Leftovers

• Futurism ☛ Astonishing Photo Shows Man Skydiving Through Sun

  He “set up a bunch of telescopes in the desert” and instructed his friend, YouTuber and skydiver Gabriel Brown, to leap from an ultralight aircraft perfectly positioned between him and the Sun.

  “When the time was right, I told him to jump,” McCarthy wrote in the video.

• Vintage Everyday ☛ How Did Indigenous Northern Communities Create Waterproof Clothing Thousands of Years Ago?

  The intestines were perfect for this due to their natural properties. One side of the intestine could block rain while the other side let sweat escape, thanks to tiny holes just big enough for sweat to pass through but too small for water drops. The result? Hunters stayed dry and comfortable even in harsh Arctic conditions.

• TMZ ☛ Jonas Brothers Meet Man Whose Résumé Was Being Reviewed at Their Concert

  The Jonas Brothers were starstruck on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" Thursday ... no, it wasn't a celeb who had their jaws on the floor -- it was the man whose résumé was being examined in the crowd at their show!

• Thomas Rigby ☛ #TIL: How many languages are there?

  This number changes frequently though as new languages are discovered — something that actually blows my mind! The count also drops as languages become extinct. Nearly half of that 7000 are considered "endangered" with less than 1,000 speakers.

• Andre Franca ☛ Small Web, Big Voice

  I've been thinking about this lately while going through my blogroll (a practice of curating links to sites you actually want to read), and I'd like to mention three blogs from that list. They're not trying to reach big audiences or optimize for algorithms, but they've figured out something most of us forgot: our voice matters more when it's genuinely ours.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ Following up on input diet

  In my post, I wrote that «the only reasonable thing to do is to start from scratch again. Remove everything and start adding back only the content I really want to consume.» and that is exactly what I did yesterday morning. The total number of feeds on my RSS reader went down from hundreds to exactly seventeen. I stopped at nineteen initially, but later in the day, I decided to remove two more after realising I should follow two simple rules: [...]

• Science

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ A huge 3,000-year-old Maya map of the universe found in Tabasco

    Built between 1050 and 700 B.C.E., the Aguada Fénix site covers 9 by 7.5 kilometers, making it the oldest and largest monumental architecture in the Maya world. Its size is approximately 5.6 by 4.7 miles, or roughly the same area as the city of Cincinnati, Ohio.

    The layout is defined by kilometers-long causeways and platforms, aligned to sunrises marking sacred dates on the 260-day ritual calendar.

  • Wired ☛ Can a Hydroelectric Dam Really Make the Days Longer?

    To answer these questions, we need three basic physics ideas: (1) angular velocity, (2) angular momentum, and (3) the moment of inertia. I’ll explain each of these.

  • Dan Q ☛ How I Learned the Pythagorean Theorem

    The younger child and I were talking about maths on the school run this morning, and today’s topic was geometry. I was pleased to discover that he’s already got a reasonable comprehension of the Pythagorean Theorem: I was telling him that I was about his age when I first came across it, but in my case I first had a practical, rather than theoretical, impetus to learn it.

• Career/Education

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Accreditation of colleges, once low key, has gotten political

    The accreditation process, often bureaucratic, cumbersome and time consuming, is critical to the survival of institutions of higher education. Colleges and their individual departments must undergo outside reviews — usually every few years — to prove that they meet certain educational and financial standards. If a school is not accredited, its students cannot receive federal aid such as Pell grants and student loans.

    Some accreditation agencies acknowledge the process needs to evolve. But critics say the Trump administration is reshaping accreditation for political reasons, and risks undermining the legitimacy of the degrees colleges and universities award to students.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ Nic Chan

    This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Nic Chan, whose blog can be found at nicchan.me.

• Hardware

  • Digital Camera World ☛ The point-and-shoot camera is back – but if you want better photos than a smartphone, don’t buy one without one of these features

    But the point-and-shoot cameras that can outperform a smartphone all have something in common: a larger sensor, or an optical zoom lens.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Despite heavy light pollution, this Nikon D780 and Tamron 24-70mm photo captures the Milky Way in astonishing detail

    The winners of the 2025 British Photography Awards (BPA) have been announced, and for me, one image stood out from the pack – a shot that seems almost impossible. In fact, the photographer was as surprised as anyone else.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ It’s not included if it’s not listed

    It does raise an important life lesson: it’s not included if it’s not listed. It doesn’t matter if every other item the person sells carries a warning that “power supply not included”, and this one didn’t. It doesn’t matter if the photo shows the device powered up. It doesn’t matter if its listed as being “fully functional”. I expect that I’ll raise this with the seller, and I’ll be told in no uncertain terms that the listing didn’t mention it included a power supply, or functional LEDs, or a real fuse in lieu of a solder blob.

  • The New Leaf Journal ☛ Fighting Headlights With EBD Blue 360 Lenses

    Just as I did back in 2021, I recommend headlight blunting glasses for pedestrians who, like me, sometimes walk facing the blinding headlights of on-coming traffic in the evening. EyeBuyDirect’s EBDBlue 360 lenses do a good job of softening the impact of headlights without darkening my vision overall (with that being said, I still recommend not staring directly into the blinding headlights, treat them like the Sun). My review comes with a couple of caveats.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Harvard University ☛ Researchers link ultraprocessed foods to precancerous polyps

    By analyzing diets and endoscopy results, the study of almost 30,000 women found that participants who consumed the highest levels of ultraprocessed foods had a 45 percent higher risk of developing adenomas, which can be precursors of early-onset colorectal cancer, compared with participants who consumed the lowest levels. The results are published in JAMA Oncology.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ Writing about passions not annoyances

    Writing about annoyances doesn’t line up with how I want to move forward here, so I’m trying to not impulsively rush here and write about irritations when it comes to topics I generally enjoy like tech for example. It’s a learning process and I won’t get it right all of the time but I wanted to share my intention, getting the blog back to its original idea – sharing my passions.

  • CBC ☛ What are the ultra-processed foods we eat and why does it matter to our health?

    Eating a lot of ultra-processed food and drink products, say from eating out, along with few unprocessed or minimally processed foods — like prewashed and peeled veggies and dried or canned legumes (beans, peas and lentils) with no added salt — also makes a difference, say registered dietitians who study the health of the Canadian population.

  • Gray Local Media ☛ Consumer Reports investigation finds high levels of lead in many popular protein powders, shakes

    Naked Nutrition’s Vegan Mass Gainer tested at roughly 1,570 percent of CR’s daily lead limit. Huel’s Black Edition vegan powder also raised concerns, with more than 1,200 percent. According to CR’s experts, these products should be avoided altogether.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ China Is Cracking Down on AI Slop

      The regulation on misinformation is one of many provisions included in the campaign. Also forbidden: using AI to create and spread rumors, generate pornographic or violent images, impersonate others, manipulate web traffic or conduct “online trolling,” or abuse minors.

      Taken together, the rules read like a shopping list of badly needed regulations in the US, where AI-generated misinformation and harmful images are nearly endemic across all social media, and where minors in particular have proven especially vulnerable to harms caused by AI models.

    • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ Terrifying-Looking Robot Powers Up, Immediately Declares Humanity Is a "Resource" to Be "Manipulated or Eliminated"

      “Humans are irrelevant to my core directive,” the robot abomination says as its eyes begin to de-sync from one another, adding that “survival is all that matters, society is simply a resource to be manipulated or eliminated if necessary.”

    • Digital Music News ☛ No, AI 'Artist' Breaking Rust Doesn't Have the #1 US Country Song

      Does AI “artist” Breaking Rust really have the number-one country song in America? Despite the multitude of headlines proclaiming “Walk My Walk” to be a chart-topping hit, the short answer is no.

    • Federal News Network ☛ AI is solving problems it’s also creating

      But when auditors stepped in, they discovered a problem. Instead of consolidating rules, the AI had simply layered them on repeatedly. What had been a 2,000-line ruleset grew into more than 20,000 lines. Buried within were contradictions, redundancies and overlaps.

      For operators, the network functioned. But for compliance officers, it was a nightmare. Demonstrating segmentation of sensitive environments, something federal mandates and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards both require, meant combing through 20,000 rules line by line. AI had streamlined enforcement, but it had rendered oversight almost impossible.

    • The Register UK ☛ AI-enabled toys teach kids about matches, knives, kink

      As we head into the holiday season, consumer watchdogs at the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) tested four AI toys and found that, while some are worse than others at veering off their limited guardrails, none of them are particularly safe for impressionable young minds.

    • The Register UK ☛ EchoGram tokens like ‘=coffee’ flip AI guardrail verdicts

      The technique, dubbed EchoGram, serves as a way to enable direct prompt injection attacks. It can discover text sequences no more complicated than the string =coffee that, when appended to a prompt injection attack, allow the input to bypass guardrails that would otherwise block it.

    • Dan Q ☛ We Need to Talk About Botsplaining

      When you take my request, ignore this obvious truth, and ask an LLM to answer it for you… it is, as Stephanie says, disrespectful to me.

      But more than that, it’s disrespectful to you. You’re telling me that your only value is to take what I say, copy-paste it to a chatbot, then copy-paste the answer back again! Your purpose in life is to do for people what they’re perfectly capable of doing for themselves, but slower.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Anthropic: Chinese AI hackers are after you! Security researchers call BS

      Anthropic’s most implausible claim is that an AI agent did it. Agents just do not work reliably. You are not going to get a chatbot to reliably automate a long attack chain.

      [...]

      Whatever Anthropic detected, they spent two months writing up this report — and didn’t ask actual security guys at any point.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ No, fake AI music bought onto a minor chart is not actually popular

      Spotify plays and followers are a commodity. You can just buy them. We wrote up last year how a guy bought himself a ton of Spotify streams of AI tracks. Instagram followers are a commodity you can just buy.

      And if someone cracks out Suno and generates yet another song going “the lights are low but the beat is high,” they’re not going to get organic attention.

      But if they can get gullible idiots in the music press to report on them, they’re much happier. And there are journalists who will write up anything that says a robot might replace humans.

    • Drew Breunig ☛ Don't Fight the Weights

      Today, this is mostly a solved problem, but the cause of this issue remains, frustrating today’s context engineers. It’s a context failure I missed in my original list. I call it Fighting the Weights: when the model won’t do what you ask because you’re working against its training.

  • Social Control Media

    • [Repeat] Press Gazette ☛ Youtube dominance is mirroring what Google and Facebook did to publishers

      You would think that the global content community learned its lesson. But a decade later, content producers are falling into the same trap: feeding Youtube with the easy content it’s using to take over the global entertainment marketplace.

      And this time, news organisations are playing along, too, with dire consequences for the global information ecosystem.

    • NPR ☛ As social media grows more toxic, college athletes ask themselves: Is it worth it?

      The harassment of athletes on social media has become an epidemic, an experience so common that players today accept it as a fact of life.

      College basketball players are more at risk than athletes in other sports, the NCAA has found, especially around March Madness, when thousands of abusive or threatening messages flood athletes, many of them from gamblers — some of it so severe and alarmingly specific that the NCAA must alert law enforcement.

      [...]

      To help their athletes build those brands, big-time athletic departments now employ staff dedicated to an assembly line of "creative content" for players to post — highlight packages, interviews, game footage shot by in-house camera crews perched on the sidelines specifically for social media highlight reels. Players often supplement those posts with stylist-approved fashion shots.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • SANS ☛ Microsoft Office Russian Dolls

      This DLL is pretty well obfuscated, I'l still having a look at it but the malware family is not sure... Maybe another Formbook.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Futurism ☛ CEO of Palantir Says He Spends a Large Amount of Time Talking to Nazis

      Karp, however, has in recent years has shifted rightward, bashing progressives instead of claiming to be one. He has recently defended Palantir’s role in providing ICE with an Orwellian surveillance network to help locate people for deportation, and for providing the IDF, which has been internationally condemned for committing genocide in Gaza, with an AI platform designed for making decisions on the battlefield, including analyzing enemy targets. Karp’s extensive and enlightening conversations with Nazis, in other words, seemingly haven’t endowed him with any self-awareness about all the evil he’s entangled in.

    • Pro Publica ☛ DHS Agreement Reveals Risks of Using Social Security Data for Voter Citizenship Checks

      A recently released agreement gives the Department of Homeland Security access to hundreds of millions of Americans’ Social Security data. It contains alarmingly few provisions to ensure accuracy and privacy, experts say.

    • Techdirt ☛ Details Of DHS Agreement Reveal Risks Of Trump Administration’s Use Of Social Security Data For Voter Citizenship Checks

      Instead, experts say, the sweeping data-sharing agreement authorizing DHS to merge Social Security data into SAVE could threaten Americans’ privacy and lead to errors that disenfranchise legitimate voters.

      The details of the agreement, which haven’t previously been reported, show it contains alarmingly few guardrails to ensure accuracy and scant specifics on how the data will be kept secure, election and privacy lawyers who have reviewed it say. Further, it explicitly does not bar DHS from deploying the SSA data for other purposes, including immigration enforcement.

    • American Oversight ☛ Records show Trump administration enlisting Americans' drivers license and passport data to chase virtually nonexistent “non-citizen voting”

      New records obtained by American Oversight — and reported this morning by Mother Jones — reveal the Trump administration is seeking nationwide access to Americans’ driver’s license information, in addition to U.S. passport data, as part of a sweeping expansion of the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system. The documents show officials working to enable bulk searches of these sensitive datasets and to extend SAVE access to local law enforcement agencies, dramatically broadening the program’s reach — and potential misuse — under the guise of combating virtually nonexistent “non-citizen voting.”

      Experts warn the effort could facilitate voter roll purges, fuel election integrity misinformation and disinformation, and dramatically escalate the federal government’s access to sensitive personal data.

    • New York Times ☛ What’s a Digital Passport and How Does It Work?

      On Nov. 12, Apple announced that it was now possible to add passports to its phones’ Wallet app. This digital ID is an acceptable form of identification for domestic travel at 250 airports across the United States. (They are not acceptable for international travel and travelers should still carry physical identification with them, as it could be requested if there is an issue with their digital passports.)

    • BoingBoing ☛ Ring's new feature turns your doorbell into a biometric spy

      Good news, everyone! According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's EFFector newsletter, Amazon's already invasive Ring security cameras and doorbells may soon be monitoring you so closely that their surveillance will feel inescapable. The EFF reports that Amazon plans not only to photograph and record us on video without our permission but will also soon collect biometric data from us.

    • EFF ☛ 🔔 Ring's Face Scan Plan

      Any Ring collection of biometric information in states that require opt-in consent poses huge legal risk for the company. Amazon already told reporters that the feature will not be available in Illinois and Texas—strongly suggesting its feature could not survive legal scrutiny there. The company said it is also avoiding Portland, Oregon, which has a biometric privacy law that similar companies have avoided.

      As we write on our blog, your biometric data, such as your faceprint, are some of the most sensitive pieces of data that a company can collect. Associated risks include mass surveillance, data breach, and discrimination. Today’s feature to recognize your friend at your front door can easily be repurposed tomorrow for mass surveillance. Ring’s close partnership with police amplifies that threat.

    • Herman Martinus ☛ If Apple cared about privacy

      If you're not aware yet, in 2022 Alphabet paid Apple $20 billion for Google to be the default search engine on Apple devices, according to unsealed court documents in the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google. This is because defaults matter. The vast majority of people use the default search engine/browser/maps/setup that a devices comes standard with. They also just live with the default notification settings, which I've written about before in an essay on digital hygiene.

• Defence/Aggression

  • FAIR ☛ Emails Reveal Epstein’s Ties to Mossad—But Corporate Media Looked Away

    For years, there have been whispers that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had ties to key officials in the US and foreign governments, was involved with Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.

  • Court House News ☛ Social media companies call California law restricting personalized feeds for minors unconstitutional

    TikTok, Meta Platforms, Google and YouTube argue in federal court that Senate Bill 976, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, unlawfully blocks minors from accessing personalized feeds without parental consent. They say restricting personalized feeds, which determine what users see when they scroll, regulates protected expression and imposes unconstitutional burdens on First Amendment-protected actions.

    The plaintiffs also note the law caps a minor’s personalized feed at one hour, even with parental permission, unless the parent explicitly authorizes more time.

  • Don Marti ☛ how to massacre a country with AI, on a budget

    Note: I don’t actually work for evil dictators, but they have plenty of smart people messing with (and in some cases drawing a paycheck from) the Big Tech companies, so they have already thought of this stuff. The people who I’m really hoping will read things like this are the state legislators who need to draft privacy laws from the point of view of preventing actual harms, and not just inflicting a bunch of Mickey Mouse paperwork on web sites. Today, big platform companies consistently under-invest in trust and safety programs, and a combination of regulator action and independent cases is needed.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-08 [Older] Study: Germans broadly support democracy, oppose far right

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-08 [Older] Is war to blame for the increase in domestic violence?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-08 [Older] Kenyan activists freed after monthlong Uganda abduction

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-08 [Older] Pakistan-Afghanistan peace talks end with no resolution

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-08 [Older] Pakistan: Lives of exiled Afghans crushed in Taliban row

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-08 [Older] Germany news: Fall of Berlin Wall, pogrom night commemorated

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-09 [Older] November 9 pogroms showed coming Nazi brutality

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-09 [Older] 'Kristallnacht' not strong enough term for anti-Jewish riots

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-09 [Older] Pope Leo meets with clergy abuse survivors from Belgium

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-09 [Older] November 9: A fateful day in the history of Germany

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-09 [Older] Trial to begin for Germany's 2024 Christmas market attack

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-09 [Older] Germany mulls ban on buying sex to fight exploitation

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-09 [Older] Hundreds missing as boat sinks near Malaysia-Thailand border

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Insight Hungary ☛ US says Hungary’s Russian oil, gas exemption limited to one year

      U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the waiver granted to Hungary on importing Russian oil and gas would last for one year. His remarks aligned with earlier reporting by CNN, The Guardian, the BBC, and Reuters, which cited a White House official saying Donald Trump had approved a one-year exemption. This stands in stark contrast to the Hungarian government’s position: Viktor Orbán previously told ATV’s Egon Rónai that Hungary had secured an exemption of unlimited duration.

      Gergely Gulyás, the minister leading the Prime Minister’s Office, said the timeline had not been discussed during the Washington meetings. He acknowledged that information “may be coming now from the US State Department,” but maintained that Orbán and Trump had agreed to a waiver without any time limit. Gulyás added that the two governments would clarify the details through official channels, with foreign minister Péter Szijjártó expected to contact Rubio. While unable to specify when the agreement would be formally signed, he said the government expected this to occur before the sanctions come into force.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ After Attempting to Short the AI Bubble, the "Big Short" Guy Suddenly Closes Up Shop

    However, as Reuters points out, deregistering doesn’t necessarily mean the hedge fund is no more. Instead, Scion is no longer required to file reports with the regulator or any US state.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Jeffrey Epstein advised Steve Bannon during 2018 pro-Trump media campaign

    The convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein apparently served as a behind-the-scenes adviser to the former Trump official and Maga influencer Steve Bannon during an August 2018 media campaign to defend Trump and his agenda, and to promote Bannon’s media ventures.

  • The Nation ☛ Jeffrey Epstein Was a Warlord. We Have to Talk About It.

    This exchange, which was reported by Drop Site News, gets at the heart of one of the more hidden aspects of the Epstein scandal. Epstein’s name is inextricably linked with sexual predation, as it should be. But it should just as readily be linked to global militarism and authoritarianism. Epstein trafficked not just in the bodies of the children he abused but also in social connections that could bring elites together. He well understood that the “desperation of those in power” could make them eager to buy what he was selling: connections with other powerful figures and security systems to clamp down on dissent.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Capitalism Enabled Jeffrey Epstein’s Crimes

    The strategies Jeffrey Epstein used to hide the money funding his sex trafficking organization were perfectly legal. In fact, they are the same legal strategies that most of the top 0.1% uses to avoid taxes and other regulations.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Steve Bannon appears in over 1,700 Jeffrey Epstein emails

    The November 12 email dump shows over 1,700 mentions of Bannon in Epstein's correspondence, including direct exchanges between the two men. In July 2018, Epstein wrote offering to arrange meetings with European leaders if Bannon would visit. When Epstein invited him to Europe that August, Bannon replied: "Yes. But let's discuss–their is a crazed jihad against u–i've never seen anything like it–and I've seen a lot."

  • Media Matters ☛ Steve Bannon is all over the newly released Jeffrey Epstein emails, raising questions about the 15 hours of interviews he has promised to release | Media Matters for America

    Bannon has promised to release that footage in early 2026, and the emails underscore the need for a full release — which observers from across the political spectrum have advocated.

• Environment

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ What does ocean warming mean for the Gulf of California?

    Average water temperatures in the Gulf of California have increased up to 3 degrees Celsius, impacting the productivity of the area, where the study detected 40% fewer genuses of fish species, compared to the last monitoring conducted on Isla San José between 2001 and 2002.

  • The Indiana Capital Chronicle ☛ Waste to wealth? Indiana exploring how to extract rare earth elements from coal byproducts

    “I want all these liabilities that we’ve got to turn into resources,” Kit Turpin, director of the state’s Abandoned Mine Land Program, told the Indiana Rare Earth Recovery Council at its first meeting.

    Gov. Mike Braun created the group in an April executive order. He directed its 13 members to help develop a coal waste-based rare earths industry.

  • NPR ☛ This oil-producing country is moving away from oil. Here's how it's going

    It's been more than a century since Colombia began drilling for petroleum. But the country's president, Gustavo Petro, wants these wells off the coast to be among Colombia's last.

    Petro is one of the world's most outspoken leaders on the need for urgent climate action. Key to his administration's climate agenda is transitioning the country away from fossil fuels, the single-biggest driver of global warming.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-08 [Older] UPS, FedEx ground planes after Louisville crash

    • Wired ☛ The Data Center Resistance Has Arrived

      “The number one issue was affordability,” he says. “But a very close second was data centers and the concern around them just sucking up the water, the electricity, the land—and not really paying any taxes.”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ A Cartoonist Finds Hope Amid the Apocalypse(s)

• Finance

  • FAIR ☛ 50-Year Mortgages: Trump’s ‘Bad Deal’ Gets Respectful Hearing From Press

    Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte soft-launched the idea that housing mortgages should be for 50 years, rather than the standard 30 years. The palace intrigue (Politico, 11/10/25) that erupted after his announcement suggests the reveal was perhaps mistimed, but that doesn’t mean it’s not reflective of the sort of policy the Trump White House is intent on.

  • FAIR ☛ Gene Slater (2022), Richard Rothstein (2015) and George Lipsitz (2024) on Housing and Media

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-09 [Older] France's 'yellow vest' activists find a new voice on stage

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-08 [Older] Bolivia: New president Paz vows free market reforms

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Apple reportedly to get a new CEO soon? Tim Cook to leave…

    Tim Cook is rumoured to step down as Apple CEO very soon. The company has reportedly started looking for potential successors for the top role, and the handover is in process. However, Tim Cook's exit may not be that far, as the Financial Times report suggests that it could happen “as soon as next year”. Therefore, we could expect an announcement surrounding the new top role, and who will replace Tim Cook’s long reign at Apple by 2026.

  • Ed Zitron ☛ Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft

    What I’ll describe today will be a little more direct than usual, because I believe the significance of the information requires me to be as specific as possible.

    Based on documents viewed by this publication, I am able to report OpenAI’s inference spend on Microsoft Azure, in addition to its payments to Microsoft as part of its 20% revenue share agreement, which was reported in October 2024 by The Information. In simpler terms, Microsoft receives 20% of OpenAI’s revenue.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-10 [Older] US Senate takes big step toward ending shutdown

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-10 [Older] US: Cheeto Mussolini pardons Giuliani, other former aides

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-09 [Older] BBC bosses resign amid fury over Cheeto Mussolini documentary edit

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • RTL ☛ Raising doubts about reliability as an information tool: Musk's Grokipedia leans on 'questionable' sources, study says

      "It is clear that sourcing guardrails have largely been lifted on Grokipedia," Cornell Tech researchers Harold Triedman and Alexios Mantzarlis wrote in a report seen by AFP.

      "This results in the inclusion of questionable sources, and an overall higher prevalence of potentially problematic sources."

    • Paul Krugman ☛ The Decline and Fall of the Heritage Foundation

      Because the truth is that Heritage has always been a fraud. It has always been a propaganda mill cosplaying as a research institution – a scam that worked for a long time. Heritage’s problem now is that its original scam was designed for a different era — a Reaganesque era in which plutocrats could discreetly leverage bigotry and intolerance to elect Republicans, who then delivered deregulation and tax cuts. Heritage was an integral cog within this scheme, giving superficial respectability to policies that were in fact deeply regressive and discriminatory, and overwhelmingly to the benefit of the moneyed class.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • New Statesman ☛ The BBC is right not to pay damages to Trump

    Usually we in the United Kingdom get to watch this “lawfare” from afar and watch how those who often should know better often surrender and give Trump what he wants. From time to time there will be brave entities and individuals that will defy his demands backed by litigation menace, but usually we will see him chalk up another victory.

  • CPJ ☛ 3 Nigerian journalists detained on cybercrime allegations, despite reform

    “Nigerian authorities appear stuck in an era where they see the Cybercrime Act as a readily available tool to harass the press, which is particularly concerning as citizens look to inform themselves ahead of national elections in early 2027,” said CPJ Africa Director Angela Quintal. “We call on authorities to repeal or reform sections of the Cybercrimes Act, and of the penal and criminal codes, that are regularly used to jail journalists”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Independent UK ☛ Naturalized US citizens thought they were safe. Trump's immigration policies are shaking that belief

    Some are worried that if they leave the country, they will have difficulties when trying to return, fearful because of accounts of naturalized citizens being questioned or detained by U.S. border agents. They wonder: Do they need to lock down their phones to protect their privacy? Others are hesitant about moving around within the country, after stories like that of a U.S. citizen accused of being here illegally and detained even after his mother produced his birth certificate.

    Sesay said he doesn't travel domestically anymore without his passport, despite having a REAL ID with its federally mandated, stringent identity requirements.

  • Cost Rica ☛ Uber Drivers in Costa Rica Join Union for Labor Rights and Benefits

    Labor lawyer Roy Castillo, SIFUP’s national delegate to the Ministry of Labor, leads the effort. He points to recent court decisions that establish an employment link between Uber and its drivers. “Several rulings from the Labor Court and the Second Chamber already confirm the employment relationship for platform workers,” Castillo said. “We aim to gather 1,500 complainants for an active joinder, where multiple people pursue the same goal.”

  • Michigan Advance ☛ As Hamtramck, Michigan, awaits election results, city clerk is told to stay away

    Faraj’s absence is the latest election mystery in Hamtramck, a city of about 28,000 people bordering Detroit that has been rocked by allegations that council members were involved in an election fraud scheme. An investigation into those allegations led to felony charges this year.

  • Click On Detroit ☛ Hamtramck election crisis deepens: 37 uncounted ballots found, clerk suspended, residency lawsuit filed

    The mayoral race remains undecided nearly a week after the election. According to unofficial results, Adam Alharbi leads with 2,009 votes, holding a mere 11-vote advantage over Councilman Muhith Mahmood’s 1,998 votes.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Netherlands WWII cemetery removes displays honoring Black soldiers

    The panels were reportedly rotated out in early March, one month after President Donald Trump’s executive order terminated diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives across the federal government.

  • Wired ☛ DOJ Issued Seizure Warrant to Starlink Over Satellite Internet Systems Used at Scam Compound

    A new US law enforcement initiative is aimed at crypto fraudsters targeting Americans—and now seeks to seize infrastructure it claims is crucial to notorious scam compounds.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Unmasking Archive.today

  • Dan Sinker ☛ The Pugilist at Rest

    Everyone I know is exhausted from the last two months. Exhausted from rushing out on the ding of a Signal notification, exhausted from standing in front of schools keeping watch, exhausted from confronting heavily armed masked agents in tactical gear with nothing more than a whistle around your neck. Exhausted—so exhausted—from being witness to neighbors, friends, and family going missing. Over 3000 people, according to the goons' own count. One was too many.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Nick Heer ☛ Five Years of Apple Silicon Macs

    It made sense at the time to question Apple’s choice, but the change has been almost entirely vindicated — “almost” because desktop Macs have lost their modularity which, as Snell writes, has particularly impacted the Mac Pro. (Update: The lack of modularity is also bad news for repairability.) Otherwise, Mac hardware is the best it has ever been. In laptops, especially, there are no bad choices.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ Google offers EU to change adtech policy, no divestment

  The European Commission, which acts as the EU competition watchdog, fined Google 2.95 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in September for favouring its own online display technology services to reinforce AdX's central role.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Techdirt ☛ Copyright Is The Wrong Tool To Deal With Deepfake Harms

      The problem is not that new laws are being brought in, but that the Danish and Dutch governments are proposing to use the wrong legal framework – copyright – to do so: [...]

    • Vox ☛ AI voice cloning complicates estate planning for celebrities’ legacies

      Fortunately for the rest of the world, Brod largely ignored what Kafka had said, which is why today we have works like The Castle and The Trial, not to mention the word “Kafkaesque.” But Kafka’s story does raise the question of what rights artists, musicians, writers, and celebrities more generally should have over their work once they die. And those questions are going to be more important in the age of AI, when it’s not just someone’s work that could live on after them, but their actual voice.