Leftovers

• James G ☛ 30 collaborative things you can do on the web

  This has me thinking: what can we do on a website that involves both our selves and someone else? With that question in mind, I have made a list of 30 activities you can do collaboratively on the web: [...]

• Ruben Verweij ☛ More multilingualism please

  Don’t get me wrong: it makes perfect sense. By writing in English, you can connect to a larger community. That’s one of the reasons why I do so as well and I believe we should keep doing that. Having said that, just like a natural ecosystem needs diversity to be resilient, we need a wide variety of languages as human beings. Multilingualism is beautiful — I personally believe different languages enable a larger variety of thoughts.

• Science

  • Quanta Magazine ☛ Self-Assembly Gets Automated in Reverse of ‘Game of Life’ | Quanta Magazine

    In cellular automata, simple rules create elaborate structures. Now researchers can start with the structures and reverse-engineer the rules.

  • 404 Media ☛ Scientists Just Got an Unprecedented Glimpse into the Nature of Reality

    “We had promised that gravitational waves would open a new window into the universe, and that has materialized,” one researcher said.”

  • RTL ☛ 100 meters in 10 hours: Viking ships make final high-risk voyage to new Oslo home

    Three 1,200-year-old Viking ships that have stood the test of time are embarking on their final and possibly riskiest journey to their new forever home in Norway.

    The first to relocate is the Oseberg, which on Wednesday slowly began making its way from its current location in the old Viking Ship Museum to a newly built addition that will house the national treasures in optimal conditions.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Curator Rediscovers Tenth-Century 'Portrait' of a Viking With an 'Unusual, Ornate Hairstyle'

    Now, Pentz says the trinket is the first-known “portrait” of a Viking. He describes the item—which is on display in the museum’s ongoing exhibition about Viking sorceresses—in a paper published August 11 in the journal Medieval Archaeology.

• Career/Education

  • Johnny Decimal ☛ 22.00.0131 Your computer is your workshop

    Computers allow us to do any number of things 'at once'. Of course you can only ever do one thing at a time, but it's nice to pretend.

    When was the last time you prepared the next piece of work? Closed all of your old windows. Opened up a new view on your files and found the place you needed to be. Opened the note you'll be using in a new, clean window. Focused your task manager on the task at hand.

  • The Juliette Zone ☛ Leaving academia, at least for now

    Instead, I applied to two industry research positions on a whim, and ended up getting an offer for one. My hope when doing this was to break out of my rut and become exposed to new people, new problems, and new methods. Essentially, the same benefits one would hopefully get from a postdoc, except with better pay and less pressure to publish. At the same time, I could take on my own personal projects, continue to look for a job teaching in the evening, and see if any of my ideas may one day lead to research back in a university.

    I can't shake the feeling, however, that I am betraying the me of a few years ago, disillusioned with computer engineering and wanting to do something meaningful. From where I am standing right now, though, it seems like I may have as good a chance of that going into the private sector and working on side projects as I would committing myself to the academic rat race.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Universities Are Selling Themselves Off Piece by Piece

    American higher ed has become a mesh of corporate contracts and outsourced services. From dining halls to student records, private vendors now run many institutions’ most basic operations — atomizing workers and undermining the university’s public mission.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Using technology skills for positive change

    Both your skills and mindset need to be compatible. It’s not enough to want to do good; you need to be able to slot into an organization and meet it where it’s at. If you go in thinking you’re going to be a savior on a white horse, you’re going to fail. You have to respect its needs, its values, and its culture. There are experts in each space, and you need to learn from them.

• Hardware

  • RTL ☛ Discovered near Church of the Nativity: Silent for 800 years, medieval organ sings again in Jerusalem

    "This is a window into the past... we have the opportunity for the first time in modern history of listening to a medieval sound which is a thousand years old," said David Catalunya, a Spanish researcher who has worked for more than five years to bring the 11th-century instrument back to life.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ ARM bets on 3nm Lumex chips to accelerate mobile AI

    Called Lumex, the new generation of ARM mobile designs come in four types, ranging from less powerful but more energy-efficient ones designed for watches and other smart wearable devices to a version designed to maximise the computing horsepower available.

  • The Register UK ☛ Arm bets on CPU-based AI with Lumex chips for smartphones

    Arm has lifted the lid on its latest mobile platform, comprising new CPU and GPU designs plus rearchitected interconnect and memory management logic, all optimized with a coming wave of AI-enabled smartphones in mind.

  • Linuxiac ☛ Fwupd 2.0.15 Update Adds Jabra Evolve2 Support

    Only two weeks after the previous 2.0.14 release, fwupd, an open-source utility designed to simplify firmware updates on Linux-based systems, has rolled out its new 2.0.15 version.

    At the top of the list, support has been added for NVIDIA’s ConnectX-6, ConnectX-7, and ConnectX-8 NICs, the Foxconn SDX61 modem, and Jabra Evolve2 child devices.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • FAIR ☛ ‘Kennedy Is Not a Skeptic. He Is an Anti-Vaccination Enthusiast’: CounterSpin interview with Elizabeth Jacobs on RFK Jr. and public health

    Janine Jackson interviewed Defend Public Health’s Elizabeth Jacobs about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and public health for the September 5, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • BBC ☛ Meta covered up potential child harms, whistleblowers claim

    Two former Meta safety researchers told a US Senate committee on Tuesday that the social media giant covered up potential harms to children stemming from its virtual reality (VR) products.

    "Meta has chosen to ignore the problems they created and bury evidence of users' negative experiences," said Jason Sattizahn.

  • US Senate ☛ Hidden Harms: Examining Whistleblower Allegations that Meta Buried Child Safety Research | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary

    Date: Tuesday, September 9th, 2025

  • NBC ☛ Meta blocked research on kids using VR, two former employees say

    Two former Meta employees alleged in sworn congressional testimony Tuesday that the company’s virtual reality products have exposed children to adult content such as nudity, sexual propositions and live masturbation.

    The former employees, Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, worked as researchers who specialized in studying the welfare of underage users of Meta VR products. They told members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law that Meta disregarded their findings, censored their attempts to do further research and, in at least one instance, deleted evidence of a youth’s being sexually harassed.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Meta hid harms to children from VR products, whistleblowers allege

    “Meta knew that underage children were using its products, but figured, ‘Hey, kids drive engagement,’ and it was making them cash,” Jason Sattizahn, one of the whistleblowers who worked on the company’s VR research, said in a statement. “Meta has compromised their internal teams to manipulate research and straight-up erase data that they don’t like.”

  • Lee Peterson ☛ How to stop social media from affecting your mood

    The only way for me to keep a handle on this is to not fall into the trap and make the apps as hard to get to as possible. It might also mean that it encourages me to write more here, have a bit more time, be a little calmer and generally manage things better.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ OpenAI reportedly on the hook for $300B Oracle Cloud bill [Ed: OpenAI bankrupt any moment now?]

    OpenAI will pay Oracle $300 billion over the course of five years to fuel Scam Altman's AI ambitions by providing five gigawatts of compute capacity.

    At least that's what unnamed sources familiar with the matter tell the Wall Street Journal, which reports that the contract is set to begin in 2027, giving the AI startup a little over a year to figure out how or perhaps who's going to be left holding the bill when it falls due.

    As it stands, OpenAI can't afford the checks it's writing. As of June, the AI flag bearer has annual recurring revenue of $10B. To be clear, that's revenue. The company isn't expected to turn a profit until at least 2029. Perhaps SoftBank is about to open its wallet after reportedly agreeing to chip in $19B to the OpenAI-led Stargate project that aims to build a series of giant AI Datacenters.

  • Purism ☛ Apple’s Latest iPhone: Sleeker Walls, Same Garden

    Apple’s “walled garden” is often framed as a virtue — a curated, tightly controlled environment where everything works together as long as you don’t leave Apple. But that curation comes at a cost: your ability to decide what runs on your device, how it runs, and who gets access to your data.

  • Futurism ☛ Google Says the Open Web Is Now in "Rapid Decline"

    In a major change in tune, Google has admitted that the "open web is already in rapid decline" — despite being adamant for months that the "web is thriving."

  • Scoop News Group ☛ China’s ‘Typhoons’ changing the way FBI hunts sophisticated threats

    U.S. officials, allied governments and threat researchers have identified Salt Typhoon as the group behind the massive telecommunications hack revealed last fall but that could have been ongoing for years. Investigators have pointed at Volt Typhoon as a group that has infiltrated critical infrastructure to cause disruptions in the United States if China invades Taiwan and Americans intervene.

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - ‘Widespread failure in cloud security fundamentals’ leaves organisations exposed, new Tenable data shows

    According to Tenable as organisations overwhelmingly adopt complex cloud and hybrid environments, a critical failure to manage identity-based threats and bridge the internal expertise gap is among the risks, leaving them dangerously exposed to breaches.

  • Simone Silvestroni ☛ Herd Mentality

    I have a simple answer, which in fact I published on Mastodon as a reply. While I agree with Denny, I'd suggest to those people that a first step could be to STOP purchasing Apple's devices every year or so.

    If I can manage my entire personal and work activities using a 10-year old Mac laptop, surely a sizeable percentage out there could do the same, instead of supporting Apple's unsustainable and environmentally criminal release pace.

  • PC World ☛ I switched from Gmail to Proton mail: 5 eye-opening takeaways

    I’ve been using PCs long enough to know that the widely adopted way of doing things isn’t always the best or most secure. Recently I’ve found that to be the case with my email accounts.

    I switched from Gmail to Proton mail on a whim and now I’m very glad I did. Here are the five key benefits I now enjoy with Proton mail.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Godfather of AI Says His Creation Is About to Unleash Massive Unemployment

      "What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers," Hinton told the FT. "It’s going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer."

      "That’s not AI’s fault," he continued. "That is the capitalist system."

    • Digital Music News ☛ Sweden's STIM Launches the 'World's First' AI Music License

      The Swedish society reached out with word of the framework – and its perceived long-term potential in the AI age – today. As described by Stim, the model leverages content-attribution platform Sureel to track training, outputs, and ultimately consumption particulars.

    • Science Alert ☛ Why Does AI Feel So Human if It's Just a 'Calculator For Words'?

      From a "black box" to "autocomplete on steroids", a "parrot", and even a pair of "sneakers", the goal is to make the understanding of a complex piece of technology accessible by grounding it in everyday experiences – even if the resulting comparison is often oversimplified or misleading.

    • Manuel Moreale ☛ On em dashes

    • Ted Unangst ☛ humanely dealing with humungus crawlers

      And then let’s say somebody directly links to a changeset like /r/vertigo/v/b5ea481ff167. The first visitor will probably hit a challenge, but then we record that URL as in use. The bots are shotgun crawling all over the place, but if a single link is visited more than once, I’ll assume it’s human traffic, and bypass the challenge. No promises, but clicking that link will mostly likely just return content, no challenge.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Inception Point — AI spam podcasts with no listeners

      What does Inception Point do? It generates AI spam podcasts! 3,000 podcast episodes a week, with iHeart Media ads on them.

    • Hollywood Reporter ☛ AI Podcast Start Up Plans 5,000 Shows, 3,000 Episode a Week

      The company is able to produce each episode for $1 or less, depending on length and complexity, and attach programmatic advertising to it. This generally means that if about 20 people listen to that episode, the company made a profit on that episode, without factoring in overhead.

  • Social Control Media

    • New Yorker ☛ Social Media Is Navigating Its Sectarian Phase

      I suspect that left-leaning journalists and editors are migrating back to X not because of the ideological tenor of Bluesky but because they miss the attention arms race. If X-ism is preferable to Blueskyism, it’s because X users don’t have to work as hard to reach people. On the [Internet], a bigger megaphone is still considered a better one. Yet parsing the distinctions between Bluesky and X has a burgeoning air of futility. The truth is that text-dominated social networks are largely decaying across the board. According to Bluesky’s open-source data, the number of daily posters on the platform has been declining each month since its peak in January of this year, following Trump’s Inauguration (though it is still four times as large as it was last year). X has been forced to release some of its internal statistics owing to new technology regulation in the European Union; the data, from earlier this year, show that the site has lost around ten per cent of its European user base, around eleven million accounts, since August of 2024. Meta’s Threads app is growing, thanks to its ongoing support from Instagram, but since its launch, in 2023, it has not, at least by my recollection, generated a single major cultural moment or meme.

    • The Nation ☛ The Lost Souls of the Internet

      There was only one problem: The experiment that the three scientists—Adam Kramer, Jamie Guillory, and Jeffrey Hancock—wrote about so excitedly was conducted on Facebook, without the knowledge or explicit consent of the 689,003 users whose newsfeeds were manipulated for that week. Nor did the researchers express much concern about or attempt to study the real-­life impact of their experiment on these users’ mental and emotional health. For seven days, then, hundreds of thousands of people were made either happy or sad as a result of deliberate changes to their news feed.

    • The Register UK ☛ Pentagon left livestream keys exposed, hijack risk included

      The US Department of Defense, up until this week, routinely left its social media accounts wide open to hijackers via stream keys - unique, confidential identifiers generated by streaming platforms for broadcasting content. If exposed, these keys can allow attackers to output anything they want from someone else's channel.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ U.S. places $11 million bounty on Ukrainian ransomware mastermind — Tymoshchuk allegedly stole $18 billion from large companies over 3 years

      The United States has placed an $11 million bounty on Volodymyr Tymoshchuk, a Ukrainian man wanted for his involvement with a string of ransomware cybercrimes. Tymoshchuk faces severe federal charges for his part in reportedly masterminding the theft of a combined $18 billion over a three year period.

    • The Register UK ☛ Akira ransomware crims abusing trifecta of SonicWall flaws

      Akira is also poking holes in SonicWall SSLVPN misconfigurations, abusing all of these security risks to gain access to vulnerable devices and conduct ransomware attacks, according to a Rapid7 warning on Wednesday.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Wyden calls on FTC to investigate Microsoft for ‘gross cybersecurity negligence’ in protecting critical infrastructure

      Wyden, whose staff interviewed or spoke with Ascension and Microsoft staff as part of the senator’s oversight, said the attack “perfectly illustrates” the negative consequences of Microsoft’s cybersecurity policies.

    • US Senate ☛ Letter from Senator Wyden to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson

      I write to request that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigate and hold Microsoft responsible for its gross cybersecurity negligence, resulting in ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure, including U.S. health care organizations, which have caused enormous harm to health care providers, put patient care at risk, and continues to threaten U.S. national security.

    • YLE ☛ S-bank fined €1.8m for lax data security

      The Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman has issued a warning and an administrative penalty of 1.8 million euros to S-Bank for a data security breach in the bank's identification service in 2022.

      The decision is not yet legally binding, as it may still be appealed to an administrative court.

    • The Register UK ☛ US indicts alleged ransomware boss tied to $18B in damages

      A Ukrainian national faces serious federal charges and an $11 million bounty after allegedly orchestrating ransomware operations that caused an estimated $18 billion in damages across hundreds of organizations worldwide.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Wired ☛ The United Arab Emirates Releases a Tiny But Powerful AI Model

      K2 Think is relatively modest in size, with 32 billion parameters. It is not a complete large language model but rather a model specialized for reasoning, capable of answering complex questions through a simulated kind of deliberation rather than quickly synthesizing information to provide an output. For such tasks, the researchers say it performs on par with reasoning models from OpenAI and DeepSeek, which have more than 200 billion parameters.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • [Old] Cryptography.doc OÜ ☛ Supply chains and watering holes

      I commented that there were a few potential attack vectors against which I'd be careful to mitigate, one of which was a watering hole attack, which is now more commonly referred to as a supply chain attack. I know enough about linguistics to realize that prescriptivism is hardly a winning strategy. Nevertheless, I do think there is a meaningful difference between these two things, and that the software industry might be better off if more people recognized the distinction.

      So what's the difference?

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • CNN ☛ How to Keep Your Private Messages Truly Private - Terms of Service with Clare Duffy

      DMs and text messages can feel like private forms of communication — but it’s not always that simple. There are scenarios where third parties might be able to access your messaging data, whether it's your employer or law enforcement. So how can you make sure your private conversations actually remain private? Riana Pfefferkorn, a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, has some tips.

    • The Record ☛ US investors in spyware firms nearly tripled in 2024: report

      The finding was published by the Atlantic Council think tank in a report released Wednesday which analyzed 561 spyware entities — vendors, supplies, partners, investors, individuals, holding companies and alumni — across 46 countries.

      The U.S. is the largest investor in the spyware market, according to the nonprofit’s analysis. The next two largest spyware financial hubs are Israel with 26 investors and Italy, which has emerged as a major spyware center, with 12.

    • Wired ☛ US Investment in Spyware Is Skyrocketing

      A new report warns that the number of US investors in powerful commercial spyware rose sharply in 2024 and names new countries linked to the dangerous technology.

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ ‘Danger to Democracy’: 500+ Top Scientists Urge EU Governments to Reject ‘Technically Infeasible’ Chat Control

      Over 500 of the world’s leading cryptographers, security researchers, and scientists from 34 countries have today delivered a devastating verdict on the EU’s proposed “Chat Control” regulation. An open letter published this morning declares the plan to mass-scan private messages is “technically infeasible,” a “danger to democracy,” and will “completely undermine” the security and privacy of all European citizens.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Mythical Beasts: Diving into the depths of the global spyware market

      As highlighted in the 2024 report by the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Mythical Beasts and where to find them: Mapping the global spyware market and its threats to national security and human rights, spyware vendors often operate in complex networks of holding companies, investors, suppliers, and partners to obfuscate their business operations, making it difficult for policymakers to curb the misuse and proliferation of these capabilities.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Democracy falls in majority of countries worldwide

    The Global State of Democracy 2025

    , published by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), analyzed democratic performance in 173 countries in 2024.

    In the report, 94 countries — or just over half of those surveyed — showed a decline in at least one of the key democracy indicators between 2019 and 2024, the report said. In comparison, only a third made progress.

  • Wired ☛ Here’s What to Know About Poland Shooting Down Russian Drones

    Article 4 allows a NATO member to solicit consultations whenever it believes its security, territorial integrity, or political independence is threatened. Unlike Article 5, which provides for collective military action in the event of an armed attack, Article 4 does not compel immediate military action, but its activation nevertheless constitutes a significant political escalation, as it emphasizes the unity of the alliance in responding to perceived threats against NATO members.

  • LRT ☛ NATO members hold consultations over drones in Poland – Lithuanian defence minister

    “Consultations are indeed already taking place in the context of Article 4, and we will find out in the near future how it will be further activated, that is, what measures Poland could request and propose for implementation,” the minister told reporters.

    She reiterated that she considers the incident an escalation.

    Under NATO’s Article 4, any NATO country may request consultations with its allies if it believes that it is threatened.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Beginning of the End of NATO

    Early this morning, Russia sent a swarm of drones into Poland. The crisis of the NATO alliance that people on both sides of the Atlantic have been denying or trying to put off is now here: This is the moment when the world finds out whether the United States remains committed to the defense of its allies.

  • Meduza ☛ Poland invokes NATO Article 4 in response to Russian drone incursion

    The move was a response to an incursion by Russian drones into Polish airspace during an attack on Ukraine early Wednesday morning. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said 19 drones crossed into Polish territory and that Polish and NATO aircraft shot down three or four of them. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put the number of drones at 24.

  • RFERL ☛ Time For NATO To Impose Defensive No-Fly Zone Over Western Ukraine, Analyst Peter Doran Says

    Speaking with RFE/RL’s Todd Prince after Poland became the first NATO state to shoot down Russian drones, he said Russian leader Vladimir Putin is probing Western defenses and challenging the alliance and US President Donald Trump to respond.

  • Garry Kasparov ☛ Charlie Kirk Was Murdered. Political Violence Is Surrender.

    I more than disagreed with Kirk’s actions and statements. I rejected much of his worldview. What happened today does not change my perspective. But my ideological opposition does not in any way qualify my condemnation of this horrendous attack. Violence harms not only the target, but society at large.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Russia Is Losing the War—Just Not to Ukraine

    But summits and sweatshirts won’t make Russia a superpower. Only a credible show of strength can do that. The war in Ukraine was meant to supply this, but it has instead become a slow-motion demonstration of Russia’s decline—less a catalyst of national revival than a case study in national self-harm.

  • JURIST ☛ Gen Z protests in Nepal result in 19 deaths, prime minister resignation and social media ban repeal

    The protests are the latest sign of discontent among Nepal’s young generation, who have grown increasingly frustrated with corruption, poor governance, and shrinking opportunities at home. The government’s decision to block 26 social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp and X, was seen by many as an attack on freedom of expression and a direct trigger for the demonstrations.

  • CPJ ☛ Nepal protests: Media outlets torched and journalists injured in deadly unrest

    Violent protests erupted in Kathmandu and other parts of the country on Monday after the government shut down access to social media platforms that had failed to heed an August 25 Cabinet directive requiring them to register and submit to official oversight. The ban was lifted on Tuesday and Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli resigned following the deaths of 19 demonstrators. But the unrest has continued, with protestors setting ablaze government buildings and assaulting ministers.

  • The Record ☛ Nepal lifts social media ban after deadly youth protests

    Thousands of mostly young protesters had poured into the streets of Kathmandu on Monday, rallying against corruption and nepotism as well as the government’s decision to block 26 platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Signal, YouTube and X. Officials said the ban was necessary to curb disinformation and criminal activity, but human rights groups condemned it as digital repression.

    Despite the lifting of restrictions on Tuesday, unrest continued. On Wednesday, the army deployed patrols in the capital after demonstrators vandalised politicians’ homes, set government buildings ablaze and torched parliament.

  • France24 ☛ Nepal deploys army as protesters look for interim leader

    Soldiers in Nepal’s capital ordered people to stay home Wednesday after the military came out in force overnight to halt two days of deadly unrest that prompted the government’s collapse as protesters set buildings on fire.

  • JURIST ☛ Human rights group urges Tanzania to lift suspension of news platform ahead of elections

    Tanzania has previously faced criticism for abusing online content laws to shut down social media platforms and control the flow of information in the country. In 2024, Tanzanian Internet Service Providers blocked access to the social media platform X amid political unrest involving the government and opposition parties. Human rights organizations have also condemned the government’s suppression of political dissent through arbitrary arrests, social media restrictions, and platform shutdowns ahead of local elections. Additionally, Maxence Melo, founder of JamiiForums, was arrested and convicted for operating an unregistered website, but was acquitted in 2020.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Nation ☛ Why Is “The Washington Post” Whitewashing Epstein’s Stomach-Churning Birthday Book?

    Today’s mainstream media, cursed with the historical consciousness of a goldfish, is already demonstrating that it has learned nothing from these past exercises in conservative-movement intimidation. Indeed, my hometown paper, The Washington Post, has accelerated its descent into MAGA-tipsheet status under the direction of its owner Jeff Bezos with a bogus report from its White House bureau chief Matt Viser, appearing under the headline “No Clear Answers on Whether Trump Signed Epstein Birthday Book.” The piece obligingly platforms the social-media pronouncements of MAGA quislings like Charlie Kirk and Benny Johnson confidently asserting that Trump’s signature was forged; when Viser stirs himself to talk to Thomas W. Vastrick, an actual authority on signatures, he gets this response: [...]

  • Paul Krugman ☛ When MAGA Prophecy Fails

    Like everyone else, I’ve been following the latest Trump-Epstein revelations. Or maybe we should call them confirmations: Unless you were deep in the cult, you already had a pretty good idea of who Trump was and were aware that he and Epstein went way back.

    But many Trump loyalists are cultists, sufficiently so that they believed that Donald Trump — Donald Trump! — was heroically defending the world against pedophiles. And we know what cultists do when confronted with facts that refute their beliefs: They engage in denial.

  • The Independent UK ☛ The subpoenaed Epstein files: Everything we know about latest release, including 50th birthday book with ‘Trump sketch’

    The documents were made public by the House Oversight Committee, after it subpoenaed Epstein’s estate last month, amid ongoing outcry over the Trump administration’s failure to keep a promise made by the president and release all the files related to the case.

  • El País ☛ What’s in Epstein’s birthday book: Lewd jokes, revealing photos and a nude sketch linked to Trump

    Trump makes another appearance in the birthday book: on page 156, Epstein is seen alongside a man described by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee as “a long-time Mar-a-Lago member,” and a young woman whose face has been blacked on. They are holding a check, supposedly signed by Trump, the kind one might receive from winning a television contest. The accompanying text claims that the then real estate magnate gave it to his pedophile friend to buy “fully depreciated” woman for $22,500. It seems as obvious as it is in poor taste that it was meant as a joke. It is also the kind of sexist humor that permeates the entire book, humor that today is certainly less common — and far less conceivable — than it was 21 years ago.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Fox News goes extremes not to cover alleged Trump doodle to Epstein

    And it certainly doesn’t want to draw attention to a newly released photo of the convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein holding an oversized check signed “DJTRUMP,” with a caption that reads, “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [female’s name redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Johnson met Thiel months before Palantir's NHS pandemic role

    The meeting, which was kept from the official record, took place on August 28, 2019, months before the UK government began forming its response to the pandemic, which would see Palantir awarded £60 million in contracts without competition, starting with a contract awarded for just £1.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Johnson and Cummings’ secret meeting with Palantir founder revealed

    Boris Johnson appears to have had a secret meeting with Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of the controversial US data firm Palantir, the year before it was given a role at the heart of the UK’s pandemic response.

    A month after entering No 10, Johnson and his senior adviser Dominic Cummings had a meeting with Thiel, leaked files suggest. Johnson is now likely to face questions about whether the non-disclosure amounts to a breach of the ministerial code.

• Environment

  • Greece ☛ Plastic still everywhere

    Another recycling and plastic-reduction initiative has suffered a similar – if not worse – fate. The government has been promising a “great green leap” since 2021, centered on a much-hyped system for returning plastic bottles and cans: Consumers pay 10 cents per bottle at the checkout and get it back upon return. It’s a simple and fair system that has been proven to work across Europe. For anyone who follows the process, it comes at zero cost, and with the satisfaction of contributing to recycling.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • France24 ☛ Cuba suffers fifth nationwide blackout in a year as crisis deepens

      In recent years it has been plagued by hours-long daily blackouts, recurring electricity system breakdowns and an acute shortage of fuel to keep producing power.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Oracle shares soar on AI contracts

      The US software maker said it expected to get $144 billion per year by the end of this decade from AI companies using its cloud computing capabilities, much of it from OpenAI, which The Wall Street Journal reported will buy 4.5 gigawatts’ worth of data center capacity from Oracle — enough energy to power millions of homes.

    • US News And World Report ☛ Cuba's Electrical Grid Collapses in Nationwide Blackout

      The grid operator said the grid collapsed at 9.14 a.m. (1314 GMT) on the Caribbean island.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Happy 50th Birthday, Monkey Wrench Gang

  • Overpopulation

    • Overpopulation ☛ New Page to Fight Myths About Population

      Our readers are well aware of the multitude of problems stemming from population growth, be they related to economy, societal well-being, biodiversity loss, or climate change. But to raise the issue with the general public, it is crucial that we can readily debunk the most common myths and misconceptions, ensuring that future population discussions are based on facts and strong evidence.

      To help with this effort, we have gathered some of the best responses on a new page of our site: “Myths about population”. The links on this page lead to well-written texts that deconstruct some of the most common myths and misconceptions about population growth, depopulation, and policies to reverse overpopulation. We hope that this material can help counter population misconceptions, acting as a handy resource to be called upon when you come across these myths.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Groundwater modeling tool helps rural Colorado community make informed irrigation and water management decisions

      The comprehensive model at the heart of the research was described in the Journal of Hydrology and is now being used to help inform water management decisions in the area. And while every river basin and community are different, findings from the study on the relationships between agriculture, groundwater systems and rivers are applicable to future planning for water rights and the potential for changes in climate that could impact water-storage needs.

• Finance

  • GNU Taler ☛ 2025-09: TalerBarr — v0.1.0 (Inventory sync)

    TalerBarr is a Free Software module that brings GNU Taler to Dolibarr ERP & CRM. This first public release is an MVP focused on inventory synchronization between Taler and Dolibarr. More info about the project is available on the project website.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Techdirt ☛ The Untold Saga Of What Happened When DOGE [sic] Stormed Social Security

    It only got worse from there, said Dudek, who would — improbably — be named acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, a position he held through May. In 15 hours of interviews with ProPublica, Dudek described the chaos of working with DOGE [sic] and how he tried first to collaborate, and then to protect the agency, resulting in turns that were at various times alarming, confounding and tragicomic.

    DOGE [sic], he said, began acting like “a bunch of people who didn’t know what they were doing, with ideas of how government should run — thinking it should work like a McDonald’s or a bank — screaming all the time.”

  • Wired ☛ Cindy Cohn Is Leaving the EFF, but Not the Fight for Digital Rights

    In an interview with WIRED, Cohn reflected on EFF’s foundational encryption victories, its unfinished battles against National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, and the organization’s work protecting independent security researchers. She spoke about the shifting balance of power between corporations and governments, the push for stronger state-level privacy laws, and the growing risks posed by artificial intelligence.

    Though stepping down from leadership, Cohn tells WIRED she plans to remain active in the fight against mass surveillance and government secrecy. Describing herself as “more of a warrior than a manager,” she says her intent is to return to frontline advocacy. She is also at work on a forthcoming book, Privacy’s Defender, due out next spring, which she hopes will inspire a new generation of digital rights advocates.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Hate the player AND the game

    The Rot Economy describes the ideology of bosses, starting with monsters like GE's Jack Welch, who financialized companies, optimizing them for making short term cash gains for investors, at the expense of their workers, their customers, their products and services, and, ultimately, their long-term health.

    For Ed, these bosses (especially tech bosses) are the sociopaths who destroyed "the computer" (a stand-in for tech more generally). I don't disagree at all. The there is a direct, undeniable line from the ideas and conduct of tech bosses and the tech hellscape we live in today. A good read on this subject is Anil Dash's scorching post from yesterday, "How Tim Cook sold out Steve Jobs": [...]

  • India Times ☛ Swedish fintech Klarna set for hotly anticipated NYSE debut after $1.37 billion IPO

    Klarna, the Swedish fintech giant, commenced trading on the NYSE after a $1.37 billion IPO, signaling a resurgence in the U.S. IPO market. The BNPL leader's debut, alongside other companies like Gemini, marks the biggest IPO week in years, driven by strong investor demand.

  • India Times ☛ Swedish fintech Klarna raises IPO target to $1.37 billion

    Klarna said in a statement late Tuesday that the share price would be set at $40, valuing the company at over $15 billion. Last week the company said it was targeting a price between $35 and $37, which would raise $1.27 billion.

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ Europe’s last hope in AI

    The fundraising, long in preparation, came with two last-minute twists. The total raised exceeded the $1 billion initially sought. And more surprisingly, the lead investor was not the one expected. Mistral had been in advanced talks for months with MGX, the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, which already plans to co-develop a vast AI campus near Paris.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New Yorker ☛ The New Yorker’s Head of Fact Checking on Our Post-Truth Era

      Fergus McIntosh, the head research editor at The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the magazine is approaching fact checking in the second Trump era. They talk about how the spread of disinformation and deepfakes has changed the work of verifying facts; why Trump has been more aggressive, in his second term, about restricting the release of government data; and what makes his particular style of spreading falsehoods so difficult to counter.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ From slavery to pollution, National Park employees flagged material deemed ‘disparaging’ to US - lonestarlive.com

    The National Park Service had until July 18 to flag “inappropriate” signs, exhibits and other material, according to a document shared with the AP by the National Parks Conservation Association, which obtained internal information from an anonymous source within the Interior Department. The public was also encouraged to participate.

  • CPJ ☛ Yemen’s Houthi rebels block access to independent news platform

    Since seizing the Yemeni capital Sanaa in 2014, Iranian-backed Houthi authorities have taken control of key telecommunications infrastructure and blocked about 200 local, regional, and international news sites, according to the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate, including major outlets such as the Saudi state-owned broadcaster Al Arabiya and the Qatari-based broadcaster Al Jazeera.

  • Wired ☛ Massive Leak Shows How a Chinese Company Is Exporting the Great Firewall to the World

    A leak of more than 100,000 documents shows that a little-known Chinese company has been quietly selling censorship systems seemingly modeled on the Great Firewall to governments around the world.

    Geedge Networks, a company founded in 2018 that counts the “father” of China’s massive censorship infrastructure as one of its investors, styles itself as a network-monitoring provider, offering business-grade cybersecurity tools to “gain comprehensive visibility and minimize security risks” for its customers, the documents show. In fact, researchers found that it has been operating a sophisticated system that allows users to monitor online information, block certain websites and VPN tools, and spy on specific individuals.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • BIA Net ☛ International call for release of detained journalist Furkan Karabay facing up to 15 years in prison

    The International Press Institute (IPI) and the undersigned organisations strongly condemn the elongated pretrial detention of journalist Furkan Karabay, who faces a prison sentence of 6 to 15 years and call for his immediate release. Karabay has now spent 117 days in prison over his journalistic commentary.

  • CPJ ☛ Sudanese journalist detained by paramilitary group since July

    “The continued detention of journalist El-Rashid Mohamed Haroun by the paramilitary group RSF highlights the grave risks journalists in Darfur are facing to simply do their work,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Regional Director Sara Qudah. “The RSF must immediately and unconditionally release Haroun, and end their practice of arbitrarily detaining journalists for their work.”

  • CPJ ☛ In Georgia, 6 journalists attacked, robbed while covering protests

    “Against the background of extensive police violence against Georgian journalists covering the protests, the latest attacks — several of which appear to be by supporters of the ruling party — are deeply concerning,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Georgian authorities must ensure that all perpetrators of violence against the press are held to account.”

  • The Record ☛ Researchers find spyware on phones belonging to Kenyan filmmakers

    The filmmakers Bryan Adagala and Nicholas Wambugu were arrested on May 2 and released a day later, but authorities held their phones until July 10. The Kenyan government is believed to have installed the spyware FlexiSPY while authorities had custody of the devices, according to Ian Mutiso, a lawyer representing the filmmakers.

    FlexiSPY, which is commercially available, can be more easily detected than far more expensive mercenary spyware available to nation states but has similar capabilities once installed, said John Scott-Railton, a forensic researcher at The Citizen Lab who helped confirm the infection.

  • Techdirt ☛ CBS Caves Again, Will No Longer Air Edited Interviews After Noem Whined About Cuts To Hers

    The motivation for CBS wasn’t the money. It only agreed to donate $16 million to the Trump library, which should be more than enough to cover the costs of erecting a physical tribute to Trump’s artifice. Sure, someone may put a few books in there, but it’s pretty much guaranteed Trump will not have read any of them. The real motivation was greasing the wheels for administration approval of its $8 billion merger with Skydance.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Is radio still relevant? In rural Colorado, this public radio station hangs on.

    The CPB announced it was closing operations after Congress passed a rescissions bill this summer, clawing back nearly $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasting. This nonprofit corporation, established by Congress in the 1960s, provides a small percentage of funding for NPR and PBS, institutions Republicans have long accused of having a liberal bias. It also helps fund local radio stations like KSUT, which are affiliated with NPR and air some of its content alongside their own programming tailored to local communities.

  • CPJ ☛ Spyware installed on Kenyan filmmakers' phones in police custody

    “The spyware would give the operators silent, secret access to all sorts of private business and information about their journalism,” Scott-Railton told CPJ, adding that their analysis was ongoing.

    “The installation of spyware on Kenyan filmmakers’ devices while in police custody is outrageous and must be explained by authorities without delay,” said CPJ Program Director Angela Quintal. “Citizen Lab’s forensic analysis shows that journalists’ devices are not safe in the hands of Kenyan law enforcement agencies, which is alarming and further stains the country’s once-lauded reputation for press freedom.”

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Where Does News Come From?

    The basic activity of finding out and publishing true things has always sat uneasily in the context of business. Separate and apart from journalism is a business that we will call Media, which makes money by attracting audiences. These audiences pay money to see the media, and they also pay attention, which the media companies sell to others.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Irish Examiner ☛ Irish grandmother in the US legally for 50 years is behind bars after arrest by ICE

    Her ‘crime’ was a bad cheque she signed for just $25 (€23) in 2015 and for which she reportedly made full restitution.

    The historic minor misdemeanour now threatens to trigger her deportation.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Man Who Hurled Sandwich at Federal Agent Pleads Not Guilty to Assault Charge

    Prosecutors charged Sean Charles Dunn with a misdemeanor last week after a grand jury refused to indict him on a felony charge, a sign of a backlash against President Donald Trump’s law-enforcement surge in Washington.

  • [Old] UNESCO ☛ Afghanistan: Four years on, 2.2 million girls still banned from school

    Today, Afghanistan stands out tragically as the only country in the world where secondary and higher education is strictly forbidden to girls and women. Nearly 2.2 million of them are now barred from attending school beyond the primary level due to this regressive decision.

  • NPR ☛ 33 million voters have been run through a Trump administration citizenship check

    U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) says election officials have used the tool to check the information of more than 33 million voters — a striking portion of the American public, considering little information has been made public about the tool's accuracy or data security.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump’s FCC Just Used A Fake ‘Investigation’ To Shower AT&T And Elon Musk With Billions In Valuable Spectrum

    Carr’s primary focus has been in destroying whatever’s left of FCC corporate oversight and consumer protection authority, yet he’s curiously involved when it comes to things like pressuring CBS to kiss Trump’s ass, or forcing Dish to sell valuable assets to rich Trump donors. Keep in mind, Dish was technically meeting these requirements; they’d struck an extension with the FCC last year.

  • RIPE ☛ Bangladesh’s Internet Transformation: From Satellite Shadows to Digital Highways

    In the past two decades, the Internet in Bangladesh has gotten out from under the shadow of its earlier dependence on costly satellite links for connectivity, growing from 0.1% to over 75% penetration. But the real work lies ahead: strengthening local peering, reaching rural areas, and building infrastructure that serves everyone.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ RIAA Mid-Year 2025—US Recorded Music Revenues Hit New High

    ”The number of paid subscriptions hit a historic milestone, surpassing 100 million accounts, while revenues from all formats reached $5,6 billion in the first half of 2025—important markets that underscore music’s enduring value and demand for human artistry supported by recorded labels and collaborative partnerships,” says RIAA Chairman & CEO Mitch Glazier.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • El País ☛ Mexico prepares for tough USMCA treaty negotiations with the United States

    Following U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Mexico last week, President Claudia Sheinbaum acknowledged that they will review the disagreements one by one. She also warned that her negotiating team will raise protests when the balance tips in favor of Mexico’s counterparts.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Nintendo get another problematic patent in their fight against Palworld for summoning characters

    With the ongoing Nintendo and Pokemon versus Palworld lawsuit, another patent has been found recently that's rather problematic for the whole gaming industry.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Futurism ☛ Orson Welles' Estate Disgusted by Amazon Remaking His Movie Using AI

      They plan to do so by shooting sequences with live actors and then face-swapping their likenesses with AI recreations of the movie's original cast. Helmed by web dev-turned-VFX maestro Tom Clive, it sounds like the "Ambersons" effects will constitute an updated version of the kind of movie magic that's been used for everything from the inclusion of Richard Nixon and other historic figures in Forrest Gump more than 30 years ago to the posthumous CGI additions of actors Peter Cushing in 2016's "Rogue One" — which spawned a lengthy court battle with Disney — and Carrie Fisher in "The Rise of Skywalker" in 2019.

    • Variety ☛ Orson Welles Estate Blasts AI-Generated 'Magnificent Ambersons' Footage

      “We saw the various articles on ‘Ambersons’ today. In general, the estate has embraced AI technology to create a voice model intended to be used for VO work with brands. That said, this attempt to generate publicity on the back of Welles’ creative genius is disappointing, especially as we weren’t even given the courtesy of a heads up,” a spokesperson for the Welles estate wrote. “While AI is inevitable, it still cannot replace the creative instincts resident in the human mind, which means this effort to make Ambersons whole will be a purely mechanical exercise without any of the uniquely innovative thinking or a creative force like Welles.”

• Copyrights

  • India Times ☛ Copyright debate erupts as AI film heads to Cannes

    India’s Copyright Act 1957 only protects works created by humans, said Sudhir Raja Ravindran, attorney-at-law at Altacit Global. “Purely AI-generated content with no human creative input does not qualify for protection. Where a human uses AI as a tool and exercises real skill, judgment and control, that human may be treated as the author. But if the output is autonomously generated by AI, it may fall outside copyright altogether.”

  • EFF ☛ EFF to Court: The Supreme Court Must Rein in Expansive Secondary Copyright Liability

    If the Supreme Court doesn’t reverse a lower court’s ruling, internet service providers (ISPs) could be forced to terminate people’s internet access based on nothing more than mere accusations of copyright infringement. This would threaten innocent users who rely on broadband for essential aspects of daily life. EFF—along with the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and Re:Create—filed an amicus brief urging the Court to reverse the decision.

  • EFF ☛ Cox v. Sony_EFF Amicus Brief

    If there was ever a case where the Court should act cautiously before expanding the scope of copyright contributory liability, it’s this one. Here, Defendant Cox is an Internet Service Provider (ISP), upon which millions of innocent users rely for internet access, a vital service in today’s society. Adopting Plaintiffs’ expansive view of copyright contributory liability would likely cause ISPs to terminate their customers’ internet access upon the flimsiest of accusations—especially since ISPs would face billion-dollar statutory damages awards if they didn’t do so.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Appeals Court Reinstates Copyright Office Director Fired by Trump

    A divided three-judge appeals court panel ruled on Wednesday that President Trump does not have the authority to fire and replace the director of the U.S. Copyright Office. The three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2-1 to temporarily block the Trump administration from firing Shira Perlmutter as the register of copyrights.