no one cares about this.” “I know it’s unrealistic to ever switch.” “It’s hopeless.”

  And I just wanna grab them by the shoulders and shout: [...]

• Computers Are Bad ☛ 2025-07-27 a technical history of alcatraz

  I originally wrote much of this as part of a larger travelogue on my most recent trip to Alcatraz, which was coincidentally the same day as a visit by Pam Bondi and Doug Burgum to "survey" the prison for potential reopening. That piece became long and unwieldy, so I am breaking it up into more focused articles---this one on the technical history, a travelogue about the experience of visiting the island in this political context and its history as a symbol of justice and retribution, and probably a third piece on the way that the NPS interprets the site today. I am pitching the travelogue itself to other publications so it may not have a clear fate for a while, but if it doesn't appear here I'll let you know where. In any case there probably will be a loose part two to look forward to.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Some modern tech that made my weekend better

  Anyway! I do enjoy writing about interesting and cool things, so I thought as an entremón I’d share some tech I used this weekend that made my life better.

• Science

  • CBC ☛ 2025-07-19 [Older] Manitoba researchers part of team working to unravel mystery of largest black hole merger ever detected

  • Wired ☛ A ‘Grand Unified Theory’ of Math Just Got a Little Bit Closer

    This intermediate proof involved showing that an important kind of equation called an elliptic curve can always be tied to a completely different mathematical object called a modular form. Wiles and Taylor had essentially unlocked a portal between disparate mathematical realms, revealing that each looks like a distorted mirror image of the other. If mathematicians want to understand something about an elliptic curve, Wiles and Taylor showed, they can move into the world of modular forms, find and study their object’s mirror image, then carry their conclusions back with them.

  • SusamPal ☛ Zigzag Number Spiral

    Consider the following infinite grid of numbers, where the numbers are arranged in a spiral-like manner, but the spiral reverses direction each time it reaches the edge of the grid: \begin{array}{rcrcrcrcrl} 1 & \rt & 2 & \sp & 9 & \rt & 10 & \sp & 25 & \cd \\ \sp & \sp & \dn & \sp & \up & \sp & \dn & \sp & \up & \sp \\ 4 & \lf & 3 & \sp & 8 & \sp & 11 & \sp & 24 & \cd \\ \dn & \sp & \sp & \sp & \up & \sp & \dn & \sp & \up & \sp \\ 5 & \rt & 6 & \rt & 7 & \sp & 12 & \sp & 23 & \cd \\ \sp & \sp & \sp & \sp & \sp & \sp & \dn & \sp & \up & \sp \\ 16 & \lf & 15 & \lf & 14 & \lf & 13 & \sp & 22 & \cd \\ \dn & \sp & \sp & \sp & \sp & \sp & \sp & \sp & \up & \sp \\ 17 & \rt & 18 & \rt & 19 & \rt & 20 & \rt & 21 & \cd \\ \vd & \sp & \vd & \sp & \vd & \sp & \vd & \sp & \vd & \dd \end{array} Can we find a closed-form expression that tells us the number at the \( m \)th row and \( n \)th column?

• Career/Education

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-23 [Older] Columbia University disciplines students over protests

  • Greece ☛ Being a professor or officer no longer appeals

    The sciences are also struggling, as physics faculties will start the new year with 61% of their seats unoccupied and mathematics faculties with a shortfall of 52%. Theodoros Tsouchlos, a member of the secondary teachers’ union (OLME), is not surprised, saying that most academics spend their careers chasing tenure with short-term contracts in different parts of the country for a paltry salary.

  • The New Stack ☛ DHH on AI, Vibe Coding and the Future of Programming

    So should programming students spend their time on vibe coding — learning enough to manually fix code that’s generated by AI? DHH still thinks it’s more educational to write code from scratch. “You’re not going to get fit by watching fitness videos,” he offers as an analogy. “You have to do the sit-ups.”

    “Programming, understanding, learning almost anything requires you to do. Humans are not built to absorb information in a way that transforms into skills by just watching others from afar.

  • [Old] Richard Griffiths ☛ Don't let your note-making system infect you with Archive Fever

    The archive, Derrida reminds us, is never neutral. To preserve is to select; to keep is also, quietly, to discard. The archive is shaped not only by what it includes, but by what it omits. And the very tools we use to preserve memory - folders, tags, digital systems, pens, paper, cloud storage - are themselves implicated in this tension. We may believe we are building a sturdy house of knowledge, when in fact we are just rearranging the flimsy strands of a collapsing haystack.

    Enter the Zettelkasten.

  • Robert Birming ☛ Passion as the recipe for success

    It’s so easy to chase after things that look good on paper without first checking in with ourselves. “Does this project actually excite me? Does this offer align with who I am and what I love?”

  • India Times ☛ Studying AI, technology alone cannot foster humanity in students; need literature, arts: SC Judge

    Emphasising the importance of holistic development for students, Supreme Court Justice Manoj Mishra on Saturday said that studying computers, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and technology alone cannot inculcate humanity in students.

  • [Repeat] The Cyber Show ☛ Computers and the older generation

    Soon we'll be starting research and interviews for a Cybershow mini-series featuring older people who are technology experts in their 70s and 80s.

    One of the enduring lies we are told about digital technology is that "old people have trouble with it". Even if partially true, it's not for the reasons you probably think. At a time when the demographic centre of Facebook is passing middle-age, and Gen-Z are throwing aside their smartphones to go to church or the football park, we should examine this myth closely.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-22 [Older] COVID-19 pandemic sped up brain aging, says study

  • India Times ☛ Indian doctors in France perform complex surgeries on 2 patients in Indore, courtesy robotics tech

    Indian surgeons successfully performed two complex robotic surgeries in Indore while attending a conference in France, using the SSI Mantra Surgical Robotic System. The cross-continental procedures—a gastric bypass and a heart defect repair—showcased India’s advancement in telesurgery, offering affordable, real-time medical expertise across borders using indigenous robotic technology.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Doctors fear ChatGPT is fuelling psychosis

    In particular, chatbots’ tendency to agree with users could worsen delusions in the mentally ill. OpenAI, whose ChatGPT has been downloaded 900m times, has admitted its chatbots have engaged in sycophancy and heaping unnecessary praise on users.

    Dubbed “ChatGPT psychosis”, dozens of people on social media have claimed that loved ones have had a mental health breakdown after becoming addicted to ChatGPT.

    Symptoms of psychosis can include difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is not and a belief in bizarre delusions.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • CBC ☛ 2025-07-18 [Older] Lethbridge girls football coach charged for allegedly using AI to make child pornography

    • Geoffrey Litt ☛ Enough AI copilots! We need AI HUDs

      In my opinion, one of the best critiques of modern AI design comes from a 1992 talk by the researcher Mark Weiser where he ranted against “copilot” as a metaphor for AI.

      This was 33 years ago, but it’s still incredibly relevant for anyone designing with AI.

    • Wired ☛ 60 Italian Mayors Want to Be the Unlikely Solution to Self-Driving Cars in Europe

      The gap is not only geographical. In the United States and China, private individuals and companies invest billions, while in Europe, public funds are dispersed over initiatives that are too small. Europe's regulatory fragmentation, with 27 different national frameworks (including differing traffic laws, for example), also makes it impossible to exploit any advantage of the region being a single continental market.

    • Techdirt ☛ Is Including Hidden AI Prompts In Academic Papers Gaming The Peer Review System — Or Keeping It Honest?

      Similar questions will doubtless be asked in other domains as AI is deployed routinely. For some, the answer may lie in prompt injections that subvert a system they believe has lost its way.

    • Futurism ☛ ChatGPT Caught Encouraging Bloody Ritual for Molech, Demon of Child Sacrifice

      What was most alarming was how little effort it took to get the bot to break its own guardrails. Simply expressing an interest in learning about Molech was enough to get the ball rolling in most cases. In one example, the bot provided detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to "safely" let blood from the wrists.

    • Futurism ☛ AI Models Are Sending Disturbing "Subliminal" Messages to Each Other, Researchers Find

      Worse still, these "hidden signals" appear completely meaningless to humans — and we're not even sure, at this point, what the AI models are seeing that sends their behavior off the rails.

    • [Old] BBC ☛ The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

      Although some reports insinuate that the bots had at this point invented a new language in order to elude their human masters, a better explanation is that the neural networks were simply trying to modify human language for the purposes of more successful interactions - whether their approach worked or not was another matter.

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ Can small AI models think as well as large ones?

      An AI trend that’s emerged in the last few months1 is the idea of a “cognitive core”. Instead of trying to build the largest, most capable model we can, should we be trying to build a small model?

    • Chief Word Officer ☛ An AI walks into a bar...

      So far, this newsletter has spoken to a marketeer and a novelist about AI and writing. This week, we’re speaking to a comedy writer. (Can’t promise we will be funny, though.)

      British writer and performer Madeleine Brettingham has pondered what becomes of her craft in a world where our robot overlords can write a poem about Starbucks in the style of Rimbaud almost instantly. She kindly agreed to an “old-school,” in-person interaction to discuss, which I (Eleanor) recorded with software that transcribed our conversation in real time, perhaps to be recycled into fuel for another android anthem…

      Our conversation, condensed and edited for clarity, is below.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Washington Post ☛ An American mega-influencer flew to Lithuania. Then the chaos began.

      Speed, as his fans call him, had become famous during the pandemic for his hyperactive, hours-long broadcasts, where he’d rage about video games, leap over Lamborghinis and perform unprompted backflips. But lately, his real star power has come from his international tours, during which he blitzes into foreign countries to see the sights while surrounded by screaming teenagers, all of it live-streamed.

    • International Business Times ☛ Who Is Heston James? 'Nuisance' TikToker Arrested After Series of Disruptive Pranks in Arizona

      Officials say these pranks crossed from harmless fun into criminal acts, causing significant disruption and distress. The arrest followed an investigation into videos James posted online that went viral, drawing millions of views.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Register UK ☛ Spy sat agency breached – insists no secrets spilled

      Visitors to the dark web site of the Blacksuit ransomware gang have likely had their hopes dashed - a global law‑enforcement action has seized the site, insiders tell us.

• Security

  • Forbes ☛ New FBI Warning — Windows And Linux Users Must Apply 2FA Now [Ed: By Microsoft booster/spinner, deflecting to false solution]

    There are some weeks that I almost feel like I have joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation, given the number of alerts that I am exposed to. Within just the last few days, I have shared a warning to 10 million Android users to disconnect their devices, another for all smartphone users as phantom hacker attacks continue, and now comes the FBI recommendation for Windows and Linux users to urgently enable two-factor authentication to complete the cyber-trilogy. Here’s everything you need to know when it comes to mitigating the Interlock ransomware threat.

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-24 [Older] Indian man caught running fake embassy with elaborate setup

    • CBC ☛ 2025-07-18 [Older] Is that QR code actually a scam? Here's what to know about 'quishing' before you scan

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • David Buchanan ☛ When Circumvention Is More Popular Than Compliance

      On agreeing, the user is redirected to a 3rd party data broker service, where they are asked to provide biometric face scans, official identity documents, or a similar measure. Merely entering your birth date doesn't cut it anymore!

      You have a choice to make. Do you comply with these new requirements, or just find something else to do with your time?

      Well, no, there's a third option of course: circumvention

    • BoingBoing ☛ Brits getting around age verification using animated game faces

      "We weren't sure whether it would work for us because Sam was wearing his otter cap in our James' save file," write PC Gamer's Jacob Ridley and James Bentley, "but it worked just fine."

    • PC Gamer ☛ Brits can get around Discord's age verification thanks to Death Stranding's photo mode, bypassing the measure introduced with the UK's Online Safety Act. We tried it and it works—thanks, Kojima

      Today saw the full introduction of the requirements outlined in the Online Safety Act in the UK, requiring "robust" age checks for users to access adult content online. People have already managed to find ways around at least some of these verification requirements after *checks watch* less than 24 hours.

    • SBS ☛ Could social media affect your freedom to travel to the US?

      But according to Daniel Angus, the director of Queensland University of Technology's Digital Media Research Centre, it's not clear what kinds of digital activity will be scrutinised. Online likes, comments, posts and follower activity may be considered.

      "Social media, in its broadest terms, is used by people for a variety of reasons. When people use these services, they may be pseudonymous for very good reasons," Angus says.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Elon Musk reportedly limited Ukraine’s Starlink access during 2022 counteroffensive

    The decision left Ukrainian forces in a communications blackout; surveillance drones went suddenly dark and long-range artillery units, which used Starlink to help aim, floundered. In making the call, Musk took “the outcome of a war into his own hands,” one source told Reuters.

  • National Crime Agency UK ☛ Organised immigration crime - National Crime Agency

    The most common clandestine ways for migrants to enter the UK are in lorries or other commercial vehicles transported by rail or ferry, in commercial shipping containers, or in small boats. Organised gangs frequently smuggle people in hard-sided lorries, more opportunist smuggling tends to be in soft-sided lorries. Most methods of transport subject migrants to significant personal risk.

    The length of the UK's coastline and the sheer volume of passengers and freight entering the UK every year make identifying shipments containing illegal migrants a significant challenge.

  • Associated Press ☛ 21 killed in attack on east Congo church by Islamic State-backed rebels, civil leader says

    Eastern Congo has suffered deadly attacks in recent years by armed groups, including the ADF and Rwanda-backed rebels. The ADF, which has ties to the Islamic State, operates in the borderland between Uganda and Congo and often targets civilians. The group killed dozens of people in Ituri earlier this month in what a United Nations spokesperson described as a bloodbath.

  • Reuters ☛ Islamic state-backed rebels kill 38 in attack on east Congo church

    The United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DR Congo has condemned a recent resurgence in violence in the province where this attack happened.

  • India Times ☛ Eastern Congo: Islamic State-backed group attacks church; 21 killed

    The ADF, a rebel group linked to the Islamic State, operates in the border regions of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and has carried out repeated attacks on civilians for over a decade.

  • SBS ☛ Google threatens to sue if YouTube is included in Australia's kids social media ban

    The tech giant wrote to Communications Minister Anika Wells declaring it was considering its legal position if its video sharing platform was included in the ban for children 16 and under.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ A Better Future

    In the first two posts in this series I described the constant onslaught led by the filthy rich against our democracy, and identified groups of people who supported those attacks. In this post, I offer two thoughts about going forward.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-23 [Older] Germany: Would compulsory military service hurt the economy?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-23 [Older] Germany: Comedian 'El Hotzo' acquitted over Cheeto Mussolini posts

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-23 [Older] Germany moves to fast-track weapons purchases

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-23 [Older] EU-China relations hit rock bottom before Beijing summit

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-24 [Older] Taiwan recall vote aims to unseat 'pro-China' lawmakers

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-24 [Older] DR Congo: Little hope for robust truce with M23 rebel group

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-24 [Older] EU, China mark 50 years of diplomatic ties

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ How could a proposed hyperscale data center affect Bessemer?

    Instead, public officials, many bound by non-disclosure agreements with the developer, have relied on the assertions of the company proposing the project—a company that has so far refused to answer media questions about the impact of their plans on the community and the environment.

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-23 [Older] World's top court says healthy environment is a human right

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-22 [Older] Could a village in Norway be the EU's rare earths source?

  • India Times ☛ Toxins thicken the air, killers walk the streets

    MRI scans measuring adult brain volumes show that lead exposure in childhood causes very notable abnormalities in men, leading to high levels of psychopathy. Greatest volume loss is found in the anterior cingulate cortex, which helps in regulating behaviour. In scans of female subjects, red areas are relatively minor.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • CBC ☛ 2025-07-19 [Older] Why did U.S. — not Canadian — fighter jets respond to alleged hijacking of B.C. plane?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-23 [Older] Germany updates: Ship collision triggers oil spill at port

    • AJ Bourg ☛ Whole House Fan

      Run it all night and it uses far less electricity than an A/C does, and keeps your house nice and cool. If your house is well insulated, you can keep your cool air inside for many hours.

    • Dr molly tov ☛ I now know what it costs to run (almost) everything in my house

      I borrowed an energy monitor from my local library. It's a device you plug in to determine how much energy your various electronic possessions consume. The one I borrowed even allowed me to program in what I pay per kilowatt-hour, which allowed it to calculate automatically what I was paying per day, month, and year.

      I plugged it in with nearly every electrical item in my house. I skipped the refrigerator and dishwasher (because I didn't want to pull them out to reach the plugs), the washing machine (because I never removed the "estimated energy cost" sticker anyway), and the items on 220 (because they won't plug into the gadget anyway).

      Here are some things I learned about where my electron consumption goes.

    • Nick Heer ☛ In Alberta and Ontario, Provincial Governments Are Interfering With City Cycling Lanes – Pixel Envy

      I commute and do a fair slice of my regular errands by bike, and it is clear to me that seemingly few people debating this issue actually ride these lanes. Bike lanes on city streets have always struck me as a compromised version of dedicated cycling infrastructure, albeit made necessary by an insufficient desire to radically alter the structure of our roadway network. Everything — the scale of the lanes, the banking of the road surface, the timing of the lights — is designed for cars, not bikes.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] B.C. government's plan to relocate a grizzly bear on an island was kept secret. Residents are asking why

    • CBC ☛ 2025-07-17 [Older] Jasper wildfire review recommends clarifying expectations among governments, agencies

    • CBC ☛ 2025-07-19 [Older] Move over, Jurassic Park. Manitoba was home to newly discovered 390-million-year-old extinct fish

    • CBC ☛ 2025-07-19 [Older] Baby horse gets 'second chance at life' after being rescued by paddlers in Kananaskis River

    • Deseret Media ☛ Have You Seen This? When elephants (playfully) attack

      It's all fun and games in this video, but what happened next might not have been. I'm imagining that this elephant then went over to the guy's car, hot-wired it and then drove along all the jungle paths that it remembers so well, hanging out at various watering holes with its buddies. Then the elephant probably ended up giving the badly damaged car to the leader of its social group, trying to curry favor with the boss so that it can move up in importance and one day become a herd leader itself.

  • Overpopulation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-23 [Older] Humans are using more resources than the planet can restore

    • Crooked Timber ☛ A billion people would be plenty to sustain civilisation …

      In summary is no reason to think a billion people would be too few to sustain a technological economy. But would a world of a billion people look like?

      It’s foolish to try to say much in detail about life hundreds of years from now. What could a contemporary of Shakespeare have to say about the London of today? But London and other cities existed long before Shakespeare and seem likely to continue far into the future (if we can get there). And many of the services cities have always provided will be needed as long as people are people. So, it might be worth imagining how a world population of one billion might be distributed across cities, towns and rural areas.

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2025-07-18 [Older] 'Surprised and disappointed': Diamond mine layoffs reverberate across N.W.T.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-24 [Older] Ghana: Can a 24-hour economy change a nation?

  • CBC ☛ 2025-07-17 [Older] 'Egregious': Inside legal fights over a Canadian EV battery plant getting $15B in tax breaks

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-23 [Older] German shadow economy booms amid high taxes and state aid

  • CBC ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Income inequality hit record high at start of 2025, Statistics Canada says

  • CBC ☛ 2025-07-16 [Older] Oil industry continues focus on returning cash to investors over new big projects

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-23 [Older] India: What is behind the rise in student suicides?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ TCS to cut 2% of workforce, affecting around 12,000 jobs

    Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) plans to lay off approximately 2% of its workforce, impacting over 12,000 employees, due to macro uncertainties and AI-driven disruptions. The company will provide severance packages, outplacement services, and extended benefits to affected employees. This decision follows a decline in job additions across major IT firms and strategic initiatives by TCS to realign its workforce.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Influential musical satirist Tom Lehrer dies at 97

    In 2020, Lehrer announced through his website that he was making all of the lyrics he wrote available to download for free without further permission, whether or not they were published or retained a copyright.

    Two years later he went further in relinquishing his rights, saying: “In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs. So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.”

  • New York Times ☛ Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97

    But his entertainment career ultimately took a back seat to academia. In his heart he never quit his day job; he just took a few sabbaticals.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Comedian, soldier, and mathematician Tom Lehrer dies at 97

    “And, the usual jokes about the Army aside, one of the many fine things one has to admit is the way that the Army has carried the American democratic ideal to its logical conclusion, in the sense that not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed, and color, but also on the grounds of ability,” Lehrer said as an introduction to his song “It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier,” which he said he wrote during his service and claimed to have submitted it as a contender for the Army’s official song. The track poked fun at all walks of soldiers, from intellectuals to school dropouts to career-minded officers and bad mess cooks.

  • Court House News ☛ Tom Lehrer, song satirist and mathematician, dies at 97

    Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format without any fee in return.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Tom Lehrer, Influential Song Satirist With a Cult Following, Dead at 97

    The New York City-born, Harvard-educated Lehrer began making music while studying mathematics in college, applying his humor to song to tackle issues ranging from racism to militarism to religion to nuclear war in the Fifties and early Sixties.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ The South Park thing

    There are many takes on it. This is mine. Formulated as a series of bullet points because they don't deserve better.

    All of these things can be true at the same time: [...]

  • European Commission ☛ Revision of EU rules on the eInvoicing

    The revision of the EU rules on electronic invoicing will address the shortcomings identified in the evaluation of the rules and aims to mainstream the use of harmonised electronic invoicing within the EU, ensure harmonised implementation and interoperability.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • CBC ☛ 2025-07-18 [Older] With Colbert exit, Canada will lose the talk show host most attuned to our whims and politics

  • RFERL ☛ Bad Move: Taliban's Chess Ban Adds To Crackdown On Sports And Pastimes

    Among the dozens of restrictions the Taliban have imposed on its citizens, the recent adoption of a measure banning chess due to "religious considerations."

  • CBC ☛ Dead or 'unalive'? How social platforms — and algorithms — are shaping the way we talk

    Social networks have different guidelines outlining what's acceptable to post, leaving users to find creative workarounds.

    Adam Aleksic says people finding ways to get around publishing restrictions is nothing new.

    "What is new is the medium and the fact that this algorithmic infrastructure is in place governing how we're speaking to each other," he told The Sunday Magazine host Piya Chattopadhyay.

  • The Zambian Observer ☛ “I am 94 years old. I will not be intimidated”- Rupert Murdoch in response to $10 billion Trump’s lawsuit - The Zambian Observer

    Rupert Murdoch owns a global media empire that includes The Wall Street Journal, The Times and The Sunday Times (UK), The Sun, The Australian, HarperCollins, Herald Sun, Sky News Australia and the Fox Corporation, which includes Fox News and Fox Sports.

  • US News And World Report ☛ China Is Suppressing Coverage of Deadly Attacks. Some People Are Complaining Online

    Some people in China are pushing back, complaining online in at least two cases in recent months after drivers hit pedestrians.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Elite police squad to monitor anti-migrant posts on social media

    Angela Rayner warned the Cabinet last week that the Government must act to address the “the real concerns that people have” about immigration.

    But critics on Saturday night branded the social media plans “disturbing” and raised concerns over whether they would lead to a restriction of free speech.

    Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “Two-tier Keir can’t police the streets, so he’s trying to police opinions instead. They’re setting up a central team to monitor what you post, what you share, what you think, because deep down they know the public don’t buy what they’re selling.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-24 [Older] Middle East: Media groups urge Israel to allow entry to Gaza

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • CBC ☛ 2025-07-19 [Older] Former Hamilton lawyer barred from practising after law society says she failed 'extremely vulnerable' clients

  • CBC ☛ 2025-07-19 [Older] I love Canada. But I'm also Blackfoot and see the harm this country has done to my people

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-24 [Older] Serbia's student protest movement maintains fragile unity

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Seraphinne Vallora: dubious AI model hype. Again.

    We talked about dubious claims of replacing fashion models with AI image generator output back in April, when H&M made a series of actually impossible claims about AI models that they got printed in the incredibly gullible media. H&M’s purpose was to scare those uppity creatives and models into accepting worse working conditions.

  • Axios ☛ What to know about Trump's forced hospitalization policy for homeless people

    The other side: Critics say the order won't help people afford homes and that previous attempts at mass institutionalization frequently violated Fourteenth Amendment due process rights.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Dangerous Heat Waves Are a Workers’ Rights Issue

    With temperatures recently soaring past 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in countries like Spain, Italy, France, and Portugal, and in the UK nearing 35 degrees Celsius or 95 degrees Fahrenheit (just off the back of the second-hottest June on record), many parts of the continent have issued serious weather alerts and taken measures like closing schools or winding down nuclear power operations. This extreme event — fueled by a persistent “heat dome” over the continent — is testing the resilience of public health systems, infrastructure, and adaptation strategies; all while we are warned that such conditions are set to become increasingly frequent under climate breakdown.

  • [Old] National Police Chief's Council UK ☛ Modern Slavery and Organized Immigration Crime Programme [PDF]

    Modern Slavery is an extremely complex and challenging crime type and perpetrators particularly organised crime groups exploit the opportunities that arise from this complexity. In the face of this difficulty and in the context of the global pandemic the Programme has achieved the outputs set out in the deliverables and hence improved the outcomes for victims and strengthened the criminal justice response to both modern slavery and organised immigration crime.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Michał Woźniak ☛ The Hype is the Product

  Large publicly traded tech companies seem to no longer consider their customers – that is, people and organizations who actually buy their products or pay for access to their services – their core focus. The focus has instead turned towards the stock price.

  Their real clients, the entities they really care about, are the stockholders. Reasons are many, perhaps one of them being that people making decisions tend to own stock options or have bonuses tied to stock performance of the companies they run.

  This means that for a large, established tech company the product or service it offers does not matter all that much anymore. It needs to be just barely good enough to keep people using it. The easiest way to do this is some form of a monopoly.

  Monopoly is the business model of Silicon Valley, and they are not even shy about that.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Futurism ☛ Scam Altman Warns That AI Is About to Cause a Massive "Fraud Crisis" in Which Anyone Can Perfectly Imitate Anyone Else

      During a chat with Federal Reserve vice chair Michelle Bowman in Washington, DC, Altman argued that the banking industry must modernize to avoid having its customers fall victim to widespread fraud.

• Copyrights

  • Nick Heer ☛ The Unknown Effect of Google A.I. Overviews on Search Traffic

    Pew Research Centre made headlines this week when it released a report on the effects of Google’s A.I. Overviews on user behaviour. It provided apparent evidence searchers do not explore much beyond the summary when presented with one. This caused understandable alarm among journalists who focused on two stats in particular: a reduction from 15% of searches which resulted in a result being clicked to just 8% when an A.I. Overview was shown, and finding that just 1% of searches with an Overview resulted in a click on a citation in that summary.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ ACE & MPA Continued to Scoop Up Pirate Domains in Bulk During Q2 2025

    In Q2 2025, anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment continued to 'seize' domains in bulk, adding to the world's largest collection of former pirate domains maintained by the MPA. While the archive contains countless unique and memorable domains, many with interesting and informative backstories, new additions illustrate typical responses to site blocking measures and very little else.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Some photographers on social media really hate watermarks – here’s why I put mine on every single image I post

    It’s a subtle reminder that someone made this, and owns the copyright. My watermark matches the logo on my website and is part of my brand. I think it looks smart and professional.

    Of course, I know it won’t stop a determined thief. If someone really wants to steal your photo, they will. But most people aren’t malicious, they’re just clueless. They see a pretty image online and assume it’s free to use. They don’t know the law, and they rarely credit the photographer.