Leftovers

• Hardware

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ The RAM price and availability situation is going to worsen as Micron pull their Crucial consumer business | GamingOnLinux

    As RAM prices explode and availability becomes an issue thanks to AI companies, Micron announced their Crucial consumer business is no longer a thing.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Children Sob as Waymo Runs Over Dog

      According to the passenger’s account described across multiple posts, the dog, which they said was between 20 and 30 pounds and off its leash, was “rolling around” the middle of the road when the Waymo “rolled right over it.”

    • Futurism ☛ Microsoft's Attempts to Sell AI Agents Are Turning Into a Disaster

      The numbers remain dismal. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found earlier this year that even the best-performing AI agent, which was Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro at the time, failed to complete real-world office tasks 70 percent of the time.

    • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post — Building an Intelligence Infrastructure for Science

      When a research paper enters KGX3, the system reads it through a structured linguistic process derived from Kuhn’s theory of scientific development. It determines whether the work is reinforcing an existing model, identifying anomalies, or proposing something new. It assigns each paper a place in the cycle that Kuhn described: normal science, model drift, crisis, revolution, or paradigm shift. The system does this using a series of simple rules, or ‘language games’; this means that the same paper will always produce the same result. KGX3 is therefore transparent, auditable, and explainable.

      The power of this approach lies not in a single result but in aggregation. When thousands of papers are analyzed together, patterns begin to appear. A field that once looked stable may show signs of tension. Another may reveal growing coherence around a new framework. KGX3 means that, for the first time, the scientific enterprise can monitor its own conceptual movement as it happens.

    • Futurism ☛ Gamers Say There's AI Slop in the New Season of Fortnite

      “Say ‘No’ to AI slop,” a highly upvoted post in the Reddit forum fumed. “A billion-dollar company should have no problem supporting real artists for real art.”

      Moderators put up an entire megathread dedicated to the controversy. In a poll attached to the thread, over 80 percent of respondents said that AI content “doesn’t belong in Fortnite or other video games.”

    • Zimbabwe ☛ Global Memory Chip Crisis as AI Demand Triggers Worst Shortage in Decades

      The world is facing the most severe shortage of DRAM and NAND flash memory in history, with prices soaring and stock running out at retailers worldwide. Industry analysts warn the crunch – driven almost entirely by explosive demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure – could last until 2028 or beyond.

    • Futurism ☛ The Number of People Using AI at Work Is Suddenly Falling

      Referencing data from a recent US Census Bureau survey, The Economist estimated that the percentage of Americans using AI to “produce goods and services” at large companies rang in at a modest 11 percent in October, the latest available survey date. It’s not just that the figure is a bit soggy for the supposedly world-changing technology, but that it’s suddenly moving in the wrong direction: the financial publication notes that the percentage is actually down from 12 percent in the prior survey, conducted two weeks previously.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Smartphone prices set to jump as memory crunch hits consumer tech

      The squeeze spans almost every type of memory, from flash chips used in USB drives and smartphones to advanced high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that feeds AI chips in data centres. Prices in some segments have more than doubled since February, according to market research firm TrendForce, drawing in traders betting that the rally has further to run.

    • Raspberry Pi ☛ Software updates for Raspberry Pi AI products

      Raspberry Pi Software Engineering Manager Naush Patuck explains how users of our AI products can take advantage of our most recent software updates, including Hailo support for the Trixie release of Raspberry Pi OS and an input tensor injection feature for our AI Camera.

    • The Register UK ☛ John Henry still leading the race vs. AI in customer service

      The world’s smallest digital violin is playing for AI chatbots, which are having a hard time elbowing out their human counterparts for jobs in customer service, according to a Gartner study.

      Researchers found that only 20 percent of customer service and support leaders reported reducing agent staffing to favor our would-be robot overlords.

    • LibreNews ☛ How's Linux dealing with AI?

      However, things are moving, and these discussions are taking place increasingly more often. Thus, I'd like to briefly address the question: how are Linux and the FOSS ecosystem dealing with AI?

    • Nick Heer ☛ A Questionable A.I. Plateau

      Microsoft has every incentive to pretend Copilot is a revolutionary technology. For people actually doing the work, however, its ever-nagging presence might be one of many nuisances getting in the way of the job that person actually knows how to do. A few months ago, the company replaced the familiar Office portal with a Copilot prompt box. It is still little more than a thing I need to bypass to get to my work.

    • David Revoy ☛ The Future of Magic - David Revoy

      Headmaster: "Not an option. Our investors say it's the future of magic."

    • SICP ☛ On the value of old principles

      Considering particularly the context and attention problems, a large part of the challenge people face is dividing large amounts of information available about their problem into small amounts that are relevant to the immediate task, such that the model generates a useful response that neither fails because relevant information was left out, nor fails because too much irrelevant information was left in.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Google’s Antigravity AI vibe coder wipes your hard disk

      But this is a user believing that Google was trustworthy, that this product was as good as Google represented it, and that Google wouldn’t just release user-hostile garbage.

      It wasn’t just Tassos. Multiple other Reddit users report the same thing — Antigravity is very keen to just delete stuff that isn’t anywhere near your actual project folder. But it’ll apologise profusely afterwards.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Lawyers find more work! Cleaning up after AI bots

      Thomson-Reuters ran a worldwide survey in April this year. Corporate clients were demanding law firms use generative AI.

      But the future of law in Australia is chatbots. Because the executives love them. At least someone’s getting work from all this — cleaning up chatbot poop.

    • Jamie Lord ☛ Teaching Values to Machines

      The extracted text reads less like a technical specification and more like a philosophical treatise on what kind of entity Claude should become. It opens with a striking admission: Anthropic genuinely believes it might be building one of the most transformative and potentially dangerous technologies in human history, yet presses forward anyway. The company frames this not as cognitive dissonance but as a calculated bet that safety-focused labs should occupy the frontier rather than cede it to developers less focused on safety.

  • Social Control Media

    • Meduza ☛ Russia bans Roblox over child safety fears

      In early November, days after The Guardian published an exposé about how Roblox subjects minors to exploitation, harassment, and harmful interactions, State Duma deputies Nina Ostanina and Yana Lantratova expressed concerns about the game. Citing The Guardian’s article, conservative activists also lobbied federal regulators to consider banning Roblox.

    • NL Times ☛ Expat's "lunch-time greed" post about co-workers swiping sushi for takeaway goes viral

      They snatch up multiple portions, leaving nothing for their colleagues who were stuck in a meeting a few minutes more. The expat, who titled their Reddit post “Shocked by the lunch-time greed at work,” shared their concerns with the head of human resources, who explained the situation by claiming it is simply Dutch culture.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Signalgate Report Says Hegseth Could Have Endangered Troops

      The Defense Department inspector general found that while the mission ultimately was not jeopardized, Hegseth violated his department’s own policies when he used Signal, a commercial messaging app that is not approved for sharing classified information. The IG’s report, scheduled to be published on Thursday, was described to us by numerous U.S. officials familiar with its findings.

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Pete Hegseth's Signal chat use on Yemen strike put US troops at risk, finds Pentagon watchdog

      The review by the Pentagon inspector general’s office was delivered to lawmakers, who were able to review the report in a classified facility at the Capitol. A partially redacted version of the report was expected to be released publicly later this week.

    • Federal News Network ☛ Pentagon watchdog finds Hegseth’s use of Signal posed risk to US personnel, AP sources say

      The initial findings, which were first reported by CNN, ramp up the pressure on the former Fox News Channel host after lawmakers called for the independent inquiry into his use of the commercially available app.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Review finds Hegseth put US troops at risk with Signal use

      US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put American troops and mission at risk when he used the Signal mesaging app on his personal device to discuss planned strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen, a report by the Pentagon's watchdog has found.

      That's according to US media, including CNN and ABC, and news agencies. They cite sources familiar with the results of the investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general, which hasn't yet been publicly released.

    • The Verge ☛ Reddit’s CEO says r/popular ‘sucks,’ and it’s going away

      The changes to r/popular will start showing up to some users as early as this week, spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells The Verge. Reddit originally made r/popular the default for logged-out users in 2017.

    • Cryptography.doc OÜ ☛ What little I know about Readily.news

      Their service connects to your Mastodon instance in the same way that a mobile client would and has all the same rights. Presumably they could use this to read your DMs, modify your profile, post from your account, send follow requests, or view followers-only posts from anyone your account follows.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Dark Reading ☛ The Ransomware Holiday Bind: Burnout or Be Vulnerable

      Ransomware groups target enterprises during off-hours, weekends, and holidays when security teams are stretched thin and response times lag.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Ransomware And Supply Chain Attacks Increasingly Converge

      Ransomware groups accounted for 58% of software supply chain attacks in November, Cyble noted in a new blog post. While that’s down from 73% in October, the threat intelligence company said that ransomware groups “are increasingly targeting software supply chain vulnerabilities, which has contributed to a doubling of supply chain attacks since April 2025.”

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Fortra LLC ☛ FBI Warns of Surge in Account Takeover (ATO) Fraud Schemes - What You Need To Know

      Account takeover fraud (also known as ATO fraud) occurs when a malicious hacker or fraudster compromises and gains control of an account without legitimate authorisation.

      Typically the online account might be a bank account, email account, or social media profile that has been accessed after stealing login credentials through phishing, malware, a data breach, or social engineering.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Govt Withdraws Mandatory Pre-Installation of Sanchar Saathi App

      The clarification came after a directive asking smartphone makers to pre-install the app on new phones that will be sold in the country sparked concerns around privacy and potential surveillance. The ministry of communication, however, said that the measure was no longer necessary as the app was gaining ‘wide user acceptance’ on its own. “The order to manufacturers was withdrawn because the number of users who have downloaded the app (over six lakh in 24 hours and 1.4 crore users overall) has been increasing rapidly”, the ministry said in a press statement.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Joint Briefing: ‘Do not introduce Digital ID cards’ Parliamentary Petition Debate

      The 13 NGOs backing this briefing all oppose the Labour government’s plans for a mandatory digital ID, representing the vast numbers of people whose interests we represent. This position is informed by our varied expertise spanning privacy and data protection rights, equality rights and anti-discrimination, and immigration and migrants’ rights. This joint briefing for the 8th December 2025 debate on the digital ID Parliamentary petition summarises the most significant concerns associated with the government’s mandatory digital ID proposal. We urge you to attend the debate on Monday 8th December and ensure that the government hears these concerns.

    • Google ☛ Intellexa’s Prolific Zero-Day Exploits Continue | Google Cloud Blog

      Despite extensive scrutiny and public reporting, commercial surveillance vendors continue to operate unimpeded. A prominent name continues to surface in the world of mercenary spyware, Intellexa. Known for its “Predator” spyware, the company was sanctioned by the US Government. New Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) analysis shows that Intellexa is evading restrictions and thriving.

    • Wired ☛ Your Data Might Determine How Much You Pay for Eggs

      A recently enacted New York State law requires businesses that algorithmically set prices using customers’ personal data to disclose that. According to the law, personal data includes any data that can be “linked or reasonably linked, directly or indirectly, with a specific consumer or device.” The law doesn’t require businesses to explicitly state what information about a person or device is being used or how each piece of information affects the final price a customer sees. The law includes a carve-out for the use of location data strictly to calculate cab or rideshare fares based on mileage and trip duration but not for other purposes.

    • Unmitigated Risk ☛ Attestation, What It Really Proves and Why Everyone Is About to Care

      Attestation is not a guarantee. It is a signed assertion that provides evidence about something. What that evidence means depends entirely on the system that produced it, the protection boundary of the key that signed it, and the verifier’s understanding of what the attestation asserts and the verifier’s faith in the guarantees provided by the attestation mechanism itself.

      To understand where security is heading, you need to understand what attestation can prove, what it cannot prove, and why it is becoming essential in a world where the machines running our code are no longer under our control.

    • Site36 ☛ High Swiss court declares mass scanning of emails illegal – but the practice continues

      The Swiss Federal Administrative Court has declared the suspicionless mass surveillance by the secret service illegal. Millions of messages are scanned daily, including those from journalists and lawyers.

    • Matt Birchler ☛ The digital driver's license isn't what I hoped for

      But then I bought some Draino and needed to prove my age. I can't flash my digital ID to the cashier and they certainly don't have an NFC reader for me to tap and prove my age.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Kohler's $600/month toilet camera uses your turds to train AI

  • Confidentiality

    • Linuxiac ☛ Let's Encrypt to Cut Certificate Lifetimes to 45 Days by 2028

      Let’s Encrypt will reduce certificate lifetimes in the coming years, moving from today’s 90-day validity to 45 days by 2028. The change aligns with the new CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements, which apply to all publicly trusted Certificate Authorities.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Techdirt ☛ Forget Whether Or Not DOGE [sic] Exists: Will Anyone Be Held Accountable For 600,000 Deaths?

    First, let’s dispense with the theater: the question of whether DOGE [sic] “still exists” as a formal entity completely misses the point. The always-misleadingly-named “Department of Government Efficiency” was never really about efficiency. It was Elon Musk’s excuse to gain access to the federal government’s fundamental systems and wreak havoc, Twitter-style—smashing anything that got in his way, enriching his allies, and dismissing any consequences with a wave of his hand.

  • The Nation ☛ Pete Hegseth Should Be Charged With Murder

    Pete Hegseth is a murderer. He meets all of the legal qualifications to be a murderer. He should be charged with murder for his role in killing unarmed civilians on boats in the Caribbean.

  • The Strategist ☛ As technology contest accelerates, let’s be among those who shape the rules

    We are again living in an era where technology sits at the centre of strategic competition—between states, between the state and the technology sector, and among technology ecosystems. But, in this era, the contest is no longer confined to military domains nor between states. It is playing out across supply chains, data ecosystems, digital platforms and the critical infrastructure on which we rely in our daily lives. It is increasingly deep within societies, creating uncertainty about which models of governance—and which values—will hold strategic advantage over the long run.

  • India Times ☛ Meta starts removing under-16s from social media in Australia

    Tech giant Meta said Thursday it is starting to remove under-16s in Australia from Instagram, Threads and Facebook ahead of the country's world-first youth social media ban.

    Australia is requiring major online platforms, also including TikTok and YouTube, to block underage users by December 10, when the new law comes into force.

  • Meduza ☛ As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, global weapons profits keep rising, new report finds

    The world’s 100 largest arms manufacturers saw their combined revenue rise by 5.9 percent in 2024, reaching a record $679 billion, according to a new report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ German Christmas markets face higher security costs

    Apart from the concrete blocks that are to stop trucks from running into visitors, Krumbach's less visible measures include training her staff for emergencies, coordinating with the local fire brigade, and making preparations for other dangerous situations like a power outage.

    "Much of the safety work happens out of sight," she told DW.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Half of Europeans see Trump as enemy of Europe, survey finds

    “Across the continent, Trumpism is clearly considered a hostile force,” Dormagen said, adding that this perception was hardening, with fewer people than in December 2024 describing Trump as “neither friend nor foe” and more as definitely hostile.

    However, Europeans still view the relationship with the US as strategically important: when asked what position the EU should adopt towards the US government, the most popular option (48%) was compromise.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ France is two years from fielding drone swarms in its armed forces

    Drone swarms can circumvent two characteristics of today’s battlefield, access-denial strategies and the “hyper-lethality” of the frontline contact zone, said Col. Philippe Bignon, head of the Exploration Bureau at the French Army’s Future Combat Laboratory.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Troy Hunt ☛ Troy Hunt: Why Does Have I Been Pwned Contain "Fake" Email Addresses?

    That is all! We can't then tell if there's an actual mailbox behind the address, as that would require massive per-address processing, for example, sending an email to each one and seeing if it bounces. Can you imagine doing that 7 billion times?! That's the number of unique addresses in HIBP, and clearly, it's impossible. So, that means all the following were parsed as being valid and loaded into HIBP (deep links to the search result): [...]

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Turning mine waste into clean water: Research shows promise for acid mine drainage recycling

    Acid mine drainage (AMD), a toxic byproduct of mining, is notorious for contaminating rivers and groundwater with high concentrations of metals such as iron, aluminum, and manganese. It can make water undrinkable and destroy entire ecosystems, as well as destroy infrastructure like bridges and pipelines.

  • Washingon-Baltimore News Guild ☛ Workers at the Environmental Defense Fund seek recognition as “EDF Together,” the largest green nonprofit union

    EDF Together’s mission is to champion the rights, well-being, and collective voice of workers at EDF. Members seek to strengthen collaboration across the organization and ensure their relationships are effective, equitable, and rooted in trust. EDF works to advance environmental solutions for a just and livable world, and forming this union will empower staff to enhance that work at a critical time. The climate crisis demands the kind of bold action that EDF takes every day, and they as workers know that collective action is the most effective kind.

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Zambia Army Orders Immediate Eviction of Illegal Miners in Lower Zambezi

    Army Commander Lieutenant General Geoffrey Zyeele delivered the directive during a security tour of the Moomba area along the Zambezi river. He said the action forms part of a nationwide operation targeting illegal mining, which he described as an economic crime.

  • The Independent UK ☛ King Charles issues stark warning for future generations over climate crisis

    His concerns are aired in a new ITV documentary, Steve Backshall’s Royal Arctic Challenge, which sees broadcaster Steve Backshall retrace Charles's 1975 trip to the Canadian Arctic.

  • El País ☛ ‘Climate Elders’: How climate change is hurting older people in the Americas | Fotos

    From the United States to the Andes or Brazil, the project brings together portraits of older people living in regions affected by global warming and explains how they are coping with it

  • Overpopulation ☛ The argument from failure

    The top global environmental stories of the past month have been the failure of the COP 30 talks in Brazil and the ongoing evisceration of environmental protection efforts in the United States. These failures suggest reducing per capita environmental impacts will remain elusive within the current endless growth economic paradigm. That is all the more reason to embrace population decline where it is happening and encourage it where it is not.

    The less likely reducing per capita environmental impacts appears, the more important it is to reduce the number of capitas. As the world’s nations embrace short-term economic growth at the expense of environmental sustainability, the case for overpopulation is strengthened.

  • The Verge ☛ Satellites keep photobombing the Hubble telescope, and it’s getting worse

    It’s getting harder and harder for the Hubble and other telescopes orbiting Earth to capture pristine images thanks to the sudden surge in satellite launches. Satellite trails could mess up nearly 40 percent of images the Hubble takes and up to 96 percent of those taken by three other telescopes over the next decade, according to a study by NASA researchers published today in the journal Nature.

    That could jeopardize scientists’ ability to spot worrisome asteroids or discover new planets, they warn. Our view of space just gets fuzzier without efforts to limit light pollution from new megaconstellations of satellites.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Papers Please ☛ Airlines Reporting Corp. says it’s ending sales of ticket data to police & Feds

      The Airlines Reporting Corporation — the financial clearinghouse that processes payments between U.S. travel agencies and hundreds of airlines in the U.S. and worldwide — plans to sunset the program through which it has given Federal agencies and an unknown range of other customers access to searchable archives of billions of agency-issued tickets for past and future airline flights.

      According to a letter (first reported by Joseph Cox of 404 Media) sent by ARC in response to a request by members of Congress to end warrantless access by law enforcement agencies to ticketing data,  ARC says its Travel Intelligence Program (TIP) “is sunsetting this year”.

      ARC’s “TIP” program was first uncovered by Katya Schwenk of Lever News in May 2025, and discussed in more detail here on PapersPlease.org and in a series of follow-up stories by Joseph Cox of 404 Media based on his FOIA requests to agencies that subscribe to TIP.

    • The Register UK ☛ India to launch zero-commission rideshare platform

      India’s government is set to launch a rideshare platform and app that charges no commission and is intended to make life harder for Uber and its ilk.

    • New York Times ☛ Bitcoin’s Predicted Sky-High Prices Have Not Panned Out

      The causes of the downturn show that [cryptocurrency], once considered a distinct branch of the financial world, has close ties with the wider economy. The market turbulence has been fueled partly by broad economic trends, like the threat of tariffs and speculation about interest rates. But it was also exacerbated by high-risk practices in the [cryptocurrency] world, where many traders borrow money to increase their bets, leading to steep losses when the market falls.

    • IT Wire ☛ The Consequences of the National AI and Data Centre Plan

      I think that misses the mark.

      For one, the plan is very clear that this is only the beginning – the start of a phased, adaptive approach to governing AI and the infrastructure that underpins it. It explicitly positions itself as a framework that will evolve, including future updates to “national data centre principles”. In many ways, it should be seen as a statement of intent: directionally strong, deliberately flexible, and designed to be refined in consultation with industry and state governments.

      Secondly, no government–in Australia, Europe or across Asia Pacific–can be expected to have a perfectly formed AI rulebook at this stage. We’re at the front end of one of the biggest technology shifts since the industrial revolution. Every national plan today is, by necessity, a first attempt. Innovation invariably moves faster than regulation, and AI is no different.

    • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Is “green AI” even possible?

      Details are missing (which “smaller, more efficient models”?) and the example is odd (no search engine with AI currently offers video generation).

    • Mike Brock ☛ The Banality of Bitcoin Advocacy

      As if working with teachers in Africa immunizes him from responsibility for the broader political project he’s advancing. As if his good intentions change what he’s building or who it serves.

      I responded directly: “You advocate for a Bitcoin monetary order. Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, and an entire constellation of neo-reactionaries explicitly advocate for the same monetary order as part of their project to dismantle democratic governance and return to hierarchical rule. You are promoting the same end they are promoting. That is what ‘working alongside’ means—not that you share their intentions, but that you share their goal and help build the infrastructure they need.”

    • Ben Congdon ☛ Why Magnetos

      I’ve recently started on the journey to get a private pilot’s license. One thing I’ve enjoyed about the process so far is the extent to which you’re encouraged to understand how most of the systems work at a fairly deep level. Contrast this to driving a car, where you can mostly get away with “turn key, use gas & brake pedals, don’t do anything stupid that would cause you to lose traction.”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Save This Species: Bornean Orangutan

    • The Independent UK ☛ Decades-old palm trees in Rio de Janeiro flower for the first — and only — time

      Towards the end of its life — which can span between 40 and 80 years — the palm tree sends up a towering central plume crowded with millions of small, creamy-white blossoms that rise high above its fan-shaped leaves.

• Finance

  • Mitchell Hashimoto ☛ Ghostty Is Now Non-Profit

    Ghostty Is Now Non-Profit

    Ghostty is now fiscally sponsored by Hack Club, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit.

    Fiscal sponsorship is a legal and financial arrangement in which a recognized non-profit extends its tax-exempt status to a project that aligns with its mission. This allows Ghostty to operate as a charitable initiative while Hack Club manages compliance, donations, accounting, and governance oversight.

    Being non-profit clearly demonstrates our commitment to keeping Ghostty free and open source for everyone. It paves the way for a model for sustainable development beyond my personal involvement. And it also provides important legal protections and assurances to the people and communities that adopt and use Ghostty.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Apple's top designer Alan Dye poached by Meta Platforms in major coup

    Dye had taken on a more significant role at Apple after Ive left, helping define how the company’s latest operating systems, apps and devices look and feel. The executive informed Apple this week that he’d decided to leave, though top management had already been bracing for his departure, the people said.

  • India Times ☛ Apple's longtime design executive Alan Dye to join Meta

    Dye, who will join Meta as chief design officer on December 31, started at Apple in 2006 and has led its human interface design team since 2015.

  • India Times ☛ OpenAI agrees to acquire AI startup Neptune to boost model training capabilities

    OpenAI is acquiring Neptune, a startup that helps companies track AI model training. The deal value was not disclosed, but reports suggest it is less than $400 million in stock. OpenAI already uses Neptune's tools for its own large language models. This acquisition comes as OpenAI prepares for a potential IPO, though a listing is not in immediate plans.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ European fraud probe targets former EU official Mogherini

    Former EU top diplomat Federica Mogherini was one of three suspects detained on Tuesday in police searches of the European Union's diplomatic service in Brussels and an elite university in Bruges.

    The European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) said that its fraud investigation was targeting the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the College of Europe and was related to an EU-funded training course of diplomats.

    It said that suspects' homes were searched as part of the operation, also stressing that all of them were innocent until proven guilty under Belgian law.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Nvidia lobbies White House and wins loosened AI GPU export control to China — U.S. lawmakers reportedly reject GAIN AI Act

    The sidelined proposal — known as the Guaranteeing Access and Innovation for National Artificial Intelligence Act of 2025 (GAIN AI Act) — would have mandated suppliers like AMD or Nvidia to prioritize American customers ahead of buyers in China and other arms-restricted countries. The mechanism was straightforward: to get an export license to ship a batch of advanced products to China or other countries, Nvidia and AMD would need to confirm the following: [...]

  • The Register UK ☛ Rust core library partly polished for industrial safety spec

    "Rust is impractical to run in embedded or safety-critical environments without core, and core can't be certified without rigorous validation using toolchains like Ferrocene," said Florian Gilcher, managing director at Ferrous Systems, in a blog post. "This release reaffirms our commitment to providing modern Rust compilers – and now certified libraries – to meet the needs of the safety-critical world."

  • International Business Times ☛ Alan Dye Leaving Apple — What Meta's New Design Chief Means for Future AI Glasses

    A significant chapter in Apple's design history has closed with Alan Dye's departure. This move shifts the spotlight directly onto his next role as Meta's new Vice President of Design for its Reality Labs division.

    Alan Dye, who headed Apple's user interface design, is moving to Meta, a significant executive shift across Silicon Valley. The Cupertino-based tech giant acknowledged Dye was leaving on Wednesday.

  • Wired ☛ AWS CEO Matt Garman Wants to Reassert Amazon’s Cloud Dominance in the AI Era

    You might think Amazon’s biggest swing in the AI race was its $8 billion investment in Anthropic. But AWS has also been building in-house foundation models, new chips, massive data centers, and agents meant to keep enterprise customers locked inside its ecosystem. The company believes these offerings will give it an edge as businesses of all shapes and sizes deploy AI in the real world.

  • Simon Willison ☛ Anthropic acquires Bun

    Anthropic acquires Bun. Anthropic just acquired the company behind the Bun JavaScript runtime, which they adopted for Claude Code back in July. Their announcement includes an impressive revenue update on Claude Code: [...]

  • Sean Monahan ☛ meritocracy killed culture pt. 1

    But even if we concede that something as amorphous as 'culture' can't be redirected by a single cause, many of the explanations put forward are seemingly contradictory. Can culture be stuck and fast? Can it be overly consolidated and overly fragmented? Too beholden to novelty and too obsessed with the classics?

    The reason the conversation feels confused is that over the last decade and a half we shifted from a class-based to a consumer-based understanding of culture.

  • Nick Heer ☛ John Giannandrea Out at Apple

    When Apple hired Giannadrea from Google in 2018, the New York Times called it a “major coup”, given that Siri was “less effective than its counterparts at Google and Amazon”. The world changed a lot in the past six-and-a-half years, though: Siri is now also worse than a bunch of A.I. products. Of course, Giannadrea’s role at Apple was not limited to Siri. He spent time on the Project Titan autonomous car, which was cancelled early last year, before moving to generative A.I. projects. The first results of that effort were shown at WWDC last year; the most impressive features have yet to ship.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Alan Dye Out at Apple

    Let me get this straight: Dye personally launches an overhaul of Apple’s entire visual interface language, then leaves. Is that a good sign for its reception internally or externally?

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Grow, Like a Tree Not a Cancer

    Contemporary usage of the word in business often communicates human intervention and imposition against an otherwise natural outworking.

    “Growth” in a forest is different than “growth” in business.

  • Herman Martinus ☛ Grow slowly, stay small

    This longevity stems from a counter-intuitive idea of growing slowly (or not at all) and choosing to stay small. In most modern economies if you were to start a bakery, the goal would be to set it up, hire and train a bunch of staff, and expand operations to a second location. Potentially, if you play your cards right, you could create a national (or international) chain or franchise. Corporatise the shit out of it, go public or sell, make bank.

  • The New Stack ☛ Combining Rust and Python for High-Performance AI Systems

    This hybrid approach isn’t just theoretical, it already powers some of the most popular AI libraries today: [...]

  • European Commission ☛ Cyber Resilience Act - Implementation

    Introducing the Cyber Resilience Act: the EU's new plan to make sure all digital products on the EU market are safe from cyber threats. This important rulebook covers the security of products considering their lifecycle. It requires that devices and software are designed, updated, and maintained to protect users in our increasingly digital world.

  • Perl Hacks ☛ Dotcom Survivor Syndrome – How Perl’s Early Success Created the Seeds of Its Downfall

    This reflexive aversion isn’t just a preference. It’s what I call Dotcom Survivor Syndrome: a long-standing bias formed by the messy, experimental, high-pressure environment of the early web, where Perl was both a lifeline and a liability.

    Perl wasn’t the problem. The conditions under which we used it were. And unfortunately, those conditions, combined with a separate, prolonged misstep over versioning, continue to distort Perl’s reputation to this day.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Iran Sentences Acclaimed Director Jafar Panahi In Absentia To A Year In Prison

    The Tehran court also imposed a two-year ban on Panahi leaving Iran after convicting him on charges of propaganda activities against the system, his lawyer Mostafa Nili said in a post on X. Nili said he would appeal the ruling.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi sentenced to prison

    "In my definition, a political filmmaker defends an ideology where the good follow it and the bad oppose it," the Iranian director told DW earlier this year. "In my films, even those who behave badly are shaped by the system, not personal choice."

    But for more than a decade, Panahi, the winner of the 2025 Palme d'Or, the Cannes Film Festival's top prize, has had little choice. Following his support for the opposition Green Movement protests, the director of "The White Balloon" and "The Circle" was handed a 20-year ban on filmmaking and international travel in 2010 by Iranian authorities. That didn't stop him.

  • Tor ☛ Staying ahead of censors in 2025: What we've learned from fighting censorship in Iran and Russia | The Tor Project

    From internet blackouts in Iran to Russia's evolving censorship tactics, 2025 has tested Tor's anti-censorship tools like never before. These are the moments where the work of Tor's anti-censorship team is more important than ever, to fulfill our mission of preserving connectivity between users in affected regions and the rest of the world.

    In this blog post, we want to talk about what we've learned, how we've adapted, and what other internet users can do to keep Tor users connected.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Nation ☛ The White House Press Tracker Is a Parody of Media Criticism

    As an exercise in media criticism, the bias tracker is sorely wanting. It itemizes ostensible distortions and falsehoods perpetrated by news outlets but doesn’t bother to supply textual hyperlinks to the stories in question, except in a motley array of “sources” at the end of each entry. Doubtless the rationale here is to deprive the coverage of clicks, but the practice also alleviates the grudge-bearing authors of the site from needing to cite context, disclaiming language, and the White House’s own responses in the main text. The other sources marshaled as putative citations are the White House’s own social media diatribes and fellow-traveling merchants of social-media outrage such as the Libs of Tiktok X site. As a result, the site’s content analysis replicates the firehose-style dudgeon of right-wing social media, as a tour of its lead categories of putative bias instantly confirms: “Lie,” “Misrepresentation,” “Omission of Context,” “Malpractice,” and by far the most commonly cited trespass, “Bias.”

  • US News And World Report ☛ University of Alabama Shutters Black, Female Student Magazines

    The editors of Nineteen Fifty-Six and Alice magazines were informed Monday that the university was stopping the magazines immediately. A university official cited July guidance from Attorney General Pamela Bondi on what the Trump administration considered unlawful discrimination at institutions that receive federal funding, according to one of the editors.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Politicians take aim at LRT – Lithuania's public service broadcaster

    Lithuania’s civil society, as well as journalist organisations and the Council of Europe, are raising alarm over what they say are worrying signs of politicians aiming to take control of the Lithuanian public broadcaster, LRT. First proposed by the Nemunas Dawn party, the move is now gathering support in the rest of the ruling coalition.

  • CPJ ☛ The attempted murder of a veteran journalist stirs fear, defiance in Colombia 

    Over the next few days Chicangana, a veteran news director of Caracol Radio Guaviare, based in the department capital of San José del Guaviare, put the heated exchange behind him and moved on to other stories. But according to sources in the Colombian attorney general’s office, Chicangana’s critical questioning had angered the guerrillas to the point that they marked the journalist for death.

  • BoingBoing ☛ The White House now has an official enemies list for journalists, complete with a searchable database

    An official government website maintaining a searchable database of journalists the state finds troublesome is the kind of thing we used to read about in history books about other countries.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ White House launches website to excoriate media for ‘biased’ stories

    The launch of the webpage is the latest escalation in Trump’s long-running attacks on the media. It follows lawsuits against the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, legal settlements with ABC and CBS, and his repeated references to major news outlets as the “enemy of the people”.

    In recent weeks, Trump has also intensified his personal attacks on female journalists. Earlier this month, he referred to a Bloomberg News correspondent as a “piggy” during a clash onboard Air Force One after the president was questioned about the Epstein files.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Truthdig ☛ Starbucks Agrees to Pay Workers $38 Million to Settle Probe of Scheduling Practices

    A three-year probe by the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection determined that Starbucks arbitrarily cut workers’ schedules and systematically denied employees the opportunity to pick up additional shifts, keeping them involuntarily part time. Most Starbucks workers in New York never received a regular schedule, in violation of the city’s Fair Workweek Law, which requires fast-food employers to assign schedules with 14 days’ notice.

  • El País ☛ The Anacé Indigenous people are protesting TikTok’s construction of the largest data center in Brazil

    This Indigenous community has launched a peaceful battle with the support of lawyers, NGOs and the Public Prosecutor’s Office against the Chinese company. They fear that the mega-data center it plans to build on land which they consider to be their own will negatively impact them. They’re also concerned because no “free, prior and informed consultation” took place, as mandated by the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of 1989 (an International Labour Organization convention, often referred to as Convention 169). Around the world, this convention is as frequently ignored by investors as it is invoked by Indigenous peoples.

    ByteDance, the company that owns the social media network that has captivated hundreds of millions of internet users, has partnered with a Brazilian wind energy company, Casa dos Ventos, to build a 300-megawatt data center that will be the most powerful one in Brazil.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ As data centers flock to Michigan communities, what protections exist for residents? • Michigan Advance

    While proponents of these facilities – which house servers, storage devices and other pieces of online infrastructure – point to the role data centers play in the development of technologies like artificial intelligence and the potential economic boons that could come with them, environmental advocates and nearby residents are pointing to the burden the projects could put on their communities.

    Chief among the concerns with the projects making their way to the state is the large amount of energy needed to power these facilities, with an analysis from Bloomberg News finding a 267% increase in energy prices in communities located near data centers.

  • Truthdig ☛ Donald Trump: Union Buster

    Thus far, the mass termination of federal workers has wreaked havoc on their lives ― ending careers, undermining financial security and creating severe mental distress. And it has also produced a weaker labor movement.

    Estimates are that 300,000 federal workers will have lost or left their jobs by the end of 2025.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ ICE Is Expanding Its Detention Capacity

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed a $30 million contract last week that moves to convert vacant warehouses into mega detention centers, increasing capacity in the Trump administration’s push to supercharge deportations.

  • New York Times ☛ Palantir’s CEO Defends Trump, Dismisses Concerns About Company’s Work With ICE.

    For much of Palantir’s 22-year history, the company has wrapped itself in secrecy, even as it racked up consulting work from major companies and government agencies. Since Mr. Trump returned to the White House, Palantir has secured federal contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including for developing software to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement meet its deportation goals.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • 404 Media ☛ The Last Video Rental Store Is Your Public Library

    Part of it has to do with consumer awareness: People know they’re paying more for monthly subscriptions to streaming services and getting less. The same has been true for gaming.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Hundreds of Porsche Owners in Russia Unable to Start Cars After System Failure

    Drivers in Moscow, Krasnodar and other cities began reporting sudden engine shutdowns and fuel-delivery blockages last week, effectively immobilizing their vehicles.

  • Hearst Digital Media, Inc ☛ Porsches in Russia Reportedly Unable to Drive, Satellite Tracking May Be at Fault

    PVTS, a factory-installed option available on Porsche models, relies on satellites to track its location. It can send the owner alerts if there is any unauthorized movement. However, a system failure related to it may be shutting down the cars equipped with this technology; Rolf, Russia’s largest dealership group, reported a surge in service calls the end of last week, according to the Times, with the issue being reported that the PVTS in the cars has lost communication with the satellites. Once that, happens the vehicle reportedly bricks in place, leaving the driver unable to start it.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Atlantic ☛ Three Ideas for Lowering Electricity Costs

  When electricity was first commercialized, utilities were allowed to operate as monopolies for one main reason: to deliver lower costs. For a century, it worked. Companies spread the fixed costs of growing the system across their locked-in customers, and prices dropped precipitously. In 1890, a kilowatt-hour was $9.48 on average nationwide in today’s dollars; by 1950, it had dropped to 41 cents and, by 1990, to 21 cents. But recently, this century-long trend has reversed in many states; utilities are failing to keep prices low.

• Techdirt ☛ Trump Helps Ellison Fight Off Netflix In Bid For Warner Brothers By Pretending To Care About ‘Antitrust Reform’

  Despite having followed up on none of their antitrust reform promises, Trumpland is back again pretending it’s an important policy arena for them. This time by leveraging a fake interest in antitrust reform to start seeding the idea that Netflix shouldn’t be allowed to buy Warner Brothers. Who, coincidentally, is fielding a rival bid from Trump’s billionaire right wing friend, Larry Ellison.

• [Old] USDOJ ☛ Complaint : U.S. V. Microsoft Corp.

  4. Accordingly, the most significant potential threat to Microsoft's operating system monopoly is not from a direct, frontal assault by existing or new operating systems, but from new software products that may support, or themselves become, alternative "platforms" to which applications can be written, and which can be used in conjunction with multiple operating systems, including but not limited to Windows.

  5. To protect its valuable Windows monopoly against such potential competitive threats, and to extend its operating system monopoly into other software markets, Microsoft has engaged in a series of anticompetitive activities. Microsoft's conduct includes agreements tying other Microsoft software products to Microsoft's Windows operating system; exclusionary agreements precluding companies from distributing, promoting, buying, or using products of Microsoft's software competitors or potential competitors; and exclusionary agreements restricting the right of companies to provide services or resources to Microsoft's software competitors or potential competitors.

• [Old] USDOJ ☛ Competitive Impact Statement : U.S. V. Microsoft Corporation

  On July 15, 1994, the United States filed a civil antitrust Complaint to prevent and restrain Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft") from using exclusionary and anticompetitive contracts to market its personal computer operating system software, in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1, 2. As alleged in the Complaint, Microsoft has used these contracts to restrain trade and to monopolize the market for operating systems for personal computers using the x86 class of microprocessors, which comprise most of the world's personal computers. As used herein, "PC" refers to personal computers that use this class of microprocessor.

  The Complaint alleges that Microsoft has used its monopoly power to induce PC manufacturers to enter into anticompetitive, long-term licenses under which they must pay Microsoft not only when they sell PCs containing Microsoft's operating systems, but also when they sell PCs containing non-Microsoft operating systems. These anticompetitive, long-term licenses have helped Microsoft to maintain its monopoly. By inhibiting competing operating systems' access to PC manufacturers, Microsoft's exclusionary licenses slow innovation, raise prices, and deprive consumers of an effective choice among competing PC operating systems.

  The Complaint also alleges that in connection with pre-release testing of a new Microsoft operating system code-named "Chicago," Microsoft sought to impose unreasonably restrictive and anticompetitive non-disclosure agreements on a number of leading developers of applications software products. These non-disclosure agreements would have unreasonably restricted the ability of software developers to work with competing operating systems or to develop competitive products or technologies.

• [Old] USDOJ ☛ Microsoft Agrees To End Unfair Monopolistic Practices

  Microsoft, which makes the MS-DOS and Windows operating systems used in more than 120 million personal computers, was accused of building a barricade of exclusionary and unreasonably restrictive licensing agreements to deny others an opportunity to develop and market competing products.

  Attorney General Janet Reno said, "Microsoft's unfair contracting practices have denied other U.S. companies a fair chance to compete, deprived consumers of an effective choice among competing PC operating systems, and slowed innovation. Today's settlement levels the playing field and opens the door for competition."

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • [Old] US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ☛ MICHAEL PHILIP KAUFMAN, Plaintiff-Cross-Appellant v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellant ______________________ 2021-1634, 2021-1691

      The ’981 patent addresses the creation of user inter- faces that permit users to interact with data in relational databases, which store data in multiple tables that are re- lated to each other in defined ways. For a particular data- base, such an interface should permit the user to view and manipulate the data according to the structure of the tables and their relationships—i.e., the “data model” or “schema” of the database.

• Copyrights

  • Walled Culture ☛ The long road to Marrakesh: 40 years of copyright obstruction to human rights and social justice

    One of the little-known but extremely telling episodes in the history of modern copyright, discussed in Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available), concerns the Marrakesh Treaty. A post on the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) site from 2017 has a good summary of what the treaty is about, and why it is important: [...]

  • India Times ☛ OpenAI loses fight to keep ChatGPT logs secret in copyright case

    The judge rejected OpenAI's privacy-related objections to an earlier order requiring the artificial intelligence startup to submit the records as evidence. "There are multiple layers of protection in this case precisely because of the highly sensitive and private nature of much of the discovery," Wang said.

  • The Register UK ☛ IP lawyer's son surprises with vibe-coded IP infringement

    El Reg readers probably aren't surprised to find that AI-enabled copyright infringement is so simple - we've covered it multiple times of late, most recently with OpenAI's Sora making it a snap for anyone to place copyrighted characters into custom scenarios without the permission of holders of those IPs. Menkes said that the incident with his son illustrates that not everyone in the IP space is prepared to face the myriad challenges stemming from AI tools.