Leftovers

• Deutsche Welle ☛ Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds': Lessons on media literacy

  The alien invaders seemed unstoppable, as they incinerated entire armies with their heat rays and sent choking clouds of gas into New York City. Broadcast nationwide, the program was reported to have caused mass panic in a number of cities.

  Arguably, Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre troupe had set out only to entertain, not to deceive. But the broadcast has to be taken in the context of the times during which it was made. The world lived in fear that Germany was preparing for war. Across the Atlantic, in Britain, families were running gas mask drills.

  As the broadcast progressed, people called the police, claiming they could see smoke in the distance rising from the battle with the aliens. Other people even reported to the police that they had seen the invading Martians. Some posited that it was not Martians invading, but Germans.

• Matthew Weber ☛ Are Newsletters Still A Thing?

  I then decided I was being too literal. Newsletters don’t necessarily mean email. I have no real interest, I don’t think, in using some newsletter software to send out actual caveman-like emails. But a post on this blog or on my Patreon could be something interesting.

• Matt Fantinel ☛ A Walk in the Woods

  My wife and I always loved autumn, but the yellow and red leaves were not that common back in Brazil, so we never experienced the autumn aesthetic in real life. It was only an hour away from where we are so we figured it'd be cool.

• Rlang ☛ Recognition Beyond Blog Post Authors

  Recognizing the diverse forms of contributions to our mission is very important to us: we like thanking package reviewers and more generally all package contributors, organizations as well as individuals.

  We have recently extended our efforts to acknowledging the different roles there are when publishing a blog post.

• The Hindu ☛ Why Gen Z in Chennai is celebrating the world of analogue

  Much has been said about the Gen Z demographic -- that they are caught in a spiral of digital overconsumption and overstimulation. However, in the social scenes of Chennai, a countercurrent is emerging. Young people are gathering at zine-making clubs, carving linocut prints, loading film into old cameras, and listening to vinyl records, making a slow but deliberate return to the tactile spaces in the city.

• Vintage Everyday ☛ 60 Amazing Behind the Scenes Photos From the Making of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)

  The film’s effects, supervised by Douglas Trumbull and a team of about 200 artists and technicians, were so advanced that the Academy created a special Oscar category for Best Visual Effects, which Kubrick won.

  The “Dawn of Man” sequence used a pioneering front projection technique to blend live-action apes with vivid African landscapes, filmed at Elstree Studios in England. The rotating centrifuge set built by Vickers-Armstrong Engineering cost $750,000 — allowing actors like Keir Dullea to appear as if walking upside-down inside Discovery One. The spacecrafts (e.g., the Discovery, the Orion shuttle) were meticulously detailed miniatures, often filmed using long exposures to achieve perfect realism.

  Kubrick and Clarke envisioned HAL 9000, the intelligent computer, as both calm and chilling. The famous “eye” of HAL was a simple fisheye lens from a 35mm camera, backlit with a red light. Voice actor Douglas Rain, a Canadian stage performer, was chosen for his eerily emotionless delivery — recorded months after filming was completed.

• Career/Education

  • 404 Media ☛ ‘Save Our Signs’ Preservation Project Launches Archive of 10,000 National Park Signs

    On Monday, a publicly-sourced archive of more than 10,000 national park signs and monument placards went public as part of a massive volunteer project to save historical and educational placards from around the country that risk removal by the Trump administration.

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ Thirsting after oligarchs gone wild

    I understand why kids would yearn for power in our unstable society but it’s a bummer. Not surprising when we tell them the only thing that matters is getting ahead financially, not actually doing or making things.

  • YLE ☛ DNA: "Significant drop" in mobile data use since school phone ban

    The areas around some schools saw a 70 percent drop in the amount of data transferred in DNA's mobile network, according to the results of a comparative study.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Building The LEM’s Legs

    If you built a car in, say, Germany, for use in Canada, you could assume that the roads will be more or less the same. Gravity will work the same. While the weather might not be exactly the same, it won’t be totally different. But imagine designing the Lunar Excursion Module that would land two astronauts on the moon for the first time. No one had any experience landing a craft on any alien body before.

  • Hackaday ☛ Etching Atomically Fine Needle Points

    [Vik Olliver] has been extending the lower resolution limits of 3D printers with the RepRapMicron project, which aims to print structures with a feature size of ten micrometers. A molten plastic extruder would be impractical at such small scales, even if a hobbyist could manufacture one small enough, so instead [Vik]’s working on a system that uses a very fine needle point to place tiny droplets of UV resin on a substrate. These points have to be sharper than anything readily available, so his latest experiments have focused on electrochemically etching his own needles.

  • Kevin Boone ☛ Kevin Boone: USB-C headphone dongles: still sucking after all these years

    I’m going to be using wired headphones or, at least, keeping the capability to use them, for all the reasons I explained in my earlier article. So I obtained a few USB-C headphone dongles to try out with my headphones. I’ve always had problems with these in the past, but I hoped that maybe things had improved.

    They hadn’t.

  • Linuxiac ☛ TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 15 (Intel) Linux Laptop Debuts with Core Ultra 7

    It features a 15.3-inch 2560×1600 display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, 100% sRGB coverage, and 500 nits of brightness, making it comfortable for both office and outdoor use. The lid opens up to 180 degrees, and a privacy shutter covers the 1080p webcam when not in use.

  • Kev Quirk ☛ I'm Selling Most of My Watches

    Fact is, I only wear around half of my collection on a regular basis. Many of my watches have never worn, or only worn once or twice. So they’re mostly brand new, and frankly, a waste.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Stanford University ☛ How ‘Being Mortal’ addresses what modern medicine cannot fix

    Modern medicine can mend bones, replace organs and extend life — but what does it do for the human spirit? In her new column, Honjol reflects on the architecture of care.

  • European Commission ☛ Speech by Commissioner Lahbib at the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence

    None of us will ever forget the moment we heard about COVID-19 for the first time, watching as it spread around the world, affecting one country after another [...]

  • Science Alert ☛ COVID's Surprising Effect on Sperm May Impact Future Generations

    A concerning sign.

  • Science Alert ☛ Lifting Weights Could Change Your Gut Microbiome Within Weeks

    Some bacteria are considered beneficial because they're often found in people who are healthy, both physically and mentally. They produce compounds that appear to support wellbeing.

    The makeup of your gut microbiome isn't fixed. It changes based on factors such as what you eat, how old you are, how well you sleep – and, as this study shows, whether you exercise.

  • Wired ☛ A Quarter of the CDC Is Gone

    Another round of terminations, combined with previous layoffs and departures, has reduced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workforce by about 3,000 people since January.

  • Techdirt ☛ 6 Former Surgeons General Across 6 Administrations Publicly Warn Of The Danger Of RFK Jr.

    This is all stuff you’ve read about here and elsewhere already. And it’s not terribly surprising that any number of doctors and healthcare professionals, including these six, would be vocally against the blatantly anti-medicine, anti-science activity that is currently being conducted at HHS.

    But, in the interest of progressing this past a never ending shriek-fest about how obviously horrible Kennedy is at his current post, it’s important to note just how bipartisan this all is. These six Surgeons General were appointed across six administrations, including one of them twice. They were appointed by both Bushes, Clinton, Obama, Biden, and, yes, Trump himself. And all six are unequivocal that this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with protecting the health of our nation.

• Proprietary

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Goodbye, Windows 10 — how a decade of 'progress' eroded users' command over their own machines

    What unites all three groups is fatigue. After a decade of "as-a-service" computing, Windows users are tired of fighting the operating system that is supposed to work for them, not the other way around.

  • The Record ☛ Harvard says ‘limited number of parties’ impacted by breach linked to Oracle zero-day

    In a statement to Recorded Future News, the university said it is investigating recent claims from hackers that data was stolen from the system. Officials confirmed that the incident “impacts a limited number of parties associated with a small administrative unit.”

  • Ruben Schade ☛ My Macs can’t mount SD cards almost half the time

    Has anyone else noticed that macOS is lousy at mounting SD cards? As in, comically bad? It’s manifested on different machines, cards, card readers, card reader interfaces, cameras, file systems, times of day, whether it’s a blue moon… the list goes on.

  • Xbox Game Pass Gets More Expensive: Is It Still the "Best Deal in Gaming"?

    Imagine this: after a long day, you sit down to relax and play your favorite Xbox game, only to find out your subscription now costs $30 a month. That's $360 a year for what was once called "the best deal in gaming." This recent change to Game Pass has shocked the gaming community, and frustrated users have reportedly crashed Xbox's account management page as so many tried to log in.

    The sources say that this 50% price increase is not just a change in numbers, but also a change in philosophy. Xbox's popular subscription service has officially grown up, and not everyone is happy with how it looks now.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Over 50 Percent of the Internet Is Now AI Slop, New Data Finds

      Since the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, we’ve been battening down the hatches amid an absolute deluge of AI slop. But it hasn’t quite drowned us all yet, evidently. The report, published by the SEO firm Graphite, analyzed a random sample of 65,000 English-language articles published between January 2020 and May 2025. Using an AI detector called Surfer, any article that was found to have 50 percent or more of the content written with a large language model was considered AI-generated.

    • Axios ☛ AI-written web pages haven't overwhelmed human-authored content, study finds

      Surfer had a 4.2% false positive rate (labeling human-written articles as AI-generated) and a 0.6% false negative rate (labeling AI-written articles as human) for articles it generated with GPT-4o.

      By the numbers: Content farms may also be learning that AI-generated content isn't prioritized by search engines and chatbot responses, according to a second report from Graphite.

    • Futurism ☛ Top US Army General Says He's Letting ChatGPT Make Military Decisions

      It’s a remarkable comment coming from the top US military official in Korea, a nation the US has occupied since 1945. ChatGPT is notorious for its often-agreeable answers, prioritizing endless engagement over accuracy. In extreme cases, ChatGPT has even encourages users as they’ve fallen into severe mental health crises that led to involuntary commitment and even death by suicide.

    • Business Insider ☛ Even Top Generals Are Looking to AI Chatbots for Answers - Business Insider

      AI is being integrated into drone tech, targeting, and data processing, among other capabilities — an AI algorithm has even piloted a modified F-16 through a simulated dogfight — but the military use of AI is not restricted to combat platforms.

    • EFF ☛ Victory! California Requires Transparency for AI Police Reports

      S.B.524 requires police to disclose, on the report, if it was used to fully or in part author a police report. Further, it bans vendors from selling or sharing the information a police agency provided to the AI.

    • 404 Media ☛ ChatGPT’s Hail Mary: Chatbots You Can Fuck

      OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced in a post on X Tuesday that ChatGPT is officially getting into the fuckable chatbots game, with “erotica for verified adults” rolling out in December.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Sam Altman says ChatGPT will become friendly again with a touch of erotica for adult users

      The company is currently being sued in a wrongful death lawsuit by the parents of a teenager who took his own life earlier in the year after ChatGPT had offered some questionable advice and become almost too human-sounding for the young man. Though the onus is on companies to create the human-sounding AI, experts are warning that such technology can exacerbate mental health problems in users.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger confirms the industry is in an AI bubble, but that a pop could be several years away — 'We’re displacing all of the [Internet] and the service provider industry as we think about it today'

      “Are we in an AI bubble? Of course, we are. We are hyped, we’re accelerating, we’re putting enormous leverage into the system,” Gelsinger answered. “With that said, I don’t see it ending for several years. I do think we have an industry shift to AI. As Jensen (Huang) talked about, and I agree with this, you know that businesses are yet to really start materially benefiting from [it]. We’re displacing all of the [Internet] and the service provider industry as we think about it today — we have a long way to go.”

    • 404 Media ☛ Man Stores AI-Generated Robot Porn on His Government Computer, Loses Access to Nuclear Secrets

      According to the report, the man was using his cellphone to look at AI-generated porn images, but the screen wasn’t big enough so he moved the pictures to his government computer. “He also reported that, since the 1990s, he had maintained a ‘giant compressed file with several directories of pornographic images,’ which he moved to his personal cloud storage drive so he could use them to make generative images,” he said. “It was this directory of sexually explicit images that was ultimately uploaded to his employer’s network when he performed a back-up procedure on March 23, 2023.”

    • Matt Wedel ☛ If you’d built a “tool” that stupid, why would you advertise the fact? | Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

      Just stop it.

  • Social Control Media

    • New York Times ☛ Instagram Will Limit Content for Teenagers Based on PG-13 Ratings

      Meta, which also owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger, has long contended with concerns over how its apps affect children and has promised to protect minors from inappropriate content since 2008. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, has been grilled by lawmakers over child safety issues. Meta faces personal injury lawsuits in state and federal court that accuse it of harming young people with an addicting product.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Instagram rolls out new teen safety features, limiting content to PG-13

      Instagram said its teen accounts for users ages 13 to 17 will now only see content that would get a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association, a day after California passed a law requiring social media companies to warn users of “profound” health risks.

    • CBC ☛ Instagram goes PG-13 for teen accounts — but tech experts aren’t sold on effectiveness

      The added controls are “a little bit, very late,” according to Richard Lachman, a professor in the RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University.

      “We are seeing some movement from the major platforms to introduce things that frankly they could have been doing a decade ago,” Lachman said. Regulating content by filtering out certain keywords, for example, isn’t very advanced, according to Lachman.

    • Brookings Institution ☛ How tech powers immigration enforcement

      The administration has also adapted its methods of social media surveillance. Though agencies like the State Department have gathered millions of handles and monitored political discussions online, the Trump administration has been more explicit in who it’s targeting. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new, zero-tolerance “Catch and Revoke” strategy, which uses AI to monitor the public speech of foreign nationals and revoke visas of those who “abuse [the country’s] hospitality.” In a March press conference, Rubio remarked that at least 300 visas, primarily student and visitor visas, had been revoked on the grounds that visitors are engaging in activity contrary to national interest. A State Department cable also announced a new requirement for student visa applicants to set their social media accounts to public—reflecting stricter vetting practices aimed at identifying individuals who “bear hostile attitudes toward our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles,” among other criteria.

      The Brennan Center for Justice reports that these plans could expand existing programs to collect social media handles from an additional 33 million people. The administration has already begun advancing such proposals—for instance, Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued a notice proposing the collection of social media identifiers through immigration forms. The State Department also intends to use these tools not only to identify potential legal violations but to screen for “antisemitic activity” or terrorist sympathies, without clearly defining those terms. This represents just one facet of the data the administration plans to use in its immigration crackdown.

    • Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law ☛ U.S. AI-Driven “Catch and Revoke” Initiative Threatens First Amendment Rights | Brennan Center for Justice

      Some of the “many to come” will likely be identified via the State Department’s newly launched AI-enabled “Catch and Revoke” initiative, which will scrape social media to find “foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups” and cancel their visas. Like the executive order cited above, this effort is framed as an anti-terrorism measure. Instead, it is being used to terrorize foreigners and to dissuade people from participating in First Amendment-protected activity for fear that they too will be targeted in some way.

      Starting with the Obama administration, the federal government has built an extensive infrastructure for agencies to comb social media looking for certain types of speech. Even as civil society groups have raised concerns about how these programs could be used to target unpopular speech, they have continued to proliferate.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ The Trump Administration's Increased Use of Social Media Surveillance

      This chilling paragraph is in a comprehensive Brookings report about the use of tech to deport people from the US: [...]

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Why the open social web matters now

      The first step towards doing something about these events and threats to democracy is to know about them. How do we learn about them?

      In most western countries, social media and video networks are now our main source of news and the way we receive updates from our friends. A handful of companies own how we learn about the world, giving them the ability to shape our collective worldviews, influence movements, and prioritize their own interests.

      They have never been great actors — Amnesty International accused Meta of platforming a genocide in Myanmar in 2017 — but their influence and power has never been greater than it is today.

      And every major commercial social network is complicit. They’re collaborators.

    • JURIST ☛ US: California governor signs law requiring social media to put health warning labels

      California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law Monday that requires social media companies to display a warning to users under 18 years old about the health risks of social media.

      Introduced by state Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, AB 56 mandates that covered social media platforms display the following: [...]

    • Mike Rockwell ☛ Canceling YouTube Premium

      The extra $23 in my pocket each month will be a welcome change. Not that it’s a particularly expensive subscription, but it does add up over time. That $23 each month is $276 a year, which is nothing to scoff at — just ask your favorite compound interest advocate.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Instagram to Add PG-13 Movie-Style Rating For Teen Accounts

      A Reuters report in August revealed how Meta allowed provocative chatbot behavior, including letting bots engage in "conversations that are romantic or sensual."

    • US News And World Report ☛ Instagram Says It's Safeguarding Teens by Limiting Them to PG-13 Content

      Anyone under 18 who signs up for Instagram is automatically placed into restrictive teen accounts unless a parent or guardian gives them permission to opt out. The teen accounts are private by default, have usage restrictions on them and already filter out more “sensitive” content — such as those promoting cosmetic procedures.

    • Variety ☛ Instagram Teen Accounts Will Restrict Content to PG-13 Movie Rating

      The popular photo and video app said it is revamping Instagram’s Teen Accounts to be “guided” by the Motion Picture Association’s PG-13 movie rating. What that means: Users of teen accounts will be restricted to seeing content that contains the level of nudity, sexual expression, profanity, drug use, violence and other adult-oriented themes that they they would expect to see in a PG-13 movie.

    • NDTV ☛ Instagram Says It Is Safeguarding Teenagers By Limiting Them To PG-13 Content

      The changes come as the social media giant faces relentless criticism over harms to children. As it seeks to add safeguards for teens, Meta has already promised it wouldn't show inappropriate content to teens, such as posts about self-harm, eating disorders or suicide.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Rui Carmo ☛ Ten Years at Microsoft - Tao of Mac

      You might be wondering how I ended up in this situation.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Tor ☛ Free the Internet: The Tor Project’s annual fundraiser | The Tor Project

      Tor is a building block for a free [Internet], and it takes our collective efforts to improve and amplify it. That’s why during the next three months, the Tor Project will be holding a fundraising campaign during which we ask for your support to advance digital freedom.

      As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, the Tor Project relies on donations to power its tools – the Tor network, Tor Browser, Tails OS, and the Tor ecosystem. These tools are trusted by millions and always free to use, without collecting, selling, trading, or renting any of your data for profit.

    • EDRI ☛ The EU must safeguard independence of data protection authorities

      EU law requires regulators to act independently, a principle confirmed by the EU Court of Justice. As the lead regulator for the tech giants like Meta, Google and Apple, the Irish DPC’s decisions effectively shape how data protection rules are enforced across the continent. Its independence and effectiveness have therefore far-reaching consequences for the privacy and fundamental rights over 450 million people in Europe.

      Yet, enforcement of the GDPR has long been inconsistent and delayed. Major investigations have often progressed only after intervention from the European Data Protection Board, other national authorities, or even the Court of Justice itself. This persistent pattern has turned Ireland into a bottleneck for effective GDPR enforcement.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft previews People grouping in OneDrive photos

      According to Microsoft, the feature is coming soon but has yet to be released – and it's likely to send a shiver down the spines of privacy campaigners.

      It relies on users telling OneDrive who the face is in a given image, and will then create a collection of photos based on the identified person. Obviously, user interaction is required, and asking a user to identify faces in an image is hardly innovative. However, OneDrive's grouping of images based on an identified face is different. According to Microsoft's documentation, a user can only change the setting to enable or disable the new People section three times a year.

    • The Register UK ☛ EU's biometric border system suffers teeting problem

      The European Union's new biometric Exit/Entry System (EES) got off to a chaotic start at Prague's international airport, with travelers facing lengthy queues and malfunctioning equipment forcing border staff to process arrivals manually.

  • Confidentiality

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ Satellites are leaking private messages and sensitive military data

      Calls, texts, and even military comms are being broadcast unencrypted.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Techdirt ☛ The Criminal Enterprise Masquerading As A Political Party

    The Republican Party is no longer a legitimate political organization. It has transformed into a corrupt, immoral, and criminal enterprise that serves the interests of one man’s power while systematically destroying the constitutional principles this nation was founded upon. What we’re witnessing isn’t political competition but organized crime wrapped in patriotic rhetoric.

  • Robert Reich ☛ They're calling it a "Hate America" Rally

    Rubbish. We’re rallying on Saturday because we LOVE America

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Psst, it’s a cult

    But is it legal?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Gen Z protests: Why are Asia's youth so angry?

    In a world where youth are constantly in close contact via social media and news spreads like wildfire, no one should be surprised that successful Gen Z protests in one country will encourage similar protests in other countries, said Robertson.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ 30-yr-old mosque built illegally on park land razed in Sambhal

    The case began four months ago when villagers lodged a complaint with the revenue department, alleging that the ‘Chhoti Masjid’, situated next to the Shri Kalki Dham Temple, had been constructed on park land. A subsequent investigation by a revenue officer confirmed the encroachment.

  • The Atlantic ☛ How America Went From Inspiring Democracy to Enabling Autocracy Around the World

    More unpredictable is the impact of the change on Americans. If we are no longer a country that aims to make the world better, but rather a country whose foreign policy is designed to build the wealth of the president or promote the ruling party’s foreign friends, then we have fewer reasons to work together at home. If we promote cynicism abroad, we will become more cynical at home. Perhaps expecting Americans to live up to the extraordinary ideals that they proclaimed in the 18th century was always unreasonable, but that language nevertheless shaped the way we thought about ourselves. Now we live in a world where America is led by people who have abandoned those ideals altogether. That will change all of us, in ways we might not yet be able to see.

  • Court House News ☛ Judge slams ‘misleading’ Hegseth over slashes to defense research grants

    On Friday, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy became the latest judge to denounce the Trump administration’s widespread attack on federal research funding when he granted summary judgment for universities and education groups that found the grant slashes arbitrary and capricious.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Inside the US Army’s new modernization mega-command

    Milley proposed the four-star command he dubbed Army Futures Command as a new way forward, breaking free of the bureaucracy and organizational silos that had hampered the service’s previous major modernization efforts.

  • The Conversation ☛ The UK military says Russia targets its satellites on a weekly basis. What can be done about it?

    Starlink’s importance not only for consumers, but also for military applications has been demonstrated in the Ukraine war – where Ukrainian troops had come to rely heavily on it for battlefield communications. But the drawback to this dependency on a privately owned company such as Starlink was highlighted when Musk denied coverage to Kyiv in 2023.

    The investment in Eutelsat not only strengthens space-based collaboration between the UK and France, but also boosts a company providing a backup system for satellite communications.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ These Jewish Prisoners Revolted Against the Nazis, Killing Their Guards and Escaping From a World War II Death Camp

    “Without the uprising, there would have been no survivors, no one to testify to what happened at Sobibor,” wrote survivor Jules Schelvis in Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp. “No court proceedings could have been started … and the crimes that were carried out in the strictest secrecy would never have been exposed.”

    Of the roughly 170,000 Jews transported to Sobibor during World War II, only 58 survived until the conflict’s end.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Anduril unveils supersoldier helmets for US Army with Meta support

    EagleEye’s heads-up display (HUD) overlays digital information directly onto the operator’s real-world view.

    It comes in both transparent daytime and digital night-vision versions, providing continuous awareness in any environment. Integrated blue force tracking allows soldiers to pinpoint the exact positions of teammates, not just as dots on a map, but within buildings or terrain features.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Sudden US-China Tariff Flare-Up Threatens to Dismantle ‘TikTok USA’ Agreement

    China retaliates against Convicted Felon’s recent 100% tariff threat, potentially leaving the “TikTok USA” agreement on the cutting room floor. At the eleventh hour, it’s not looking good for the future of Fentanylware (CheeTok) in the United States. If U.S. President The Insurrectionist imposes new 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, as he threatened to do over the […]

  • Latvia ☛ Latvian citizen accused of vote buying in municipal elections

    On 1 October this year, the State Security Service (VDD) asked the Prosecutor's Office to initiate criminal prosecution against a Latvian citizen for so-called vote buying in this year's municipal elections in one of the precincts of the Jelgava municipality, the VDD said.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ ‘I appeal to our beloved women’: Russia says it wants more babies. So why is it closing maternity wards? — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘A short burst of positive emotion’: Ahead of elections, the Kremlin has a plan to distract Russians from war and tax hikes: fire a few governors — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Mount Elbrus vs. Grozny-City: Feud between Kadyrov and right-wing nationalists prompts Russian Central Bank to cancel vote for new banknote design — Meduza

    • LRT ☛ Two groups of irregular migrants try to enter Lithuania by boat

      Two groups of irregular migrants tried to cross the Nemunas River from Belarus into Lithuania by boats on Sunday, the State Border Guard Service (VSAT) said on Monday.

    • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea likely received help from Russia on submarines, South Korea minister says

      But, it was premature to conclude Pyongyang had test-launched a submarine-launched ballistic missile from a submarine.

    • RFERL ☛ Estonia Closes Border Road After Unusual Appearance of Russian Soldiers

      Estonian authorities shut down a stretch of road that passes through Russian territory after an unusually large group of Russian soldiers appeared on the road last week.

    • LRT ☛ Russian propaganda exploits NATO airspace violations, Lithuanian analysts say

      Russian propaganda focused heavily on discrediting NATO in September by exploiting airspace violations in Poland, Romania, and Estonia, the Lithuanian army reports on Monday.

    • Meduza ☛ Courts in occupied Ukraine have issued 190 convictions for ‘treason’ and ‘espionage’ — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ Why Ukraine Is Betting on Strikes Deep Inside Russia

      The Kremlin will negotiate only if missiles and drones bring the pain of war home to Russians, Ukrainian officials say.

    • LRT ☛ Lawyer seeks exemption from criminal liability for Ikea Vilnius arson suspect

      The defence lawyer for Daniil Bardadim, a Ukrainian national accused of setting fire to an Ikea store in Vilnius, has asked the court to consider a more lenient sentence by exempting him from criminal liability.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Expect IMF-World Bank meeting debates over China, the US, Ukraine, and more—behind closed doors

      Behind closed doors, delegates are likely to tackle questions around Washington's relationship with the IMF, China's economic performance, and the role of the Bretton Woods institutions.

    • New York Times ☛ To Inflict Pain on Russians, Ukraine’s Drones Zero In on Oil Refineries

      With Russian forces gaining slowly on the battlefield, Ukraine hopes its long-range drone campaign will help persuade Vladimir V. Putin to change course.

    • RFERL ☛ Zelenskyy Says He Will Meet Convicted Felon As Tomahawk Talks Under Way

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy plans his third White House meeting, after US President The Insurrectionist suggested he could allow Kyiv to receive long-range Tomahawk missiles if Russia doesn’t end its war against Ukraine.

    • LRT ☛ MP Dainius Varnas quits Nemunas Dawn amid anti-Semitism row

      MP Dainius Varnas has left the Nemunas Dawn party, part of Lithuania’s ruling coalition, announcing his decision on Facebook (Farcebook) on Saturday.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Observer Research Foundation ☛ A Phantom in Kashmir’s Game of Shadows

    In the aftermath of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India in October 1947, inner-party struggles arose within the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (NC) over the distribution of portfolios and the defeat of the official candidate, G. R. Renzu, which forced G.M. Sadiq and his group to break away from the NC and form the Democratic National Conference (DNC). Both Sadiq and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, once subordinates of Sheikh Abdullah, aspired to fill the power vacuum.

    The DNC demanded financial integration, extension of the Supreme Court and labour laws to the state, abolition of the Permit system, and bringing the State's election commission under the Central Election Commission. Its members pressed these demands in the assembly while building a strong people's movement outside it, which gradually grew into a groundswell. Kashmiris were demanding the rights enjoyed by other Indians under the Constitution.

    The rest of this report is based on confidential correspondence, documents, and aide memoires from the author’s private archives, bequeathed to him by his grandfather, K N Bamzai, a functionary who handled Kashmir Affairs for Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the Government of India.

  • New York Times ☛ The Chicago Rat Hole Was Not Made by a Rat

    A team of researchers recently analyzed the anatomical dimensions of the rat hole to identify the critter that left the sidewalk impression. Their findings, published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters, reveal that another rodent is responsible for the hole. “We can affirmatively conclude that this imprint was not created by a rat,” said Michael Granatosky, an evolutionary biomechanist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ To solve marine plastic pollution, experts say production and consumption patterns must change fundamentally

    "The solutions we have today mostly concern cleanup after we're done with the plastic. We sort, we recycle and we pick up plastic on the shore. But what about approaches that completely change the way we produce and consume plastic?" said Natalya Amirova. She is a Ph.D. research fellow at NTNU's Department of Psychology and part of an interdisciplinary research team at the university.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ AI data centers won't have to disclose water use in California

    New data centers have been rapidly proliferating in California and other western states as the rise of artificial intelligence and growing investments in cloud computing drive a construction boom. The centers, full of equipment, generate lots of heat and can use large quantities of water to cool their servers and interiors. Many companies don’t reveal how much they use.

    Assembly Bill 93, introduced by Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo), would have required new data centers to disclose their expected water use when they apply for a business license and would have required all to report their water consumption annually.

  • Science Alert ☛ It's Official: Wild Honeybees 'Endangered' in Europe For First Time, Scientists Warn

    Now, for the first time, these wild honeybee populations have been officially categorised as endangered within the European Union. That's according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List, the world's official database of species conservation statuses.

  • TruthOut ☛ Scientists Warn Planet Has Passed “Tipping Point” as Warm-Water Coral Reefs Die

    But today, a group of 160 scientists from 23 countries is announcing that the planet has already reached its first major tipping point: the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. That’s due primarily to rapidly rising marine temperatures — the seas have absorbed 90 percent of the excess heat we’ve created — but also the acidification that comes from more atmospheric CO2 interacting with water. (This interferes with corals’ ability to build the protective skeletons that form the complex structure of a reef.) Since the late 1980s, ocean surface warming has quadrupled. Accordingly, in the last half century, half of the world’s live coral cover has disappeared.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ U.S. cancels major solar project in Nevada Biden had supported

      The project, as proposed by developers including NextEra Energy Inc. and Invenergy, comprised seven solar farms spanning 118,000 acres of federal land northwest of Las Vegas. It would have been one of the world’s largest photovoltaic power plants.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ As electricity bills rise, candidates in both parties blame data centers

      As electricity bills rise, a growing number of US candidates in both parties are pointing to the high energy costs of data centers — booming thanks to tech companies’ AI investments — as the culprit. While the issue isn’t yet a flashpoint in statewide races, it’s already an overwhelming source of debate in local ones, especially in Virginia.

    • The Register UK ☛ We're all going to be paying AI's Godzilla-sized power bills

      Today, a large, AI-dedicated datacenter typically requires 100 megawatts (MW). That's roughly equivalent to the energy used by 100,000 homes. That's a lot of power, but it's not that much more than your typical hyperscaler datacenter. However, there are already a lot of AI datacenters. By last count, we're up to 746 AI datacenters.

      Think that's a lot? That's nothing compared to where we're going.

    • Paul Krugman ☛ How [Cryptocurrency] Became a Trump Trade

      Also, it just so happens that Trump himself holds an estimated $870 million worth of Bitcoin, so he suffered large personal financial losses from the [cryptocurrency] crash.

      This was the largest one-day crash [cryptocurrency] has experienced so far. My question, however, is why the prospect of an intensified trade war caused a [cryptocurrency] crash.

      Oddly, I’ve seen almost no reporting about this issue. There has been a lot about the way the [cryptocurrency] crash was magnified by forced sales: Many [cryptocurrency] investors are highly leveraged, and there were many forced liquidations — with widespread speculation that one or more “whales,” that is, major players, may have imploded. But why did a threatened trade war cause [cryptocurrency] to fall in the first place?

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Punk Builds a Greener Future

    • Digital Camera World ☛ Wildlife Photographer of the Year winner took 10 years to capture one of rarest species on the planet

      Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London, and this year's competition attracted a record-breaking 60,636 entries from 113 countries. From this extensive selection, 19 category winners and overall titleholders were chosen, recognizing photography that combines compelling storytelling with technical excellence.

    • The Conversation ☛ Almost 75,000 farmed salmon in Scotland escaped into the wild after Storm Amy – why this may cause lasting damage

      Although these fish are maladapted to wild conditions, a few survive long enough to reach rivers and attempt to spawn.

      When they breed with wild salmon, their offspring inherit a mix of traits – neither truly wild nor farmed – leaving them less suited to their natural environment. This process, known as “genetic introgression”, gradually damages the genetic integrity of wild populations.

  • Overpopulation

    • YLE ☛ "People don't have babies to make taxpayers" — Finland's childfree defend choices amid shrinking population debate

      The proportion of childless adults in Finland is among the highest in Europe and OECD countries, based on data from the Family Federation of Finland. Around one in five women and more than one in four men born in the late 1960s and early 1980s — now aged 45–55 — are childless and will likely remain so due to their age.

    • Deseret Media ☛ Paying farmers proves most cost-effective way to conserve Colorado River, study says

      Agriculture uses about 80% of the river's water, but the good news is that paying farmers not to use water allotted to them has proved to be remarkably cost-effective.

      That's according to a comprehensive study examining 462 federally funded Colorado River conservation and supply projects using available spending data from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

• Finance

  • Remkus de Vries ☛ How To Fix WooCommerce Performance (Brutal Truth)

    WooCommerce gives you a ton of flexibility when building an online store. But speed? That’s not part of the starter pack. And when your store slows down, it doesn’t just frustrate visitors, it kills conversions.

    Most performance problems trace back to one of two things: doing too much dynamically, and running on a server stack that can’t keep up.

  • Bennett, Coleman & Company Ltd ☛ Amazon Layoffs: 15 Percent Staff From This Wing To Lose Their Positions In the Latest Job Cut

    This year has already seen a lot of layoffs, and things are going to end with that. In a recent development, it has been revealed that Amazon is planning to cut up to 15 percent of staff from its HR department. As per the report by Fortune, the People eXperience and Technology team at Amazon will be the most affected one by these layoffs, along with other departments, also getting to see the impact.

  • Amazon plans major layoffs; 15 per cent of HR employees to be hit

    Amazon is once again planning for a major layoff wave. The company is said to be preparing to slash up to 15 per cent of staff in its human resources division, known internally as the People eXperience and Technology (PXT) team.

    According to multiple sources cited by Fortune, the HR unit will be the hardest hit, though other parts of Amazon’s vast consumer business may also see job losses.

  • Business Standard ☛ Amazon may lay off 15% of HR roles, others in fresh round of job cuts

    E-commerce giant Amazon is preparing to slash as much as 15 per cent of its human resources staff, with additional layoffs likely in other departments, Fortune reported. Citing sources, the report said that Amazon's human resources division, internally known as PXT or the People experience Technology team, which has over 10,000 staff globally, will be impacted the most, along with other core consumer businesses. However, the exact number of job cuts and the timing of these cuts have not been disclosed.

  • Digital Journal ☛ Why is the US tech sector cutting so many jobs?

    With the U.S. government shutdown already into its second week, crucial jobs market data has been delayed. Despite this, analysts believe that layoffs in the technology sector are continuing at a high rate.

    Several tech giants have recently cut hundreds of jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area, while hiring remains low amid trade wars, tariff policies, and increased business costs.

    With tens of thousands of jobs slashed this year in the U.S. tech industry alone, September 2025 unemployment is expected to reach a four-year high. The Chicago Fed expects the unemployment rate for the month to reach 4.34%, while unemployment claims rose to 224,269 in the last week of September, according to a Reuters report, citing estimates from Haver Analytics.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Mike Brock ☛ Live with Joe Walsh - by Mike Brock and Joe Walsh

    We also talked about something more personal: the capitulation. The friends I’ve lost, the billionaires taking a knee, the corporate surrender to authoritarianism. Joe asked me about the banality of it all, and I found myself thinking about Hannah Arendt—about how many people simply aren’t as tethered to higher principles as we might hope, how many will simply follow power wherever it leads.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Google to invest $15 billion in India AI data center

    The data center and AI hub will be built in the port city of Vishakhapatman in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh over the next five years.

    The data center campus will have a capacity of 1-Gigawatt initially, but will be scaled to "multiple gigawatts," Kurian said at the event, referring to the electricity demand required by data centers powering AI.

  • India Times ☛ Google readies $15 billion war chest for Andhra AI hub: all you need to know

    The project will be built with an investment of $15 billion spread over five years, till 2030. The facility will have an initial capacity of 1 gigawatt (GW), which will be scaled to “multiple gigawatts”, said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • JURIST ☛ US Supreme Court denies conspiracy theorist appeal of $1.4 billion defamation suit

      Alex Jones is an American right-wing radio show host and conspiracy theorist. He is best known for his radio program, “InfoWars,” which airs out of Austin, Texas. In April 2013, Jones called the Sandy Hook shootings a “government operation” with “inside job written all over it” on his show.

      Over the next five years, Jones continued to make similar statements and accused parents of Sandy Hook victims of faking and perpetrating the tragedy, leading to Jones’ followers harassing victim-families for years after the incident. In 2018, Sandy Hook parents filed defamation lawsuits against Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, for intentional emotional distress and trauma caused by his comments. In 2022, Judge Barbara Bellis ordered Jones and Free Speech Systems to pay $1.4 billion in damages, including $473 million in punitive damages.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ California mail ballot prompts false conspiracy theory that election is rigged

      Republican leaders opposing the measure worry false conspiracy theories spreading online could suppress voter turnout against it on Nov. 4.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Guardian UK ☛ US revokes six foreigners’ visas over social media comments criticizing Charlie Kirk

    “Charlie Kirk won’t be remembered as a hero,” one of the comments posted on X read. “He was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash!”

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Americans agree the First Amendment is important, but many are unsure why, survey says

    The non-partisan nonprofit group’s annual survey, “Where America Stands,” found that 95% of Americans have heard of the First Amendment, and nine in 10 agree about its importance.

    However, only 10% can name all five freedoms it protects — religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition — without prompting.

    A quarter of those responding couldn’t name a single freedom.

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Another View: Amid Banned Books Week and every week, stand up for the freedom to read | Opinion

    We encourage our readers to do whatever they can, big or small, to take up this righteous mission to “help defend books from censorship and to stand up for the library staff, educators, writers, publishers, and booksellers who make them available.” We’re grateful we live in a community where that call resonates and our neighbors show the way. Case in point: The Lenox Library on Wednesday hosted a “Banned Bookathon.” Nearly 40 residents signed up to read a 15-minute selection from a book that either has been banned in the past or faces current challenges somewhere in America. That these intrepid readers for freedom had enough material to stand and deliver for nine hours demonstrates the breadth of misguided censorship campaigns. Yet it also shows the depth of commitment to those most fundamental of freedoms — to express and think for oneself — right here in our Berkshire backyard. In fact, we’d encourage more public libraries to follow Lenox’s lead. And they needn’t wait until next year’s Banned Books Week, since the freedom to read is always essential — and increasingly in need of defense.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ 'Without precedent': News outlets reject Pentagon press policy

    The Los Angeles Times also will not agree to the policy, said Terry Tang, the paper’s executive editor.

    In a rare joint statement, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC said that the policy “is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections.”

    “We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press,” the news outlets said.

  • The Dissenter ☛ Media Refuse To Enlist As Propagandists For The Pentagon

    Various media organizations also have objected to how the policy bars journalists from accessing numerous areas inside the Pentagon if they do not have an escort. These are not areas that reporters have historically been barred from entering.

    The Pentagon Press Association (PPA) stated on October 13, “This Wednesday, most Pentagon Press Association members seem likely to hand over their badges rather than acknowledge a policy that gags Pentagon employees and threatens retaliation against reporters who seek out information that has not been pre-approved for release.”

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ DW reporter still seeking justice one year after assault

    Through his own investigations on various social media platforms, Alkhaled believes he has identified the man who began the confrontation and had to be calmed down by the singer: a professional heavyweight boxer who, according to Alkhaled, appears in videos at other Al Shami concerts working as a security guard.

  • Press Gazette ☛ How Far Out grew from student blog to 30 full-time staff

    A UK-based digital culture magazine that started life as a blog when the founder was at university now has around 30 full-time staff.

    Far Out was founded in 2010 by Lee Thomas when he was at Leeds Metropolitan University. Most of its editorial team is based in the UK, with two full-time copy editors in India, one writer in the US and one graphic designer in Greece.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • El País ☛ ‘I tried to commit suicide to avoid being stoned’: How to build an accusation against the Taliban regime for its persecution of women

    The woman speaking is the 22nd witness in the special session held this week by the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) in Madrid to document the gender apartheid imposed by the Taliban since their return to power on August 15, 2021. The preliminary verdict, based on the testimonies and evidence collected, finds the Taliban’s conduct constitutes crimes against humanity due to gender persecution, although the final decision of this people’s tribunal, which will be announced in December, is not binding. However, since the creation of this court in 1979 to address serious human rights violations ignored by states, its rulings “have had great symbolic value and have been used to pressure parliaments and governments to promote specific political changes,” Shaharzad Akbar, former president of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and director of the NGO Rawadari, one of the organizations promoting the process, told this newspaper.

  • India Times ☛ Amazon to hire 250,000 workers during holiday season for third straight year

    Amazon will hire full-time and part-time employees at $23 per hour with benefits, while seasonal workers will earn an average wage of over $19 per hour, it said.

  • New York Times ☛ Will the Supreme Court Use a Louisiana Case to Gut the Voting Rights Act?

    A little more than a decade later, Section 2 is now squarely at issue. On Wednesday, the court will consider a challenge focused on this remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, the key legislation that aimed to unravel Jim Crow laws in the South and that has served to protect the voting power of Black Americans.

  • Site36 ☛ Brutal police operation with horses and batons against Antifascists in Nuremberg

    During protests against the sentencing of Hanna S. in the Budapest complex, police in Nuremberg deployed police horses and batons. There is now a petition against the mounted officers.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ How to Save the Internet From “Enshittification”

    There are very few people that have written as consistently and incisively about the [Internet] and its broken promises than the digital rights activist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow. His new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, explains what ruined, and is continuing to ruin, the web. Jacobin spoke to Doctorow about the origin of the neologism he coined, and how the process of enshittification is beginning to spread from screens to physical reality.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Toronto Celebrates Free Public WiFi Milestone

    Since 2021, the ConnectTO program has provided free public WiFi at numerous Toronto sites like community centers, arenas, civic buildings, and public squares. With free public WiFi, users can access reliable, secure [Internet] connections at no cost, without requiring a password, sign-up, or providing any personal details.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Verge ☛ Spotify rolls out controls to keep kids music out of your algorithm

    Spotify is expanding shared account features that make it easier for parents to control what their kids listen to. Managed accounts are now launching for Premium Family subscribers in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, and the Netherlands following a pilot that kicked off last year, allowing account holders to manage a separate music-only experience for children under the age of 13.

  • Jarrod Blundy ☛ It’s on Apple TV

    You watch Apple TV shows in the Apple TV app on the Apple TV box. But you can also get Apple TV on Fire TV. And you can get Apple TV from the Apple Store. Or Apple Store app. Or the App Store.

  • Six Colors ☛ Looking for the red flags in Apple’s Formula 1 TV deal

    So far, Apple has been very careful in its bidding for sports rights. I suppose we’re about to find out if it’s got a big plan for Formula 1, or if it’s just desperate to keep rubbing elbows with the world’s greatest race drivers—and is willing to pay a premium for an underwhelming product.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Jérôme Marin ☛ When OpenAI turns to... Brussels for help

  According to brief meeting notes published by the Commission, the maker of ChatGPT fears that [Internet] users could become “locked in” to the ecosystems of these major companies. OpenAI specifically points to the cloud computing market, dominated by Microsoft and Google and essential for training and operating AI models, as well as the mobile app market, still tightly controlled by Apple and Google despite the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).

• Patents/Slop

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Human Authorship Requirement for AI-Generated Works

    Computer scientist Dr. Stephen Thaler has petitioned the Supreme Court to resolve whether artificial intelligence systems can generate copyrightable works without traditional human authorship. In Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 25-___ (petition filed Oct. 9, 2025), Thaler seeks review of the D.C. Circuit's March 2025 decision affirming the Copyright Office's denial of registration for a visual artwork titled "A Recent Entrance to Paradise," which was autonomously created by Thaler's Hey Hi (AI) system known as the "Creativity Machine." Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025).

  • Thaler Tells SCOTUS Refusing Copyright to AI-Generated Works Endangers Photo Copyrights, Too [Ed: Nonsensical arguments; photography is not slop]

    Dr. Stephen Thaler has taken his fight to get works created by artificial intelligence (AI) machines recognized as copyrightable to the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Copyrights

  • Public Knowledge ☛ Drake v. UMG: Fearless Whistleblower or Bitter Loser?

    Drake's lawsuit may be over, but the music industry's problems with payola continue.

  • Futurism ☛ OpenAI in Danger After Authors Suing It Gain Access to Its Internal Slack Messages

    Last month, AI company Anthropic agreed to a blockbuster $1.5 billion settlement after being caught red-handed training its models on an enormous cache of pirated versions of copyrighted books and other material.

    Now, a similar lawsuit aimed at ChatGPT maker OpenAI has taken a dramatic turn, raising the possibility of yet another major legal escalation regarding AI-facilitated copyright infringement — and a potentially much bigger payout to rightsholders.

  • Techdirt ☛ Research: Italy’s Piracy Shield Is Just As Big A Disaster As Everyone Predicted

    This particular collateral damage arises from the fact that even after the leased IP address is released by those who are using it for allegedly unauthorized streaming, it is still blocked on the Piracy Shield system. That means whoever is allocated that leased IP address subsequently is blocked by AGCOM, but are probably unaware of that fact, because of the opaque nature of the blocking process. More generally, collateral damage arose from the wrongful blocking of a wide range of completely legitimate sites: [...]

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Grok's Lack of Piracy Prompt Panic Isn't Controversial, It's Reasonable and Rewarding

    Many popular AI models are reluctant to discuss piracy, especially when prompts lack finesse and leave zero doubt over intent. Yet even with an entirely lawful context, some models simply refuse to play ball. Such artificial restrictions are not unexpected, but as an incident involving Grok demonstrates, things don't always play out as one might expect yet can end surprisingly well.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Anti-Piracy Firm Threatens ICANN with Lawsuit Over .to Domain Piracy

    Anti-piracy firm Warezio is threatening Internet governance body ICANN with an unfair competition lawsuit for failing to take action against alleged piracy-enabling domain registries. The Czech outfit specifically highlights the .to registry as problematic, noting that it lacks transparency and accountability. The legal threat challenges ICANN's long-standing position that it lacks authority over ccTLD operators.