Leftovers

• Digital Camera World ☛ I’m sick and tired of being told to stop taking photos on the street, so I was flabbergasted when a security guard did this!

  To my utter amazement, the security guard opened the front door, gave me a beaming smile and said, “You won’t get any decent photos from out there, come on in and have a look around.” He then proceeded to give me a potted history of the Vampire, which was designed in the 1940s, only the second jet fighter to be flown by the RAF, and the first jet-engined plane to ever takeoff and land on an aircraft carrier. And through all of this, I was encouraged to take as many photos as I liked. What a refreshing change! Why can’t more people engage with photographers in this way, instead of treating them like criminals?

• Seth Godin ☛ The sorting

  But now, particularly with digital output, we’re doing it backwards. Making lots of stuff and then sorting it later. There’s very little cost to making more, and it’s getting more and more time-consuming to find what we’re looking for.

• Ruben Verweij ☛ In Search of Meaning - Kedara.eu

  Isn’t it strange, that we rarely think about the most important question we could ask ourselves: “What is the meaning of my life?” I haven’t really been able to figure out why we don’t talk about this more often. It’s not just an interesting philosophical question, after all: it directly and practically influences our life and the decisions we make. Fair warning: due to the Nature of the Topic I’ll be discussing in this post, I’ll make liberal use of Pooh case.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-01-08 [Older] Greenland is rich in natural resources – a geologist explains why

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-01-07 [Older] ‘Metamaterials’ could transform our lives – and sports equipment is at the vanguard

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-01-08 [Older] Chemistry is stuck in the dark ages – ‘chemputation’ can bring it into the digital world

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-01-09 [Older] How astronomers plan to detect the signatures of alien life in the atmospheres of distant planets

  • Matt Wedel ☛ Never name a new species of an existing dinosaur genus | Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

    You should never[1] name a new species of an existing dinosaur genus. Here’s why. Suppose you have two genera, A and B, which are sister taxa in your phylogeny: [...]

• Career/Education

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ South Africa is running out of software developers

    Pnet’s analysis of the IT sector focused on eight roles including business analyst, data analyst and IT project administrator. The full list is detailed in the table below: [...]

  • Hackaday ☛ Get Bored!

    My son went over to a friends house this afternoon, when my wife had been planning on helping him with his French homework. This meant she had an hour or so of unexpected free time. Momentarily at a loss, she asked me what she should do, and my reply was “slack off”, meaning do something fun and creative instead of doing housework or whatever. Take a break! She jokingly replied that slacking off wasn’t on her to-do list, so she wouldn’t even know how to start.

    But as with every joke, there’s more than a kernel of truth to it. We often get so busy with stuff that we’ve got to do, that we don’t leave enough time to slack, to get bored, or to simply do nothing. And that’s a pity, because do-nothing time is often among the most creative times. It’s when your mind wanders aimlessly that you find inspiration for that upgrade to the z-stage on your laser cutter, or whatever the current back-burner project of the moment is.

  • Rui Carmo ☛ The Dilbert Afterlife

    As a telco person, it resonated with me so much (and had so many touch points with my daily life) that I was even accused of tipping Adams off about some of the absurdities I witnessed in the field.

  • Hound Technology Inc ☛ “You Had One Job”: Why Twenty Years of DevOps Has Failed to Do it

    I think the entire DevOps movement was a mighty, twenty year battle to achieve one thing: a single feedback loop connecting devs with prod. On those grounds, it failed.

  • Medium ☛ Rewilding Software Engineering. Chapter 6: Myths we tell ourselves

    Software is a domain of mostly invisible knowledge work. It’s hard to see progress, quality or risks in the way that you can with building bridges or running a factory. In that vacuum, simple narratives often fill the gap. As Alan Kay said “computing has turned into a pop culture” and many of its most popular stories have become myths … “the 10x engineer”, “the genius founder”, “move fast and break things!”. In this chapter, we wish to explore specific myths focused on software engineering itself.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ The EMac: Using Apple’s Forgotten Educational Mac In 2025

    As for the model that [MattKC] purchased, it was this earliest model, featuring a 700 MHz PowerPC G4 CPU in addition to 640 MB SDRAM. Despite the seller’s description it seems to be in good nick with it firing right up, and even a glance inside after beating the challenge of 2.5 mm hex screws showed it to be in relatively good condition.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Tyee ☛ The Screens Are Gone. Bring on the Family Games

    These days, we try to stay away from screens. It’s decidedly more work for me and their mom, but it’s really cut down on the kicking and screaming, especially after we found a better way to spend our time. The iPads are gathering dust in the closet. Tabletop board games and card games have taken their place.

    The kids are five and seven, so they aren’t quite ready for the heavy-hitters — Scrabble, Cribbage, Settlers of Catan — but all-ages classics like Uno and Guess Who are suddenly right up their alley. I never much cared for Guess Who as a kid, but the version they have is a card game. The plastic grid system of my day, it turns out, is not only needless, but weakens the game.

  • Science Alert ☛ Cases of 'AI Psychosis' Are Being Reported. How Dangerous Is It?

    But as of late, a number of media reports have described people experiencing psychotic symptoms in which ChatGPT features prominently.

    For a small but significant group – people with psychotic disorders or those at high risk – their interactions with genAI may be far more complicated and dangerous, which raises urgent questions for clinicians.

  • Time ☛ The Art of Protecting Your Peace

    When we overreact our desire to quickly find a solution leads us to rush and make assumptions about what’s going on. When it comes to important social issues like a shift in political power, climate change, gun control, or other things that are mostly out of your control, you can be less bothered there, too.

    To be clear, I’m not saying there isn’t plenty to be outraged about in the world. I am also not for a moment suggesting you turn your back on important issues. I’m saying that overreacting is not where our power lies. Rather it exists potentially in underreacting.

  • Dylan Araps ☛ Have Taken Up Farming

    In 2024, I appeared briefly to tell the world I retired and had "taken up farming" [1]. The vagueness of my message and strangeness surrounding its circumstances created a lot of buzz. It is not every day a person in a cushy, intellectual career drops everything and pivots to working outdoors with their body. It was amusing to read the theories people came up with: from driving a tractor up and down massive tracts of land to being holed up in a Kaczynskiesque cabin in the woods.

  • Hackaday ☛ DIY, Full-Stack Farm Automation

    He calls his project the Pi Internet of Things, or PioT, and as its name suggests is based around the Raspberry Pi. Since this will all be outdoors and exposed to the extremes of Arkansas weather, everything built under the auspices of this project prioritizes ruggedness, stability, and long-term support, all while avoiding any cloud service. The system also focuses on being able to ride through power outages. The server side, called piotserver, uses a REST API to give the user access to the automation systems through a web interface

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Tyee ☛ The Computers Are Closing In

      At first, I brushed off the sensation like one would wave away a flying insect. But the feeling kept circling back. In looking for an answer for this odd new reaction, I began to look more actively at the root cause.

      The internet and its social web have been an attention-grabbing machine since they came into being. We have had our focus and brain power leached away online for decades. So why the recent revulsion?

    • The Atlantic ☛ My Students Write Their Papers Backwards

      But even if we’ve moved past the heyday of whole-language reading, we clearly still believe that we can draw conclusions from context rather than from all the facts before us. Rarely has the adoption of a new technology been so quick and insidious as what we’re witnessing in the popularization of large language models such as ChatGPT.

    • Techdirt ☛ Report Says AI That Hallucinated A Cop Into A Frog Is Making Utah Streets ‘Safer’

      Yep. They just don’t care. If it means cases get tossed because sworn statements have been AI auto-penned, so be it. If someone ends up falsely accused of a crime or falsely arrested because of something AI whipped up, that’s just the way it goes. And if it adds a layer of plausible deniability between an officer and their illegal actions, even better.

      Not only is the tech apparently not saving anyone much time, it’s also being abused by law enforcement officers to justify their actions after the fact. But it’s shiny and new and seems sleek and futuristic, so of course reporters will occasionally decide to do law enforcement’s PR work for it by presenting incredibly fallible tech as the 8th wonder of the police world.

    • LabX Media Group ☛ Why Is It So Hard to Tell If a Piece of Text Was Written by AI?

      Large language models have become extremely good at mimicking human writing. Even they have a hard time identifying AI-written text.

    • The Register UK ☛ ChatGPT will get ads. Free and Go users first

      "In the coming weeks, we're also planning to start testing ads in the US for the free and Go tiers, so more people can benefit from our tools with fewer usage limits or without having to pay," said Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of applications. "Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions will not include ads."

    • Jeremy Cherfas ☛ Under the Hammer

      Eventually I decided to get rid of the email contact form completely from everywhere on the site and even changed the URL of one of the pages that seemed to be attracting the most abuse. Still, the site continues to be hammered, and I cannot understand how. I don’t believe it is scrapers.

      The question I had before — how are the bots evading the honeytrap on the form? — remains unanswered but for now is not relevant. I have plenty of others.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Workday sued for AI-powered hiring discrimination

      This doesn’t mean Workday intended HiredScore to discriminate. But machine learning systems are notorious for being trained on data that’s horribly biased, then implementing the bias. If HiredScore was trained on data from biased hiring, that’s what it learned.

      And the companies can absolutely be held liable.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Slain Minneapolis Mom Renee Good Is Being Turned into Bizarre AI Slop

      But not all of this slop was purely for the purposes of misinformation, or misguided efforts to expose Ross. At least one of the MAGA loyalists arguing that Good’s death was her own fault went to an image generator with a sickening request for a depiction of Ross kneeling on her neck in a pose that recalled former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, which set off massive demonstrations against racial police brutality in 2020. Someone used Grok, the model developed by Elon Musk‘s xAI and integrated into his social platform X, to deepfake Good’s bloodied corpse in a bikini. (Access to the bot was restricted last week after it was enlisted to create thousands of nonconsensual sexualized images, and xAI later announced that it had implemented measures to prevent Grok from editing pictures of real people to swap in more revealing clothes.) A particularly bizarre Grok video showed a woman meant to resemble Good being shot in her car and tumbling out of the driver’s seat into the fires of hell.

    • The Register UK ☛ Just because Linus Torvalds vibe codes doesn't mean it's a good idea

      Vibe coding got a big boost when everyone's favorite open source programmer, Linux's Linus Torvalds, said he'd been using Google's Antigravity LLM on his toy program AudioNoise, which he uses to create "random digital audio effects" using his "random guitar pedal board design."

      This is not exactly Linux or even Git, his other famous project, in terms of the level of work. Still, many people reacted to Torvalds' vibe coding as "wow!" It's certainly noteworthy, but has the case for vibe coding really changed?

      [...]

      More recently, in the late '70s and early '80s, which is when I came on the scene, fourth-generation languages (4GLs) appeared. 4GLs were high‑level, usually domain‑specific languages that let you specify what you wanted from a database, such as queries, reports, and displays, rather than how to do it procedurally, with a focus on business data tasks. You'd ask for, say, a sales report, and they'd generate the COBOL or SQL to deliver it.

      I used Adabas/Natural on mainframes to deliver NASA data communication reports back in the '80s. 4GLs are still around, and some, such as SAS and SPSS, remain important in production environments.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • YLE ☛ BBC releases podcast on Vastaamo hacker

      The six-part series delves into Kivimäki's story and the experiences of the victims of the Vastaamo data breach.

      The podcast is titled Ransom Man, Kivimäki's alias when he [compromised] the records of more than 33,000 patients and extorted money from psychotherapy centre Vastaamo and its clients.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Ludlow Institute ☛ They Asked for My Cell Number. I Don’t Have One.

      I just tried to set up a new account, and it asked for my phone number. Not a VoIP number. It demanded a real SIM-based cell number.

      The problem is that I don’t have a SIM in my phone. Which means that I actually don’t have a cell number, the number associated with a SIM.

      What should someone do in a situation like this?

• Defence/Aggression

  • India Times ☛ TikTok to tighten age checks in Europe as regulators ramp up pressure

    The previously ‌unreported system ‌follows a year-long pilot in Europe. It analyses profile information, posted videos and behavioural ‌signals to predict whether an account may be underage. Accounts flagged by the technology will be reviewed by specialist moderators rather than automatically banned, TikTok said.

  • The Atlantic ☛ DHS Has Become What Its Critics Feared

    Stodder told me that this now seems naive. “You have these institutions and these technologies and these authorities,” he said, “then some guy like Trump or Stephen Miller can say, Hey, we could use this stuff to do something that nobody’s ever done before in the United States. To suddenly see DHS become this kind of mechanism of authoritarian intimidation and incipient fascism is disorienting, and frightening.”

    Stodder added: “It makes me think that maybe DHS was a bad idea.”

  • New York Times ☛ Before Criticizing Pro-Hamas Chants, Mamdani Sought Jewish Leaders’ Input

    Mayor Zohran Mamdani was facing an early test on a delicate matter. Protesters had gathered outside a synagogue in a heavily Jewish neighborhood of New York City and chanted in support of Hamas.

    Video of the chants rocketed around social media, and by the time the protest ended at roughly 10 p.m., attention quickly turned to how he would respond. Yet for hours, Mr. Mamdani said nothing.

  • Thorsten Alteholz ☛ European Vulnerabilities DataBase – a blessing or a curse?

    First of all it is good to have such a database in Europe to become more and more independent of things hosted in the US. But you are not able to directly add your own research of vulnerabilities to EUVD. Therefore you need an account at CIRAS (Cybersecurity Incident Reporting and Analysis System), which is also operated by ENISA. Obtaining such an account is not really an easy task. Lots of links on the website show a 404. Anyway, for whatever reason in 2025 only about 1100 issues have been reported via CIRAS, so compared with the MITRE CVE database, this is nothing at all.

• Environment

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-10 [Older] Brazil Soy Industry’s Exit From Moratorium on Using Amazon Land Could Spur Deforestation

    • The Conversation ☛ 2026-01-07 [Older] What I’ve learned from studying the wild pigeon

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Zimra Admits Digital Services Tax Has Major Problems

    The first was double taxation. Many of the foreign digital services they are targeting already charge 15 % VAT. Now they have introduced a 15% digital services tax being collected locally through banks.

    Without a clear way to make sure those two don’t overlap, we knew what would happen: people would pay twice.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ One cure for sour feelings about politics: Getting people to love their hometowns

    My research as a political scientist suggests an overlooked factor explains why some people engage with their communities while others tune out: local patriotism, or how they feel about their town.

  • Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives ☛ Every data centre is a U.S. military base - CCPA

    The sanctions on Khan hampered the work of the court, and he found that not only were his UK bank accounts frozen, but he also lost access to his Microsoft email address. He ended up switching to Swiss privacy-focused provider Proton Mail. While it has not made the same impact in Canada, the news about Khan losing his access to Microsoft services quickly rippled through the halls of power across Europe when it was revealed in May.

  • Nick Heer ☛ ‘Every Data Centre Is a U.S. Military Base’ – Pixel Envy

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The world needs an Ireland for disenshittification

    A single country – poor, small, at the literal periphery of a continent – was able to foundationally transform the global order. Any company that has enough money to pretend to be Irish can avoid 25-35% in tax, giving it an unbeatable edge against competitors that lack the multinational's superpower of magicking all its profits into a state of untaxable grace somewhere over the Irish Sea.

    The effect this had on Ireland is…mixed. The Irish state is thoroughly captured by the corporations that pretend to call Ireland home. Anything those corporations want, Ireland must deliver, lest the footloose companies up sticks and start pretending to be Cypriot, Luxembourgeois, Maltese or Dutch. This is why Europe's landmark privacy law, the GDPR, has had no effect on America's tech giants. They pretend to be Irish, and Ireland lets them get away with breaking European law. The Irish state even hires these companies' executives to regulate their erstwhile employers: [...]

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • MinnPost ☛ Do most Americans use social media for health information?

      In two recent polls, a majority of U.S. adults said they use social media to get health information.

      July 2025 by KFF, a leading health policy research nonprofit: 55% said they use social media “to find health information and advice” at least occasionally. Less than one in 10 said “most” of the information is trustworthy.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ How dangerous are Iranian secret services in Germany?

    Along with worrying about their relatives back in Iran, many of them are also concerned about their own safety. This is especially true if they are politically active or work in journalism. Such individuals can quickly become targets of Iranian intelligence services, which are very active — and dangerous — in Germany, according to the country's domestic intelligence agency.

    "It can be assumed that Iranian intelligence services will increase their persecution abroad, partly due to current events," wrote the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence agency, in response to a query from DW.

  • New York Times ☛ A Refuge for Afghan Music Is at Risk of Falling Silent

    The musicians are part of a community of Afghan artists that has flourished over decades, and that also includes carpet weavers and dancers. Pakistan provided a haven for millions of Afghans fleeing war and political instability, first from Soviet invaders in the 1980s and later from the Taliban, who first seized power in the 1990s.

    The Taliban have banned music, persecuted artists and burned or smashed instruments, both in the 1990s and since reclaiming power in 2021.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Iran plans permanent break from global [Internet], say activists

    “A confidential plan is under way to turn international [Internet] access into a ‘governmental privilege’,” according to a report from Filterwatch, an organisation monitoring Iran’s [Internet] censorship, citing a number of sources in Iran.

    “State media and government spokespersons have already signaled that this is a permanent shift, warning that unrestricted access will not return after 2026.”

  • FilterWatch ☛ Iran Enters a New Age of Digital Isolation

    We have entered a new era where connectivity is no longer a right, but a government-granted privilege. The findings in this report detail a confidential state project—orchestrated by high-level figures including Mohammad Amin Aghamiri and Mehdi SeifAbadi—to transform the country’s [Internet] infrastructure into a "Barracks Internet." In this sealed intranet, access to the outside world is granted only to those with security clearance via a strict "White List."

  • The Times Of Israel ☛ Iranian regime plans to permanently cut people off from [Internet] -- watchdog

    The [Internet] blackout imposed amid the recent anti-regime protests is part of a broader plan to turn Iran “into a communication black hole under the looming dominance of the Khatam al-Anbia base,” the joint command base of Iran’s armed forces, said Filterwatch in the report it published Thursday.

    Thousands have been killed under cover of the blackout, according to rights groups.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Why Iran's communication blackout could become permanent

    Precise information is difficult to come by, but estimates suggest between 95 and 99% of the country's communication network — from mobile phone and [Internet] signals to landline telephones — has been blocked since Friday.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ 2025 Readership Survey

    TSK remains the leading source of information for its readers at 75%, in the face of growing competition from The Brief (28%) and Journalology (28%). Respondents also prioritize email notifications from outside organizations (48%) and directly visiting professional news sites (25%) as very important for discovering key developments. LinkedIn is emerging as the social media outlet of choice (64%), with a notable decline in X (Twitter), which is now of the lowest interest (15%). Readers tend to occasionally share posts within their organizations, but never or rarely share publicly through social media for a range of reasons – sometimes because they assume that most of their colleagues and peers already access the posts on their own, but sometimes because readers would prefer posts with a wider range of perspectives, and/or that are more accessible to early career professionals. Overall, the highest proportion of readers find TSK relevant to their professional needs as well as those of their employer, and view it more as a professional interest blog or a group of experts and analysts, and less as a service from SSP.

  • New York Times ☛ White House Warns CBS: Air Trump Interview in Full, or ‘We’ll Sue’

    In previously unreported remarks, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CBS News that Mr. Trump would “sue” the news outlet if it did not air an interview unedited.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Vox ☛ Musk’s Starlink in Iran only works if things don’t go wrong in outer space

    Crackdowns against anti-government protesters have led to at least 2,600 deaths, although some estimates put the death toll at upward of 20,000. According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, more than 18,000 protesters have been arrested.

  • Papers Please ☛ Know Your Rights as a U.S. Citizen

    With all this happening, we’ve posted a new know-your rights FAQ for U.S. citizens, “Do I have to show ID as a pedestrian, passenger in a car (not the driver, for whom the rules are different), at my home, or at the airport for a domestic flight?” (Also available here as a printable one-page PDF.)

  • Human rights Activists News Agency ☛ Day Twenty-One of the Protests: Islamic Republic’s Leader Acknowledges “Thousands Killed” as Internet Shutdown Continues - Hrana

    The nationwide [Internet] shutdown, which began on Thursday night, January 8, passed the 200-hour mark on the twenty-first day and continues. Although very limited and brief increases in connectivity were reported at certain points in recent hours, overall access to the global [Internet] remains at only a few percent of normal levels.

  • Soylent News ☛ The Culture War

    Then a decade later a very rich demagogue named Ross Perot got into politics in the 1990s. In his two failed attempts at buying the White House, he came up with the idea of the “culture war,” saying that the radical left was out to pollute America’s culture with homosexuality and multiculturalism. The aim was to turn the ninety nine percent of us who weren’t born into great wealth against each other so that they, the fewer than one percent, could steal what it hadn’t already stolen.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ ICE: What Can Be Done to Rein In Trump's Deportation Force?

    New polling released this week by The Economist and YouGov confirmed support for ICE is rapidly eroding: For the first time ever, support for abolishing ICE has eclipsed opposition to the idea, by a margin of 46 percent to 43 percent — and the idea of keeping ICE in its current form is 10 points less popular than abolishing it altogether.

  • New Republic ☛ Joe Rogan’s Harsh New Takedown of Trump ICE Raids Hands Dems a Weapon

    The testing also found that the killing has “broken through with voters,” the memo says, with 86 percent saying they have heard at least “a little” about it and 76 percent saying they’ve seen footage. And importantly, the testing also finds that Democratic proposals to rein in ICE have broad support. Voters favor requiring warrants for arrests by 29 points, and back a prohibition against masking during arrests by 16 points, though “Abolish ICE” remains a few points underwater.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Inside Towers ☛ Congressman Says Carriers Could Help Pay for Airplane Retrofits

    Representative Jay Obernolte (R-CA), who has a pilot’s license, brought up the topic during the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee FCC oversight hearing. He said he personally experienced the “chaos” caused by the “unintended effect on radio altimeters” when carriers began using 5G in 2021. That happened near some airports when the Commission freed up the lower portion of the C-band for wireless use, Inside Towers reported.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Macworld ☛ The high-end M5 MacBook Pro chips are almost here: Here's why the wait was worth it

    Flexible configurations of this sort would be new for Macs since the end of the Intel days, and there’s no guarantee it will happen. Apple could be using this new technology just to have separate silicon for the CPU and GPU in order to improve yields and heat dissipation, both of which should be improved over a single monolithic die.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Firstpost ☛ Google seeks stay as it appeals US search monopoly verdict

  Alphabet Inc.’s Google has filed a notice to appeal a US federal court ruling that declared it holds an illegal monopoly in online search and search advertising, that will delay the implementation to the company’s implementation of changes to the company’s business.

  The appeal was submitted on January 16, in Washington federal court which also requests a stay on certain remedies during the process.

  Along with the appeal, a request was put to hold the lower-court ruling while the appeal is pending. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals will likely hear the case later this year.

  The federal court, which hears many appeals related to the federal government, takes about a year to issue a decision after an appeal notice is filed, according to statistics compiled by the US Courts.

• Patents

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Massive patent leak suggests Insta360 is planning to take out DJI's dominant Osmo Pocket 3 vlogging camera | Digital Camera World

    Now the problem is that, while it's easy enough to find a leaked patent and diagrams, all that really tells us is that someone at Insta360 also had the idea – not that a product is on the way, or that it is definitely coming, or when. All of that is what we'd really like to know.

• Trademarks

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Apollonia Says Prince ‘Would Be Appalled’ by Estate Trademark Seizure

    “The truth is none of this litigation would have occurred if Prince were still alive,” she wrote in her declaration filed Friday. “He would be appalled by the unbecoming conduct of PPE and the efforts by PPE to usurp his wishes. I do not trust PPE, and I am afraid that if PPE is able to accomplish its goal of taking the Apollonia Marks from me, my identity will be lost, my rights will be diminished, my business will be interrupted, and I will be unable to use the Apollonia marks without repercussion from PPE.”

  • Right of Publicity

    • Engadget ☛ Matthew McConaughey fights unauthorized AI likenesses by trademarking himself

      Under the law, it’s already prohibited for companies to steal someone’s likeness to sell products. However, McConaughey is taking a proactive approach due to the nebulous rules around the use of someone’s likeness for artificial intelligence and what’s considered commercial use involving the technology. His lawyer, Kevin Yorn, admits that they don’t know how the court would decide if an offender challenges the trademarks. But they’re hoping that the threat of a lawsuit would deter companies from using McConaughey’s likeness for AI in the first place. Actors have been trying to protect themselves from AI since the technology blew up, and it was one of the sticking points in the negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and Hollywood studios when the labor union went on a strike in 2023.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Matthew McConaughey combats AI by trademarking his image and voice

      AI deepfakes are one of the great societal growing pains of our time. They distort reality, hijack individual currency for entertainment and public humiliation, and could cost people who make a living off their face or voice serious money. In the US and Europe, it's already illegal for companies to use someone's likeness to sell products without permission. But with AI's ease and speed in replicating voices and appearances, fly-by-night companies still try to profit off celebrity by creating false endorsements. Professional face user Matthew McConaughey is trying to get ahead of this: [...]

    • BBC ☛ Matthew McConaughey trademarks iconic phrase to stop AI misuse

      Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey has trademarked his image and voice to protect them from unauthorised use by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Matthew McConaughey trademarks ‘All right, all right, all right’ catchphrase in bid to beat AI fakes

      The Oscar winner intends to combat misuse of the famous line from Dazed and Confused by creating ‘a clear perimeter around ownership’

    • Variety ☛ Matthew McConaughey Trademarks 'Alright, Alright, Alright' to Protect Against AI Misuse

      Attorneys for entertainment law firm Yorn Levine representing McConaughey have secured eight trademarks from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office over the last several months for their client, which they said is aimed at protecting his voice and likeness from unauthorized AI misuse.