Leftovers

• The Georgia Recorder ☛ USPS unveils Jimmy Carter Forever stamp on his 101st birthday

  “It was postcards from his uncle that inspired a young Jimmy Carter to join the Navy and explore the world outside of rural Georgia,” said Beth Davis, the chief operating officer for the Carter Center who once worked as Carter’s scheduler. “It was love letters sent between a midshipman at the Naval Academy in Annapolis and the light of his life in Plains, Georgia that sustained the beginnings of the most enduring love story I have ever heard, and it was missives from his mother during her time with the Peace Corps in India after she retired as a nurse that set the example that a life of purpose and service doesn’t have to end because your career changes.”

• Vintage Everyday ☛ 26 Funny Portraits of Groucho Marx in the 1930s

  Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx (/October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian, actor, writer, and singer who performed in films and vaudeville on television, radio, and the stage. He is considered one of America’s greatest comedians.

• Cyble Inc ☛ Hackers Claim Breach Of Red Hat Customer Data

  In a blog post late today, Red Hat said the company had detected unauthorized access in a GitLab instance used for “internal Red Hat Consulting collaboration in select engagements.” The company launched an investigation, removed the unauthorized access, isolated the instance, and contacted authorities. The company has since implemented additional hardening measures.

• Scoop News Group ☛ Red Hat confirms breach of GitLab instance, which stored company’s consulting data

  Red Hat on Thursday confirmed an attacker gained access to and stole data from a GitLab instance used by its consulting team, exposing some customer data. The open-source software company, a subsidiary of IBM, said the breach is contained and an investigation into the attack is underway.

• James G ☛ When your website makes you smile

  My website is full of tiny things I made that I occasionally think about or re-discover with joy, like my (occasionally updated for various technical reasons too long to explain here) retro page that shows a (ahem dubiously) “retro” version of my home page. Or my Unicode-character-whose-name-I-can’t-remember-but-brings-me-joy page.

• Sean Conner ☛ Why do they even bother with /robots.txt?

  But what I noticed (and this happened last month too!) is that an individual IP address will come in like a wrecking ball, making as many requests in as short amount of time as it can, but that each such sequence will start with a request of /robots.txt. Like this: [...]

• Jim Mitchell ☛ Changes

  Or, if you read with RSS (you’re friggen’ awesome for doing that, btw), you might’ve noticed the site’s feed suddenly has a lot of older posts showing up as new in your reader, and all the little “thought” posts have suddenly vanished.

• New Statesman ☛ How Charlie Brown captured the American psyche

  Peanuts was published in newspapers for the first time on 2 October 1950. By the mid-Sixties, it had tens of millions of daily readers, becoming the most widely read comic strip in the world, translated into more than 20 languages, reaching some 355 million readers in 75 countries. In Japan, Peanuts was taken so seriously that the official translator of the strip was also a Nobel Prize front-runner. Schulz was the first modern cartoonist to be given a retrospective in the Louvre.

• Career/Education

  • Ian Dick ☛ Thirty

    October 2nd 1995 – my first day at Yarrow Shipbuilders, then owned by GEC Marconi. Little did I know then that thirty years later I’d still be at the same firm now owned by BAE Systems.

  • The Cyber Show ☛ Digital Inclusion Coffee Morning Part 2: Wake up and smell the exclusion.

    "My husband died this year. He did everything online for me. Now I have to figure it all out myself", said a woman clearly in her late 80s or 90s. No sooner did my heart sink for the unfortunate widow than my blood boiled at the Dickensian injustice of her falling between the cracks of 21st century society.

    She was one of many older people with similar stories Helen and I met during a "Digital Inclusion Coffee Morning" (DICM). The event was organised by Amanda Martin MP, the Portsmouth Labour Representative. This post is the fourth in a series exploring age and technology, consultation and maturity.

  • Gergely Orosz ☛ Asked to do something illegal at work? Here’s what these software engineers did

    Update on 2 Oct 2025: back in 2021, Charlie Javice, CEO of student loan startup Frank pressured a software engineer to inflate customer numbers. She told the engineer that she did not believe that anyone would end up in an ‘orange jumpsuit’ just for this. Still, the engineer refused – and was proven right. Javice, in fact, did end up in an orange jumpsuit, sentenced to 7 years of prison in 2025 for fraud.

• Hardware

  • MB ☛ That Time with the Evil Printer - jarunmb.com

    I seriously hate printers with a passion. Most are complete crap these days, and, fortunately in most cases, I don’t need to print anything. I normally just save to PDF and store it on my phone. There are exceptions (mostly just return labels). My wife however, prints a lot.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ 2025-09-26 [Older] Health Canada recalls over 104,000 Oster toaster ovens due to burn risk

  • CBC ☛ 2025-09-26 [Older] Alberta has flirted with nuclear power before. Is it now ready to make a move?

  • CBC ☛ 2025-09-26 [Older] Canada Post is on strike. Here's what you need to know

  • CBC ☛ 2025-09-25 [Older] Starbucks shuttering stores, laying off 900 workers in Canada and U.S.

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Doing It Manually

    As I have many times over the last ten years, I recommit to keeping it — mostly as a reminder that it’s ok to do some things manually. Not everything in my life needs to be available to me at the push of a button.

  • Gabriel ☛ I can’t anymore.

    This is spot on! Interestingly, I came across this post as I am rebuilding my RSS feed and also having the same thoughts. With everything that is going on in this country, it’s becoming increasingly hard to stay positive and not worry sick, feeling overwhelmed and anxious.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Kodex outage blamed on AWS social engineering attack

    A software platform used by law enforcement agencies and major tech companies to manage subpoenas and data requests went dark this week after attackers socially engineered AWS into freezing its domain.

  • The Record ☛ Cybercriminals are trying to extort executives with data allegedly stolen through Oracle tool

    Hackers possibly connected to a prominent Russian ransomware gang are attempting to extort corporate executives by threatening to leak sensitive information they claim was stolen through a popular tool made by Oracle.

  • PC World ☛ Gmail users, watch out! These 2 features are being killed next year

    Google recently published a support page that explains how it’s going to reorganize Gmail by removing two features in January 2026. Many users have been relying on these two features: first, the Gmailify extension, and second, the retrieval of emails via the POP protocol.

  • PC Gamer ☛ Starbreeze lays off a bunch more people as it cancels its co-op D&D game and shifts focus to building Payday 3 into a 'modern live-engagement game'

    Starbreeze has cancelled the co-op Dungeons and Dragons game it announced in 2023 in order to focus its resources on the Payday franchise—and also reduce its resources, because yes, the cancellation of the game also means layoffs.

  • GeekWire ☛ Smartsheet cuts jobs shortly after departure of longtime CEO

    Smartsheet, the Bellevue, Wash.-based enterprise software company that went private earlier this year in an $8.4 billion acquisition, has cut jobs amid its leadership transition.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Godfather of AI Says We're Barreling Straight Toward Human Extinction

      “If we build machines that are way smarter than us and have their own preservation goals, that’s dangerous,” he told the paper. “It’s like creating a competitor to humanity that is smarter than us.”

    • Techdirt ☛ Stanford Study: ‘AI’ Generated ‘Workslop’ Actually Making Productivity Worse

      Automation undeniably has some useful applications. But the folks hyping modern “AI” have not only dramatically overstated its capabilities, many of them generally view these tools as a way to lazily cut corners or undermine labor. There’s also a weird innovation cult that has arisen around managers and LLM use, resulting in the mandatory use of tools that may not be helping anybody — just because.

    • Simon Willison ☛ Daniel Stenberg's note on AI assisted curl bug reports

      This result is especially notable because Daniel has been outspoken about the deluge of junk AI-assisted reports on "security issues" that curl has received in the past. In May this year, concerning HackerOne: [...]

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Daniel Miessler on the AI Attack/Defense Balance

      By the way, this is the SPQA architecture.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Lawyers Caught Using A.I. Explain Why They Did It

      What is striking about 404’s reporting is how many of these lawyers simply disclaim responsibility. I know few people want to admit to being lazy and incautious, but the number of these expensive professionals who blame their assistants instead of taking responsibility for their own filings is shameful.

    • Greece ☛ AI: A threat or boon for democracy?

      As artificial intelligence impacts our lives in expected and unexpected ways, and augurs unprecedented new opportunities and challenges, leading thinkers, analysts and policy makers came together in the Greek capital to discuss what this burgeoning new technology means for democracy at large in a special two-day session in the context of the 2025 Athens Democracy Forum (September 30 – October 3) organized by the Democracy & Culture Foundation in association with The New York Times.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ The AI ‘actor’ Tilly Norwood is a symptom of blandified film culture. We need a return to reality

      So far, the media coverage has taken an indulgently bemused tongue-in-cheek approach to “Tilly” and the threat “she” represents. But a number of very real tech people created “Tilly” and a number of very real corporate lawyers are there to enforce ownership and licensing of the brand. CEO Eline Van Der Velden has defended the existence of “Tilly” but, assuming that she herself has no hands-on coding experience of its creation, I wonder if we might also hear from the team of Victor Frankensteins under her command, the guys doing the grave-robbing or writing the programs doing the grave-robbing.

    • Futurism ☛ AI Poised to Gut Your Retirement Fund, Analysts Warn

      And if the AI bubble does burst, one of the lesser-remarked dangers would be its effect on retirement funds. As WaPo points out, public markets are now dominated by tech companies, which means any fluctuation in their bottom line could have a “powerful influence” on 401(k) accounts — not to mention other retirement savings vehicles like IRAs, or the rest of the economy.

    • The Atlantic ☛ The Alien Intelligence in Your Pocket

      One of the persistent questions in our brave new world of generative AI: If a chatbot is conversant like a person, if it reasons and behaves like one, then is it possibly conscious like a person? Geoffrey Hinton, a recent Nobel Prize winner and one of the so-called godfathers of AI, told the journalist Andrew Marr earlier this year that AI has become so advanced and adept at reasoning that “we’re now creating beings.” Hinton links an AI’s ability to “think” and act on behalf of a person to consciousness: The difference between the organic neurons in our head and the synthetic neural networks of a chatbot is effectively meaningless, he said: “They are alien intelligences.”

  • Social Control Media

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Four questions (and expert answers) about the antigovernment protests in Morocco

      Youth-led protests continue to escalate in multiple cities across Morocco, with three people killed in an altercation with security forces, Moroccan authorities announced Thursday. Below, Sarah Zaaimi, a resident senior fellow for North Africa at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East programs, answers four pressing questions about the ongoing demonstrations.

    • ]Repear] New York Times ☛ Spam and Scams Proliferate in Facebook’s Political Ads

      The ads are a lucrative part of Facebook’s advertising revenue that, the project’s researchers and others say, has led the company to turn a blind eye to a flood of low-quality or deceptive content, spam and in some cases outright fraud on the platform.

      “Meta is very aware of these types of scams,” said Katie A. Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project. “They just didn’t care.”

    • New York Times ☛ How Social Media Is Changing the Narrative of the Israel-Gaza War

      Modern wars are increasingly playing out on social media. From Ukraine to Myanmar to Sudan, people have documented and uploaded footage from conflict zones to the internet. In Gaza, the videos and photographs have played out over a longer period amid bursts of violence over the years.

      That has prompted Israelis and Palestinians to use social media as a battleground for public opinion. Their efforts escalated after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants launched cross-border attacks into Israel from Gaza that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead and at least 250 kidnapped, leading to the war.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • APNIC ☛ Cyber risk is business risk: Lessons from the recent airport cyberattack

      International airports across Europe faced major disruption recently after a cyberattack on MUSE, the Collins Aerospace check-in and boarding platform used by multiple airlines. Heathrow, Brussels, and Berlin all reported an impact, with electronic check-in and bag drop affected, and manual workarounds invoked.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Botnets are getting smarter and more dangerous

      In 2024 alone, botnets accounted for 29% of all observed malware, reclaiming their spot at the top of the cyberthreat landscape, according to ForeScout Technologies Inc.’s latest analysis of 900 million recorded attacks.

    • The Register UK ☛ Clop-linked crims shake down Oracle with data theft claims

      However, unlike previous Clop-linked operations, the current activity is limited to email-based extortion attempts, without any public release of data to support the criminals' assertions.

    • The Record ☛ Georgia Tech settles with DOJ over allegations of lax cybersecurity on federal projects

      Last August, the Justice Department joined a whistleblower lawsuit filed by current and former members of Georgia Tech’s cybersecurity team, with U.S. prosecutors accusing the institution of flagrant disregard for federal cybersecurity rules as it worked contracts for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Air Force.

• Security

  • Las Vegas Review Journal ☛ 2025-09-25 [Older] Judge orders release of teen accused in 2023 casino cyberattacks

  • The Wall Street Journal ☛ 2025-09-26 [Older] ‘No Harm, No Foul:’ Courts Take Tougher Line on Data-Breach Suits

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Vietnamese Magazine ☛ The Digital Lifeline: How Việt Nam Abets the Myanmar Junta's Digital Terror Campaign

      However, the success of this surveillance state largely depends on domestic telecommunications infrastructure and financial channels—most prominently, the mobile network operator Mytel, which is inextricably linked to the Vietnamese nation and military via Viettel. At its core, this partnership is a cold-blooded transaction where immense financial gains are traded for the active enablement of an authoritarian regime’s war crimes.

    • The Independent UK ☛ ‘Not everyone has a smartphone’: Independent readers divided over mandatory online GP bookings

      Others welcomed the reduced need to sit in crowded surgeries, especially those with life-limiting conditions who said phone or email consultations often meet their needs.

    • The Register UK ☛ MEPs: EU must explain funding to spyware companies

      The group of 39 politicians referred to recent investigations that revealed countries such as Italy, Greece, Hungary, and Spain have funnelled millions of taxpayer euros at a time to help support commercial spyware-makers' finances.

      They wrote: "According to these findings, entities such as Intellexa, Cy4Gate, Verint and Cognyte – whose technologies have been linked to unlawful surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders and political actors in the EU, as well as in third countries with dreadful human rights records – have benefitted from public financing, including EU programmes.

    • EFF ☛ The UK Is Still Trying to Backdoor Encryption for Apple Users

      The demand uses a power called a “Technical Capability Notice” (TCN) in the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Act. At the time of its signing we noted this law would likely be used to demand Apple spy on its users.

      After the U.K. government first issued the TCN in January, Apple was forced to either create a backdoor or block its Advanced Data Protection feature—which turns on end-to-end encryption for iCloud—for all U.K. users. The company decided to remove the feature in the U.K. instead of creating the backdoor.

  • Confidentiality

    • 2025-09-26 [Older] Columbia University Irving Medical Center pays $600K in data breach lawsuit settlement

    • 2025-09-24 [Older] Volvo Group Data Breach Affects Workforce PII

    • 2025-09-24 [Older] Verily Faces Lawsuit Over Alleged HIPAA Violations

    • 2025-09-24 [Older] ClaimPix Data Leak Exposes 5 Million Customer Records

    • Undeadly ☛ LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 released

      LibreSSL version 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 have been released.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Independent UK ☛ Manchester synagogue terrorist who killed two people on Yom Kippur is named by police as Jihad Al-Shamie

    Three more casualties are being treated for serious injuries in hospital after the attacker, named by police as Jihad Al-Shamie, targeted worshippers marking Yom Kippur at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue, on Middleton Road in Crumpsall on Thursday morning.

  • Federal News Network ☛ When shutdowns become weapons, the damage goes far beyond the budget

    The latest White House memo on shutdown planning signals more than temporary disruption. It introduces the possibility of permanent job losses and a shift in executive power. If this approach becomes precedent, it could redefine how Congress and the White House negotiate the federal budget and exercise constitutional authority.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Finnish Court to Deliver Verdict in Baltic Sea Cable Breach Trial Against Tanker Crew

    A Finnish district court is expected to deliver its verdict on Friday in the criminal trial of the captain and the first and second officers of the Eagle S oil tanker, accused of severing five undersea power and telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea last year.

  • Vox ☛ What we learned from Trump and Hegseth’s speeches to at Quantico

    The unusual gathering, and Hegseth’s speech, can teach us a lot about the defense secretary’s leadership style — and why his selection by Trump to run the Pentagon looms as an especially consequential choice. To explore further, Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Kerry Howley, a writer at New York magazine who recently wrote a feature on Hegseth.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Algorithms That Dictate Our Lives Are Not Neutral

    Algorithms are not apolitical tools that simply improve efficiency in online transactions or workplace coordination. They are instruments of control and should be regulated like other tools of control.

  • Futurism ☛ Experts Alarmed That AI Is Now Producing Functional Viruses

    They focused on an extensively studied phage called phiX174, which is known to infect strains of the bacteria E. coli. Using the EVO AI model, the team came up with 302 candidate genomes based on phiX174 and put them to the test by using the designs to chemically assemble new viruses.

    Sixteen of them worked, infecting and killing the E. coli strains. Some of them were even deadlier than the natural form of the virus.

  • NL Times ☛ Dutch court orders Meta to let users disable algorithmic timelines

    A Dutch court on Thursday ordered Meta Platforms to give Facebook and Instagram users an easier way to choose a timeline that shows posts in chronological order rather than being shaped by algorithms that track their activity and interests. The District Court of Amsterdam issued the preliminary injunction in summary proceedings that it found that elements of both platforms violated the European Union’s Digital Services Act.

  • Vox ☛ ChatGPT parental controls don’t mean kids need AI companions

    The number of kids getting hurt by AI-powered chatbots is hard to know, but it’s not zero. Yet, for nearly three years, ChatGPT has been free for all ages to access without any guardrails. That sort of changed on Monday, when OpenAI introduced a suite of parental controls, some of which are designed to prevent teen suicides — like that of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old Californian who died by suicide after talking to ChatGPT at length about how to do it. Then, on Tuesday, OpenAI launched a social network with a new app called Sora that looks a lot like TikTok, except it’s powered by “hyperreal” AI-generated videos.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ An Autocracy of Dunces

    If America still had a fully functioning democracy, Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday to the assembled generals would have ended his presidency. Trump treated the event like a political rally and was clearly taken aback by the refusal of the audience to applaud or laugh at his jokes. Delivering a nakedly partisan speech to a mandated assembly of military officers was a gross violation of the Hatch Act. The content —telling the officers to be ready to use force against U.S. citizens — was clearly an impeachable offense. In an earlier era, Trump’s incoherent ranting would have paved the way for his immediate removal from office under the 25th Amendment.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Stephen Miller Implies He Intended for Trump's Nutjobs to Kill Democrats

    Less than a week after copying a Joseph Goebbels speech to mythologize Charlie Kirk, Stephen Miller is trying to gin up outrage because Gavin Newsom’s trollish Xitter account called him, accurately, a fascist.

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ NATO must further coordinate as confrontation between Europe, Russia escalates, Denmark's Frederiksen says

    "The idea of a hybrid war is to threaten us, to divide us, to destabilise us. To use drones one day, cyberattacks the next day, sabotage on the third day. So this will not end only by (boosting) capabilities," she said.

  • NL Times ☛ 2025-09-25 [Older] Teens sentenced to prison, treatment for killing Syrian asylum seeker, 15, in Enschede

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-09-27 [Older] Germany updates: Berlin wants deportation deal with Syria

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-09-28 [Older] Is Syria's Ahmad al-Sharaa ignoring domestic challenges?

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] Syria’s Future After the Massacre in Sweida

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-09-30 [Older] German Police Arrest Syrian Man Suspected of Crimes Against Humanity

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-10-01 [Older] South African Court Finds Opposition Leader Malema Guilty in 2018 Firearm Case

  • Project Censored ☛ 2025-09-25 [Older] Killer Humans, Killer Robots

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ Climate Of Fear Grows As HUD Whistleblowers Are Fired

    Two civil rights attorneys at the United States Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD) were fired after blowing the whistle on President Donald Trump and his administration’s efforts to undermine enforcement of the Fair Housing Act. They also challenged a “strict gag order” that was allegedly imposed against them.

    Paul Osadebe and Palmer Heenan were first interviewed by Maximillian Alvarez of the Real News Network, which published the segment on September 22. A week later, they returned to the Real News to discuss their termination.

  • The Nation ☛ The Government Shutdown Is Based on a 16-Year-Old Lie

    In 2009, Republicans falsely claimed that the Affordable Care Act would benefit undocumented immigrants. They’re still peddling the same bullshit.

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-01 [Older] 'Alternative Nobel Prize' goes to Pacific climate activists

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-10-01 [Older] New Scorecard Reveals Which States Prepared for Climate Health Threats

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-09-30 [Older] Is Gen Z Really Apathetic to Climate Chaos and Cheeto Mussolini’s Fascist Creep?

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] Climate Change and Pollution Threaten Europe's Resources, EU Warns

  • Vox ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] America’s flood insurance system is doomed to fail

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-09-27 [Older] As Millions in the US Face Climate Relocation, the First Attempt Bears a Warning

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ 2025-09-27 [Older] Is hurricane season in Los Cabos getting longer?

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Power Flowing to Chernobyl Nuclear Plant After Outage – Officials

    The Chernobyl zone administration told AFP that the plant's New Safe Confinement — a protective structure which covers both the exploded reactor unit and its original shelter to stop the release of radioactive material — was "operating in usual mode."

  • RFERL ☛ Situation 'Critical' As Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Plant Runs On Emergency Generators

  • CBC ☛ Ocean floor off N.S. warming twice as much as surface, report finds

    A new report by the European Union's marine monitoring service has found that the waters off Nova Scotia have been gradually warming due to longer, more intense marine heat waves and fewer cold spells — especially affecting the waters near the ocean floor and the species living there.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • CBC ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] Imperial Oil to cut 900 jobs, will mostly leave Calgary

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-01 [Older] Are Volkswagen's EVs made with African conflict minerals?

    • Vox ☛ 2025-09-30 [Older] Your expensive power bill is part of an alarming trend

    • New York Times ☛ Tesla Is Sued by Family Who Says Faulty Cybertruck Doors Led to Woman’s Death

      A college student was trapped in a burning Cybertruck because electronic doors made it difficult for her to get out or be rescued, a lawsuit claims.

    • Stephen Hackett ☛ Google Announces $4 Billion Investment in AI Data Center in West Memphis, Arkansas

      West Memphis — and its future AI datacenter — is right across the Mississippi River from downtown Memphis, and just a couple dozen miles from xAI’s first site in Memphis. That obviously leads to the obvious question about power deliver to the datacenter.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Decarbonization at a distance

      Here Comes the Sun is an extraordinary, beautifully told, exhaustively researched and argued book about the remarkable progress of solar energy over the past five or so years. McKibben is speaking as much to his fellow activists as he is to the people on the sidelines, trying to get them to understand the quiet, profound changes to solar, to "update their priors" about whether a solar transition is possible, and what impediments stand between us and decarbonization.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ EV tax credits are dead in the US. Now what?

      Those credits, expanded and extended in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, gave drivers up to $7,500 in credits toward the purchase of a new electric vehicle. They’ve been a major force in cutting the up-front costs of EVs, pushing more people toward purchasing them and giving automakers confidence that demand would be strong.

    • The Walrus ☛ AI’s Unquenchable Thirst for Water Could Rival That of Some Nations

      Luccioni describes a December 2024 conference hosted by the International Energy Agency, which brought big tech companies into the same room as energy grid operators from across the world. To do their jobs, the latter, Luccioni says, need to know what electrical demand will be. “Data centres will use energy 24/7,” she says, but electricity providers “don’t get any information, so they don’t know how many data centres are going up.” It’s kind of just forced upon them. They can’t plan ahead. “And so they were panicking a little, being like, ‘We need numbers, we need at least some projections, we need to know where we’re going. We need to know how we have to build out our capacity, because otherwise we can’t respond to demand.’”

      The reason why all this information is so critical was underscored early this summer, when a heat wave struck the entire eastern North American continent, driving humidex temperatures into the mid-forties. Electricity providers struggled to keep up with demand from air conditioning, which, during bouts of increasingly common extreme summer heat, keeps many people alive. As utilities warned of impending rolling blackouts, tech companies were racing to plan a mass expansion of energy-sucking data centres.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-09-30 [Older] Scientists Find Ancient Life-Size Animal Rock Carvings in the Saudi Arabian Desert

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Elephants know when you're watching—how they recognize human visual attention

      A previous study demonstrated that African savanna elephants can recognize human visual attention based on a person's face and body orientation, but this had yet to be investigated in their Asian cousins. Asian elephants split from African elephants millions of years ago, so their behavior and cognition differ in some aspects.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Jane Goodall said 'the biggest problem is greed'

      Jane Goodall: The biggest problem is greed. People want more and more and more — more than they need. Companies want to grow bigger and bigger and bigger and gobble up the competition. And the gap between the haves and the have-nots is getting bigger all the time, causing resentment and anger, rightly so.

      Speaking of that, a lot of your environmental work focuses on lifting people out of poverty. What led you to connect this social justice work with more traditional conservation efforts?

      It was back in 1986, when I realized that chimpanzees' numbers in Africa were decreasing and habitat was being destroyed. I decided I should go to a different range of countries and learn more about it, which I managed to do. But at the same time, I was learning about the plight of so many people living in and around chimpanzee habitat: the crippling poverty, the lack of good health and education, the destruction of the environment.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Independent UK ☛ Another tourist spot to introduce entry fee

      The charge aims to reduce the significant visitor footfall, which reached 2.6 million in 2024, and address issues of residents' privacy. The pre-booked ticket will include access to the local museum and windmill interiors, which currently charge for entry individually.

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2025-09-26 [Older] As combine manufacturer shifts production to Europe from U.S., experts say tariffs mean more may follow

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] Six Months In, Canada's Carney Faces Two-Front Trade War With Little Leverage

  • CBC ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] Jobs minister urges Canada Post to send new offer to striking union

  • CBC ☛ 2025-09-26 [Older] Canada's GDP rebounds in July after contracting for 3 months

  • CBC ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] As GM job cuts loom in Oshawa, one man is preparing to leave the Ontario city he loves

  • CBC ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] Algoma Steel to get loans of $400M federally, $100M from Ontario as tariffs hit the industry

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-09-27 [Older] Hungary: Hate speech and media pressure ahead of 2026 vote

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] On Free Speech, Jacobin Has Always Been Consistent

  • FSF ☛ FSF confirms Ian Kelling as its new president

    Kelling, age forty-three, has held the role of a board member and a voting member since March 2021. The board said of Kelling's confirmation: "His hands-on technical experience resulting from his position as the organization's senior systems administrator proved invaluable for his work on the board of directors. The board is confident Kelling is the right person to help the organization achieve its long-term goals. His commitment to free software comes from a life of exploring ways to exert user control. He has the technical knowledge to speak with authority on most free software issues, and he has a strong connection with the community as an active speaker and blogger."

  • New York Times ☛ OpenAI Completes Deal That Values It at $500 Billion

    OpenAI has completed a deal to sell employees’ shares to investors that values the artificial intelligence company at $500 billion, said two people familiar with the agreement.

  • India Times ☛ From Riyadh to Silicon Valley: How EA became the jewel of Saudi Arabia's gaming vision

    Backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), the $55 billion deal announced on Monday will enlarge Silver Lake's games, sports and entertainment portfolio while giving the sovereign wealth fund an asset it may want to hold on to for a long time, the sources said. EA was first approached in the summer, the people said.

  • CBC ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] Electronic Arts acquisition by private equity sparks more uncertainty for Canadian gaming industry

  • India Times ☛ Yahoo nears deal to sell AOL to Italy's Bending Spoons for $1.4 billion

    The Milan-based app developer is in advanced talks to purchase the legacy media brand, the sources said. But they cautioned that a final agreement has not been signed and talks could still fall apart.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Daniel Ek to Exit Spotify CEO Role in 2026, Take New Position

    Regarding the C-suite pivots’ timing, Ek chalked up the decision to the “natural evolution” of Norström’s and Söderström’s “exceptionally” strong results as co-presidents since 2023.

  • Techdirt ☛ [DOGE]’s “Efficiency” Theater Comes Full Circle: Trump Admin Scrambles To Rehire The Very Workers Musk Fired To “Save Money”

    Remember when Elon Musk and his merry band of [DOGE] vandals were going to revolutionize government by firing everyone and slashing everything? Yeah, about that. Turns out when you fire people who actually know how to do essential jobs, you eventually need to… hire them back. Who could have predicted this shocking turn of events? (Spoiler: literally everyone who was paying attention.)

    The General Services Administration is now desperately begging hundreds of federal employees to come back after Musk’s cost-cutting blitz left the agency “broken and understaffed.” These are the same workers who were supposedly dead weight that needed to be eliminated to save taxpayer money. Funny how that worked out.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Furloughed Education Department workers ‘shocked’ after automatic email replies changed to blame shutdown on Democrats

      The apparently automatic email changes are raising fears that agency employees will be implicated in Hatch Act violations.

    • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Federal agency notifications blame shutdown on "Radical Left" Democrats

      “This blatant propaganda being spat out was astonishing,” said Port, a Virginia-based volunteer for the progressive advocacy organization Common Defense. “Then the astonishment turned into just anger that we’re being politicized like this.”

    • Truthdig ☛ TikTok Investor: ‘Embed the Love and Respect for Israel’ in the U.S.

      The $14 billion deal to transfer TikTok’s ownership away from ByteDance, a company with roots in China, may be the culmination of the Biden and Trump administrations’ efforts to force divestment of Chinese-linked ownership in the social media behemoth. Fears over foreign influence at TikTok undergirded the campaign, but an executive at one of the new investors has expressed a commitment to influencing U.S. public opinion in favor of Israel.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Project Censored ☛ 2025-09-29 [Older] Journalism and Free Expression from the US to Kashmir

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-09-25 [Older] CA Educators Urge Newsom to Veto What They Call “Classroom Censorship Bill”

  • RFERL ☛ After Internet Restored, Afghans Recount ‘Being Suffocated’ During Blackout

    The Taliban cut off access to fiber-optic Internet and cell phone service, which relies on the same system, without warning on September 29.

    The move triggered chaos, disrupting flights and cutting people off from banking and e-commerce systems as well as online jobs and schools.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Trump Classifies “Anti-Capitalism” as a Political Pre-Crime

    On top of that, “antifa” is not even the name of an organization, although the general label (referring to militant forms of self-declared “anti-fascist” organizing) might describe varied and disparate small groups that do exist. Moreover, there’s no such category as a “domestic terrorist organization” in American law, so it’s unclear what practical import the order will have, if any.

    The executive order used a catch-all term to condemn a vague set of actors to an uncertain fate. It was almost as if, with great fanfare, the president had promised to extrajudicially execute vampires by exposing them to sunlight.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Why is Malaysia banning more books?

    This year's banned titles include thrillers and romance novels, a collection of poems titled "Masturbation," non-fiction books about Islam, and guides on puberty for pre-teens.

  • CPJ ☛ The Taliban must restore [Internet] access across Afghanistan now [PDF]

    According to evidence documented by an [Internet] connectivity monitoring organization, IODA, the nationwide [Internet] blackout went into force on September 29, 2025, at around 12:30 am UTC (17:00 local time). The disruption aligned with earlier reports by TOLO News that a nationwide shutdown was imminent. Although mobile [Internet] connections were not impacted during Mondayʼs blackout, data from Cloudflare Radar today shows that the entire country is currently cut off from the digital grid, with [Internet] traffic dropping to zero at the national level.

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ and #KeepItOn coalition urge Taliban to end [Internet] blackouts in Afghanistan

    The shutdown severely disrupted access to information, cutting off online media broadcasts from Afghanistan and hindered the ability of Afghan journalists to report and communicate safely, news reports said. The blackout not only undermines press freedom but also further isolates the Afghan people from the global community.

  • The Atlantic ☛ YouTube Bends the Knee

    All of this amounts to a rounding error for the tech giants—averaged out, YouTube made more than $107 million from ad revenue every single day last quarter—but these are still acts of profound obsequiousness and corporate cowardice. There are any number of reasons they may have chosen to pay up: Perhaps the tech elite have become genuinely red-pilled, fear regulation, or don’t want to lose out on government contracts. They have good reason to worry about personal retribution (last year, Trump accused Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of plotting against him in the 2020 presidential election and said that he would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did so again). But in any case, by settling with Trump over these suspensions, the companies are effectively arguing that their content-moderation decisions following the insurrection were wrong. They are also arguing, in effect, that the government has the right to tell business owners what they can and cannot allow on their own platforms—a weak stance generally, and a weak stance on free speech specifically.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • ANF News ☛ Kurdish journalist summoned, interrogated in Mahabad

    Ghazali was reportedly interrogated about the anniversary of the “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (Woman, Life, Freedom) uprising and for posting political content on his social media accounts, and was pressured to sign a written pledge promising to refrain from political and social activities.

  • teleSUR ☛ Peruvian Journalists Protest Over More Than 200 Attacks, Demand End to Harassment

    In Lima, the National Association of Journalists of Peru (ANP) led a protest outside the Palace of Justice to call attention to what it described as escalating violence and systematic harassment against media workers. The organization emphasized that judicial persecution and police aggression have become persistent threats to press freedom.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Lee Miller: From surrealist muse to war photographer

    Miller was motivated by empathy more than a desire to aestheticize, and her photos of the death and destruction und human suffering she witnessed retain their shocking power more than seven decades later.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Americans’ trust in media hits new low, poll finds

    The polling is the latest evidence that traditional journalism in the US is facing a moment of crisis, as President Donald Trump attacks outlets and reporters, and as Americans lose faith in legacy publications and flock to podcasts and other, newer forms of media.

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ submits comment on Trump administration’s proposed changes to journalist visas

    CPJ’s public comment highlights potential risks under the proposed policy change, including weakened quality and quantity of international reporting, a chilling effect on coverage of American politics, and potential threats to source confidentiality. Other countries may also retaliate by similarly restricting American journalists in turn.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • YLE ☛ Wolt CEO Miki Kuusi leaving post for top job at UK's Deliveroo

    Wolt announced that it was being acquired by DoorDash in 2021. At the time, the deal was said to be worth roughly seven billion euros, in one of the biggest takeovers involving a Finnish [sic] company.

  • The Nation ☛ The Sad Spectacle of American Comedians Selling Out in Saudi Arabia

    It turns out that edgy free-speech warriors will scuttle their principles for a check from a brutal autocratic regime.

  • Mike Brock ☛ We Are Not Peasants

    When Peter Thiel writes that democracy and freedom are incompatible, he’s not making a philosophical observation. He’s stating a preference. When Elon Musk guts federal agencies while posting American flags, he’s not reforming government. He’s replacing citizenship with administration. When Silicon Valley oligarchs speak about “optimization” and “efficiency,” they’re not talking about improving systems that serve citizens. They’re talking about managing peasants.

    Because that’s what they think we are. Peasants. Masses incapable of self-governance. Users to be monetized. Workers to be replaced. Voters to be manipulated through algorithmic feeds designed to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities. Populations requiring management by those with superior intelligence and technological sophistication.

  • New Statesman ☛ As the Taliban erases Afghan women, the world looks away

    In the four years since, the Taliban has effectively erased women from Afghan public life. And the draconian repressions have intensified sharply over the past year. By June, the government had enacted a “vice and virtue law” that silences women in public and bans those without a mahram (male chaperone) from using transportation. The law is enforced by “morality inspectors,” who detain individuals suspected of violating the code and bring them before Taliban courts for prosecution – where a large number of female detainees report torture, sexual assault and abuse. Women and girls remain banned from attending medical appointments, participating in sports, visiting parks or public baths, travelling more than 72 km or appearing in public without mahram. According to Afghan Witness, some 94 per cent of all women’s protests now take place indoors.

  • EFF ☛ EFF Is Standing Up for Federal Employees—Here’s How You Can Stand With Us

    That’s why EFF jumped to action earlier this year, when the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) handed over sensitive employee data—Social Security numbers, benefits data, work histories, and more—to Elon Musk’s Department [sic] of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This was a blatant violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, and it put federal workers directly at risk.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Unions sue Trump administration over shutdown RIF plans

    The unions said the directive is “contrary to federal law, because carrying out RIFs is plainly not a permitted function that can lawfully continue during a shutdown.”

    The unions’ lawsuit calls for an injunction. “These actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, and the cynical use of federal employees as a pawn in Congressional deliberations should be declared unlawful and enjoined by this Court,” the lawsuit notes.

  • The Nation ☛ Clarence Thomas Admits That He’s Coming for Our Rights

    In an interview at Catholic University last week, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said what he’s clearly been thinking for the past 30 years: Supreme Court precedents don’t matter, and he’s making things up as he goes along to fulfill his own political agenda.

    He didn’t say it in that way, of course. People would have noticed that. Instead, he couched his self-serving philosophy in legal jargon that will fly under the radar of most people, including journalists. Here’s what he said: “At some point we need to think about what we’re doing with stare decisis.… [I]t’s not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say ‘stare decisis’ and not think, turn off the brain, right?”

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Inside Towers ☛ Local Governments Must Be Key Part of the Broadband Permitting Process

    Panelist Chris Koetzie, Executive Director of the New York Association of Towns asked, “What is BEAD?” He made the point that the federal and state governments have not engaged local governments even as those local governments are expected to conduct a review process and issue permits for fiber and other infrastructure construction in their jurisdictions. Koetzie said that local governments and municipalities are needed as partners but have not been given “a seat at the table” and there is not enough work on the front end for what has to take place in the field.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Verge ☛ NBCUniversal’s new YouTube TV deal includes some shows on YouTube

    “We’ve secured long-term access to our full portfolio of broadcast and cable networks on YouTube TV, and we’re advancing our Peacock strategy with an upcoming launch on YouTube Primetime Channels and ongoing presence on Google TV,” said NBCUniversal exec Matt Schnaars.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Techdirt ☛ ABC/Disney Gets Rewarded For Kissing Trump’s Ass: FCC Moves To Eliminate Any Remaining Media Consolidation Limits

  ABC and Disney’s attempt to please our dim idiot king by banning a critical comedian didn’t go all that well. The company managed to lose 1.7 million streaming subscribers as customers voted with their wallets to punish the company for taking a giant dump on the First Amendment. This latest effort, you’ll recall, came on the heels of ABC paying Trump a $15 million bribe to settle a lawsuit they easily would have won.

• Court House News ☛ Economist says Google divestiture would hurt market

  Witnesses have presented sharply different views about the economic impact of divesting Google’s ad arm, which would involve migrating code from one business to another. And during cross examination, Julia Tarver Wood, the government’s lead attorney, pointed out that Lerner had been hired by Google during previous antitrust cases. Last year, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C. found the company violated antitrust law with its search business. And in September, European regulators fined Google €2.95 billion — $3.2 billion — over accusations the company abused its dominance in digital advertising technology.

  This case, brought in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, revolves around the way Google’s ad display business works.

• Patents

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ USMCA review will be 'more bilateral than trilateral,' says economy minister

  • US News And World Report ☛ US Patent and Trademark Office to Lay off 1% of Its Workforce, Agency Letter Says

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will lay off about 1% of its workforce of over 14,000 employees as the agency continues to operate amid a government shutdown, according to an internal letter to agency staff on Wednesday.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Digital Music News ☛ Unauthorized Celebrity Bots Raise Industry Alarms—DMN Pro

      The implications extend far beyond novelty fandom experiments. The rise of unauthorized AI bots raises urgent questions about control of name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights, a segment that is only beginning to solidify in the music business. For living artists, the stakes are clear: loss of control over their voices, reputations, and creative identities. For labels and publishers, the issue extends to brand dilution, piracy of monetizable IP, and escalating enforcement battles.

• Copyrights

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ "Stop, or I'll say 'Stop' again."

    Haven't seen this before. Credits of film from major Hollywood studio beg AI companies to pretty please not train on it: [...]

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Fake copyright take-down notices are incredibly annoying for me as a photographer. AI is about to make them even worse

    A few months ago, it seemed like I was getting a variation of the same message every day on my social media accounts: Copyright take-down notices. These take-down requests weren’t real, but malicious attempts at spreading malware by clicking the links inside. Recent research into the popular phishing attempt, however, suggests some of the malicious actors behind such phishing attempts are likely using AI.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Personal/Opinions

    • Hard Time

      I have a hard time telling if
      --as things fall apart and around
      , as things drop deeper and deeper
      , situationally, responsibly
      , elliptically--
      

    • This day sucked....

      The day started with junior having bad mood (and when his normal "happy-go-lucky" persona turns sour, it goes HARD). Followed by a total shitshow at work (why is seemingly everyone completely unable to follow written rules? WHY?!?) and culminated in a call from the accounting of the retirement home fascility where my dad now lives at. There are overdue payments and they threaten to kick him out. Fuck... it turns out his pension doesn't cover all of the costs and that he has now accumulated about 15 k Euros of missing payments... Foxtrott Uniform Charly Kilo...