Leftovers

• SANS ☛ Use of CSS stuffing as an obfuscation technique?

  What turned out to be unusual was the source code of this page. Although it was 449 KB in size, it contained only about 10 KB (or roughly 250 lines of code) that was actually used when the page was rendered. The remaining hundreds of kilobytes were made up of unused style data – most of it was renamed and/or slightly modified copy-pasted CSS code that was actually used in the page, and about a third of it consisted of a copy of bootstrap.min.css.

• Chris Aldrich ☛ Zettel of the Year Awards

  And if you’re going to give out an award, it should involve a trophy of some sort, right?!? So naturally I went out and picked up a “4 x 6 inch index card” made out of India Black Granite that I plan on engraving with the Note of the Year. At 3/8ths of an inch thick, it is by a large stretch the thickest index card I have in my zettelkasten.

• Baldur Bjarnason ☛ The dichotomy of print versus the web

  The reactions we got from advance readers were very positive.

  But the process of designing and producing the book and then having it printed and distributed, has given me reason to think about the role print plays in modern society versus that of the web.

  And, specifically, my role in both print and digital media.

• Andre Franca ☛ Why 90s Movies Feel More Alive Than Anything on Netflix

  I think the difference comes down to this: older movies took risks. They trusted audiences to pay attention, to feel something, to think. Scorsese and Tarantino had visions and the freedom to execute them without endless studio interference. They weren't chasing demographics or worrying about franchise potential. They were making films, not products.

  Today's cinema often feels designed by committee, optimized for streaming algorithms and opening weekend numbers rather than lasting impact. We have better technology, way bigger budgets, more sophisticated effects, but somewhere along the way, we forgot that movies are supposed to move us, not just occupy our time between scrolling sessions.

• Science

  • El País ☛ Why AI cannot create new scientific knowledge

    A study by researchers at Oxford and Utah State University argues that large language models are not yet capable of reasoning or generating innovative theories because they are limited to existing information

  • Futurism ☛ While Grok Calls Him a Genius, Elon's New Rocket Explodes While Just Sitting There

    But when it comes to launching rockets, the entrepreneur is struggling to live up to Grok’s outrageous flattery. Right on the heels of the glazing, Musk’s space company SpaceX suffered a major setback on Friday morning when a next-generation Starship booster prototype exploded during testing.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Reimagining Scholarly Publishing Workflow: A High-Level Map of What Changes Next

    Preprints are increasingly central to open science and author-centric publishing. Many services — such as arXiv and openRxiv — still rely on volunteer expertise, donations/memberships/grants, and minimal infrastructure: fine at modest volume, fragile at scale. Sustainability now depends on automation that reduces operating expenses while preserving trust. Trust also wobbles when low-quality or AI-generated submissions spike. arXiv, for example, will no longer accept non-peer-reviewed surveys or opinion pieces. Discovery feels dated when the default is “search, download, read” in a world where natural-language questions should yield instant synthesis.

  • Science Alert ☛ The World's Longest Underwater Cave Is Even Longer Than We Realized

    A few years ago, a team of cave divers exploring Ox Bel Ha made a breakthrough while re-surveying existing lines. They managed to find around 10 kilometers of new passageways, opening the door to an undiscovered area.

    "To our surprise it looked like we were the first ones there," the divers wrote for In Depth magazine in 2023.

    Since then, the total explored length of the cave has increased from 496.8 kilometers (308.7 miles) to 524 kilometers, according to reports from the conservation organization CINDAQ (El Centro Investigador del Sistema Acuífero de Quintana Roo).

• Career/Education

  • NDTV ☛ Don't Let AI Do Your Homework, Pope Leo Tells US Youth

    "Using AI responsibly means using it in ways that help you grow," said the pope. "Don't ask it to do your homework for you."

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘We could have asked ChatGPT’: students fight back over course taught by AI

    Students at the University of Staffordshire have said they feel “robbed of knowledge and enjoyment” after a course they hoped would launch their digital careers turned out to be taught in large part by AI.

  • American Library Association ☛ Court permanently blocks Trump’s executive order to dismantle federal agency for America’s libraries

    Washington – Today, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island struck down the Trump Administration’s attempts to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The decision was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of 21 states.

    ALA President Sam Helmick said, “Today's court decision is a powerful affirmation of what libraries mean to America. It restores everything that the executive order tried to take away: shared access to books in rural and remote areas, essential virtual learning tools, children's reading programs and the countless library services available to anyone who walks into a public, school or academic library. This isn't just a win for the 21 states who filed the case--it's a win for every library user and every American in every state and territory.

  • International Business Times ☛ Trump Bill Strips Nursing Of 'Professional' Status And Puts Future Patient Care At Risk

    The exclusion of nursing means thousands of trainee nurses will have to finance years of expensive clinical education within that lower ceiling or abandon their plans altogether.​

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ Alexandra Wolfe

    This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Alexandra Wolfe, whose blog can be found at wrywriter.ca.

  • Joel Chrono ☛ If everyone read everywhere

    Today, most people are looking at their phones, tiny screens, each person using different apps, social media platforms, or ad-ridden mobile games, and all of it is for the same thing, feeding from quick entertainment, slop and domapine, in the best case maybe having a chat with someone, although it’s usually a bubble—yes, Facebook Messenger here rules 🤢—left on a corner, replying when needed as one continues to consume.

    So, I wonder how it would be if we just carried a book around instead?

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ We have forgotten what a classical liberal education is. It may be too late to revive

    The current meaning of the word has drifted so far from Johnson’s that it has damaged itself. The way we judge education today is so much to do with gaining qualifications, getting jobs and earning money – all valuable instrumental aims – that it has forgotten the primary reasons why it exists. You cannot have civilisation without education. We have become so obsessed with education’s utility that we are neglecting its deeper blessings.

• Hardware

  • The Register UK ☛ Magician loses password to his hand after RFID chip implant

    Zi's idea is not innovative – individuals such as Professor Kevin Warwick and his cyborg ambitions spring to mind – but forgetting the password certainly highlights one of the risks of inserting hardware under the skin.

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ AMD vs. Intel: a Unicode benchmark

    Roughly speaking, our processors come in two types, the ARM processors found in your phone and the x64 processors made by Intel and AMD. The best server processors used to be made by Intel. Increasingly, Intel is struggling to keep up.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • US News And World Report ☛ Dramatic Surge in Water Demand Predicted by 2040 Puts Ohio Farmers and Industry on Collision Course

    The competing demands of agriculture and industry – particularly the 130 data centers in central Ohio already consuming millions of gallons of water a day to cool computer equipment – would require billions of gallons of water daily, according to a 15-county Central Ohio Regional Water Study released this year by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

  • Wired ☛ This Hacker Conference Installed a Literal Anti-Virus Monitoring System

    Elevated levels of CO2 lead to reduced cognitive ability and facilitate transmission of airborne viruses, which can linger in poorly ventilated spaces for hours. The more CO2 in the air, the more virus-friendly the air becomes, making CO2 data a handy proxy for tracing pathogens. In fact, the Australian Academy of Science described the pollution in indoor air as “someone else’s breath backwash.” Kawaiicon organizers faced running a large infosec event during a measles outbreak, as well as constantly rolling waves of Covid-19, influenza, and RSV. It’s a familiar pain point for conference organizers frustrated by massive gaps in public health—and lack of control over their venue’s clean air standards.

• Proprietary

  • Ubisoft Report: 1,500 Employees Laid Off in a Year and €1.15 Billion in Net Debt

    Ubisoft reported that compared to last year, its revenue slightly decreased—by 2.1% to €657.8 million. At the same time, net bookings increased by 20.3%, reaching €772.4 million. Old Ubisoft games accounted for 96% of this amount. Looking at the platform breakdown, the figures were as follows: console games generated 59% of all bookings, PC games 23%, and mobile games 7%. Ubisoft is still operating at a loss, but its net losses have decreased. Over the year, they dropped from €246.5 million to €161.4 million. The deal with Tencent to establish Vantage Studios is nearing completion. Following this, Ubisoft will settle its net debt, which amounted to €1.15 billion at the end of September.

  • The Register UK ☛ Google Workspace AI 'smart features' are on by default

    Engineering YouTuber Dave Jones noticed that he had been opted into a set of new Workspace smart features without ever being asked. According to Google's help page for the features, the point of the on-by-default settings is to add its Gemini AI across Workspace in order to suck in all your Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, and Meet data so that it can all be cross-referenced.

  • Android Police ☛ I've used Duolingo for 1,900 days, and it's getting worse — here's how I'd fix it

    Duolingo is getting worse and worse, and while that didn't impact quarterly revenues in recent reports, at some point, it'll get to the point where even the most die-hard fans won't be able to stomach it any longer.

  • Watts Martin ☛ Apple wins me over again, but it’s getting tougher

    With me, they’ve won this round. For the design elements I care about—which include that annoyingly nebulous term, “fit and finish”—Apple’s hardware is still second to none. It’s hard to even get close in the PC world, and when you do, the PCs aren’t that much cheaper. And despite all the, uh, Tahoeness of macOS Tahoe, it remains more comfortable for me than Windows 11 or Linux with current versions of KDE and Gnome. It’s a mix of the solid UX foundations that have so far survived Alan Dye’s depredations, the apps that don’t have satisfying replacements on Windows or Linux, and the relative seamlessness of the Apple ecosystem.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Giant AI-Generated Christmas Decoration Being Torn Down After Residents Noticed Grotesque Horrors Hidden in It

      Some joked the murals were put up to “celebrate the return of our dark lord Cthulhu,” while others questioned how such “carnage” was approved in the first place.

    • Press Gazette ☛ AI cannot replace human insight and inspiration, says People Inc tech chief

      But his current intellectual challenge could be even greater: figuring out a way to make sure journalists get paid in a world where the content they create has been taken, scrambled and reassembled by generative AI companies.

      While Roberts, who holds a Phd in theoretical physics, is on the front line of using AI in publishing – one bridge he won’t cross is getting robots to create content.

    • Uwe Friedrichsen ☛ AI and the ironies of automation - Part 1

      Back in 1983, she discussed the effects of automation in the context of industrial processes, which were massively automated at that time. The paper became quite famous for putting the finger on quite a few unsolved questions that were (still) ignored in the rush towards automation back then. Today, we see another massive push towards automation using agentic AI leveraging LLMs, and it is in a similar state as the automation of industrial processes in 1983, with many relevant questions yet being unanswered.

      Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to revisit it and see what Lisanne Bainbridge’s observations mean for the current agentic AI automation rush. So, let us see what observations Lisanne Bainbridge made in 1983 and what we can learn from it in the context of the current omnipresent push towards the automation of white collar work using agentic AI, usually having AI agents doing the work and some kind of human operator who is meant to monitor the work and may interfere if anything should go wrong.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ More on Rewiring Democracy

      There are two live book events in December. If you’re in Boston, come see us at the MIT Museum on 12/1. If you’re in Toronto, you can see me at the Munk School at the University of Toronto on 12/2.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Africa bears the brunt of global ransomware attacks

      Check Point argued that since Africa is coming from a lower base, being in a “digital infrastructure deficit” compared to the developed world, its rapid rate of digitisation is outpacing the speed at which organisations can mature their cybersecurity capabilities. This is leading to higher rates of exposure that criminals are using advanced AI tools to exploit.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Techdirt ☛ Why People Don’t Demand Data Privacy, Even As Governments & Corporations Collect More Personal Info

      When the Trump administration gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement access to a massive database of information about Medicaid recipients in June 2025, privacy and medical justice advocates sounded the alarm. They warned that the move could trigger all kinds of public health and human rights harms.

      But most people likely shrugged and moved on with their day. Why is that? It’s not that people don’t care. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 81% of American adults said they were concerned about how companies use their data, and 71% said they were concerned about how the government uses their data.

    • 404 Media ☛ Cops Used Flock to Monitor No Kings Protests Around the Country

      A massive cache of Flock lookups collated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) shows as many as 50 federal, state, and local agencies used Flock during protests over the last year.

    • Ars Technica ☛ He got sued for sharing public YouTube videos; nightmare ended in settlement

      The more that Linkletter researched Proctorio, the more concerned he became. Taking to then-Twitter, he posted a series of seven tweets over a couple days that linked to YouTube videos that Proctorio hosted in its help center. He felt the videos—which showed how Proctorio flagged certain behaviors, tracked “abnormal” eye and head movements, and scanned rooms—helped demonstrate why students were so upset. And while he had fewer than 1,000 followers, he hoped that the influential higher education administrators who followed him would see his posts and consider dropping the tech.

    • [Old] The Guardian UK ☛ CEO of exam monitoring software Proctorio apologises for posting student's chat logs on Reddit

      She said it was hypocritical of Proctorio to say they valued student’s privacy when the CEO of the company was posting student chat logs online. “I think it is very concerning and definitely a privacy issue,” she said. “It undermines their claims.”

      Previously, Proctorio has told students that the footage, keystrokes and other data taken during exams can never be accessed by Proctorio staff. The software uses an algorithm to detect movement or suspicious activity, and any data or footage can only be viewed by the university’s own “approved administrators and instructors”.

  • Confidentiality

    • Tor ☛ [tor-relays] Sybil Attack on 2025-11-20 - please setup your AROIs :) - tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

      as some of you might have noticed, yesterday 2025-11-20 someone added ~900 new tor relays to the tor network.

      They used nickname schemes from other operators: [...]

• Defence/Aggression

  • Digital Music News ☛ ByteDance Valuation Reportedly Hits $480 Billion During Auction

    On the evidence side, that refers in part to the treasury secretary’s remarks; and on the logic side, there’s ByteDance’s above-described massive valuation.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Says Democratic Lawmakers Should Die For Telling The Military To Obey Their Oath

    The same oath that the president, in theory, took as well. The president is saying that elected officials of the opposing party should be put to death for telling people to remember their oath to the Constitution.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Coward’s Bargain: How “Realism” Became a Doctrine of Submission

    There exists a particularly noxious species of intellectual who mistakes capitulation for wisdom and calls the result “realism.” You’ll find them in think tanks and faculty lounges, on cable news and in leaked diplomatic cables, all peddling the same rancid formula: when confronted by superior force, the rational response is to kneel.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Insight Hungary ☛ Debate continues over whether Hungary could survive without Russian oil: MOL turns to the European Commission

      The Adria oil pipeline, which runs through Croatia to Hungary, would be one of the most important routes for supplying the country if it had to give up Russian oil. There has been an ongoing debate about the capacity of the Adria pipeline ever since the European Union and the US imposed sanctions on the purchase of Russian crude oil. The Hungarian government's main argument is that without Russia, it would be impossible to supply the country's energy needs. Hungary and Slovakia were granted a temporary exemption, allowing them to continue purchasing Russian oil.

      Mol and its Slovak subsidiary, Slovnaft, are also in dispute with Janaff, the operator of the Adria pipeline, over the capacity of the oil pipeline. This dispute has now entered a new phase with the two Mol companies turning to the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

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

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

    However, the Epstein-Mossad ties were often labeled by U.S. corporate media as “unfounded,” dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” or said to have been “largely manufactured by paranoiacs and attention seekers and credulous believers.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has claimed that “Epstein’s conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the state of Israel.”

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • US Navy Times ☛ Solar-powered unmanned surface vessel sets new speed crossing Atlantic

      The fully autonomous Lightfish is a small solar-powered craft manufactured by Seasats. Its solar panels operate and store energy even in cloudy weather, and the craft is equipped with a battery and generator that can extend its range for over 500 nautical miles in emergency situations. The Lightfish is able to detect obstacles in its path and can respond to them autonomously or be maneuvered remotely.

    • Abhijit Menon-Sen ☛ Twelve years of sunlight

      We've been using solar panels for over a decade now. To begin with, we used them only to charge the UPS batteries that kept our work computers running during power failures (outages of 6–8 hours were common). Over time, we've expanded our generation and storage to support our entire domestic load.

      For the past two decades, no matter where we were, the two most important factors for our work were reliable power and connectivity. When we decided to move to a small village in Uttarakhand in 2013, we knew it would take a lot of time, effort, and money to ensure that we had a robust setup.

      I say this right at the beginning in order to emphasise that the popular idea of investing in solar power as an income-generation (or "income-less-eating", at least) measure was laughably distant from our situation. Not once did we ever try to calculate the break-even point for our solar generation. For us, the only question was whether we could work or not.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Can an International Treaty Save the American Eel?

• Finance

  • FAIR ☛ Crystal FitzSimons on SNAP and Public Understanding

  • FAIR ☛ ‘Housing Discrimination Harms Health and Steals Wealth’: CounterSpin interview with Gene Slater, Richard Rothstein and George Lipsitz on housing and media

    Janine Jackson reaired archival interviews with Gene Slater, Richard Rothstein and George Lipsitz about housing and media for the November 14, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Wired ☛ There Is Only One AI Company. Welcome to the Blob

    That’s what we have today. Even more concerning, this interlinked complex is funded in part by overseas powers and supported by the US government, which seems to prioritize winning over safety. This rococo collection of partnerships, mergers, funding arrangements, government initiatives, and strategic investments links the fate of virtually every big player in the AI-o-sphere. I call this entity the Blob.

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Cybersecurity Vote Was Rocky

    Gomez said rather than scrapping the item, “the solution should have been to strengthen the item” via public comment and give the carriers clarity. Gomez described the breach as a wake-up call. “It showed us just how few incentives exist to force companies to address vulnerabilities that allow the attack to happen.” She said the item passed yesterday will not prevent the next breach.

  • Eno Such ☛ We should all be using dependency cooldowns

    “Supply chain security” is a serious problem. It’s also seriously overhyped, in part because dozens of vendors have a vested financial interest in convincing your that their framing of the underlying problem1 is (1) correct, and (2) worth your money.

    What’s consernating about this is that most open source supply chain attacks have the same basic structure: [...]

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • RTL ☛ Fake AI Trump audio clip on 'Epstein files' gains traction

      The clip was amplified by posts on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, many of which garnered millions of views and thousands of comments.

      Disinformation watchdog NewsGuard said the audio was "an AI-generated fake."

    • The Atlantic ☛ The CDC’s Website Is Anti-Vaccine Now

      A senior CDC scientist told me that many people at the agency heard about the change only yesterday evening, hours before the revamped website launched. The decision appears not to have passed through the normal channels, which would involve staff at the Immunization Safety Office, Jernigan said. When asked via email whether CDC scientists had been bypassed, Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, didn’t answer. Instead, he reiterated bullet points from the website update, including the claim that studies supporting a link between autism and vaccines “have been ignored by health authorities”—essentially, the CDC accusing itself of having disregarded scientific evidence.

    • NPR ☛ How could Trump interfere in the midterms? Here's what voting officials are watching

      For the last decade, as voting officials have fought to dam up a tsunami of false information about their work, they've begged people in their communities to go to "trusted sources" for election information.

      In 2026, figuring out who is a trusted source may be more difficult than ever.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ Family Says Iran Detains US Citizen Over Son's Activism

    A US-Iranian dual citizen has been detained in Iran and is facing multiple security-related charges, according to her son, who says authorities are using his mother to pressure him.

    Germany-based political activist Reza Zarrabi told RFE/RL's Radio Farda on November 19 that his 70-year-old mother, Afarin Mohajer, was arrested on September 29 at Imam Khomeini International Airport as she was leaving the country after a visit.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Truthdig ☛ Public Knowledge Under Siege

    White House attacks by Trump early in his second term also included specious lawsuits against corporate media outlets including ABC and CBS, cases in which Disney and Paramount, the two networks’ respective parent companies, bent to Trump’s will by paying millions of dollars in pretrial settlements rather than confronting his administration in court in battles that media and legal scholars saw as winnable. By capitulating, ABC/Disney and CBS/Paramount set dangerous precedents that normalize even more information control.

    In his first month back in the White House, Trump fired most of the staff of the Office of Personnel Management, which handles Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and he also forced out the leadership at the National Archives and Records Administration, prompting Lauren Harper from the Freedom of the Press Foundation to warn, “The gutting of the institutional knowledge at the National Archives is going to impact every agency across the federal government.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ 'Quiet, piggy' wasn't a joke. It's a dangerous invitation to violence

    And that was from other journalists — not a single politician, left or right, condemned it. Not one. The only nonaccepting response I could find was Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mocking memes.

  • Techdirt ☛ Defense Contractor Lobbyists Are Trying To Kill Army ‘Right To Repair’ Reforms With A Bunch Of Lies And Bullshit

    But despite the bipartisan popularity of right to repair reforms, companies aren’t keen on losing money via a government crackdown on their grift. The various policy and lobbying fronts for America’s defense contractors have been busy this fall trying to frame the modest reforms as an affront on innovation to scuttle the reforms as the House and Senate debate over bill versions: [...]

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Fires Back Against Apple with Playlist-Transferring

    The move comes as Spotify’s biggest competitor, Apple Music, already offers a way for users (at least those on iOS) to transfer their saved music and playlists from other services to their Apple Music library. A similar option exists within the Android version of the app, though it reportedly works a bit differently than the native iOS version.

  • YLE ☛ Spotify's audiobook rollout in Finland takes authors by surprise

    On Tuesday, Spotify started offering audiobooks, joining competing platforms like BookBeat, Storytel, Nextory and Audible.

  • Matthew Weber ☛ Music Sounds Better When You Own It

    So now that I’m actually self hosting my own music collection (which I’ll write more about soon), something I’ve noticed is that music sounds better now.

    It isn’t actually better, though. I always listened to lossless when I could and close to it when I couldn’t. Besides, I’m no audiophile. But it does sound better now. I’ve decided the reason behind this is entirely because now it’s being streamed from my own server and it’s music I own.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Google makes final court plea to stop US breakup

  Brinkema ruled in April that Google holds two illegal ad-tech monopolies and is now considering what the company must do to restore competition. The DoJ and a coalition of states have asked the judge to make Google sell its ad exchange, AdX, where online publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites.

• Reuters ☛ Judge in Google ad tech case seeks quick fix for web giant's monopolies

  The U.S. judge considering whether to order a breakup of Google's advertising technology business asked the Department of Justice on Friday how quickly such a remedy would take effect, saying, "time is of the essence."

• The Verge ☛ Judge wants to fix Google’s ad tech monopoly before it’s too late

  Google and the Justice Department had their last chance to make their case before Judge Leonie Brinkema Friday before she decides whether Google needs to be broken up to remedy its ad tech monopoly.

• Six Colors ☛ AirDrop now compatible with Google Pixel 10 phones

  It’s currently only available on the Pixel 10 family, though Google says it is “expanding it to more Android devices.” It also requires you to set your AirDrop visibility to “Everyone for 10 minutes”, as it presumably has no visibility into your contacts.

  Interestingly, there’s no indication that Apple did anything to make this possible. The provisions of the Digital Markets Act in the European Union do currently stipulate that Apple will have to allow for competing standards to AirDrop (which might very well include the Android Quick Share feature that Google is leveraging here) as well as bring interoperability to the feature. Of course, the company has made its disagreement with the DMA known, so it’s unclear if this development has any bearing on that. Apple hadn’t responded to my request for comment at the time this article was published.

• Dedoimedo ☛ Google Play Store keeps stopping

  Just a few days ago, I encountered a rather silly problem. I opened the Play Store. It showed the main view, and then, withing a second, it closed. I tried again. It closed again. Then, on the Home Screen, the phone displayed a message that read: Google Play Store keeps stopping. What they should have written was crashing, but no matter. Thus, a problem. One of the most critical pieces of software on an Android phone will not launch and open correctly.

• Copyrights

  • The Register UK ☛ Researchers build a better AI model memory probe

    Researchers affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University, Instituto Superior Técnico/INESC-ID, and AI security platform Hydrox AI describe their approach in a preprint paper titled "RECAP: Reproducing Copyrighted Data from LLMs Training with an Agentic Pipeline."

    The authors – André V. Duarte, Xuying Li, Bin Zeng, Arlindo L. Oliveira, Lei Li, and Zhuo Li – argue that the ongoing concerns about AI models being trained on proprietary data and the copyright claims being litigated against AI companies underscore the need for tools that make it easier to understand what AI models have memorized.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Librarian spent 5 years fighting Proctorio lawsuit for sharing public YouTube videos

    Rather than ask him to remove the tweets, Proctorio deleted the videos and sued him for copyright infringement. The company obtained an injunction by claiming Linkletter shared "private" videos — except they weren't private. As Ars Technica reports, the videos were public but "unlisted" on YouTube, and many other parties had shared them without being sued.

    "Even a child understands how YouTube works, so how are we supposed to trust a surveillance company that doesn't?" Linkletter wrote after the settlement.