Leftovers

• Lee Peterson ☛ Reasons why a paper notebook is better than an iPad

  Organising is external (the tools) and internal (behaviours) and everyone is different. What I like about a paper notebook and bullet journaling is that it is flexible to suit my own style, which I still don’t know.

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Dotfiles feel too intimate and personal to share

  Yet, somehow I feel like sharing my own dotfiles to the world is beyond my comfort zone. I feel my customisations and aliases and other decisions are too intimate and personal to share.

  I don’t quite know why though.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Archaeologists Find Evidence of Life in Post-Eruption Pompeii

    They came back.

  • BoingBoing ☛ White House now wants NASA's woke satellite destroyed

    The 2008 Orbiting Carbon Observatory and its 2014 replacement cost hundreds of millions of dollars to put in space and the data recorded is of such "exceptional" quality that farmers use it to track their fields, optimize yields and predict droughts. They were built, all the same, to monitor greenhouse gases and climate change. Accordingly, the Trump administration wants it destroyed, because it's woke.

• Career/Education

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Which jobs can be replaced with AI?

    David Graeber (RIP) identified several kinds of bullshit jobs and not all of those can be perfectly performed by an AI (for example, the flunkies that minor corporate princelings surround themselves with to demonstrate their status need to be human). But there are whole categories of job that perform functions that corporations don't want performed, like customer service rep, jobs they've spent decades degrading to the point where the people who do them have been stripped of all power and authority and serve no function except allowing a company to claim that they have a customer service department.

  • [Old] The Conversation ☛ Flunkies, goons and managerial feudalism: why David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs is the book that keeps on giving

    A “bullshit job”, according to Graeber, is a job where even the person doing it secretly believes the job shouldn’t exist. But part of their conditions of employment is to pretend it’s not as pointless as they know it to be.

    Bullshit jobbers, he writes, can include “box tickers”, “flunkies”, “goons” and “taskmasters” (more on them later). Such roles are prevalent in areas such as finance, admin, law, marketing and human resources. The book has been translated into many languages and while it has been criticised for some rather broad generalisations, he clearly struck a chord.

  • Cynthia Dunlop ☛ Thorsten Ball on Technical Blogging

    Following up on Writing for Developers: Blogs That Get Read and writethat.blog, we’re sharing the perspectives of expert tech bloggers: why they write, how they tackle writing challenges, and their lessons learned.

    This month, we interviewed Thorsten Ball, developer and author of Writing An Interpreter In Go and Writing A Compiler In Go. He’s been blogging explorations and reflections on the craft of programming since 2012. His writing stems from his love of what he calls "recreational programming," where he digs deep into various topics to get a better understanding of what we really do when we program.

  • Ava ☛ work friction and automation

    Those unsolved, new cases enable me to think about a problem or request and formulate the solution. I have a choice over my words and how to explain something or how to address someone. It activates my brain that has been put to sleep by just clicking buttons and copy-pasting the same things over and over again in a form of digital assembly line work. I enjoy being formally informal: still writing appropriately for the work, but not having a text chunk I am supposed to use. It makes the whole thing more deliberate, makes me feel more connected to the task at hand and the person who will receive the email. I become invested in providing good service to the other person, whatever it might be about.

  • Security Week ☛ Black Hat USA 2025 – Summary of Vendor Announcements (Part 2)

    To help cut through the clutter, the SecurityWeek team is publishing a digest summarizing some of the announcements made by vendors at Black Hat USA 2025, including new products and services, updates to existing offerings, reports, and other initiatives.

    This is part two of the roundup. The first part covers announcements made in the days leading up to the event, as well as some of the announcements made on Monday, August 4.

• Hardware

  • PC Mag ☛ Trump: Get Ready for 100% Tariffs on Foreign Chips

    The 100% tariff rate would be staggering, and risks raising costs for tech companies and consumers, depending on how the duties are implemented. It's also significantly higher than the 25% rate that Trump initially floated in February.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ You're More Likely to Die From an Asteroid Than Rabies, Scientists Find

    Enclosed: nine deadly comparisons you didn’t expect.

  • India Times ☛ Teens are increasingly turning to AI companions, and it could be harming them

    About three in four US teens have used AI companion apps such as Character. ai or Replika. ai. The study, which surveyed 1,060 US teens aged 13-17, found one in five teens spent as much or more time with their AI companion than they did with real friends.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Trump illegally froze 1,800 NIH medical research grants, Congress’ watchdog says

    The failure to fund grant awards violated the Impoundment Control Act and the Constitution, which certified Congress as the branch of government responsible for funding decisions, said GAO.

    If a law is passed by Congress and signed by a president, it must be carried out by the executive branch, the watchdog said.

    “The President must ‘faithfully execute’ the law as Congress enacts it,” the report said. “Once enacted, an appropriation is a law like any other, and the President must implement it by ensuring that appropriated funds are obligated and expended prudently during their period of availability unless and until Congress enacts another law providing otherwise. … The Constitution grants the President no unilateral authority to withhold funds from obligation.”

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Atlassian's Trello redesign may be 'worst in tech history' say frustrated users

    Customers compare upgrade to Microsoft's mega-messy Windows 8

  • Fandom Inc ☛ Xbox Is An Increasingly Unstable Platform For Anyone To Invest In

    Xbox is going through an identity crisis. The most recent wave of layoffs at Microsoft, which cut about 9,000 jobs including numerous positions at studios under the Xbox banner, suggests as much. These cost-cutting measures are said to be in the service of some realignment or reorganization that's always purported to set up these companies for greater success. And yet they keep happening, further eroding any trust and goodwill the brand may have built up from previous successes. After several waves of job cuts, restructurings, pivots in strategy, and any other corporate jargon I've neglected to mention, I'm beginning to suspect that Xbox's growing instability deserves more scrutiny and concern from its developers and consumers alike.

    Let's be direct: The journey that Xbox has been on over the last decade appears to be a failure. Its famous spree of purchases and the subsequent management of its studios has churned out about as many blemished games as it has delays, cancellations, and studio closures. That isn't to say Xbox hasn't produced hits and gems, but along the way there, Xbox has also built up quite the track record of critically panned games, cancelled projects, and defunct teams.

  • The Register UK ☛ AWS wiped my account of 10 years, says open source dev

    An open source developer is claiming AWS deleted his ten-year-old account, wiping all the data. He believes this was due to a botched test of a script designed to prune dormant accounts.

    Abdelkader Boudih, who goes by the handle Seuros, is a software engineer who has produced numerous Ruby gems used in production systems worldwide, and even claims that the developers within Amazon's cloud biz ask him regularly for help with Ruby issues.

    However, that didn't help save his account from being deleted without warning by the company, apparently due to a verification failure – though the developer suspects the real reason may have been a snafu during testing of a script by AWS itself.

    [...]

    AWS told us the account has been reinstated and reckons the developer can now access his data.

  • Dedoimedo ☛ Windows 10 end of life is coming, what to do?

    In a few short months, Windows 10 will reach the end of life (EOL) of mainstream consumer support. Without additional steps and remedies, by October 2025, roughly 50% of all Windows machines out there will no longer receives updates and patches. Yes, almost half of all boxen running Microsoft's operating system will become proverbial e-waste. If there's a better indicator to how much of a failure Windows 11 is, I can't name any. Never before has a "dying" version of Windows held such massive market share come its end of life. For that matter, the good ole Windows 7 was used by about 25% of all users when it was retired.

    The reason I decided to write this tutorial is to help you with the conundrum. What do you do come October 2025? Should you upgrade to Windows 11? What if you cannot upgrade? Or don't want to upgrade? Are there any extended support options available? Should the end user be worried about the security implications of this change? Well, let's talk about all this, and then some.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • PC World ☛ Researcher finds Microsoft’s agentic HTML can leak passwords, AI keys

      With new AI systems comes new AI vulnerabilities, and a big one was just discovered. It’s a flaw in Microsoft’s method of allowing agents to interact with websites on your behalf.

    • BSDly ☛ Elvis is alive! How 'AI' stunts modern mythmaking

      Or as some less kind commentators have uttered, Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO for short).

      When the hypemasters of the large language models forget this simple truth about their systems, we all end up poorer for it. The tool acts as if it has absorbed all knowable truth, and presents it with all the confidence of a veteran mansplainer. Whatever was not in the training data set simply falls by the wayside.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Microsoft’s 2030 Vision: no mouse, no keyboard — just the AI! [Ed: Instead of making products they make vapourware and false promises]

      Microsoft has a several-decade record of bizarre fever dreams about the future of computing. They always involve stuff that doesn’t exist, and Microsoft sure doesn’t know how to get there either. But also, it’s all somehow running in Windows.

      The video script is artisanal corporate slop. Hand made, the old way. I won’t be so rude as to say it was written by ChatGPT — some people just write and talk like that, and they’re corporate vice presidents at Microsoft.

    • Jamie Brandon ☛ All the cool kids are doing it

      I haven't invested much time in LLM tools yet, but I don't have big loud reasons for that, more a jumbled drawerful of impressions and priorities.

      This isn't going to be very exciting. Less "old man yells at clouds" and more "old man hasn't finished drinking his tea yet but is maybe thinking about going for a walk later".

    • Lawrence Tratt ☛ LLM Inflation

      Today compression is less often an absolute requirement but it can still make our lives usefully better. For example, the page you’re reading right now has, almost certainly, arrived to you in a compressed form. It was worth my time making this work, because my site now displays more quickly on your screen and the load on my server is reduced.

      All of which makes me greatly amused to see that in 2025 we are now sometimes doing the very opposite.

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Airline Price-Gouging Could Become the New Normal

      Led by Delta, many airlines are now working with AI firms to expand the industry’s use of big data for price setting. Using new surveillance techniques, these firms exploit consumer privacy to set “personalized” prices to jack up fares.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Influencers target Orthodox Jews in water pistol stunt

      “We are also aware that this is not the first time that one of these men has targeted Jews for videos on social [control] media.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Teenagers no longer answer the phone: Is it a lack of manners or a new trend?

      For teenagers, voice calls are no longer the default mode of communication. Instead, they are becoming the exception, used in very specific contexts, like emergency situations, moments of distress or when immediate comfort is required. In all other cases, texting is the preferred option. The reason isn't laziness: written communication—text messages, voice notes, or DMs on Snapchat and Instagram—offers a completely different relationship to time, emotions and self-control.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Fortra LLC ☛ Ransomware plunges insurance company into bankruptcy

      A company, which offered insurance and repair services to cell phone owners across Germany, and generated revenues of up to 70 million Euros (US $80 million) has collapsed following a ransomware attack.

      Einhaus Gruppe, located in Hamm, Nordrhein-Westfalen, was founded in 2003 and had over 5000 sales partners across Germany.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • New Yorker ☛ The Internet Wants to Check Your I.D.

      Shoshana Weissmann, the director of digital media at the R Street Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, told me that these regulations might superficially seem similar to a liquor store or a night club requiring patrons to show I.D.—just another minor annoyance that we accept as routine. A store clerk glancing at an I.D., however, is very different from a website storing personal data or tracking users’ activities. As the Tea leak demonstrated, any age-verification system that stores user data comes with vulnerabilities and risks compromising users’ privacy. In short, the new safety laws eliminate the relative anonymity that we have continued to expect online even as social media has collapsed the boundaries between our physical and digital lives. Some users will surely decide that it’s not worth sacrificing privacy for access to online material, which means that fewer people who may benefit from a putatively sensitive space, such as an online A.A. community, will ultimately access it. As Goldman put it, “Age-authentication mandates shrink the [Internet] for adults.” The chilling effect will be felt especially among those who lack proper identification credentials and among publishers who can’t easily afford verification software, without which they risk incurring steep fines.

    • Techdirt ☛ No, The UK’s Online Safety Act Doesn’t Make Children Safer Online

      Young people should be able to access information, speak to each other and to the world, play games, and express themselves online without the government making decisions about what speech is permissible. But in one of the latest misguided attempts to protect children online, internet users of all ages in the UK are being forced to prove their age before they can access millions of websites under the country’s Online Safety Act (OSA).

      The legislation attempts to make the UK the “the safest place” in the world to be online by placing a duty of care on online platforms to protect their users from harmful content. It mandates that any site accessible in the UK—including social media, search engines, music sites, and adult content providers—enforce age checks to prevent children from seeing harmful content. This is defined in three categories, and failure to comply could result in fines of up to 10% of global revenue or courts blocking services: [...]

    • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - What Is Your Digital Footprint and How to Change It?

      It’s hard to be fully aware of how much data a single person produces just by connecting to the [Internet]. Every device, account, and third-party service collects some, if not multiple, types of data on its users. After just a few days, your digital trace starts to develop. After a few years, it becomes a very definable footprint of your habits, information, and online activity.

      Most people average around 1,800 online traces per month, contributing to their digital footprint. While a lot of the information you leave behind online seems harmless on its own, it could lead to serious consequences in the wrong hands. This goes beyond just privacy concerns to include an array of unsavoury outcomes.

    • Manton Reece ☛ UK's Online Safety Act

      Most people agree that it’s reasonable for someone working behind the counter at an old-fashioned adult video store to ask to see an ID before a young person checks out with their purchase. Glance at the ID, notice they’re old enough, hand the ID back, all good. For buying alcohol at a grocery store, maybe the employee also keys in the birthday on the point-of-sale system.

      But it would be a huge overreach to also photocopy the ID and file it away in the store, forever, where nearly anyone could get access to it, and where it was connected to a database of purchases. Customers would be very anxious about that. That is what it’s like to be asked to show an ID online. We need to be extra careful with privacy online because the default is to store way more information than in the real world.

    • Don Marti ☛ you gotta FIGHT for your RIGHT to not read privacy policies

      So if you don’t see the link, do not go read the privacy policy. Privacy policies, at best, are lists of all the creepy stuff that the site’s lawyer’s other clients got caught doing. And often they’re just some boilerplate that came with the CMS and that the site owner hasn’t looked at in a while. You’re unlikely to get anything useful out of reading one. (If they did put some malarkey about "how you can exercise your rights under the law" in there without actually, you know, obeying the law, it’s even less worth reading.)

      Instead, if the site is owned by a company big enough to be covered by CCPA/CPRA: [...]

    • Graham Cluley ☛ Hospital fined after patient data found in street food wrappers • Graham Cluley

      I’m a big fan of recycling. But what about recycling our private data? Like medical records?

• Defence/Aggression

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Faux Intellectuals of Silicon Valley

    Thiel doesn't merely theorize about replacing human judgment with superior systems—he builds them. His Palantir Technologies is working with the Trump Administration to compile digital dossiers on every American citizen, creating surveillance infrastructure that makes the Stasi look like amateur hour. Under Trump, Palantir gained unprecedented access to federal databases, combining immigration records, financial transactions, social media activity, and behavioral patterns into algorithmic profiles designed to predict and control human behavior.

  • The Nation ☛ We Need to Stop the Nuclear Arms Race Before It Stops Us

    The rhetorical combat between Trump and Medvedev underscored the risk that a war of words between Washington and Moscow could escalate into a real war—a war between nations with enough nuclear firepower to end life as we know it.

  • Common Dreams ☛ ICAN chief at 80th Hiroshima commemoration calls for immediate action to eliminate nuclear weapons

    The survivors, or hibakusha as they are known in Japan, whose average age is now 86, were almost all children in 1945 and have campaigned for decades to alert the world to the continuing existential threat that nuclear weapons pose and, 80 years on from the trauma they suffered, have renewed their demand for their abolition.

  • CBC ☛ Hiroshima 80th anniversary commemorated amid worries of renewed nuclear threats

    With the number of survivors rapidly declining and their average age now exceeding 86, the anniversary is considered the last milestone event for many of them.

    "There will be nobody left to pass on this sad and painful experience in 10 years or 20 years," Minoru Suzuto, a 94-year-old survivor, said after he kneeled down to pray at the cenotaph. "That's why I want to share as much as I can."

  • Politico ☛ Europeans feel meh about democracy, study finds

    The study found that democratic values are the strongest in Sweden, where 52 percent value democracy. In all other countries, less than half of the population favor consistent democracy, falling as low as 30 percent in France and Romania. In Spain, only one in four consistently voiced support for democracy.

  • European Movement Internationl ☛ European Movement International Defance Poll June 2025 [PDF]

    Only just over a third (36%) of respondents are consistent supporters of democracy, with respondents in Sweden (52%), Germany (42%) and Italy (42%) most likely to fall under this bracket. Those in Spain are least likely to be consistent supporters of democracy (25%).

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump’s Least Favorite Part of Constitution Deleted From Govt. Website

    Earlier in the month, Trump was asked about due process, and whether as president he has an obligation to uphold the Constitution. “I don’t know,” he replied.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Habeas Corpus and other provisions removed from official website of U.S. Constitution

    Constitution.congress.gov is the U.S. Congress's official website presenting the Constitution of the United States of America. Visitors noticed this morning that passages from it were missing, as can be shown by comparison with snapshots of the page at the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Sections 9 and 10 are removed completely, as is much of Section 8.

  • France24 ☛ 'The memories of the horrors of nuclear war and radiation seem to be lost on today's leaders'

    Hiroshima on Wednesday marked the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the western Japanese city, with many aging survivors expressing frustration about the growing support of global leaders for nuclear weapons as a deterrence. The bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, destroyed the city and killed 140,000 people. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending World War II and Japan’s nearly half-century of aggression in Asia. For in-depth analysis and a deeper perspective, FRANCE 24's Stuart Norval welcomes Nicole Grajewski, Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her focus is on Russian nuclear strategy, Iran’s nuclear decision-making and nuclear deterrence.

  • France24 ☛ Space race: US aims to beat out China and Russia with nuclear reactor on the Moon

    NASA’s interim chief Sean Duffy has made deploying a nuclear reactor on the Moon his top priority, framing the effort as a "second space race". Washington hopes to beat Beijing and Moscow to powering a future lunar base with nuclear energy.

  • The Straits Times ☛ US to ease human rights criticism of El Salvador, Israel and Russia, WaPo reports

    The Forrest Dump administration plans to scale back criticism of El Salvador, Israel and Russia over human rights, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing drafts of the State Department's annual human rights reports.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Hiroshima marks 80 years as US-Russia nuclear tensions rise

    The attacks on the city and Nagasaki remain the only time atomic bombs have been used in wartime.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man’s sharp India criticism corners Modi as rift deepens

    Dihydroxyacetone Man lashes out at India over Russian oil imports and failure to seal trade deal with New Delhi.

  • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man’s Tariff Gamble Puts America’s Ties With India at Risk

    As the president pursues his goals on Russia and trade, America’s relationship with an important partner in Asia could end up as collateral damage.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania resumes Radio Svoboda Russian-language broadcasts

      The Lithuanian Radio and Television Centre (Telecentras) resumed rebroadcasting Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Russian-language service Radio Svoboda on medium wave on August 1.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania’s new intelligence chief on Russian sabotage attacks and regional threats

      Recently appointed Director of Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD), Remigijus Bridikis, like many intelligence officers, is not one to chatter. When he does speak, he chooses his words carefully.

    • Zimbabwe ☛ 800+ Sign Up as Free Cybersecurity Training Officially Launches, But Can Cyberus Deliver Its $100m Vision?

      It’s not every day you see an acting Russian ambassador, the Minister of ICT and her deputy, and hopeful Zimbabwean youth all in one room [...] The Russian government was represented too, through acting ambassador Sergey Kuzin, fitting, given Cyberus’ Russian roots and the future plans to fly top-performing students to Russia.

    • The Strategist ☛ India, the US and the Quad: managing tensions to meet the China challenge

      India’s continued purchase of weapons and energy from Russia is raising difficulties in its relationship with the United States that are extending across the Indo-Pacific. This is not just a bilateral irritant.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Dispatch from the Russian border: The Curonian Spit and the contest of the Baltic Sea

      A recent visit to Lithuania’s border with Kaliningrad reveals how the Baltic Sea has become one of Europe’s most contested maritime zones.

    • Defence Web ☛ Exercise Mosi III set down for November

      The third iteration of the tri-nation naval exercise Mosi, between Russia, China and South Africa, is set down for Western Cape waters in November.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Russian, Chinese navies to conduct joint patrols in Asia-Pacific, Interfax reports

      Russian and Chinese naval vessels will conduct joint patrols in the Asia-Pacific following recent exercises in the Sea of Japan, Russia's Interfax reported on Wednesday.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Atlantic ☛ Trump Keeps Making the Epstein Saga Worse

    The president keeps trying to change the subject from Jeffrey Epstein, but his tactics are only making it worse.

• Environment

  • Cost Rica ☛ Plastic Pollution Costs $1.5 Trillion Annually

    Amid significant geopolitical and trade tensions, this additional negotiation session, called INC-5.2, was convened after a failed round last December in Busan, South Korea. A group of oil-producing countries blocked any progress at that time.

  • International Business Times ☛ Why Are Blue Whales Going Silent? Scientists Reveal The Heartbreaking Reason

    Experts now warn that increasing ocean noise pollution may be driving blue whales towards silence, with grave implications for their survival.

  • NDTV ☛ In Pics: France Fights Biggest Wildfire Of The Year, Burns Through 27,000 Acres, Kills 1

    A wildfire in southern France which started on Tuesday injured nine people and burned through 12,000 hectares (27,000 acres) of vegetation after slowing down into Wednesday, according to local officials. 1800 firefighters have been battling to extinguish it as the fire is still threatening several villages in the Aude department. 25 homes have been destroyed or damaged in the southern Aude department because of the fire.

  • France24 ☛ Massive wildfire in France leaves at least one dead, nine injured

    Firefighters in southern France were battling on Wednesday to contain the country’s biggest wildfire so far this year, said local authorities. At least one person has died so far in the wildfire, while nine others were injured. More than 1,800 firefighters have been deployed to tackle the blaze.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Growing shade trees can cut chocolate's environmental impact

    The study found increasing tree cover on cocoa farms across the two countries to a minimum of 30% would sequester up to 10.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) each year over the next few decades. CO2e is a standard measure used to compare emissions from different greenhouse gases based on their global warming potential.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ NASA supercomputers take on life near Greenland's most active glacier

    Previous work using NASA satellite data had found that the rate of phytoplankton growth in Arctic waters surged 57% between 1998 and 2018 alone. An infusion of nitrate from the depths would be especially pivotal to Greenland's phytoplankton in summer, after most nutrients have been consumed by prior spring blooms. But the hypothesis has been hard to test along the coast, where the remote terrain and icebergs as big as city blocks complicate long-term observations.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Journalist missing in Norwegian wilderness found in good health

      Luhn is an experienced mountain walker, fit and was well equipped for the journey. Among numerous awards, Luhn has two Emmy nominations. He was based for many years in Moscow, then Istanbul, and now lives in the UK where he specialises in climate journalism and is a Pulitzer Center Ocean Reporting Network fellow.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Messengers of the Eternal: Trees in Life and Literature

  • Overpopulation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Is Iran running out of water?

      Tehran city, which is home to more than 9 million people, is located on the northern edge of the central Iranian desert zone. Water scarcity has been a central issue for the city administration since at least 1969.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Macworld ☛ Apple CEO Tim Cook presents special gold gift to Donald Trump

    Cook was at the White House to announce “a new $100 billion commitment to America,” according to an Apple press release. The new investment comes after Apple announced in February a $500 billion investment in the U.S.—that’s all the company’s U.S. spending, not just manufacturing—over the next four years.

  • The Verge ☛ Apple announces $100 billion US manufacturing plan after pressure from Donald Trump | The Verge

    It’s not clear whether Apple’s new promises will satiate Trump, who believes Apple can make its iPhones in the US. Apple has shifted some of its manufacturing out of China and into Vietnam and India in recent years in an attempt to avoid tariffs and supply chain disruptions. Trump has criticized Apple for not bringing the work back to the US instead, and threatened the company with a 25 percent tariff if it doesn’t manufacture more products domestically.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Tim Cook Gives Donald Trump a Gold Trophy and, Legally Speaking, Expects Nothing in Return – Pixel Envy

    Call it whatever you want, but Cook now finds himself trying to appease the presidents of both the United States and China. The goals of each are in opposition, yet either one could make a move imperilling Apple. When his time at Apple ends, Cook may wish to be remembered as a diplomat, but that word will always carry the vibe of euphemism.

  • India Times ☛ Apple plans to invest another $100 billion in US manufacturing amid tariff pressure

    The development comes after Cook, in an internal meeting with employees, highlighted that the company will take a $1.1 billion hit this quarter due to Trump-era tariffs, even as App Store revenue surged in double digits last quarter despite regulatory pressure from the European Union and other global authorities.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Microsoft to reportedly tighten office attendance policy: Employees could be asked to..

    This would be a major change, considering Microsoft has had a flexible policy that allows employees to work remotely for 50% of their time. Under this new policy, employees could be asked to return to the office for a minimum of three days a week.

  • India Times ☛ Google commits $1 billion for AI training at US universities

    More than 100 universities have signed on to the initiative so far, including some of the nation's largest public university systems such as Texas A&M and the University of North Carolina.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • RTL ☛ Technology far from error-free: Grok, is that Gaza? AI image checks mislocate news photographs

      The AI bot's untrue response was widely shared online and a left-wing pro-Palestinian French lawmaker, Aymeric Caron, was accused of peddling disinformation on the Israel-Hamas war for posting the photo.

      At a time when internet users are turning to AI to verify images more and more, the furore shows the risks of trusting tools like Grok, when the technology is far from error-free.

    • CBC ☛ Young people more prone to believe in conspiracies, research shows

      These are all conspiracies with no basis in fact, says University of Ottawa professor Daniel Stockemer — but his research shows that theories like them are gaining traction among young people.

      In fact, people younger than 35 are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than other age groups, according to a recent study by Stockemer and co-author Jean-Nicolas Bordeleau that surveyed more than 380,000 people internationally.

      The research was recently published in the journal Political Psychology.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Pennsylvania’s blasphemy laws are unconstitutional and must be repealed | Opinion

    Here’s a fascinating piece of Pennsylvania history most people don’t know: The state still has an anti-blasphemy law on the books that dates back to the 1700s.

    Pennsylvania is one of just six states that has anti-blasphemy laws, alongside Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming. These outdated statutes originate from America’s colonial era, before the U.S. Constitution, when church and state were entangled and religious orthodoxy was enforced by law.

  • [Old] Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ We swear, blasphemy laws still on the books by Andrew Seidel — Freedom From Religion Foundation

    Despite the numerous cases overturning blasphemy laws and the fact that “it is proper to regard the statute before us not only as obsolete, but as repealed by implication in such essential parts as an advanced and enlightened civilization justifies with due regard for the personal liberties of the citizen,” several states still have them, although they’re rarely enforced and would fall to a constitutional challenge. The following are still on the books: [...]

  • Sean Monahan ☛ Pirate Internet

    What all of these things amount to is a "chilling effect" on the [Internet], a retreat. Something has shifted.

  • Techdirt ☛ Mastercard Claims NSFW Game Bans Aren’t From Them, Valve Explains How Mastercard Launders Its Control

    This whole attempted censorship of adult games on gaming platforms is becoming a thing. Collective Shout—a group out of Australia that wraps itself in a feminist flag while behaving like the religious right to get anything it doesn’t like out of the video game industry—put on a pressure campaign with payment processors, writing in to demand that processing companies stop working with the likes of itch.io and Steam over games on those platforms the group has decided are unacceptable. Couched in the claim that the group was primarily going after games that focused on horrid things like “rape” and “incest,” the end result was those two platforms delisting or deindexing all kinds of adult games that either don’t include that type of content or—and here’s why free speech is tricky—approach those topics not to promote them, but to grapple with the horrors of them in an artistic manner.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • India Times ☛ How Hulk Hogan destroyed Gawker — after tag teaming with Peter Thiel

    The lawsuit, Bollea v. Gawker, ended in a $140 million judgment that bankrupted the site.It later emerged that tech billionaire Peter Thiel — whom Gawker had outed in 2007 — had secretly funded the legal assault.

  • ABC ☛ Hulk Hogan's sex tape trial pitted the First Amendment against the privacy rights of celebs

    Putting Gawker out of business, it also ensured Hogan, who died on Thursday at age 71, would have an indelible impact on media law.

    Ironically, for the MAGA supporter, it would also unwittingly pave the way for Donald Trump's court cases against "fake news", including the Wall Street Journal and CBS.

  • CJR ☛ ‘Pretend Somebodies’

    Hogan’s lawsuit is, obviously, a huge part of his legacy; the Gawker verdict was historic, and the chilling effect it engendered was, and likely remains, very real. Still, the suit might form a bigger part of Thiel’s obituary when that’s eventually written (assuming the cryogenics don’t work). And if Hogan hadn’t sued a news site out of existence, it seems likely to me that someone else would have—perhaps a different plaintiff against Gawker, bankrolled by Thiel. At the very least, Hogan didn’t invent this age of escalating press threats, even if he did come to embody it (and will surely continue to do so for generations of aspiring media lawyers).

  • New Zealand Herald ☛ How Kiwi billionaire Peter Thiel bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit that bankrupted controversial US media company - NZ Herald

  • Fast Company ☛ Hulk Hogan changed media forever with his Gawker lawsuit - Fast Company

    Perhaps more shocking than the verdict itself, however, was the revelation of who paid for the lawsuit in the first place: Two months after the smoke cleared, Forbes reported that tech billionaire Peter Thiel had been bankrolling Bollea. The former PayPal Mafia member spent roughly $10 million on the lawsuit, apparently with the aim of destroying Gawker, as revenge for outing him as gay in a 2007 post.

  • Associated Press ☛ Hulk Hogan won one of his most notable victories in a Florida courtroom.

    It also ensured Hogan, who died Thursday at age 71, and his legal team would have a long-term impact on media law. The case showed that, in certain circumstances, celebrities could persuade a jury that their right to privacy outweighs the freedom of the press — even when the published material was true.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Cuts Kill The Corporation For Public Broadcasting, Harming All Of Us

    After the White House falsely deemed NPR and PBS a “grift” last April, Republicans successfully pushed for a Senate vote that eliminated the CPB’s entire budget in July. That vote rescinded the $1.1 billion that Congress had allocated to CPB to fund public broadcasting during 2026 and 2027.

    In a statement, the CPB said the cuts, which “excluded funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades,” were impossible to survive: [...]

  • Press Gazette ☛ Defence tech start-up Resilience Media expands with seed funding

    Former Techcrunch staffers have joined a new title covering the defence tech industry which has just expanded after a successful fundraising round.

    Resilience Media has an editorial team of around ten people and is publishing a mixture of news and thought leadership articles on Substack. The title charges subscribers £8 per month or £80 per year.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Why parts of Tom’s Hardware now have a paywall

    You may have noticed that parts of Tom’s Hardware now have a paywall. This is because we have now launched a beta of Tom’s Hardware Premium, which offers paywalled subscriber-only content.

    Before we continue to explain how these newer parts of Tom’s Hardware function, above all else, the articles that you already know and love will remain free to access. After reading five articles in a 30-day window, you will be asked to register for a free Tom’s Hardware account, if you wish to do so.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Futurism ☛ Former Google Exec Warns That If You Have a Good Job Now, You Should Be Terrified of AI

    During a podcast appearance this week, Google's former chief business officer, Mo Gawdat, warned that AI could be poised to wipe out white-collar jobs, including cushy gigs like software developers and CEOs.

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Who Got Arrested in the Raid on the XSS Crime Forum?

    I happened to be lurking on Flycracker’s private cybercrime forum when his heroin-framing plan was carried out, and called the police myself before the smack eventually arrived in the U.S. Mail. Vovnenko was later arrested for unrelated cybercrime activities, extradited to the United States, convicted, and deported after a 16-month stay in the U.S. prison system [on several occasions, he has expressed heartfelt apologies for the incident, and we have since buried the hatchet].

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Dan Q ☛ Internet Services^H Provider

    Do you remember when your domestic ISP – Internet Service Provider – used to be an Internet Services Provider? They were only sometimes actually called that, but what I mean is: when ISPs provided more than one Internet service? Not just connectivity, but… more.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Will the UK CMA’s changes to its merger rules deliver?

  The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is trying to reduce the impact of its work on legitimate economic activity.

• Ben Werdmuller ☛ Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

  It’s interesting to watch various national technology policies build on each other, learning from their failures and unintended effects in order to be more effective.

  Here, Japan’s legislation has learned from EU rules in order to more effectively ensure that Apple allows non-Safari engines to be used in iOS browser apps: [...]

• Open Web Advocacy ☛ Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

  The legislation was based on the Final Report by Japan’s Headquarters for Digital Market Competition, a report Open Web Advocacy consulted on. Our submission is available here.

  Last week, Japan published the Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA) Guidelines. These subordinate rules clarify how the Act will be interpreted and enforced. Here's what they mean for browser competition.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Police Raid IPTV Pirates, Freeze $6m in Assets, Seize Vehicles & Real Estate

    Brazil's National Telecommunications Agency has reported a significant operation targeting a group who smuggled pirate IPTV devices from neighboring Paraguay, for distribution and nationwide sale in Brazil. Thirty-eight police officers executed 12 warrants, seizing vehicles, real estate, and other property, with assets worth up to US$6m frozen by a court.

  • Rob Knight ☛ Perplexity Doesn’t Give a Shit About Consent

    I linked to this post from CloudFlare yesterday where they showed, based on the data they have, that Perplexity is using all sorts of shitty tactics to get around robots.txt[1] and other blocks based on user agent.

    Perplexity then put up their own blog post where they used the best part of 1000 words to explain they either don't understand consent, or don't care.

  • Stuff NZ ☛ Kim Dotcom says he can walk ‘a bit’ after stroke last year

    Kim Dotcom has given an update on his health following his life-threatening stroke last year.

    The internet entrepreneur posted on the X social media platform to say he’s making “good progress” in his recovery, and can now “walk a bit” after being confined to a wheelchair.

    “I use the toilet and the shower again,” he said in the Saturday post.

    “My speech is still impaired and my memory loss is concerning.”