Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Leftovers

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Fallingwater's Roof Is Leaking. Can This $7 Million Renovation Protect Frank Lloyd Wright's Masterpiece?

    The house was built as a private vacation home for Edgar J. Kaufmann, a Pittsburgh department store owner, who used it as a weekend retreat for his family and guests. Despite its seclusion, the house “was hardly up before its fame circled the Earth,” recalled Kaufmann’s son, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., in 1963, when the house was entrusted to the conservancy. In 1964, Fallingwater opened for public tours, and it’s since received more than 6.3 million visitors.

  • Anil Dash ☛ Five for 50

    Today I’m 50 years old! That feels absurd, because it’s a big number, the kind of round number that people usually obscure by saying “I’m celebrating a big birthday” or something vague like that. But, since you only get so many of these to celebrate, I’m using this chance to ask everyone who I’m lucky enough to have in my life to join me in observing the day by considering five different ways of taking action. These are all the gifts I could possibly ask for, because I’m lucky enough that my life has brought me all the good fortune that anyone could ever want or need.

  • Krebs On Security ☛ GOP Cries Censorship Over Spam Filters That Work

    However, the situation looks very different when you ask spam experts what’s going on with WinRed’s recent messaging campaigns. Atro Tossavainen and Pekka Jalonen are co-founders at Koli-Lõks OÜ, an email intelligence company in Estonia. Koli-Lõks taps into real-time intelligence about daily spam volumes by monitoring large numbers of “spamtraps” — email addresses that are intentionally set up to catch unsolicited emails.

    Spamtraps are generally not used for communication or account creation, but instead are created to identify senders exhibiting spammy behavior, such as scraping the Internet for email addresses or buying unmanaged distribution lists. As an email sender, blasting these spamtraps over and over with unsolicited email is the fastest way to ruin your domain’s reputation online. Such activity also virtually ensures that more of your messages are going to start getting listed on spam blocklists that are broadly shared within the global anti-abuse community.

  • Science

    • Science Alert ☛ JWST May Have Found The First Direct Evidence of a Primordial Black Hole

      Huge news.

    • Bartosz Milewski ☛ Models of (Dependent) Type Theory

      It’s been known since Lambek that typed lambda calculus can be modeled in a cartesian closed category, CCC. Cartesian means that you can form products, and closed means that you can form function types. Loosely speaking, types are modeled as objects and functions as arrows.

      More precisely, objects correspond to contexts— which are cartesian products of types, with the terminal object representing the empty context. Arrows correspond to terms in those contexts.

    • Stephen Hackett ☛ Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Testifies About Future Moon Landings

      In the years since, he’s been working in the private space sector, and was recently questioned on Capitol Hill about where NASA is in its slow motion return to the moon.

    • Science Alert ☛ Asteroid Fragment Reveals a Strange Mineral Never Seen on Earth

      An echo from the distant past.

  • Career/Education

    • ACLU ☛ Lawmakers Can't Turn Classrooms Into Sunday Schools

      If state lawmakers have their way, this fall public-school students in Arkansas and Texas will be forcibly subjected to unavoidable displays of a state-approved Protestant version of the Ten Commandments. Inspired by a similar Louisiana statute enacted last year, both states passed laws earlier this year requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments in a “conspicuous place” in every single classroom. But the ACLU is fighting back against these laws and other efforts to turn our public schools into Sunday schools.

      When states impose religious doctrine, beliefs, or practices on public schools, it marginalizes students who don’t share those beliefs and treats them as unwelcome. Students who do not feel safe and welcome in their school cannot focus on learning.

    • Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Louie Mantia

      This is the 106th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Louie Mantia and his blog, lmnt.me

    • Mandy Brown ☛ Everything

      Abolition is both destruction and reconstruction; in abolishing work, you become able to create it anew. For too long, “work” has been synonymous with waged work, with the work we long for an escape from. And everything else becomes the “life” that stands in opposition to work, as if work were somehow an equal to the life it sucks dry. But what if work was all the change we make in the world, with all the people we make that change with—colleagues and comrades, neighbors and friends, kin in all the kingdoms. What if work wasn’t only what we do at work, but all the ways that work moves out into the world, and all the work we do elsewhere—whether in our homes or in our streets. What if our work is all the things we give a fuck about? What becomes possible then?

    • Carl Svensson ☛ The Demo Scene is Dying, But That's Alright

      Except... That last part might no longer apply to the scene. Examine photos from a late 1980s rave party and they'll show a bunch of young people partying hard. Fast forward in time and look at photos from a 2025 rave party, and the concept remains basically the same, but there's now a different bunch of young people partying hard. When performing the same experiment on the scene, there's close to zero teenagers among 2025 demo party attendants. Look closer and it becomes evident that many of the 2025 attendants are in fact the very same persons as the teenagers and twenty-somethings appearing in party photos from 1989.

      Some subcultures are regularly replenished or revived, whereas others are not. The scene seems to fall distinctly into the latter category: With few exceptions, most active sceners - even those who create demos for modern gaming PCs - belong to the home computer generation, meaning people who remember the heydays of Commodore, Atari, Amiga and MS-DOS.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Why Wikipedia works

      Nupedia, Wikipedia's immediate predecessor, tried to solve this problem by verifying its editors and establishing that they had the requisite expertise before allowing them to write encyclopedia entries in the domain of their expertise. This was an abject failure: not only was it so slow as to be indistinguishable from dormancy (Nupedia produced a mere 20 articles in its first year), but also the fact that these articles were written by experts did not mean that they were good. After all, experts disagree!

      Wikipedia jettisoned user-verification in favor of source verification. After all, it's impossible for a group of strangers to agree on the identity of another stranger, let alone what qualifies them to write an encyclopedia entry. Instead, Wikipedia created a process by which a source could be deemed noteworthy and reliable source, then instituted a policy that assertions appearing on Wikipedia had to be cited to a noteworthy and reliable source: [...]

  • Hardware

    • Hackaday ☛ Optimizing VLF Antennas

      Using digital techniques has caused a resurgence of interest in VLF — very low frequency — radio. Thanks to software-defined radio, you no longer need huge coils. However, you still need a suitable antenna. [Electronics Unmessed] has been experimenting and asks the question: What really matters when it comes to VLF loops? The answer he found is in the video below.

    • Hackaday ☛ TFINER Is An Atompunk Solar Sail Lookalike

      It’s not every day we hear of a new space propulsion method. Even rarer to hear of one that actually seems halfway practical. Yet that’s what we have in the case of TFINER, a proposal by [James A. Bickford] we found summarized on Centauri Dreams by [Paul Gilster] .

    • Hackaday ☛ Powering A Submarine With Rubber Bands

      A look underneath the water’s surface can be fun and informative! However, making a device to go under the surface poses challenges with communication and water proofing. That’s what this rubber band powered submarine by [PeterSripol] attempts to fix!

    • Hackaday ☛ Tips For Homebrewing Inductors

      How hard can it be to create your own inductors? Get a wire. Coil it up. Right? Well, the devil is definitely in the details, and [Nick] wants to share his ten tips for building “the perfect” inductor. We don’t know about perfect, but we do think he brings up some very good points. Check out his video below.

    • PC World ☛ The Arc Pro B50 gives me hope that Intel isn't giving up on GPUs

      It’s the Arc Pro B50, and before you say anything, yes, this is an industrial GPU not meant for gamers. But the lower-priced alternative to the B60 shows that the company hasn’t given up on Battlemage, Intel’s second-gen discrete graphics architecture. The $350, low-profile card doesn’t require a dedicated power rail, despite some neat tricks like PCIe 5. This one’s packing 16GB of video memory, 16 Xe cores, and 16 ray tracing units, four fewer than the B60 in each category, and 224GB/s of memory.

    • The Register UK ☛ OpenAI reportedly taps Broadcom to launch AI chips in 2026

      Citing, you guessed it, unnamed sources familiar with the matter, the Financial Times reports that Broadcom's $10 billion mystery customer teased by CEO Hock Tan on Thursday's earnings call was none other than Sam Altman's AI hype factory OpenAI.

    • India Times ☛ OpenAI set to start mass production of its own AI chips with Broadcom in 2026: FT

      OpenAI is set to launch its first AI chip next year in partnership with Broadcom, aiming to reduce reliance on Nvidia, according to the Financial Times. The chip will be used internally. This move mirrors efforts by Google, Amazon, and Meta to build custom chips for growing AI workloads.

    • Data Swamp ☛ Hardware review: ergonomic mouse Logitech Lift

      In addition to my regular computer mouse, by the end of 2024 I bought a Logitech Lift, a wireless ergonomic vertical mouse. This was the first time I used such mouse.

      Logitech.com : Lift product

      I wanted to write this article to give some feedback about this device, I enjoy it a lot and I can not really go back to a regular mouse now.

  • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • France24 ☛ AI upscaling tool distorts Convicted Felon photo, fuelling speculation about his health

      In early September, a photo “enhanced” by an artificial intelligence tool made it seem as though The Insurrectionist's face had changed. In reality, it was a poor modification generated by an upscaling process, a technique intended to improve image quality but that can also alter it.

    • Pro Publica ☛ How an Illinois Farmer Turned Flooded Farmland Into Rice Paddies

      On a late July morning, Blake Gerard zips across his Southern Illinois rice farm on a four-wheeler, wearing his usual USA Rice shirt and shorts that hit above the knee. It’s the only rice farm in Illinois, a place where rice never grew before.

      He carries rubber hip boots in his truck for when he needs to wade into the water to check or change its depth. The young rice has entered a crucial stage; it has taken root but is still tender and needs a shallow, steady blanket of water, which Gerard maintains with a system of cascading fields surrounded by levees and pumps. Two to 4 inches of water is ideal.

    • Science Alert ☛ Back Pain Impacts 60% of Us — Here's How Your Curvy Spine Might Cause It

      It's surprisingly common.

    • Science Alert ☛ One Diet Can Lower Genetic Risk For Alzheimer's, Scientists Discover

      "This recommendation applies broadly."

    • Science Alert ☛ Ultra vs. Minimally Processed Food: Simple Tips to Make Better Choices

      An expert explains why it matters.

    • Science Alert ☛ Vicious Cycle Revealed: How Alcohol Helps Gut Bacteria Attack Your Liver

      The damage is already bad enough.

    • FAIR ☛ Elizabeth Jacobs on RFK Jr. and Public Health

    • FAIR ☛ ‘Insurance Companies Are Moving to Protect Their Profits in a Short-Term Way’: CounterSpin interview with Cathy Cowan Becker on insurance and climate disasters

      Janine Jackson interviewed Green America’s Cathy Cowan Becker about insurance and climate disasters for the August 29, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

    • Science Alert ☛ Plastic Discovered In More Than 50% of Plaques From Clogged Arteries

      In March, a small study in Italy found shards of microplastics in fatty deposits surgically removed from patients who had an operation to open up their clogged arteries – and reported their health outcomes nearly 3 years later.

    • Wiley ☛ Searching for a Potential Blue Zone in the Nordics: A Study on Differences in Lifestyle and Health in Regions Varying in Longevity in Western Finland

      [...] Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia showed good health and adherence to the Blue Zone lifestyle. [...]

  • Proprietary

    • PC World ☛ Gmail’s security scare is a dark reminder of the Internet’s fragility

      What most folks don’t focus on the fact that Google’s data leak happened through a major third-party vendor—and followed on the heels of other major companies suffering data leaks through the same source. That external company is Salesforce, no small player either.

    • Vegard ☛ RIP Bitnami…and some reflections on convencience vs simplicity

      So, I could buy myself some time buy changing to the legacy repo, or I could decide to not have that technical debt and just migrate away from bitnami.

      I chose the latter, because technical debt tends to not get any easier to fix over time. Often you build on it, and you end up with even more technical debt.

    • Feld ☛ Preventing Systemd DHCP RELEASE Behavior

      It sends a RELEASE packet on shutdown...

      So if you're restarting a server that uses DHCP and are running something like dnsmasq, it rips the DNS entry out of cache and the TTL is already super low (TTL=1) so now you can't ping the server by its hostname to watch it come online until it's actually back online.

    • Nicolas Magand ☛ Why I love BBEdit

      But last year, while I switched from the excellent Blot platform to Eleventy for this website, these needs changed, and I was then looking for a more capable text editing app than the one I finally settled on, so I gave BBEdit another shot.

      One year or so later, I have only one regret: not adopting BBEdit earlier in my life.

      Now, let’s move on with why I love this app so much.

    • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

      • Silicon Angle ☛ C3.ai’s stock crumbles on ‘unacceptable’ results, but new CEO promises to turn things around

        Artificial intelligence software company C3 Hey Hi (AI) Inc.’s stock was battered and bruised in extended trading, down more than 10% after it delivered disappointing financial results and a weak outlook.

      • Science Alert ☛ 'AI Slop' Is Turning Up Everywhere. An Expert Explains What's at Stake.

        It's fast, easy, and inexpensive to make this content. AI slop producers typically place it on social media to exploit the economics of attention on the [Internet], displacing higher-quality material that could be more helpful.

        AI slop has been increasing over the past few years. As the term "slop" indicates, that's generally not good for people using the [Internet].

      • Matthew J Ernisse ☛ Poorly Written and Questionably Useful Bots

        It's no surprise that there have been an absolute torrent of new bots springing up, hoovering up various parts of the web. In my little corner of the web the most popular have been image downloaders that just tried to slurp image URLs. Presumably I ended up on a list of one of those multi-billion image datasets and people were trying to fetch their own copies of those to... I guess run local versions of some image generation code? These mostly spawned from one of a few projects helpfully hosted on Github so it was particularly easy to block them as it seems that they have largely been deployed by the modern equivalent of what we would have called script kiddies in the 1990s (vibe coders perhaps being a slightly less pejorative modern equivalent). Lately though it seems that the LLM brigade has started to show up, scraping my RSS feed and the HTML for the blog exclusively (and often... poorly). Generally speaking I am more permissible with these resources, especially the RSS feed as that is meant to be consumed programatically, but a new bot popped into the logs last night that got me thinking.

      • Dan MacKinlay ☛ Human reward hacking

        I use “human reward hacking” to mean something slightly more general than the default meaning of reward hacking in reinforcement learning which just games a fixed reward model: an AI system gains advantage by steering the human evaluator—not only by making outputs look good to today’s criteria, but potentially also by shaping what people will value, endorse, or even notice over time. I think this generalization is merited by the fact that humans are more complicated than typical reward functions, and as such we have more ways we can be hacked, not fewer; I don’t want to let that slide due to a terminological accident. We can call classic RL-type reward hacking “narrow” reward hacking if we need to.

      • Atlantic Council ☛ Securing data in the AI supply chain  

        In doing so, it finds that many risks to AI-related data are risks to data writ large that existing best practices could mitigate. These include National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) specified data access controls, continuous monitoring systems, and robust encryption; the risks at hand in these cases do not require reinventing the wheel. Simultaneously, this report also finds that some security risks to AI data components do not map well to existing security best practices that would adequately mitigate the risk or even apply at all. At least two stand out immediately: bad actors’ attempts to poison AI training data require data filtering mechanisms not well captured by existing measures, and which access controls or encryption would not appropriately mitigate; and emerging, malicious efforts to insert so-called neural backdoors into the behavior of neural networks require new security protections, too, beyond the realm of traditional IT data security. On top of implementing these two categories of mitigations, this report emphasizes that organizations can leverage “know your supplier” best practices to ensure all other entities in their AI supply chains have security best practices for both non-AI-specific and AI-specific data risks.

        This report concludes with three recommendations.

      • Futurism ☛ Sam Altman Says He's Suddenly Worried Dead Internet Theory Is Coming True

        "I never took the dead [Internet] theory that seriously," Altman tweeted in his typical all-lowercase style, "but it seems like there are really a lot of LLM-run twitter accounts now." (LLM meaning large language model, the tech which powers AI chatbots.)

        He was resoundingly mocked.

      • EFF ☛ California Lawmakers: Support S.B. 524 to Rein in AI Written Police Reports

        This bill does several important things: It mandates that police reports written by AI include disclaimers on every page or within the body of the text that make it clear that this report was written in part or in total by a computer. It also says that any reports written by AI must retain their first draft. That way, it should be easier for defense attorneys, judges, police supervisors, or any other auditing entity to see which portions of the final report were written by AI and which parts were written by the officer. Further, the bill requires officers to sign and verify that they read the report and its facts are correct. And it bans AI vendors from selling or sharing the information a police agency provided to the AI.

      • Vox ☛ AI forecasting tournament tried to predict 2025. It couldn’t.

        That makes the domain experts look better. They put slightly higher odds that what actually happened would happen — but when they crunched the numbers across all questions, the authors concluded that there was no statistically significant difference in aggregate accuracy between the domain experts and superforecasters. What’s more, there was no correlation between how accurate someone was in projecting the year 2025 and how dangerous they thought AI or other risks were. Prediction remains hard, especially about the future, and especially about the future of AI.

      • Press Gazette ☛ AI bots bombard publisher websites with 'no meaningful value exchange'

        Unwanted AI scraping of publisher websites is placing a costly financial burden on publishers, according to one leading industry executive.

        Chris Dicker, chief executive of Candr Media Group and board member of the Independent Publishers Alliance, said that the publisher’s Trusted Reviews website was taken down multiple times on 16 August when it was scraped 1.6 million times in a day.

        This was up from a previous record of 1.2 million scrapes on the site a day earlier.

      • Rolling Stone ☛ Melania Trump, White House Officials Spout Nonsense About AI

        This was hardly the only nonsense uttered at the 40-minute press briefing, which was light on policy specifics but heavy on praise for the AI industry as a whole. David Sacks, the White House czar of AI and cryptocurrency as well as a Musk and Thiel ally, adopted the Cabinet technique of shamelessly flattering his boss by saying that a July 23 speech by the president was “the most important speech that’s been given on AI by any official.” In that speech, at a “Winning the AI Race” event, Trump digressively rambled about tariffs, transgender women in sports, California car emissions rules, and “getting rid of woke.” He also mentioned that he didn’t care for the term “artificial intelligence,” explaining, “I don’t like anything that’s artificial,” and called on American companies “to join us in rejecting poisonous Marxism in our technology.”

    • Social Control Media

      • PC World ☛ Mark Zuckerberg sues Meta

        The camel’s back has finally broken and the lawyer has now chosen to sue the social media giant. The straw that broke the camel’s back? Facebook continuing to charge him to promote the law firm’s account, even after the company had shut it down.

  • Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

    • The Register UK ☛ GitHub Copilot on autopilot as community complaints persist

      Among the software developers who use Microsoft's GitHub, the most popular community discussion in the past 12 months has been a request for a way to block Copilot, the company's AI service, from generating issues and pull requests in code repositories.

      The second most popular discussion – where popularity is measured in upvotes – is a bug report that seeks a fix for the inability of users to disable Copilot code reviews.

  • Security

    • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

      • International Business Times ☛ 2025-08-31 [Older] Verizon Outage Limits Devices to SOS Mode, Affecting Thousands — Is It a Security Breach?

      • Make Tech Easier ☛ 2025-09-03 [Older] Phone Number Recycling is a Major Security Risk – How to Protect Yourself [Ed: "Phones" as in skinnerboxes are in general a security risk]

      • National Law Review US ☛ 2025-08-30 [Older] Massachusetts AG Secures $795,000 Settlement for Alleged Data Security and Breach Notification Failures by Peabody Properties Inc.

      • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-29 [Older] US Homeland Security Chief Reports Breach at FEMA, Fires 23 Employees

      • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-29 [Older] Social Security Whistleblower Who Claims DOGE Mishandled Americans' Sensitive Data Resigns From Post

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Nick Heer ☛ U.S. Jury Says Google Should Pay $425 Million in Privacy Lawsuit

        This lawsuit was filed in July 2020 (PDF), and alleged various privacy violations surrounding Google’s “Web and App Activity” control — a known source of confusion — and Google’s data collection through other services like Firebase and Analytics. Perhaps Google should not operate such a sprawling empire of surveillance by both becoming a smaller business and doing less data collection. Alas, it will not do so voluntarily.

      • Bitdefender ☛ Parents warned that robot toys spied on children's location without consent

        A complaint filed by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), accuses Apitor Technology of breaching the Children’s Online Privacy Protection (COPPA) Rule, by failing to notify parents and obtain their consent before their toys collected childrens' geolocation information.

        Apitor's robot toys are controlled with a free Android app, that requires location sharing to be enabled. According to the FTC, Apitor integrated a third-party library called JPush into their app, that allowed JPush's developer to collection location data and use it for any purpose, including advertising.

      • Futurism ☛ Patients Furious at Therapists Secretly Using AI

        With artificial intelligence integrating — or infiltrating — into every corner of our lives, some less-than-ethical mental health professionals have begun using it in secret, causing major trust issues for the vulnerable clients who pay them for their sensitivity and confidentiality.

        As MIT Technology Review reports, therapists have used OpenAI's ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) for everything from email and message responses to, in one particularly egregious case, suggesting questions to ask a patient mid-session.

      • Privacy International ☛ Which comes first, the Google search monopoly or the data?

        A judge has ruled that Google must disclose data acquired through the operation of its illegal search monopoly. The case leaves much to be desired in protecting both privacy and fair competition in how big tech operates.

      • CBC ☛ Google ordered to pay $425 million US for privacy violations in class-action case

        A U.S. federal jury determined on Wednesday that Alphabet's Google must pay $425 million US for invading users' privacy by continuing to collect data for millions of users who had switched off a tracking feature in their Google account.

        The verdict comes after a trial in the Federal Court in San Francisco over allegations that Google over an eight-year period accessed users' mobile devices to collect, save and use their data, violating privacy assurances under its Web and App Activity setting.

    • Confidentiality

      • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Don’t Save Aadhaar, PAN Cards On Phone, Say Experts

        According to cybersecurity expert Rakshit Tandon, miscreants could use the images of ID proofs such as Aadhaar, PAN card, driving licence stored on the phone for accessing the victim’s bank accounts or performing fake KYC authentication, SIM swaps, or digital loan fraud.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Pro Publica ☛ Uvalde School Officials Initially Planned to Defend Pete Arredondo, Records Show

      After the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary, school leaders in Uvalde, Texas, initially planned to publicly defend district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, but officials instead chose to remain silent as investigations into police actions unfolded, newly released records show. Arredondo is now facing criminal charges over law enforcement’s delayed confrontation with the gunman.

      The previously unreported details were revealed in over 25,000 pages of records the district has disclosed over the course of a week since Aug. 26 after a yearslong legal fight with news outlets, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, which filed over 70 public information requests for the records in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ How Language Is Weaponized in Wartime Ukraine

      This is the move: turn language from a means of communication into a “security” issue: Russian becomes a weapon, Ukrainian a shield. Once framed that way, everyday differences between ordinary people look like a danger. For a society already exhausted by war, austerity, and decades of institutional neglect, this narrow framing of belonging is a form of self-harm. Instead of building solidarity and bridging divides, political discourse increasingly insists that true unity requires cultural homogeneity.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ My Latest Book: Rewiring Democracy

      Rewiring Democracy looks beyond common tropes like deepfakes to examine how AI technologies will affect democracy in five broad areas: politics, legislating, administration, the judiciary, and citizenship. There is a lot to unpack here, both positive and negative. We do talk about AI’s possible role in both democratic backsliding or restoring democracies, but the fundamental focus of the book is on present and future uses of AIs within functioning democracies. (And there is a lot going on, in both national and local governments around the world.) And, yes, we talk about AI-driven propaganda and artificial conversation.

    • Mike Brock ☛ The Oligarchs’ Dinner Party: How Silicon Valley Toasted American Fascism

      And on Thursday evening, America’s tech titans gathered at the White House to toast Trump for his “visionary leadership on artificial intelligence.”

      Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, and the rest of Silicon Valley’s oligarchic pantheon assembled to celebrate the future of American innovation while the systematic construction of authoritarian governance unfolded around them. Did Tim Cook bring another gold bar? You know they all brought gifts—tribute for the strongman, offerings for the regime, tokens of submission disguised as diplomatic courtesy.

      The moral obscenity is breathtaking. These are the people who built the systems that made democratic reasoning impossible, now toasting the dictator who’s made democratic reasoning unnecessary.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Nepal Bans Facebook, Other Social Media Platforms

      Nepal on Thursday banned social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube among others for failing to register with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology within the given deadline. According to the notice issued by the ministry, the social media companies were given seven days from August 28 to register.

    • India Times ☛ Nepal blocks Facebook, X, YouTube and others for failing to register with the government

      Nepal's Minister for Communication and Information Prithvi Subba Gurung said about two dozen social network platforms that are widely used in Nepal were repeatedly given notices to come forward and register their companies officially in the country. The platforms would be blocked immediately, he said.

    • RTL ☛ Stockholm: Hitwomen: how teen girls are being used in Sweden crime wars

      Sweden was once known for low crime, but the gangs [sic] -- who emerged over the last 15 years -- have changed all that with drug and arms trafficking, welfare fraud and human trafficking, the authorities say.

      The government now calls them a "systemic threat" to the country.

      They are even reported to have infiltrated Sweden's welfare sector, local politics, legal and education systems as well as juvenile detention care.

    • Sightline Media Group ☛ DC sues Trump administration over National Guard deployment

      The attorney general’s office alleges the administration’s efforts are an “involuntary military occupation.”

      “No American city should have the US military – particularly out-of-state military who are not accountable to the residents and untrained in local law enforcement – policing its streets,” Attorney General Brian Schwalb said. “It’s DC today but could be any other city tomorrow.”

    • Matt Birchler ☛ Some Americans kinda like fascism

      Add to this a party of which 53% favors an unconstitutional third term for Trump (we should talk about this more, by the way) and you can start to see why those of us who don’t cheer at immigrants getting stolen from their homes or at a president who gleefully lies and enriches himself in plain view of the world are a tad concerned.

    • JURIST ☛ Rights groups condemn Iran crackdown on civilians in aftermath of war with Israel

      Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday condemned the crackdown on civil opposition by the Iranian authorities following the conflict with Israel. According to the rights groups, the Iranian government is using national security as an excuse to target civilians and minorities.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Dispatch from Basra: Glimpses of hope in Iraq’s forgotten south

      Basra is proving to be part of a broader trend: improved security and visible reconstruction, despite persistent corruption and dysfunction.

    • Gangs, guns and bibles in Cape Town: what it takes to quit a life of violence and stay alive

      “Blood in and blood out” is a well-known saying in the townships of Cape Town, South Africa. It refers to the violent initiation rituals often needed to enter a gang – and the likelihood of being killed before one can get out.

    • Defence Web ☛ Africom Commander Anderson’s first Africa visit targets Horn security challenges

      US Africa Command (Africom) Commander General Dagvin R M Anderson has travelled on his first official visit to the African continent since assuming leadership in August, and the choice of itinerary—Djibouti, Somalia, and Kenya—was anything but routine. The East Africa trip started in Djibouti on Monday 1 September.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Maritime autonomous vehicles are threatening Arctic security. Here’s what to do about it.

      International norms governing the Arctic have been unable to match the pace of technological innovation taking place with autonomous vehicles.

      >

    • The Strategist ☛ Unpredictability of today’s leadership creates insecurity

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-31 [Older] Israel Kills Hamas Spokesperson as Security Cabinet Meets to Discuss Expanding Offensive in Gaza

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-08-29 [Older] Germany updates: Merz, Macron want more security cooperation

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-29 [Older] UN Considers Bigger Security Force as Gangs Extend Grip on Haiti

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-29 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Ends Security Protection for Former Vice President Harris, Senior White House Official Says

    • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

      • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-29 [Older] Zelenskiy Wants Higher-Level Talks on Security Guarantees Next Week

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Journalists Stumble Across Real Estate Listing With a Photo of a Nazi-Looted Painting Hanging Above the Couch

      The family of a Nazi official has turned in “Portrait of a Lady,” an 18th-century artwork by the Italian painter Giuseppe Ghislandi. The painting had been stolen from a Jewish art dealer during World War II

    • [Old] The Real News Network ☛ Epstein May Be Just One Part of an Intricate Network of Sex and Power

      Journalist Whitney Webb’s series looks at the sordid history tying together mobsters, oligarchs, and government intelligence agencies in a web of blackmail, exploitation, and profit

  • Environment

    • New York Times ☛ Inside Convicted Felon’s Unorthodox Climate Attacks in Courts Nationwide

      The administration is cranking up efforts to kill state laws and legal cases that would force fossil-fuel companies to pay for climate damage.

    • James G ☛ Announcing rainfall.scot

      My hope for this project is to make it easier to understand rainfall changes over time here in Scotland. Through making this website, I learned that 6/8 months so far this year have been drier this year than they were last year in my area. On learning how dry it was with the data, and reflecting on this year, the extent to which lesser rain had fallen this year set in. It really has been a dry year.

    • Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research ☛ Possible North Atlantic overturning circulation shutdown after 2100 in high-emission future — Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

      Under high-emission scenarios, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a key system of ocean currents that also includes the Gulf Stream, could shut down after the year 2100. This is the conclusion of a new study, with contributions by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The shutdown would cut the ocean’s northward heat supply, causing summer drying and severe winter extremes in northwestern Europe and shifts in tropical rainfall belts.

    • Energy/Transportation

      • Jeff Geerling ☛ I bought the cheapest EV (a used Nissan Leaf)

        I bought a used 2023 Nissan Leaf in 2025, my first 'new' car in 15 years. The above photo was taken by the dealership; apparently their social control media team likes to post photos of all purchasers.

        I test drove a Tesla in 2012, and quickly realized my mistake. No gasoline-powered car (outside of supercars, maybe? Never drove one of those) could match the feel of pressing the throttle on an electric.

        I started out with a used minivan, which I drove into the ground. Then I bought a used Olds that I drove into the ground. Then I bought a used Camry that I bought before we had kids, when I had a 16 mile commute.

      • New York Times ☛ Orsted Sues Convicted Felon Administration in Fight to Restart Its Blocked Wind Farm

        The Danish company behind Revolution Wind, a $6 billion project off Rhode Island, said the federal government had unlawfully halted work on the wind farm.

      • Julik Tarkhanov ☛ Drive manually

        It turned out that while the automatic control system was in place, it hasn’t been operational for 8 months. And it turned out that the driver of the accident train was not able to drive the train manually well enough, has lost concentration and - consequently - caused the train to accelerate way above the permitted speed.

        Since the accident, the RATP has instated a rule for the Paris Metro drivers that, even with a present and functioning ATC (automatic train control), at least one trip up- and down the line per day should be performed under manual operation, with the driver controlling braking and traction.

      • Heliomass ☛ Runaway Train

        What followed is captured by the recording as MacDonald contacted the dispatcher down in Moncton for help as the train reached up to 72mph, without any mechanism to slow down or stop.

        MacDonald having been in the process of coupling had ended up with a formation which was without a crew (typically a brakemen and conductor) as well as missing a caboose at the rear. He had to manage the emergency by himself. Calling the dispatcher gave them a chance to alert other trains on the line of the impending calamity.

      • Tom's Hardware ☛ Google quietly removes net-zero carbon goal from website amid rapid power-hungry AI data center buildout — industry-first sustainability pledge moved to background amidst AI energy crisis

        It appears that Google is starting to hide its internal climate advocacy goals from the public eye. The [Internet] titan has silently removed its goal to "pursue net-zero emissions" across all operations by 2030 from its Sustainability webpage, as first spotted by Canada's National Observer.

      • Pivot to AI ☛ Google quietly vanishes its net zero carbon pledge

        By June last year, 2024, Google was warning it would miss Pichai’s 2030 net zero goal. Google blamed its AI buildout — the company’s power usage went up 26% just in 2024. By October, Google was signing new contracts for coal power.

        Now Google’s net-zero pledge has quietly vanished from its Sustainability website. Canada’s National Observer dug back through the history of the page, and Google removed it in June this year.

      • [Repeat] Jeff Geerling ☛ I bought the cheapest EV (a used Nissan Leaf)

        I overanalyze most things, so had been researching this purchase for about a decade now.

        With EVs there are tradeoffs. Even in my situation, only driving a car a few miles a day, I do take my car on one or two regional road trips every year.

    • Wildlife/Nature

      • The Revelator ☛ Wild Reads: 10 New Books that Celebrate Wildlife and Their Environments

    • Overpopulation

      • The Hindu ☛ Groundwater over-exploited in 102 districts: Jal Shakti Ministry

        He highlighted that the Jal Shakti Abhiyan has led to a rise of 11.36 billion cubic metres in water tables. Over two crore conservation projects, 142 crore afforestation activities, and 639 district water conservation plans have been completed, with Jal Shakti Kendras functioning in 712 districts.

  • Finance

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-08-29 [Older] Japan, India to Deepen Security, Economic Ties Amid U.S. Tariffs

    • The Straits Times ☛ Australian PM Albanese spoke to Convicted Felon about critical minerals and security​

      Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese discussed opportunities for Australia and the United States to cooperate on critical minerals in a phone call with President The Insurrectionist on Thursday evening, his office said.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Report says North Korea is also posting fake jobs to steal crypto — because using Hey Hi (AI) to get fake employees real jobs at US tech firms wasn't enough

      North Korea is reportedly posting fake jobs in the cryptocurrency sector as part of a bid to steal applicants' crypto assets.

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-09-03 [Older] Economic Insecurity in the US Has Gotten Worse Since COVID

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • New Yorker ☛ Why Pam Bondi Is the Attorney General of Convicted Felon’s Dreams

      The upheaval under Bondi has left the Justice Department hollowed out, with consequences likely to outlast her tenure and reshape the institution itself.

    • The Verge ☛ How Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

      Wikipedia is the largest compendium of human knowledge ever assembled, with more than 7 million articles in its English version, the largest and most developed of 343 language projects. Started nearly 25 years ago, the site was long mocked as a byword for the unreliability of information on the internet, yet today it is, without exaggeration, the digital world’s factual foundation. It’s what Google puts at the top of search results otherwise awash in ads and spam, what social platforms cite when they deign to correct conspiracy theories, and what AI companies scrape in their ongoing quest to get their models to stop regurgitating info-slurry — and consult with such frequency that they are straining the encyclopedia’s servers. Each day, it’s where approximately 70 million people turn for reliable information on everything from particle physics to rare Scottish sheep to the Erfurt latrine disaster of 1184, a testament both to Wikipedia’s success and to the total degradation of the rest of the internet as an information resource.

    • Alexandru Scvorțov ☛ Writing a metronome in Rust on a micro:bit

      Let’s write a simple metronome using a micro:bit and see how easy embedded programming in Rust is in 2025.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

      • The Conversation ☛ We risk a deluge of AI-written ‘science’ pushing corporate interests – here’s what to do about it

        The articles in question are an excellent example of “resmearch” – bullshit science in the service of corporate interests. While the overwhelming majority of researchers are motivated to uncover the truth and check their findings robustly, resmearch is unconcerned with truth – it seeks only to persuade.

        We’ve seen numerous other examples in recent years, such as soft drinks companies and meat producers funding studies that are less likely than independent research to show links between their products and health risks.

        A major current worry is that AI tools reduce the costs of producing such evidence to virtually zero. Just a few years ago it took months to produce a single paper. Now a single individual using AI can produce multiple papers that appear valid in a matter of hours.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Michigan Advance ☛ ‘This is how it starts’: Michigan activists unite to push back against far-right censorship • Michigan Advance

      On Thursday evening, a small but mighty cross-section of those groups gathered in Hartland, Michigan to discuss strategy, and to hopefully recruit like-minded people as conservative activists have made strides in their communities to take over local, county, school and library boards — many with the aim of undoing those institutions and suppressing access to information.

    • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight Applauds Court Ruling Blocking Trump Administration’s Unlawful Attack on Harvard Funding - American Oversight

      In a sweeping opinion, Judge Burroughs called the Trump administration’s unlawful freezing of Harvard’s federal research funding a “targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.” She emphasized that while combating antisemitism — which the Trump administration has cited as a basis for its actions against Harvard and other universities — is a legitimate goal, it cannot be “used as a smokescreen” for stripping constitutional protections.

  • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • FAIR ☛ Witness for the Prosecution: NPR slants the case against Mumia Abu-Jamal

      NPR vice president Bill Buzenberg explained the 1994 decision not to air Abu-Jamal by saying it was “not appropriate to use someone in the commentator’s role who is the focal point of a highly polarized and political controversy without at the same time providing the context of the controversy and without other voices involved in that controversy.”

    • Press Gazette ☛ Newsletter-based publisher gets huge boost from European Commission grant

      The European Correspondent has 70,000 free subscribers.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Focus on local, not ‘trending’, news fuels record Newsquest digital growth

      'People love local news,' says CEO Henry Faure Walker.

    • NPR ☛ PBS cuts 15% of jobs in wake of federal funding cut

      PBS's chief executive told public television officials Thursday that it was cutting about 15% of its jobs due to the move by Republicans in Congress to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting starting on Oct. 1.

    • CPJ ☛ Saudi Arabia arrests Yemeni journalist Mujahid Al-Haiqi after pilgrimage

      Relatives told the Yemeni press freedom organization Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC) that they believed Al-Haiqi was arrested due to his reporting on Yemen’s increasingly unstable Hadramawt governorate, an oil-rich region on the Gulf of Aden.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • TruthOut ☛ 2025-09-03 [Older] New Report Says Max Security Prison Compound Must Close, Citing Inhumane Conditions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-09-02 [Older] China's Xi Presses Pakistan to Improve Security for Chinese Workers

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-09-02 [Older] Indonesian Police Fire Tear Gas, Rubber Bullets at Student Protesters

    • Chris Enns ☛ Should Men Be the Head of Every Household?

      It might be something that's done in your faith tradition, or culture, or your specific family. But since there are also a lot of theologians who say it's not necessarily biblical, I think it's worth unpacking what the actual origins of that idea are.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • American Library Association ☛ ALA warns FCC Proposed Action Would Cut Off Internet for Library Patrons and Cost Libraries Nationwide

      ALA President Sam Helmick said, “ALA has advocated for the FCC's new hotspot program because we know our communities need them. Students, adult learners, jobseekers, seniors, and rural residents all need high-speed [Internet], even after the library closes in the evening.

      “Libraries have offered hotspot lending for a decade, and their experience proved transformative for people facing emergency situations. While libraries and schools are working hard to bridge digital learning gaps, Chairman Carr is tossing out the bricks of those bridges. Withdrawing the opportunity for people to check out Wi-Fi hotspots from their library is a step backwards.

    • The Register UK ☛ FCC boss pushes to kill bus Wi-Fi, hotspot loans

      Carr, who was elevated to his leadership position by President Donald Trump, said this week that two Biden-era E-Rate expansions - one that funded Wi-Fi access on school buses and the other that created library lending programs for mobile Wi-Fi hotspots - were illegal, and as such had to go.

    • Inside Towers ☛ Carr Moves to End E-Rate Funds for School Bus WiFi

      FCC Chairman Brendan Carr asked his Commission colleagues to vote on an item that would reverse the agency’s 2023 decision to allow schools to use E-Rate money to equip school buses with WiFi. He also circulated an order that would reverse the FCC’s 2024 decision to enable libraries to use E-Rate funds to loan WiFi hotspots that kids or library patrons could use off-premises.

  Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Ticketmaster Is Forcing Users Into Shady Arbitration Courts

    Owned by the parent company Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster quietly announced the new agreement in an innocuous email sent last month titled “We’re updating our terms and policies,” which included a new binding arbitration clause and class action waiver buried in the fine print. Experts told the Lever that the new terms of use appear to be stretching the limits of an October 2024 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that struck down the company’s prior arbitration clause as unenforceable in a class action antitrust lawsuit.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ EU fines Google $3.5B over advertising technology practices

    EU officials found that the search giant holds a dominant position in two key segments of the ad tech market. Furthermore, they determined that Google abused that dominant position to give its products an unfair edge. The latter finding led to the fine that the company received today.

    Bids that marketers place for ad space through Google’s software are often processed by an online auction platform, AdX, that is likewise operated by the search giant. The company that places the highest bid wins. The EU found that Google unfairly favored AdX by not routing bids to competing ad auctions.

  • The Verge ☛ Google antitrust ruling clears the way for Apple’s Gemini push

    Apple and Google’s search deal should have been undone, and perhaps it still will be if Apple eventually gets its turn under the antitrust spotlight. I’ve spoken with many would-be Google Search rivals over the years who have pointed to the deal as a key factor in stifling competition. You could argue that no deal has had a greater impact on Silicon Valley over the long arc of time, in fact. The most sinister aspect is that it has enabled the two companies that already control how most people access the [Internet] to become richer and more powerful together.

    The relationship being allowed to continue now sets the stage for Apple and Google to extend their shared dominance into the age of AI. Apple is behind on AI, but remains a powerful source of distribution for Gemini via iPhones, iPads, and Macs. With search payments from Google continuing to roll in, why would Apple need to acquire a startup like Mistral or Perplexity to play catch-up? It’s already getting paid to work with one of the world’s leading AI companies and now has carte blanche to forge deeper ties.

  • Nick Heer ☛ E.U. Fines Google €2.95 Billion for Abusing Its Online Advertising Dominance – Pixel Envy

    [...] its stock went up after the judge announced remedies. [...]

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: All (antitrust) politics are local

    The US government has abandoned antitrust. Today, companies facing antitrust jeopardy can just pay key Trumpland figures a million bucks, and they will make a discreet visit to the fifth floor of the DoJ building, have a little shufty around the Antitrust Division and the whole thing will just…go away: [...]

  • CBC ☛ Google can keep Chrome but needs to give up some data, judge rules in antitrust case

    The 226-page decision made by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., will likely ripple across the technological landscape at a time when the industry is being reshaped by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence — including conversational "answer engines" as companies like ChatGPT and Perplexity try to upend Google's long-held position as the [Internet]'s main gateway.

  • Patents

    • Kangaroo Courts

      • JUVE ☛ Taylor Wessing Munich loses large portion of its patent monopoly litigation partners [Ed: Fails to mention UPC is illegal and those firms are profiting from an illegality, which they have actively encouraged]

        Taylor Wessing got off to an extremely good start at the UPC with its networked approach of European practices. Most recently, the large firm impressed with partner hires in Amsterdam and its establishing a team in Paris. All signs in Taylor Wessing’s European patent monopoly practice were pointing to expansion.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Behind the Curtain: The Three-Year Journey to the Block BEARD Site Blocking Act

      The text of the No-Fault Copyright Remedy Act (NFCRA) was shared among stakeholders but wasn’t announced to the public.

    • RTL ☛ To settle lawsuit: AI giant Anthropic to pay $1.5 bn over pirated books

      The settlement stems from a class-action lawsuit filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who accused Anthropic of illegally copying their books to train Claude, the company's AI chatbot that rivals ChatGPT.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ US: Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion in AI lawsuit settlement

      There are several ongoing similar lawsuits against tech companies like OpenAI and Meta.

    • Locus Magazine ☛ AI Company Anthropic Settles for $1.5 Billion in Authors’ Lawsuit

      Before the settlement, the AI company was facing a trial over illegally downloading seven million books from pirate sites like Library Genesis to create the training library for the technology. “That it later purchased copies of those books it stole off the internet earlier to cover its tracks doesn’t absolve it of liability,” stated US District Judge William Alsup. The company could have seen high damages stemming from the decision, up to $150,000 per infringed work. Anthropic is set to pay the settlement in four installments, over two years.

    • Wired ☛ Anthropic Agrees to Pay Authors at Least $1.5 Billion in AI Copyright Settlement

      Anthropic will pay at least $3,000 for each copyrighted work that it pirated. The company downloaded unauthorized copies of books in early efforts to gather training data for its AI tools.

    • Stephen Hackett ☛ Anthropic to Pay Authors 'At Least' $1.5 Billion

      We’ll see how this pans out, but for now, all I can think is that it couldn’t happen to a more deserving company.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Anthropic Proposes Paying Authors $1.5 Billion Over Pirated Books Used in Training – Pixel Envy

      Yet another complication for the fair use arguments of generative A.I. companies, though one which was obviously undermined by using pirated data to begin with. Though I think it makes sense to focus on this case for now, the question looming over this entire case is what precedent it sets. It does not singlehandedly eliminate the fair use argument for training on public information, but what about other illicitly reproduced information ingested into data sets?

    • The Verge ☛ Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion to authors in landmark AI settlement

      The settlement is subject to court approval, and a hearing will take place on September 8th. According to a press release, the final amount could be higher, in that approximately 500,000 works will likely be paid out, but if the total is higher than that, Anthropic will pay an additional $3,000 per work, and it all depends on the number of claims submitted. As part of the settlement, Anthropic must also destroy the original files it downloaded and any copies.