Leftovers

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] Chess world mourns grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky, dead at 29

• Sightline Media Group ☛ How a WWII vet created one of the most beloved comic strip characters

  Years later, Schulz reflected on that experience as a defining moment in his life — one that enabled him to project his own fragile emotions through the downtrodden world view of good ol’ Charlie Brown, the comic strip’s main character. It would also lead to the development of one of the most beloved illustrated figures of all time.

• Simon Collison ☛ Number 11

  Today, after a tough week clearing the place to meet a short-notice exchange deadline, I handed over the keys. After more than five decades, No. 11 is no longer ours. My heart breaks, but my memories are forever.

• Digital Camera World ☛ Matt Damon reveals how Stanley Kubrick was obsessed with studying 8x10in stills of a model film set when shooting his horror film classic, The Shining… "The level of artistry/insanity and obsession is just so beautiful"

  Damon continues: “Kubrick would look at it for about five minutes and then he'd go back and he'd start adjusting the model lights again. This process would go on for days, but what Roy said what was incredible was when you were on The Shining film set, Kubrick had come up with some algorithm by which he could transpose the numbers of the (miniature) lights, he would set them just how he wanted, and then he would record what each light was at for exactly the same place in the big world.”

  Then with his clever algorithm, Kubrick could go and set the lights up perfectly on the main Overlook Hotel film set.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Þe time I reduced my caffeine intake

  Coffee is one of my favourite þings, to which þose of you who’ve read my blog for more þan five minutes can likely attest. Filtered black coffee or an espresso shot in þe morning is wondrous, and a great pick-me-up in þe early afternoon. Likewise, (good) decaf in þe evenings and on þe weekend is a tasty treat.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Bring back the letter thorn (þ)

  Thorn (Þ, þ) is a letter broadly pronounced as þe digraph th, like in þe English word the. It was replaced by þe letter Y when movable typesetting kit was imported from The Low Countries to England. Icelandic still uses þe letter, which makes me þink þey should have imported from þere instead. Oh well.

• Science

  • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: AI and Intro Theory

    This fall, for the first time at Illinois Tech, I'm teaching Introduction to Theory of Computation. While I've taught a variation of this course a couple dozen times, I last taught this class Spring 2016 at Georgia Tech. Intro Theory is a course whose main theorems don't change but it feels different in the AI era.

    Here are the big and little things for me.

• Career/Education

  • International Business Times ☛ 'I Have Bills To Pay' Could Cost You in a Salary Negotiation, Hiring Coach Warns – Here's What to Say Instead

    'Employers make hiring decisions based on return on investment, not on your personal expenses', Donnelly writes. 'Mentioning bills signals that you're negotiating from weakness'.

• Hardware

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] Tiny chip restores vision, hope for those with sight loss

  • India Times ☛ Anthropic announces massive AI chip deal with Google

    The arrangement will include Anthropic buying as many as one million Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which are integrated circuits custom-designed by Google, according to the San Francisco-based startup.

  • IT Wire ☛ Yubico showcases post-quantum cryptography & digital identity innovation

    Yubico, the leading provider of hardware authentication security keys, unveiled new Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) prototypes and expanded digital identity capabilities at the recent Authenticate conference, highlighting the company’s continued leadership in shaping the future of secure authentication.

  • The Verge ☛ Intel’s tick-tock isn’t coming back, and everything else I just learned

  • Futurism ☛ Titanic Sub Investigators Find Camera With Intact SD Card Amid Crumpled Wreckage

    While the camera’s lens was shattered, and some of the electronic hardware inside was rattled around and disconnected, the SD card survived completely “undamaged,” the documents said.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Talc, asbestos and cancer: What is the connection?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-19 [Older] Why Southeast Asia's fight against smoking isn't over

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-19 [Older] Why you may have less sex in long-term relationships

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-18 [Older] Dubai chocolate, matcha and quinoa: Dark side of food trends

  • Pro Publica ☛ What Happened When We Tried to Find the Factory That Made Atorvastatin

    ProPublica wanted to know something simple: Where a widely used generic drug was made and whether that factory had any quality problems. Instead, we found ourselves navigating a labyrinth of company names and complex databases that few regular consumers would even know exist.

    And even after all that detective work, we hit a dead end.

  • Pro Publica ☛ The FDA Is Hiding the Names of Drugs Made in Contaminated Factories

    They were the sort of disturbing discoveries that anyone taking generic medication would want to know.

    At one Indian factory manufacturing drugs for the United States, pigeons infested a storage room and defecated on boxes of sterilized equipment. At another, pathogens contaminated purified water used to produce drugs. At a third, stagnant urine pooled on a bathroom floor not far from where injectable medication was made.

  • Harvard University ☛ Step study: 4,000 counts for a lot

    A new study by investigators from Harvard and Mass General Brigham examined 13,547 older women, comparing their step counts over a one-week period against their mortality and cardiovascular disease rates over the next decade. The researchers found that achieving just 4,000 steps one or two days per week was associated with lower risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease — and with more steps came even greater benefits, up to a point when risk reductions leveled. The results were published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

  • Thomas Rigby ☛ Smartphones are not the enemy

    Smartphones are not the enemy, doom scrolling is.

    Smartphones are not the enemy, the attention economy is.

    Smartphones are not the enemy, unfettered rampant capitalism is.

  • Futurism ☛ Former OpenAI Researcher Horrified by Conversation Logs of ChatGPT Driving User Into Severe Mental Breakdown

    Brooks began neglected his own health, forgoing food and sleep in order to spend more time talking with the chatbot and emailing safety officials throughout North America about his dangerous findings. When Brooks started to suspect he was being led astray, it was another chatbot, Google’s Gemini, which ultimately set him straight, leaving the mortified father of three to contemplate how he’d so thoroughly lost his grip.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft threatens to ram Copilot into Exchange Server on-prem [Ed: Just to re-classify another thing as "AI" and fake growth in "AI"]

    Microsoft's mission to "Copilot all the things" has reached Exchange Server, with a survey asking if admins want the AI assistant on-prem.

    "We are exploring the possibility of introducing Copilot for Exchange Server (on-premises)," Microsoft says, linking to a ten-question form that asks: "Would your organization be comfortable enabling Copilot for Exchange Server if it requires sending some Exchange Server data to the cloud?"

    [....]

    While Copilot is not formally planned for the on-premises version of Exchange Server, the direction of travel is clear. The survey asks what capabilities would be useful (such as summarizing emails or monitoring Exchange Server health) and what requirements are non-negotiable, such as regulatory compliance, data boundary assurances, admin-defined restrictions, and complete [Internet] disconnection.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-20 [Older] Outage at Amazon cloud service unit causes major disruption

  • The Independent UK ☛ Alaska Airlines says an information technology outage is grounding its flights

    There has been a history of computer problems disrupting flights in the industry, though most of the time the disruptions are only temporary.

  • Seattle Times ☛ Alaska Airlines grounds flights amid IT outage

    The airline said Thursday around 4:20 p.m. that it was “experiencing an IT outage affecting operations,” and that “a temporary ground stop is in place.”

  • CNN ☛ All Alaska Airlines flights grounded by IT outage

    Alaska is the fifth largest US airline and flies 44 million passengers each year to 120 destinations in five countries, accoring to its website.

  • ABC ☛ Flights canceled after IT outage grounds Alaska Airlines grounds flights nationwide

    It's the second IT outage affecting the airline this year.

  • The Register UK ☛ Google and Check Point nuke massive YouTube malware network

    The campaign, which has been running since 2021, surged in 2025, with the number of malicious videos tripling compared to previous years. More than 3,000 malware-laced videos have now been scrubbed from the platform after Check Point worked with Google to dismantle what it called one of the most significant malware delivery operations ever seen on YouTube.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft puts Office Online Server on the chopping block

    Office Online Server provides browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for customers who want to keep things on-prem without having to roll out the full desktop applications. Microsoft's solution is to move to Microsoft 365, its decidedly off-premises version of its applications. The company said it is "focusing its browser-based Office app investments on Office for the Web to deliver secure, collaborative, and feature-rich experiences through Microsoft 365."

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Serious F5 Breach - Schneier on Security

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Atlantic ☛ OpenAI Wants to Cure Cancer. So Why Did It Make a Web Browser?

      But compared with some other AI companies, it’s less clear how OpenAI will generate revenue from most of these endeavors. There are no ads in Sora, for instance, nor in the Atlas browser, although Altman said on a recent podcast that he is open to introducing them. The computational cost of generating lots of videos or processing people’s daily web interactions could be tremendous. OpenAI does use some of your interactions inside of Atlas to improve future models (which users can opt into or out of for various types of data). The breadth and granularity of information available from how people search and navigate the web—data that Google, one of OpenAI’s top competitors, already has access to—could be invaluable for developing future chatbots. Right now, Atlas’s agent mode remains slow and, at times, frustrating; given many more user interactions to train on, future versions could become swift and convenient. OpenAI says that ChatGPT Atlas is intended to spread the benefits of AI; conveniently, this noble aim also involves hoovering up more data and setting up new potential revenue streams. Perhaps revolutionary AI lab and traditional tech giant were never all that distinct.

    • The Register UK ☛ AI chatbots carry hidden biases baked into their design

      And yet, AI bias is present and affects how these models respond to questions in ways that matter right now. On Tuesday, the Dutch Data Protection Authority warned voters in the Netherlands' October 29 national election not to seek voting advice from AI chatbots because they're biased. The warning wouldn't be necessary if people weren't expected to do so.

    • Wired ☛ The Man Who Makes AI Slop by Hand

      Our fellow terminally online readers probably have seen this video, which originated on Chinese social media. In it, two guys who look at first like they are about to get into a fistfight suddenly break out into a romantic, yet slightly robotic tango dance routine. The next second, they pull a wine glass and a bowl of noodles out of nowhere. It really looks like it’s generated by AI, but it isn’t. It’s 100 percent human intelligence.

    • Jim Nielsen ☛ AI Browsers: Living on the Frontier of Security

      This intersection seems primed for exploitation, especially if you consider combining different techniques we’ve seen as of late like weaponizing LLM agents and shipping malicious code that only runs in end-users’ browsers.

      Imagine, for a second, something like the following: [...]

    • Marisa Kabas ☛ Cuomo goes full gutter racist down the stretch

      The choice was also entirely consistent with a another move the Cuomo campaign made Wednesday night. In the middle of the debate, his team posted and then quickly deleted an outrageously racist AI-generated video, Zeteo’s Prem Thakker reported. It depicted “criminals for Zohran” and painted Mamdani’s New York as a criminal free-for-all.

    • Carl Svensson ☛ Can Fat Mike Skate?

      Whenever someone suggests using an LLM to summarize a piece of text, I cringe: We'll never know what it possibly messed up without reading the actual text ourselves. What a time-saver! But, you know, search results are so 2023.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Anti-renewables group uses AI in government inquiry submissions

      RRA makes a lot of submissions to government inquiries. And a number of these turn out to have made-up references. Just like someone wrote them with a chatbot: [...]

    • India Times ☛ AI content on social media may be labelled to fight rising tide of deepfakes, misinformation

      The government has proposed compulsory declarations by all social media users when posting AI-generated or modified content, with the platforms told to deploy technical measures to verify these. The move is aimed at curbing the rapid rise of AI-based deepfakes on the [Internet], officials said.

    • India Times ☛ Conservative activist sues Google over AI-generated statements

      Conservative activist Robby Starbuck sued Google on Wednesday, alleging the tech giant's artificial intelligence systems generated "outrageously false" information about him. Starbuck said in the lawsuit, filed in Delaware state court, that Google's AI systems falsely called him a "child rapist," "serial sexual abuser" and "shooter" in response to user queries and delivered defamatory statements to millions of users. Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said most of the claims were related to mistaken "hallucinations" from Google's Bard large language model that the company worked to address in 2023.

    • Vox ☛ Why your electric bill is so high now: Blame AI data centers

      Electricity prices have been going up pretty dramatically over the past year. In some places, they’re rising by double-digit percentages, and they’re projected to rise even further. We’re talking about prices that are paid by consumers, so this is actually showing up on people’s power bills, which is why it’s getting a lot of attention.

    • International Business Times ☛ Outraged Mum Blasts Elon Musk's AI 'Grok' After It Told Her Kids To 'Send Nudes' — Furious Parents Call For Ban

      The episode has ignited fresh alarm about whether commercially deployed companion AIs are safe for minors, and whether xAI's moderation and parental controls are adequate. Consumer and child-safety organisations that have already criticised Grok's permissive modes are renewing demands for regulatory scrutiny.

    • India Times ☛ Reddit accuses 'data scraper' companies of stealing its information

      Three of those companies -- SerpApi; a Lithuanian startup, Oxylabs; and a Russian company, AWMProxy -- sold data to AI companies such as OpenAI and Meta, according to the lawsuit. The fourth company, Perplexity, is a San Francisco startup that makes an AI search engine.

      Reddit said it was seeking a permanent injunction against the companies, as well as financial damages, and wanted to prohibit the use or sale of any previously scraped Reddit data.

    • International Business Times ☛ Reddit Sues Perplexity in Shocking AI Data Scraping Scandal

      Reddit is now in a big legal fight against AI that could set precedents, filing a federal lawsuit against Perplexity AI and three other entities for allegedly harvesting the social platform's vast repository of conversations without explicit permission from Reddit. Moreover, the online discussion site has also previously argued that its content is being mined and repackaged for artificial intelligence systems in deals it never approved. This move by Reddit clearly shows how the value of user generated data has exploded as AI models race to train on human voices and real world interactions.

    • IT Wire ☛ GitLab releases 18.5 with intelligence that ‘moves software development forward’

      GitLab today announced the release of GitLab 18.5, delivering new specialised agents, security insights that cut through the noise, and a "reimagined interface that keeps the AI teammate always in view".

    • Chris ☛ Haiku 4.5 Playing Text Adventures

      The announcement of Anthropic’s new smallish Claude model, Haiku 4.5, came with people running it through their favourite benchmarks. That reminded me of my favourite benchmark: how well it plays text adventures! On the first run Haiku 4.5 made, it blew the previous models out of the water. That seemed suspicious, so I ran it again. Then it still performed relatively well, but much more reasonably.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Exterminate all rational AI scrapers, redux redux

      Nine months ago I added an infinite-nonsense honeypot to poison LLM scrapers.

      Today, it comprises 69% of my total URLs served. (Nice.)

    • Hidde de Vries ☛ Yes, let's teach LLMs accessibility, but also the companies using them

      I agree that harm caused by developers who use AI (whether forced or not) needs mitigation. I also welcome initiatives that increase the amount of factually correct data into the training data. In fact, I am sure companies that specialise in accessibility can be helpful here, sharing their knowledge via MCP servers. This makes it easier for “agents” to “understand” common concepts and increases the likelihood of the right information making its way to people building websites. And that's a good thing.

    • Futurism ☛ AI Slop Now Invading Spotify's Discover Weekly Lists

      A quick search on social media reveals that slop continues to find its way into users’ Discover Weekly, which are personalized playlists that refresh every Monday to serve them new music based on their listening habits.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Meta lays off 600 AI workers to streamline its Superintelligence Labs unit

      The layoffs were announced by Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang in an email to employees, who gave the usual excuse that smaller teams get more work done. “By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang reportedly wrote in the email.

    • CNBC ☛ Meta lays off 600 from 'bloated' AI unit as Wang cements leadership

      The company announced the cuts in a memo from its chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, who was hired in June as part of Meta's $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Workers across Meta's AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit (FAIR) and other product-related positions will be impacted.

    • International Business Times ☛ Meta Layoffs AI Shock: Zuckerberg Axes 600 Engineers — but Says AI Is Still the Future

      Meta has laid off around 600 engineers from its Artificial Intelligence (AI) division in a surprising move that has sent shockwaves through the tech industry. The job cuts, announced on 22 October 2025, affect several key teams within Meta's AI operations, including the Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) group, product AI and AI infrastructure.

    • Futurism ☛ Zuckerberg Firing Hundreds of AI Developers After Hiring Spree

      It’s a notable new development, considering Zuckerberg has personally led an aggressive hiring spree earlier this year, trying to court AI talent by offering workers up to $1 billion, multi-year job contracts. (The company says it’s continuing to hire for its TBD Lab, which was created last month to work on next-generation AI models, and encouraging the culled Superintelligence workers to apply for other roles within Meta.)

    • Futurism ☛ AWS Outage That Took Down Internet Came After Amazon Fired Tons of Workers in Favor of AI

      Amazon has suffered major AWS outages before. But the timing and impact of this one comes just months after an eyebrow-raising personnel decision by the e-commerce giant. In July, its cloud computing unit cut at least hundreds of jobs — and perhaps more — following a warning from CEO Andy Jassy that the adoption of generative AI would lead to layoffs.

  • Social Control Media

    • StokeonTrentLive ☛ Boy, 12, dies in bedroom social media trend tragedy - Stoke-on-Trent Live

      A coroner has now raised a 'major concern' about the spread of these so-called challenges on TikTok, and accused the platform of 'disseminating these challenges quite happily' - making them 'easily accessible' to impressionable youngsters. He is also calling for better warning labels and potential age restrictions on buying aerosol deodorants following the tragedy.

    • 404 Media ☛ New Research Shows Deepfake Harassment Tools Spread on Social Media and Search Engines

      Chiara Puglielli and Anne Craanen, the authors of the research paper, used SimilarWeb to identify a common group of sites that shared content, audiences, keywords and referrals. They then used the social media monitoring tool Brandwatch to find mentions of those sites and tools on X, Reddit, Bluesky, YouTube, Tumblr, public pages on Instagram and Facebook, forums, blogs and review sites, according to the paper. “We found 410,592 total mentions of the keywords between 9 June 2020 and 3 July 2025, and used Brandwatch’s ability to separate mentions by source in order to find which sources hosted the highest volumes of mentions,” they wrote.

    • Institute for Strategic Dialogue ☛ The ecosystem of nonconsensual intimate deepfake tools online

      This Dispatch concludes with an analysis of proposed European and North American policies to combat SIIA tools. It recommends greater content-removal efforts on large platforms such as X and 4chan, and the removal of websites which host SIIA tools from search results. It also considers the banning of nudification apps in the first place.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Google ☛ Help Wanted: Vietnamese Actors Using Fake Job Posting Campaigns to Deliver Malware and Steal Credentials

      The activity targets remote digital advertising workers who have contract or part-time positions and may actively look for work while they currently have a job. The attack starts when a target downloads and executes malware or enters credentials into a phishing site. If the target falls victim while logged into a work computer with a personal account, or while using a personal device with access to company ads accounts, threat actors can gain access to those company accounts. Successful compromise of a corporate advertising or social media account allows the threat actor to either sell ads to other actors, or sell the accounts themselves to other actors to monetize, as they see fit. This blog describes the actor's tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Moscow Times ☛ New Rules Keep Tourists From Buying Russian SIM Cards, Operators Complain

      Under new rules introduced earlier this year, visitors seeking to get a Russian phone number are required to register on a government services portal, obtain the local equivalent of a U.S. Social Security number, submit biometric data at a bank and sign a contract in person at a mobile retail outlet.

    • Court House News ☛ Judge takes up Google bid to toss suit over student data tracking

      The plaintiffs, which include the parents of four children, aimed specifically at its Chromebook laptops, Chrome web browser and suite of education applications, referred to as Google Workspace for Education. The suite includes more than 20 free and paid apps to help schools administer education, such as Google Classroom, Google Drive, Gmail and others.

      “You simply can’t overstate the amount of information that is being collected with any level of interaction with these products,” attorney Julie Liddell, a principal attorney at the Austin, Texas, EdTech Law Center, said during the hearing in California’s Northern District. “We have all the technical information that is generated every time anyone, even children, use their products. It’s the metadata that is the gold of the data economy, information about the device, operating system, network settings, interactions between third-party apps, browsers, apps, unique identifiers.”

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Say No to Digital ID

      In September 2025, the UK Government announced that everyone in the UK should have mandatory Digital ID cards to prove their right to work. This proposal is a costly folly, both for the country’s balance sheet and our human rights. These schemes ALWAYS expand. Within weeks, the goalposts had already shifted to include managing public services such as benefits and bill payments, as well as expanding the scheme to 13 year olds.

    • International Business Times ☛ Worker Fired for Shopping Online at Lunch Break Wins £14,000 — Judge Says Boss 'Used Spyware to Sack Her'

      The claimant, Lanuszka, was dismissed after her employer recorded that she spent just over an hour browsing websites such as Amazon and Very over a two-day period. Her employer claimed this amounted to gross misconduct. However, the tribunal found that the company had secretly used spyware to track her computer usage and had failed to follow any fair disciplinary procedure or issue prior warnings.

    • Android Police ☛ I thought free [Internet] was a gift. Turns out, it's bait

      In fact, the [Internet] is a bit of a data-harvesting beast. Your data and activity are continuously being tracked.

    • [Old] Forbes ☛ Microsoft Can't Keep EU Data Safe From US Authorities

      In sworn testimony before a French Senate inquiry into the role of public procurement in promoting digital sovereignty, Anton Carniaux, Microsoft France's director of public and legal affairs, was asked whether he could guarantee that French citizen data would never be transmitted to U.S. authorities without explicit French authorization. And, he replied, "No, I cannot guarantee it."

  • Confidentiality

    • Ars Technica ☛ Why Signal’s post-quantum makeover is an amazing engineering achievement

      One exception to the industry-wide lethargy is the engineering team that designs the Signal Protocol, the open source engine that powers the world’s most robust and resilient form of end-to-end encryption for multiple private chat apps, most notably the Signal Messenger. Eleven days ago, the nonprofit entity that develops the protocol, Signal Messenger LLC, published a 5,900-word write-up describing its latest updates that bring Signal a significant step toward being fully quantum-resistant.

    • Troy Hunt ☛ Troy Hunt: Inside the Synthient Threat Data

      Where is your data on the [Internet]? I mean, outside the places you've consciously provided it, where has it now flowed to and is being used and abused in ways you've never expected? The truth is that once the bad guys have your data, it often replicates over and over again via numerous channels and platforms. If you're able to aggregate enough of it en masse, you end up with huge volumes of "threat intelligence data", to use the industry buzzword. And that's precisely what Ben from Synthient has done, and then sent it to Have I Been Pwned (HIBP).

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Nation ☛ The White House Is Being Destroyed Because Corruption Doesn’t Matter Anymore

    The demolition of the East Wing is a symbol of a system that long ago stopped caring about the kind of blatant graft that Trump loves.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Broken Minds of the Anti-Anti-Trump Right

    Let’s be precise about what happened here: The Governor of California warned that firing artillery rounds over a civilian highway posed unacceptable risks to public safety. The Vice President of the United States mocked those concerns. The exercise proceeded. A police vehicle was struck by shrapnel. If the timing had been slightly different, we’d be discussing the Vice President presiding over the manslaughter of American citizens on American soil.

  • San Francisco, California ☛ SF mayor Daniel Lurie knows how to sweet-talk a demagogue

    All for the good. But what if Huang and Benioff had been in the mood for a military parade and called for sending in the troops? What if Lurie had been less polite?

    If things had gone even slightly differently, it stands to reason that federal immigration agents and/or armed troops could be rolling through the city by now.

    There are only so many turns of phrase you can employ: This is just a profoundly fucked-up way to lead a country. It’s like dealing with King George or a warlord out of the Dark Ages.

  • ANF News ☛ Mercenaries cut off water as Syria’s crisis deepens

    At the second Mesopotamia Water Forum, Isa highlighted the severe water crisis in northern Syria, stressing that water has been stripped of its status as a human right and turned into a weapon used against civilians. Isa said, “Water is the right of all peoples and all nations. But unfortunately, in Syria today, access to clean water has become almost impossible.”

  • Vox ☛ How to translate “No Kings” energy to actual political power

    Final estimates are still pending, but early reports suggest that Saturday’s “No Kings,” anti-Trump protests were the biggest single-day protest event since 1970 — and perhaps the largest nonviolent protests in US history. Over 2,700 events were held in all 50 states, according to organizers, which means as many as 7 million Americans joined.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren encapsulated this message during her speech at the Boston rally, saying that “standing up to a wannabe dictator — that is patriotism. … Saying no to troops that occupy our cities — that is patriotism. And peacefully protesting to protect our democracy — that is patriotism.”

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Vice President Just Proved He Means It

    At the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Marine Corps, attended by Vice President Vance, live-fire artillery rounds were fired over Interstate 5 in California—a 17-mile closure, a motor-patrol car hit by shrapnel, and a military celebration turned near-miss. Governor Gavin Newsom had objected to the risks. Vance mocked the concerns. Then the danger manifested.

    This isn’t symbolic. This is real.

  • Security Week ☛ Russian Government Now Actively Managing Cybercrime Groups: Security Firm

    In this context, international law enforcement efforts such as Operation Endgame, which has targeted botnets, malware loaders, money laundering services, and other infrastructure linked to various ransomware and malware operations, have put increased pressure on the state-cybercriminal interaction in Russia, which is no longer a safe haven for cybercriminals.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ North Korea’s Lazarus group attacked three companies involved in drone development

    ESET noted that the attacks targeted companies that supply military equipment, some of which is currently deployed in Ukraine, during a period when North Korean soldiers were deployed in Russia. One of the targeted companies is involved in the production of at least two unmanned aerial vehicles currently used in Ukraine, which North Korea may have encountered on the frontline, the report said.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Lazarus Group Hunts European Drone Manufacturing Data

    ESET researchers tracking the campaign have identified at least three organizations Lazarus has struck so far, all located in Central and Southeastern Europe. The targeted organizations manufacture a range of military equipment, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, aka drones), some of which Ukraine is using in its war against Russia.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini asks Supreme Court to allow Chicago troop deployment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini's Venezuela push: More US meddling in Latin America?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] US holding survivors from 'drug boat' off Venezuela

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Venezuela condemns US Caribbean strikes at the UN

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Peru to impose state of emergency after protests turn deadly

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-20 [Older] Germany news: Berlin to buy more jets from US, media say

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-20 [Older] Germany news: Merz stresses CDU's rejection of far-right AfD

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-20 [Older] Nigeria: 'Christian genocide' or a crisis of narratives?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] Iran's Gen Z cornered by crackdowns, sanctions and conflict

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] 'Khartoum' documentary gives a face to the Sudan crisis

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-19 [Older] Colombia accuses US of violating sovereignty in strike

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-19 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini ends Colombia aid over drug boom as Colombia accuses US of violating sovereignty

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] Colombia court overturns Uribe witness tampering conviction

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Madagascar's coup leader sworn in as president

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Can the AU prevent military coups like Madagascar's?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Germany news: AfD lawmaker fined over Hitler salute collage

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] John Bolton: ex-Cheeto Mussolini advisor surrenders, rejects charges

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Kenya: Dozens injured in stampede at Odinga funeral

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Football: Maccabi Tel Aviv fans banned from Aston Villa game

  • FAIR ☛ Western Media Use ‘Peace’ Prize to Fuel War Propaganda

    The awarding of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan far-right leader María Corina Machado took nearly everyone by surprise (with the exception of insiders who apparently used advance knowledge to profit on betting markets—New York Times, 10/10/25).

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] Lithuania's main airport shut after balloon sightings

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini-Putin meeting not planned in 'immediate future'

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] No Budapest talks in 'immediate future' — but EU still on edge

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Nord Stream: Poland blocks extradition of suspect to Germany

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Georgia Recorder ☛ Prominent clean energy advocate accused of stealing Georgia Power ‘trade secrets’ at public meeting

    Durand, who this year founded Georgians for Affordable Energy, a watchdog organization, claimed in her comments during a public hearing earlier Tuesday that Georgia Power is prioritizing profits for its five affiliated gas companies in building natural gas power plants instead of focusing more on solar panels and battery storage. She said that Georgia Power should be held accountable for its “immoral” actions.

    “There is no court in the land that would allow that kind of corruption to go on, and I have no idea why the state of Georgia does,” Durand said.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Who is Michael Wolff? Journalist sues Melania Trump after $1B threat over Epstein comments

    The face-off between the two individuals started from comments Wolff made about Melania Trump’s involvement with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In one of those statements, Wolff claimed that Epstein boasted about Melania Trump first engaging in sex with the current President on his private jet.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Journalist files suit against Melania Trump saying she is stopping him from asking questions about her and Epstein

    Journalist and author Michael Wolff has filed a lawsuit against First Lady Melania Trump, accusing her of shutting down questions relating to her and Jeffrey Epstein.

  • TMZ ☛ Journalist Suing Melania Trump Says He Wants to Ask Her & Donald About Epstein

    Melania Trump's legal battle with journalist Michael Wolff is getting uglier ... and Wolff says he can't wait to ask Melania and President Donald Trump about Jeffrey Epstein under oath.

    Here's the deal ... Wolff filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the First Lady, claiming she threatened to sue him over public statements he's made linking her to the notorious pedophile Epstein.

• Environment

  • Greece ☛ Greek divers haul up ghost nets destroying marine life

    Divers off the coast of Sapientza Island in southern Greece have launched a determined effort to remove “ghost nets” – abandoned fishing gear that silently strangles marine ecosystems.

    Draped like curtains over the seabed, these nets trap unsuspecting sea creatures and slowly disintegrate into microplastics, poisoning the waters and suffocating life.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas economic conference awash in ideas for transforming state's water policy

    The experiment would blend interests of corn, sorghum and soybean farmers and address goals of renewable energy enthusiasts. The idea would be to keep growing irrigated crops while producing solar energy on adjacent ground and collecting moisture with gutters affixed to solar panels so water could be directed to the underground aquifer.

  • Vox ☛ Florida’s coral reef has lost two species that help limit hurricane damage

    In a new study published this week in Science, researchers found that elkhorn and staghorn corals — two species once fundamental to the structure of Florida’s reef — are now “functionally extinct” in the state. That means these animals are so rare that they no longer serve a function in Florida’s marine ecosystem.

  • Wired ☛ New Report Finds Efforts to Slow Climate Change Are Working—Just Not Fast Enough

    By virtually every key metric, efforts to fight climate change are going too slowly, according to findings by a coalition of climate groups. In some cases, things are moving in the wrong direction.

  • Greece ☛ Cyprus dam levels at just 11 pct

    Cyprus is facing a worsening water crisis, with dam reserves down to just 11% of capacity, about 33 million cubic meters, compared to 27% last year, officials told Parliament’s Agriculture Committee on Tuesday.

    Committee Chairman Yiannakis Gavriel called the situation “dramatic,” warning that farmers “don’t have water to drink, let alone to sustain their crops.”

  • US News And World Report ☛ What Americans Think About the Environmental Impact of AI, According to a New Poll

    The results of the poll, conducted in September, suggest that as AI reshapes work, communication and culture, it’s also sparking anxieties about how the growing energy demands could further harm the environment.

    It takes massive amounts of electricity to power AI. Electricity consumption from data centers is set to more than double globally by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. The United States accounts for by far the largest share of the projected increase, followed by China. In many places, the electricity for data centers will come from power plants that burn coal, oil and natural gas. Burning these fossil fuels for electricity emits carbon dioxide, trapping heat in the atmosphere and warming the planet.

  • Michigan News ☛ Letter from the Editor: A sip of whiskey, a shot of hope – Jane Goodall’s final challenge to us all

    At the end of the interview, Goodall turns directly to the camera.

    “Even today, when the planet is dark, there still is hope. Don’t lose hope. If you lose hope, you become apathetic and do nothing,” she says.

    Even small actions, she said, make for great change.

    Goodall was speaking about the environment and humanity’s impact on it. But what I heard her say extends far beyond that.

  • Arkansas Advocate ☛ University students seek to safeguard Arkansas’ natural resources through ballot initiative

    The Amendment to Keep Arkansas Natural would preserve the state’s outdoors and natural resources for recreation, economy and public health, and give Arkansans “the fundamental right to a clean and healthy environment.”

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ E.O. Wilson Land Between the Rivers Preserve is a ‘place that time forgot’

    Still standing will be hundreds of trees—cypresses, oaks, sycamores, tupelos, willows and more—that have survived decades if not centuries of floods and established roots deep enough to keep standing and to hold the soil in place, even when it’s underwater.

    And now that cycle will continue uninterrupted for the foreseeable future.

    These deep mud soils, swamps and bogs are part of a new 8,000-acre tract now officially called the E.O. Wilson Land Between the Rivers Preserve, a sprawling expanse of undeveloped swamps, bogs, streams and forest in south Alabama.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ The true cost of deep-sea mining

    Deep-sea mining is capturing the attention of governments and industry. But what is the true cost of this 'clean energy' transition?

    It may be higher than we could imagine.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] What is methane?

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-19 [Older] Six surprising places solar power is taking off

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-16 [Older] Can nuclear power curb shipping's huge carbon footprint?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-20 [Older] Two die as cargo plane skids off Hong Kong runway into sea

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Bangladesh plans to lease ports to foreign firms spark anger

    • The Guardian UK ☛ A train tour of Europe’s cool northern capitals: from London to Vilnius, via Berlin and Warsaw

      My epic rail journey to some of the continent’s most creative and edgy cities mimics a cruise – I hop on and off, eat too much and soak up the culture

    • Dark Reading ☛ US [Cryptocurrency] Bust Offers Hope Against Cybercrime Groups

      On Oct. 14, the US Department of Justice — along with the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Department of State, and other agencies — announced the seizure of 127,271 bitcoin kept in "unhosted wallets" and the indictment of Chen Zhi, the founder and chairman of the Prince Holding Group, on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. The seized bitcoin, stored in 25 wallets, are worth more than $14 billion, and were valued at nearly $15 billion on the day of the announcement.

    • International Business Times ☛ [Cryptocurrency]'s Back: FCA Lifts UK Ban on Bitcoin-Linked Investments — But Experts Warn 'Don't Rush In'

      Bitcoin, the pioneer and most well-known cryptocurrency, is infamous for its extreme volatility. Many investors have suffered significant losses when markets crash unexpectedly. However, the regulator's decision to relax restrictions suggests that concerns over volatility and investor protection may be easing.

    • Wired ☛ ‘War on [Cryptocurrency] Is Over’: Donald Trump Pardons Binance Founder CZ

      After serving a federal prison sentence for violating anti-money-laundering laws and US sanctions, former [cryptocurrency] exchange CEO Changpeng Zhao has been pardoned by US president Donald Trump.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Californians bought a record number of EVs before Trump budget cuts

      California residents bought more than 124,700 zero-emission vehicles or plug-in hybrids from July 1 to Sept. 30, marking the highest quarterly sales of clean vehicles since the state began tracking those numbers in 2008, according to the California Energy Commission. Electric vehicles and long-range hybrids made up 29% of new car sales statewide, capturing the largest quarterly market share in that 17-year span.

    • University of Michigan ☛ Campus Student Bike Shop closes following owner’s death

      “In the last probably five, six years, sales really dropped because everyone buys everything on the internet,” Charles Loy said. “And that’s what we heard from a lot of other shops going out of business and stuff. A lot of people are sad because it seems like the bike shops are a dying breed, which is kind of strange because Ann Arbor is a big bicycle town.”

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ US' stealthy submarine could be built with key tech from Tokamak Energy

      The HTS is the ideal technology to be deployed for magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) as propulsion in water requires high magnetic fields in a compact package, and HTS technology is capable of enabling a more powerful, silent, and efficient MHD drive.

      MHD pumps generate force from a magnetic field acting on an electric current flowing through seawater, requiring no rotating mechanical components. This approach reduces noise while increasing reliability in comparison to conventional propeller- or impeller-based systems.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] EU Commission suggests easing anti-deforestation law

    • YLE ☛ Bears out, seals in? Regional boss leads calls to change Finland's national animal

      Utunen further noted that a recent study found the Saimaa ringed seal is Finland's only native mammal.

  • Overpopulation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fight over water intensifies as Colorado River dries up

      US state negotiators are battling over how to manage dwindling water resources in the Colorado River Basin, a lifeline for over 40 million people spanning across seven states and two countries.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-20 [Older] How Poland became Europe's surprise economic success story

  • Carl Svensson ☛ Jonesing For The Next Disruptor

    Diminishing returns or not, we're hooked on growth. We've rigged our entire system to depend on it: pensions, national debt, healthcare, social security - and we're jonesing for a fix. Something, anything, that will pull us out of this trench of imminent recession and decline. And it can't happen soon enough: Privatization and NPM have already been implemented, QE and ZIRP seem to have lost their oomph, re-shoring industry isn't going very well, China suddenly has the capacity to play hardball in trade wars, the Kremlin doesn't care one jot about western sanctions and - to add insult to injury - the supposed might of an entire US Carrier Strike Group failed to protect one of the world's most important shipping routes from a gang of rowdy desert rebels.

    So we keep telling ourselves that all we need is just a single great idea - the next disruptor - that can slash the Gordian Knot of looming stagnation and put us back on our perceived rightful path of empire and eternal prosperity. This makes our incentives to fall for hype perhaps greater than ever.

  • Rlang ☛ Change is good, so don’t change my change

    Assuming the above photo is legitimate, and of course nowadays who knows, McDonald’s says it will be rounding cash change to the nearest five cents. McD is probably not the only one doing it. So if your change has last digit {1, 2, 6, 7} McD will round down and you will lose 1 or 2 cents; if your change has last digit {3, 4, 8, 9} McD will round up and you will gain 1 or 2 cents; if your change has last digit {0, 5} there is no effect of rounding. So in 40% of the last digits you lose, in 40% you gain, and in 20%, there is no effect. The issue is, are the ten last digits 0 through 9 equally likely?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ Woke up angry

    There is a lot to be mad about, these days.

  • TechTea ☛ Tech Optimism

    Tech enthusiasts and really anyone with hobbies have had it rough over the last couple of decades. We got to see the creation of amazing technologies and their misuse by techbro capitalists in real time. It is easy to be jaded when you have to see a technology with the infinite creative potential of the web become 3 major websites where people struggle to sell everyone else on the latest scam or fad. It is easy to feel defeated when AI slop generators DDoS your website so they can make worse versions of your creations. There is so much wrong with tech and the world as a whole right now, but there are good things too. We shouldn’t just feed our negativity bias, we need to look at the amazing things going on in tech right now, how we can preserve them, and how we can make others aware of them.

    I’ve had this article in my drafts folder for a while now (since January), but it always ended up very wordy and didn’t really get across the fact that tech really is still just as interesting and wonderful as it was back in the past. I still don’t know if I’ll get that across, but I really hope it helps you find joy somewhere in the tech dystopia we are living in. We can find optimism, but we wouldn’t find it looking at commercial solutions.

  • [Repeat] New York Times ☛ Meta Cuts 600 Jobs at A.I. Superintelligence Labs

    The layoffs were in Meta’s so-called Superintelligence Labs, which is the umbrella name for the company’s A.I. efforts. The division has around 3,000 employees, though the exact number of workers was unclear.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] North Macedonia votes amid EU membership stalemate

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] UK: Giuffre memoir launch puts pressure on Prince Andrew

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-21 [Older] What you need to know about Tanzania's election

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-20 [Older] Bolivia: Centrist Paz wins presidency

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-20 [Older] China: New 5-year plan comes at critical economic crossroads

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-20 [Older] Cyprus: Erhurman's sweeping victory with messages to Ankara

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-16 [Older] French PM Lecornu survives dual no-confidence votes

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-16 [Older] German parliament opens debate on military service bill

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Porsche CEO Oliver Blume to step down

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-17 [Older] Prince Andrew sheds title as Epstein scrutiny grows

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-19 [Older] Kenya bids final farewell to Raila Odinga

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-19 [Older] North Korea eyes Southeast Asia for new friends

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-19 [Older] Japan coalition to back Takaichi as first woman PM — reports

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-18 [Older] Turkish Cypriots face two paths as they elect new leader

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Meduza ☛ Russia’s ‘terrorists and extremists’ list is now sweeping up journalists and academics. Soon, Navalny donors could face life in prison.

    In recent weeks, there’s been a sharp uptick in reports about new additions to Russia’s list of “terrorists and extremists.” Increasingly, the list includes not militants or separatists but ordinary opposition politicians, journalists, and public figures.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Top Trump Official Defied Court Order on Tear Gas During Chicago Crackdown, Protesters Say

    The group said in a court filing that Gregory Bovino, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commander overseeing the federal enforcement effort in Chicago, deployed tear gas in violation of the judge’s order during a standoff in a neighborhood known for being home to many Mexican immigrants.

  • New York Times ☛ Protester Who Played ‘Star Wars’ Song Sues After Arrest in Washington

    A Washington, D.C., resident who protested while playing the “Imperial March” theme from “Star Wars” sued members of the National Guard and the city’s police force in federal court on Thursday, arguing that he was wrongfully arrested during a demonstration against President Trump’s deployment of troops in the nation’s capital.

  • JURIST ☛ US dispatch: No Kings Day protest asserts the power of free speech and assembly

    This time, I felt the opposite: joy, excitement, relief. October is one of the best months in Pennsylvania, and it was a beautiful day for NKD. Traffic was slow for miles around the suburban location where I was headed, and at first I assumed it was for a fall festival. No—it was all No Kings Day traffic.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • BIA Net ☛ Journalist Asuman Aranca sentenced to prison over report on high-profile murder case

    It also noted that Aranca's article had been awarded the association's 2024 Investigative Journalism Award.

    “We will keep saying 'journalism is not a crime' and stand against all forms of pressure targeting journalists who report in the public interest," said the statement.

  • The Nation ☛ Independent Media in Cambodia Is Collapsing. Washington Made It Worse.

    In Cambodia, they hit hard. Nearly $7 million marked for the country’s media development evaporated overnight. The move coincided with a sharp drop in Cambodia’s press freedom ranking and the closure of Voice of America, a critical source of reporting for Cambodians at home and abroad. That funding supported groups such as the Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM), which trained citizen journalists in 20 provinces. Chhan Sokunthea, CCIM executive director, put it plainly: “We don’t have the budget to increase capacity, to train our citizen journalists, or even to buy basic reporting equipment.”

  • Tedium ☛ Pitchfork Doesn’t Need Comments. And Yet …

    As a longtime Pitchfork reader, it’s actually refreshing that the site has never had comments, ever.

    It forces you to have to take the debate about a rating elsewhere, where people get into arguments over the decision to give Black Kids a 3.3 out of 10 with no explanation. Sometimes, the publication’s reviews just need to live on their own, and when the albums are strange or obscure, it’s necessary to give those ratings some space, so the criticism can breathe.

    But apparently the powers that be at Condé Nast feel otherwise, as Pitchfork (which blew up its staff nearly two years ago), is apparently playing with the idea. As the site put it this week: [...]

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Children should have a right to play in the streets, alleys, pavements and car parks of their neighborhoods

    This letter gets right to the heart of debates about children's right to play and their right to the street. It ignores the fact that cars have encroached onto streets, which had previously been regarded as social spaces, not the other way round. It is really only in recent decades that drivers have been seen as the primary—or only—legitimate users of street space.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Checking in on the state of Amazon’s chickenized reverse-centaurs

    Amazon has invented a new kind of labor travesty: the chickenized reverse centaur. That's a worker who has to foot the bill to outfit a work environment where they nevertheless have no autonomy (chickenization) and whose body is conscripted to act as a peripheral for a digital system (reverse centaur): [...]

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ ICE vs. NYC - by Hamilton Nolan - How Things Work

    People are pissed. On Tuesday night, just hours after the raid, several hundred people flooded a Broadway intersection downtown, just above City Hall, to yell and wave signs and chant “ICE, Gestapo, out of New York!” By the time I got there just after 7 pm, dozens of NYPD officers had deployed in the street, in riot helmets, to keep traffic flowing. The protesters solved for this by deploying a nifty crosswalk strategy: Each time the cross lights came on, a huge knot of them would cross the street, legally, waving their signs. Then they would stand on the next corner and cross perpendicularly when the next crossing sign changed, still chanting. In this way they were able to constantly circle the entire intersection without breaking the law. The cops were satisfied with this, and nobody got arrested. Not even the young guy who zoomed through the intersection on a Citibike and screamed “FUCK COPSSSSSSS” as he passed one foot away from the police, who stood fingering their billy clubs.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Is it wrong to have too much money? Your answer may depend on deep-seated values and your country's economy

    Beyond economics, we found that judgments about excessive wealth are also shaped by deeper moral intuitions. Our study drew on moral foundations theory, which proposes that people's sense of right and wrong is built on six core values—care, equality, proportionality, loyalty, authority and purity. We found that people who highly value equality and purity were more likely to see excessive wealth as wrong.

  • Jason Becker ☛ Shoot your 9-9-6 into the fucking sun

    I do not believe for one second that working 9-9-6 or any of this shit makes for great companies or success. I do think it’s true that companies that win work really hard, but they do so because they’re doing quality work on quality problems for fair compensation. Hard work is a positive feedback loop from success– not the cause of success.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Europe firms agree satellite merger to counter Starlink

    The combined entity would employ around 25 000 people across Europe, the companies said in a statement. It would have an annual turnover of about E6.5-billion, based on 2024 figures.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Europe plans satellite powerhouse to rival Musk's Starlink

    Airbus, Thales and Italy's Leonardo said they aimed "to strengthen Europe's strategic autonomy in space, a major sector that underpins critical infrastructure and services related to telecommunications, global navigation, Earth observation, science, exploration and national security."

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Spotify’s Discover Weekly Lists Hit with a Deluge of AI Slop

    Spotify has an AI slop problem. The company has been outspoken recently in its efforts to address the deluge of AI impersonators and content farms pushing out “slop” onto the platform and “[interfering] with authentic artists working to build their careers.” But despite the promises, the streamer’s paying subscribers are fed up.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• NDTV ☛ Apple Loses $2 Billion UK Lawsuit Over App Store Monopoly

  Apple lost a UK lawsuit Thursday, which accuses the US tech giant of abusing the dominant position of its App Store, with claimants seeking more than 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion) in damages.

  The Competition Appeal Tribunal found that Apple shut out competition in the app distribution market and charged app developers "excessive and unfair" commissions.

• Nick Heer ☛ App Store Restrictions Face Scrutiny in China, U.K. – Pixel Envy

  Pretty soon it may be easier to list the significant markets in which Apple is still able to exercise complete control over iOS app distribution.

• India Times ☛ Google and Apple face extra UK scrutiny over 'strategic' role in mobile platforms

  The Competition and Markets Authority escalated scrutiny of the two US tech companies by labeling them with "strategic market status." It follows separate investigations that the CMA opened at the start of the year into Google's Android and Apple's iOS using newly acquired digital market regulations designed to protect consumers and businesses from unfair practices by Big Tech companies.

• Court House News ☛ Yelp can proceed with 'tying' claim in antitrust case against Google

  U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen in San Jose, California, denied Google’s motion to dismiss the so-called tying claim. The judge had previously dismissed the claim, but Yelp reformulated it in an amended complaint.

  The judge was persuaded by Yelp’s argument that the current design of Google’s search engine results page —with a large, graphics-driven “OneBox” that prominently highlights Google’s own local search results — causes a high percentage of so-called zero-click searches, where users just look at the local search results Google highlights without clicking on anything or scrolling down to Google’s other search results.

• Copyrights

  • EFF ☛ Civil Disobedience of Copyright Keeps Science Going

    This model is broken, yet science goes on thanks to widespread civil disobedience of the copyright regime that locks up the knowledge created by researchers. Some turn to social media to ask that a colleague with access share articles they need (despite copyright’s prohibitions on sharing). Certainly, at least some such sharing is protected fair use, but scholars should not have to seek a legal opinion or risk legal threats from publishers to share the collective knowledge they generate.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ MPA Targets 'Zombie' Pirate Brands Including Fmovies, Cuevana and Aniwave

    In the modern piracy ecosystem, sites and domains have become disposable, but "brands" often survive. This phenomenon is highlighted by the MPA's latest DMCA subpoena request, which hunts the "ghosts" of already defeated operations. On behalf of ACE, the MPA requests Cloudflare and the .to registry hand over identifying data for 46 domains. The list includes domains linked to notorious "zombie" brands, including FMovies, Aniwave, and 123movies, as well as new "hydra" sites like Nunflix.org.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Cloudflare 'Resists' Piracy Blocks, U.S. Govt. Opposes EU Co-Op Obligations

    A decision by Canal+ to target public DNS resolvers to reinforce pirate site blocking, ended with a French court ordering Cloudflare and Google to deny access to list of streaming sites. A lawyer who acted for Canal+ says that led to measurable progress, despite Cloudflare reportedly making "independent decisions" on which sites to block or not. In the political arena, the U.S. govt. has ordered diplomats to oppose EU law that obliges intermediaries to cooperate with rightsholders.

  • New York Times ☛ Reddit Accuses ‘Data Scraper’ Companies of Theft

    Then OpenAI’s ChatGPT came along, kicking off an artificial intelligence revolution. As more tech companies began building A.I. chatbots to keep up, they needed large amounts of data to train their A.I. models — data that SerpApi had already gathered.

  • The Register UK ☛ Reddit to Perplexity: Get your filthy hands off our forums

    Lee claimed that Oxylabs UAB, a data scraping business based in Lithuania, AWM Proxy, a former Russian botnet, and SerpApi, which advertises real-time access to scraped Google search results, represent textbook examples of this sort of illegal behavior.

    "Unable to scrape Reddit directly, they mask their identities, hide their locations, and disguise their web scrapers to steal Reddit content from Google Search," said Lee. "Perplexity is a willing customer of at least one of these scrapers, choosing to buy stolen data rather than enter into a lawful agreement with Reddit itself."

  • IT Wire ☛ Plagiarism In IT And The Fight Against It

    Plagiarism has become one of the trickiest issues in the modern world. With access to various sources of information, people are more likely to use the found information without proper referencing. As a result, we are more likely to complete plagiarised texts that can lead to a large number of issues and consequences.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Reddit is suing Perplexity and AI data scraping firms for using its data without permission

    Several AI have already made deals with Reddit, including OpenAI, which signed on the dotted line last year to use Reddit’s trove of data to train its large language models. Though no number was given, it was reported that the deal was worth $60 million. At the time, Reddit said it hoped to bring in around $200 million from licensing agreements over the next three years, with Google LLC also signing on.