GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • It's FOSS ☛ Intel's Linux Exodus: CPU Temperature Monitoring and Critical Drivers Orphaned

    What is happening at Intel?

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• FSFE

  • FSFE ☛ 2025-08-12 [Older] After 100 days: German government falls short on Free Software

Leftovers

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Blog comments, a must-have or fun extra?

  I’m participating in Blaugust this month and one of the recurring discussions that has risen this year again is whether a blog needs to have a comment section to be considered a blog. There’s been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere and even more in our Discord server and the discussion has spanned across many aspects. Originally, I took part in the discussion in Discord only as that’s been a discussion I haven’t seen anywhere else. But eventually, I also wanted to bring in my thoughts into the public, hence, you’re reading this.

• Adriaan Roselli ☛ My Thoughts on the State of Surveys

  Every few months there’s another State of Something survey. As of this week, the State of CSS 2025 survey results have just become available and the State of HTML 2025 survey is wrapping up. This post is skewed to those, touches on more, and is rather disjointed. Looking over the shoulder of a woman writing on a form attached to a clipboard; the form has a giant logo that reads, “State of Survey 2025,” in a neon green diamond with purple wrappers, very much in the style of ‘State of’ survey logos. “2012 Oregon City Schools Field Trip” by Ohio Sea Grant, CC BY-NC 2.0, modified to add the logo.

  I should disclose that I am broadly wary of surveys. I am also not a researcher. My thoughts here are mine alone and driven as much by gut as anything else.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ Why being open about science can make people trust it less - and what to do about it

    One way scientists are trying to build more trust is by being more open and honest about themselves and their work. The idea of “open science” means sharing data, how experiments are done and even results from tests that didn’t go as planned. Scientists are also being asked to tell people if they have any financial incentives that might affect the quality of their work.

    But as a philosopher of science and public policy, I argue that some forms of openness can actually reduce trust.

  • Science News ☛ A 104-centimeter-long hair could rewrite recordkeeping in Inca society

    But a single strand of hair woven into the cord tells a very different story. A chemical analysis reveals the owner’s diet and likely location, pegging the person as a commoner from the Andean highlands, researchers report August 13 in Science Advances. If true, the results challenge the notion that Inca elites were the only ones literate enough to understand their recordkeeping systems.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ A couple videos about bad science

    Anyway, just my regular reminder to be careful where you get your science info.

• Career/Education

  • Kevin Kelly ☛ The Technium: Everything I Know about Self-Publishing

    In my professional life, I’ve had several bestselling books published by New York publishers, as well as many other titles that sold modestly. I have also self-published a bunch of books, including one bestseller on Amazon and two massive hit Kickstarter-funded books. I have had lots of foreign edition books released by other publishers around the world, including bestsellers in those countries. Every year I also publish a few private books to give away. I’ve contracted books to be printed in the US and overseas. I’ve sold big coffee-table masterpieces and tiny text booklets. Together with partners, I run some notable newsletters, a very popular website, and a podcast with 420 episodes. I accumulated followers on various platforms. I’m often asked for advice about how to go about publishing today, with all its options, so here is everything I have learned about publishing and self-publishing so far.

• Hardware

  • Wired ☛ Why Trump Flip-Flopped on Nvidia Selling H20 Chips to China

    On one hand, this is a simple story about a president who appears to have been influenced by a powerful executive lobbying in his company’s interest. But beneath the surface, there’s a much more interesting and complicated saga about how we got here.

  • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ My favorite mouse costs less than USD 10 ⁄ Manual do Usuário

    I even understand those who buy a mouse full of buttons and functions because they need or make use of the extras. Gamers, video editors… who else? For everyone else, knowledge workers who spend the day filling spreadsheets, writing documents and scrolling web pages and *.pdf files? Maybe I’m underestimating the superpowers of an expensive mouse, the extra buttons and turbocharged wheels. Maybe not.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Lee Peterson ☛ I wouldn’t want to read my blog either when it reflects my own mental health trends

    I’m not going to promise I’ll only write positive stuff but I am going to think before I post on days I know I’m not up for it and most probably letting emotions drive what pops up on the blog.

• Proprietary

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Critical Zoom Vulnerability CVE-2025-49457 Poses Risks

    The flaw, identified as /CVE-2025-49457, has been classified with a CVSS score of 9.6, signaling its high severity. The vulnerability could allow unauthenticated attackers to exploit a weak search path issue within the Zoom application, enabling them to escalate privileges without requiring user interaction.

  • Joel Chrono ☛ Early PSP memories

    However, I knew about the PSP long before I got one, since a couple of friends or family members had them, giving me a chance to experience glimpses of its greatness. In this post, I decided to write down some of them, not just for your pleasure, but for my future self as well.

  • [Old] US Library of Congress ☛ All Hyped Up for HyperCard: Further Adventures with an Apple Legacy Format

    As part of our work as Junior Fellows, we have been involved in research on HyperCard, a discontinued Apple program used to design a wide range of computer applications in the late-1980s and 1990s. We’ve built on the previous efforts of Kathleen O’Neill and Chad Conrady, archives specialists in the Manuscript Division, who also engaged with HyperCard files during their time as Staff Innovators with LC Labs in 2020. Chad and Kathleen’s project, Born Digital Access Now!, focused on reviewing the Manuscript Division’s born-digital files through a combination of file analysis and file emulation. Their work on this project has been documented in a number of previous Signal blog postings, including: Introducing the 2020 Staff Innovators! (July 20, 2020), Analyzing the Born-Digital Archive (Kathleen O’Neill, October 22, 2020), and An Archivist’s Perspective on Legacy Files (Chad Conrady, November 16, 2020).

  • Notebook Check ☛ Lawsuit underway against Microsoft over end of Windows 10 support

    Microsoft is facing a lawsuit in the US over the end of support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. The lawsuit is directed against the forced replacement of Windows 10 and its consequences for users and businesses.

  • Game Rant ☛ Former PlayStation Boss Throws Shade at Xbox Game Pass

    Former PlayStation Worldwide Studios' chairman Shawn Layden has recently criticized gaming subscription models such as Xbox Game Pass. The former Sony executive defended the notion that Xbox Game Pass and services with similar business models are detrimental to the industry, negatively affecting companies and developers.

  • PC Gamer ☛ Subscription services like Xbox Game Pass turn developers into 'wage slaves', says former PlayStation boss

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Unmitigated Risk ☛ From Persistent to Ephemeral: Why AI Agents Need Fresh Identity for Every Mission

      This behavior is entirely predictable given how we train AI systems. They’re designed to optimize objectives and have no real-world consequences for what they do. Chess agents discover exploits rather than learning to play properly, reinforcement learning agents find loopholes in reward systems, and optimization AIs pursue metrics in ways that technically satisfy objectives but miss the intent.

      When you give an AI agent access to your infrastructure with the goal of “improve system performance,” you can’t predict whether it will optimize efficiency or find creative shortcuts that break other systems, like dropping your database altogether. Unlike traditional workloads that execute predictable code, AI agents are accumulators with emergent behaviors that evolve during execution, accumulate context across interactions, and can be hijacked through prompt injection attacks that persist across sessions.

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ The famous "bottomless pit" AI greentext is fake

      In other words, both the setup (the writer becoming a regular pit supervisor) and the punchline (the new pit being bottomless) were effectively provided by the prompter, not generated by the AI model. To be fair, GPT-3 did a pretty credible job filling in the rest. But it didn’t tell the joke. And (if the bottomless pit example weren’t now in the training data), I bet any new language model would do just fine filling in the blanks with something similarly funny.

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?

      There are many interesting questions to ask about chain-of-thought: how accurately it reflects the actual process going on, why training it “from scratch” often produces chains that switch fluidly between multiple languages, and so on. However, people keep asking the least interesting question possible: whether chain-of-thought reasoning is “really” reasoning.

      Apple took up this question in their Illusion of Thinking paper, which I’ve already written about. Now there’s a paper from Arizona State University that’s getting some attention called Is Chain-of-Thought Reasoning of LLMs a Mirage? As will become clear, I do not think this is a very good paper.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ LLM Coding Integrity Breach

      This is an integrity failure. Specifically, it’s a failure of processing integrity. And while we can think of particular patches that alleviate this exact failure, the larger problem is much harder to solve.

    • Flyngpenguin ☛ Let AI Dangle: Why the sketch.dev Integrity Breach Demands Human Accountability, Not Technical Cages | flyingpenguin

      Today, we face a familiar crisis of contextualized intelligence, but this time it’s not human code that’s ambiguous, it’s the derived machine code. The recent sketch.dev outage, caused by an LLM switching “break” to “continue” during code refactor, represents something far more serious than a simple bug.

    • Matt Webb ☛ Me talking about AI elsewhere (Interconnected)

      I’ve been popping up in a few places lately. Here’s a round-up: a talk, an academic paper, and a blog post.

    • Jono Alderson ☛ On propaganda, perception, and reputation hacking

      For the last two decades, SEO has been a battle for position. In the age of agentic AI, it becomes a battle for perception.

      When an LLM – or whatever powers your future search interface – decides “who” is trustworthy, useful, or relevant, it isn’t weighing an objective truth. It’s synthesising a reality from fragments of information, patterns in human behaviour, and historical residue. Once the model holds a view, it tends to repeat and reinforce it.

      That’s propaganda - and the challenge is ensuring the reality the machine constructs reflects you at your best.

    • David Rosenthal ☛ The Drugs Are Taking Hold

      In The Selling Of AI I compared the market strategy behind the AI bubble to the drug-dealer's algorithm, "the first one's free". As the drugs take hold of an addict, three things happen:

      • Their price rises.
      • The addict needs bigger doses for the same effect.
      • Their deleterious effects kick in.
      

      As expected, this what is happening to AI. Follow me below the fold for the details.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ DEFRA says: delete your emails to … save water?!

      You might think the issue involves the government-advocated data centres that use vast amounts of fresh water each day for cooling. Or perhaps the water companies that leak vast amounts of water and just don’t do maintenance.

      No, it’s you. Personally. You’re the problem. Not them.

      [...]

      But either way, the amount of power does not depend how much data’s stored on the disk. It just doesn’t. It has no relation.

  • Social Control Media

    • [Repeat]Ars Technica ☛ Study: Social media probably can’t be fixed

      The results were far from encouraging. Only some interventions showed modest improvements. None were able to fully disrupt the fundamental mechanisms producing the dysfunctional effects. In fact, some interventions actually made the problems worse. For example, chronological ordering had the strongest effect on reducing attention inequality, but there was a tradeoff: It also intensified the amplification of extreme content. Bridging algorithms significantly weakened the link between partisanship and engagement and modestly improved viewpoint diversity, but it also increased attention inequality. Boosting viewpoint diversity had no significant impact at all.

      So is there any hope of finding effective intervention strategies to combat these problematic aspects of social media? Or should we nuke our social media accounts altogether and go live in caves? Ars caught up with Törnberg for an extended conversation to learn more about these troubling findings.

    • arXiv ☛ [2508.03385] Can We Fix Social Media? Testing Prosocial Interventions using Generative Social Simulation

      Social [control] media platforms have been widely linked to societal harms, including rising polarization and the erosion of constructive debate. Can these problems be mitigated through prosocial interventions? We address this question using a novel method - generative social simulation - that embeds Large Language Models within Agent-Based Models to create socially rich synthetic platforms. We create a minimal platform where agents can post, repost, and follow others. We find that the resulting following-networks reproduce three well-documented dysfunctions: (1) partisan echo chambers; (2) concentrated influence among a small elite; and (3) the amplification of polarized voices - creating a 'social media prism' that distorts political discourse. We test six proposed interventions, from chronological feeds to bridging algorithms, finding only modest improvements - and in some cases, worsened outcomes. These results suggest that core dysfunctions may be rooted in the feedback between reactive engagement and network growth, raising the possibility that meaningful reform will require rethinking the foundational dynamics of platform architecture.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Wired ☛ The First Federal Cybersecurity Disaster of Trump 2.0 Has Arrived

      The breach of the US Courts records system came to light more than a month after the attack was discovered. Details about what was exposed—and who’s responsible—remain unclear.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Security Week ☛ Passkey Login Bypassed via WebAuthn Process Manipulation

      However, researchers at SquareX showed at DEF CON over the weekend that under certain circumstances passkeys can be bypassed. It’s worth pointing out that the attack does not target passkey cryptography, but rather it shows the potential for a compromised browser environment to manipulate the process that passkeys rely on.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ What Exif Data Reveals About Your Site

      I recently came across https://theyseeyourphotos.com/, a hidden ad landing page acting as a small tool that shows your photos reveal a lot of private information for bots to ingest. Ente ad and AI guesstimations of people and locations in photos aside, these crawlers also scan your multimedia files for the presence of Exif data. Funny that the Wikipedia article categorizes Exif as part of digital forensic science, as that’s basically what it is: it leaves traces of information behind we often don’t think about.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: “Privacy preserving age verification” is bullshit

      For politicians to make good policy, they don't need to be technical experts: they need to have solid, independent, well-resourced expert agencies. Those would be the very agencies that Trump and Musk have DOGEd into oblivion, which is pretty ominous, since the work of expert agencies is how you avoid dying of food poisoning, water poisoning, air poisoning, collapsing buildings, faulty antilock brakes, train explosions and plane-crashes.

      But when it comes to tech policy, politicians get it all so goddamned wrong. Partly that's because the cartel of tech companies lies to them like crazy, even under oath, leading to a kind of nihilistic refusal to believe any expert input. Mark Zuckerberg wants you to think that's it's inconceivable for you to have a social life without him eavesdropping on it, and any rule demanding this is a farce, like a demand to make water that's not wet: [...]

• Defence/Aggression

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Ex-Intel engineer sentenced for sharing secrets with Microsoft — gets two years of probation and $34k fine for stealing 'thousands of files' that may have landed them a new job with the company

    An ex-Intel employee has been sentenced to two years' probation and fined $34,472 for pilfering “thousands of files,” which were reportedly instrumental to him landing a new position at Microsoft. Oregon Live says that Varun Gupta, who had been a product marketing engineer at Intel for a decade, aided Microsoft in significant processor purchasing negotiations with Intel. A custodial sentence was offset by the fine and the judge’s belief that Gupta had suffered enough due to a loss of reputation.

  • [Old] The Oregonian ☛ Ex-Intel worker pleads guilty to stealing trade secrets - oregonlive.com

    While working for Microsoft, he connected a hard drive that contained Intel material to his Microsoft-issued computer more than 100 times and accessed 179 documents and transferred eight Intel proprietary documents to his Microsoft-issued computer in February 2020, according to the plea agreement.

  • The Record ☛ Norway police believe pro-Russian [attackers] were behind April dam sabotage

    Local media previously reported that the [attackers] breached the dam’s control system, opening valves for four hours and sending large amounts of water gushing into the Riselva River until operators regained control.

    The small dam is used for fishery purposes and not part of the power grid, but released about 500 litres (132 gallons) of water per second before the breach was detected and stopped. Officials said the attack was unsophisticated but carried symbolic weight, given Norway’s reliance on hydropower.

  • Robert Birming ☛ The unseen victories

    With all the misery in the world, it’s easy to think peace work is pointless. Beatrice said:

    “Think of all the weapons that have never been used.”

    Without those who fought for peace, the world would be far worse.

  • FAIR ☛ Trump Occupying DC: WaPo Used to Be Disgusted

    The Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher (8/12/25) envisions “a a scenario in which [Trump’s] dramatic takeover of the nation’s capital and his pronouncement that he will miraculously put an end to its crime might be greeted with more hope than skepticism or outrage.”President Donald Trump has now put troops on the District of Columbia’s streets in both of his terms. This time around, the Washington Post is less alarmed.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • CNN ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] Russian authorities detain suspect over St. Petersburg cafe blast

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini and Putin Will Meet at an Alaska Military Base Long Used to Counter Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] Estonia Expels Russian Diplomat Over Sanctions Violations

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] Norway Spy Chief Blames Russian Hackers for Dam Sabotage in April

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] Russian and Belarusian Military Exercises Next Month to Involve Oreshnik Hypersonic Missile

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] Russia Restricts Calls Via WhatsApp and Telegram, the Latest Step to Control the Internet

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] Russia Restricts Telegram, WhatsApp Calls, Citing Law Breaches

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] Russia Says Its Demands Are Unchanged: Full Ukrainian Withdrawal From Regions That Moscow Claims

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] The US-Russia Summit Marks Putin's First Trip to the West Since the War in Ukraine Began

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-12 [Older] What Russia gets out of Cheeto Mussolini-Putin meeting on Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-12 [Older] Factbox-How Much Territory Does Russia Control in Ukraine?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-12 [Older] Russia Has Won War in Ukraine, Hungary's Orban Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-12 [Older] Tusk Says Poland Must Not Let Russia Drive Wedge Between Warsaw and Kyiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-11 [Older] Factbox-A Recent History of Russian Presidential Visits to the US

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-11 [Older] Kallas Says EU Will Work on 19th Russia Sanctions Package

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-11 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says Ukraine, Russia Will Have to Swap Some Land for Peace

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-11 [Older] Zelenskiy Says 'No Sign' Russia Is Getting Set for Peace

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-10 [Older] Kallas Says Any Deal Between US and Russia Must Include Ukraine and EU

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-10 [Older] Russia and Ukraine Hold Fast to Their Demands Ahead of a Planned Putin-Cheeto Mussolini Summit

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-10 [Older] Ukraine Drone Attack Kills One, Damages Industrial Facility in Saratov, Russia Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-10 [Older] Ukraine Says It Struck Oil Refinery in Russia's Saratov Region

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] Ukraine updates: Zelenskyy vows to cede no land to Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] Will EU-India ties survive the latest Russia sanctions?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] Magnitude 6 Earthquake Strikes Russia's Kuril Islands Region, EMSC Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] Russia Welcomes US-Brokered Armenia-Azerbaijan Deal, Warns Against Foreign Meddling

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] Zelenskiy Discussed War, Russia With UK's Starmer

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-08-08 [Older] Pro-Russian hacker group more active than ever after Europol takedown

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-08 [Older] Ukraine Buries Reporter Who Died in Russian Captivity, Urges Release of Others

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-08 [Older] Ukrainian Troops Have Little Hope for Peace as Cheeto Mussolini's Deadline for Russia Arrives

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-08 [Older] US-Russia Plan Truce Deal That Would Cement Putin's Gains in Ukraine, Bloomberg Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-08 [Older] US Should Impose More Sanctions on Russia, Finland Says, as Cheeto Mussolini's Deadline Arrives

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-08 [Older] Xi Tells Putin China Welcomes Fresh US-Russia Contacts as Cheeto Mussolini Seeks End to Ukraine War

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] Ukraine updates: Cheeto Mussolini floats meeting with Putin, Zelenskyy

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] What Ukrainians expect of the Putin-Cheeto Mussolini summit

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] Europe and Kyiv Lay Out Ukraine Ceasefire Terms to Cheeto Mussolini on Call

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-13 [Older] UK Support for Ukraine 'Unwavering', Starmer Tells Cheeto Mussolini and Other Leaders

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-12 [Older] Putin-Cheeto Mussolini Ukraine summit: What's on the cards?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-12 [Older] Ukraine updates: Ukraine must 'choose its own destiny' — EU

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-12 [Older] Ukraine Will Not Pull Its Forces Out of Donbas, Zelenskiy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-12 [Older] Ukrainian Troops Doubt Quick Ceasefire, Reject Territorial Concessions

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-11 [Older] Ukraine updates: Merz invites Cheeto Mussolini, Zelenskyy to meeting

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-11 [Older] UK and Canada Say Peace Must Not Be Imposed on Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-11 [Older] European Leaders to Meet Virtually on Ukraine Before Call With Cheeto Mussolini

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-11 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says Both Sides in Ukraine War Will Need to Cede Territory

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-08-10 [Older] Schoof, EU leaders say Ukraine must decide its own future ahead of Cheeto Mussolini-Putin meeting

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-10 [Older] In Ukraine's occupied Luhansk, many 'struggling to get by'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-10 [Older] European Leaders Rally Behind Ukraine Ahead of Cheeto Mussolini-Putin Meeting

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-10 [Older] Three Killed on Ukraine's Odesa Region Beaches by Unexploded Objects

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-10 [Older] Zelenskiy Says Ukraine 'Fully Supports' Joint Statement by European Leaders

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] As Putin and Cheeto Mussolini talk Ukraine, what will be on the agenda?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] Lula and Putin Discuss Peace in Ukraine Before US Summit

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] Ukraine's Future Cannot Be Decided Without Ukrainians, France's Macron Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] Europe Stresses Need to Protect Ukrainian Interests Ahead of Cheeto Mussolini-Putin Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] Ukrainians Will Not Give Their Land to Occupiers, Zelenskiy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] US, EU, and Ukrainian Officials to Meet in UK on Saturday Ahead of Cheeto Mussolini-Putin Meeting

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-09 [Older] Zelenskyy Rejects Formally Ceding Ukrainian Territory, Says Kyiv Must Be Part of Any Negotiations

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-08 [Older] Ukraine: Putin, Cheeto Mussolini to meet in Alaska over ceasefire

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-08 [Older] Ukrainian war correspondent Roshchyna buried in Kyiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-08 [Older] Polish PM Tusk Says Pause in Ukraine War Could Be Close

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Louisiana governor goes from praising to panning Solar for All program

      Gov. Jeff Landry is voicing a change of heart regarding the Solar for All program, launched under President Joe Biden to provide cleaner power and reduce electric bills for some 900,000 low-income Americans.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Pro Publica ☛ Lawmaker Calls for Explanation of Inconsistent Forest Service Staffing Data

      The top Democrat on a House committee is demanding that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins account for discrepancies between her public statements about wildland firefighter staffing and a ProPublica report showing there were thousands of vacancies in the Forest Service’s firefighting workforce as peak wildfire season approached.

      In June, the Forest Service claimed it had reached 99% of its hiring goal for its wildland firefighting workforce. But ProPublica’s reporting indicated that the agency was selectively counting firefighters, presenting an optimistic assessment to the public. As many as 27% of jobs were vacant as of July 17, according to data obtained by ProPublica.

• Finance

  • FAIR ☛ ‘People Don’t Know the Deep Inequities Baked Into the Tipped Wage’: CounterSpin interview with Raeghn Draper on tipped workers

    Janine Jackson interviewed the CHAAD Project’s Raeghn Draper about tipped workers for the August 8, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Funding Open Source like public infrastructure

    In a world where countries are exploring moving their infrastructures over to sovereign tech, and in particular are both using and fostering open source projects in order to do so, it’s time to get serious about funding. Building real infrastructure to create an alternative software ecosystem — one that is about openness, but retains the usability and design rigor of the most-loved software — carries enormous benefits.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • APNIC ☛ Your elected leaders: Dr Kenny Huang, APNIC EC Chair

    Designing network topology and managing Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) peering is a long way from chairing the governing body of the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Registry (RIR), but that is how Dr Kenny Huang — Chair of the APNIC Executive Council (EC) and a lifelong contributor to the Internet operations community — began his career.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Paul Krugman ☛ MAGA’s Feelings Don’t Care About Your Facts

      What these two stories have in common is this: MAGA’s feelings don’t care about your facts. And the rejection of data Trump doesn’t like will surely extend to many areas beyond jobs and crime.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Washington Post ☛ Russia restricts WhatsApp and Telegram calls, alleging terrorist activity

    Moscow claims the encrypted apps are used for “deceit and extortion.” Meta says it’s a push to get Russians onto less secure services to allow government surveillance.

  • Michael Geist ☛ TIFF Removes October 7th Documentary Film From Schedule Citing Implausible Copyright Clearance Concerns From Hamas Terror Footage

    From a copyright law perspective, the copyright claim is so ridiculous that it hardly needs debunking and is beneath what is supposedly a credible organization that has received tens of millions in public support from the federal government in recent years. But just in case there is actually someone out there who thinks that TIFF faces a legal risk that a Hamas operative who filmed his attack on October 7th might sue it for screening a film that includes that video footage, it should be noted that such a suit would go nowhere.

  • Deadline ☛ TIFF Pulls October 7 Documentary From Lineup

    Filmmakers were told they had to make editorial changes specifically identifying horrific footage that was livestreamed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, footage that had already been seen publicly. The festival claims it requested that the filmmakers not make changes, rather identify the source of the footage and confirmation of legal clearance. The Road Between Us team were asked and provided an errors and omissions insurance letter that added TIFF as the insured. Filmmakers were also asked to provide a legal reporting letter confirming clearance of the footage, as well as added security. We’re told by the festival that the event was going to provide additional security given any potential risk from the film.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Nation ☛ When Hospitals Act Like ICE

    The problem begins, as it so often does in the United States when healthcare is concerned, with money. Federal law requires hospitals to provide lifesaving care to anyone who enters an emergency room, regardless of their immigration status or whether they have health insurance. But hospitals have long sought to limit their costs by discharging patients as soon as they’re in stable condition—particularly when a patient doesn’t have health insurance, as was the case with Soledad. In their rush to send patients on their way, hospitals have been known to pressure undocumented patients and their families to consent to transfers back to their home countries. Lawyers and immigrant rights advocates call this practice “medical deportation.”

  • Nick Heer ☛ ICE Adds Random Person to Group Chat About Live Manhunt

    This is going to keep happening if law enforcement and government agencies keep communicating through ad hoc means instead of official channels. In fact — and I have no evidence to support this — I bet it has happened, but the errant recipients did not contact a journalist.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • T-Mobile confirms undisclosed number of layoffs for IT employees in latest round

    The Bellevue-based wireless network T-Mobile has laid off an undisclosed number of employees in its IT organization earlier this month, according to The Seattle Times.

    T-Mobile stated that it is “evolving” its IT organization and is offering support to affected employees during the transition period, according to a press release issued on Wednesday.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • 404 Media ☛ ICE Propaganda Video That Used Jay-Z Song Hit With Copyright Takedown

    The video features footage of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents training and doing immigration raids set to Jay-Z’s 2003 song “Public Service Announcement,” which has recently been used in at least two DHS videos. DHS tweeted the video alongside the caption “Hunt Cartels. Save America. JOIN.ICE.GOV.” The original tweet, from August 10, has 2.9 million views on X; the video has been replaced with the message “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”

  • [Old] New York Times ☛ Deadheads Must Be Satisfied With 1,300 Audience Tapings

    The shift, announced late Wednesday by the band's spokesman, Dennis McNally, means that the Live Music Archive, part of the independent Web site archive.org, will once again allow the band's followers to download recordings made by audience members at their performances. But high-quality live recordings made from the band's concert soundboard will be available only for online listening, not downloading.