GNU/Linux

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • E71 - Building Freedom: A Conversation with Alexandre Oliva, FSF Latin America Co‑Founder

Leftovers

• Shubham Bose ☛ The Rise of Sanityware

  If you walked into a library and the librarian took you to look at five other books before handing you the one you asked for, you would leave. Yet, this is exactly how we navigate the web today. We have normalized hostile user interfaces designed to obstruct your navigation on a webpage with engagement traps. Once upon a time, the interface existed solely to bridge the gap between intent and action.

• The New Leaf Journal ☛ My Heroic Car Rescue in Brooklyn Heights

  I was unsure how much I had contributed to helping her move her car. I pushed, but cannot say that subjectively felt like I had much to do with the car moving. But before driving off she said I was a “lifesaver” and asked me if I had ever done that before. I responded honestly that I had never pushed a car before and do not know much about cars, but I was glad to have been able to help. With that, she thanked me again and drove off.

• [Repeat] Jim Nielsen ☛ The Don’t “Contact Us” Page

  The “Contact Us” page is a computer-generated dream world, built to keep us from contacting another human in order to save cost and turn a human being into this: a source of revenue.

• James G ☛ IndieWeb Carnival: Host Interview

  Zachary kindly invited me to answer a few questions about hosting the IndieWeb Carnival. Running for three years now, the IndieWeb Carnival has been the source of endless inspiration for me, sparking both long periods of thinking as well as writing blog posts. Even when I have not written an entry for a given month, the topic has always been interesting.

  I have hosted the indieWeb Carnival twice, first on the topic “Moments of Joy” and then on the topic of “Tools.” I am going to tailor my answers to the latter topic since it is the most recent one. I will also be hosting in March 2026 – stay tuned!

• Science

  • Chris ☛ Solving Systems of Equations Faster

    There’s a fast way to solve this, which is to take two of the lower equation and add to the upper equation. This makes the \(x\)’s cancel out and removes some of the \(y\)’s, leaving us with

• Career/Education

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Govt encourages reading culture

    Mr Nkulukusa, who was speaking during the launch of a book entitled, “Where Hearts Dare and Minds Soar”, by Gabriel Chisanga, expressed hope that the book will make a difference in communities in revamping the reading culture.

    He said the launch of the book affirms that books and ideas still matter, and that Zambia’s intellectual future is bright.

  • Elliot C Smith ☛ How to, mostly, guarantee success in your career

    Over my career so far I have done a lot of different things. I've written code, designed PCBs and MRI machines, run Google ads, been out on the road doing sales and managed teams doing all of the above. Overall, regardless of the job at hand, I think I've found a few ways to ensure I do fairly well.

  • Ava ☛ my journey into data protection, part one

    I want to do my part to be as open as is sensible about my path of trying to work in data protection/privacy; my challenges and my failures, the reasons for doing what I did, and my thoughts during some of the difficult moments and choices.

    I originally wanted to keep updating this for years until I hit a specific milestone and then release it, but even just writing down everything that happened until now was a lot. So I guess there will be two parts, with the second part coming one day :)

  • Tim Bradshaw ☛ Practice

    So how does the LLM thing pan out? It pans out with humans who are no longer practising programming and so are no longer very good at programming checking code written by a machine which they should not trust, but which they do for the reasons I said I would not discuss above. In due course it is going to pan out with humans who never got to be competent at all using code written by a machine that they no longer understand why they should not trust. Worse than that: the people who could have become good if they practised won’t even enter the field, because people like that don’t want to be drones, and don’t need to become one. It pans out with LLMs seeing more and more code written by LLMs, and less and less written by humans, with the resulting model collapse we’re already seeing.

• Hardware

  • David Revoy ☛ The RAM Nightmare: How I Lost My Sanity (and Almost My Deadline)

    I'm reporting on a recent experience with a faulty RAM module that caused chaos on my system. Now that it's fixed, I hope this post will inform future users about the symptoms of a bad RAM module, how to detect it, and how to remove the culprit.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ Exercise Can Actually Make Your Brain Look Younger, MRI Scans Reveal

    In a new 12-month clinical trial of 130 healthy adults aged between 26 and 58, researchers from the US found that participants who followed a comprehensive weekly exercise regimen ended up with brains that showed signs of being biologically younger than those of a control group.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Persona fog: why you can't find yourself online

    The problem is structural. We once formed identities by testing them against bounded arenas — neighborhoods, schools, workplaces. Now those boundaries have been obliterated, replaced by infinite inputs and infinite possible selves. "The coherent self requires boundaries to form against," Martin says. "Remove them, and identity becomes liquid, unsecured, and endlessly revisable."

• Proprietary

  • The Conversation ☛ Apple’s unrivalled commitment to excellence is fading – a designer explains why

    Jobs’ leadership style could verge on the tyrannical, yet his approach was essential to Apple’s enduring success, which, more than 14 years after his death, still ranks as the world’s most valuable brand.

    To Jobs, the twin importance of design aesthetics and user experience (UX) was non-negotiable – both must be perfect for the public to see the product. But the recent history of Liquid Glass – introduced under Jobs’ successor as CEO, Tim Cook – suggests Apple may now be losing that ethos.

  • NVISO Labs ☛ ConsentFix (a.k.a. AuthCodeFix): Detecting OAuth2 Authorization Code Phishing

    ConsentFix (a.k.a. AuthCodeFix) is the latest variant of the fix-type phishing attacks, initially identified by Push Security1. In this technique, the adversary tricks the victim into generating an OAuth authorization code that is part of a localhost URL by signing in to the Azure CLI instance (or other vulnerable applications). Then, the victim is instructed to copy that URL and paste it into a phishing website, essentially handing over the authorization code to the adversary, who is now able to exchange it for an access token. Using the access token, the adversary gets access to the victim’s Microsoft account.

    In this blog post, we dive into the mechanics of the attack and explore detection and mitigation strategies for it.

  • Matthew Weber ☛ This Has Got To Stop

    It’s not that these amounts are insane, but regular applications that don’t provide a recurring service, don’t need subscriptions. If the developer isn’t providing you with something each month (like storage or backups), then there is no need to give them recurring money. I’ll happily pay $15 for a stupid Bluesky app. But I’m not going to pay that every year. I’m not getting more value from the app as time goes on.

    I sound like an old man, but I can’t afford this shit. None of us can. Developers are going to price themselves out of a ton of users by simply being too greedy. Choose a price, let me pay it, and we can both move on. If you want more money from me, come out with a new version like they used to do, and I can decide if I want to pay again.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Google DeepMind open-sources AlphaGenome medical research model

      The Alphabet Inc. unit first debuted the algorithm in June. Until now, it was accessible only through an application programming interface limited to noncommercial research use cases. According to DeepMind, the API has been adopted by more than 3,000 scientists and processes about 1 million requests per day.

      The Alphabet unit created AlphaGenome to accelerate DNA-focused medical research projects. According to the company, the model can help scientists better understand the role of DNA in biological processes and study diseases.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Waymo robotaxi hits child at school drop-off

      Federal regulators said they are investigating how the autonomous vehicle handled the incident.

    • Doc Searls ☛ Watts Up

      Will Lockett says OpenAI Is Headed For Bankruptcy. His case: "recent investigations have found that less than 5% of ChatGPT users actually pay for the service. That is a dogs**t conversion rate — especially when you consider OpenAI is selling ChatGPT at a staggering loss to try and get more customers through the door. Even their top-tier $200-per-month plan loses them buckets of money. In short, OpenAI’s income is devastatingly underperforming."

      He says Atlas and Sora are both duds, and OpenAI's new ad biz will fail too. I don't disagree.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Pivot to AI in Portuguese at Manual do Usuário

      Rodrigo Ghedin at the Brazilian tech blog Manual do Usuário is running translations of Pivot to AI into Portuguese!

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Moltbot/Clawdbot: an expensive and insecure AI agent that doesn’t work

      Steinberger calls Moltbot “The AI that actually does things.” That translates to: it can do anything on your computer that you can. Complete access. For a chatbot that fails a lot.

      As Pivot to AI regulars know, AI agents literally cannot be secured against prompt injection. Because chatbots can’t tell data from instructions. Especially when a project is — like Moltbot — a pile of vibe coded slop.

    • YLE ☛ AI-generated bearded 'boomer' in summer job ad raises eyebrows, criticism

      So far, the company has received more than 400 job applications for 23 vacant summer positions in the capital region.

  • Social Control Media

    • Harvard University ☛ A start in bridging divisiveness: Rein in social media

      “An acceptance of violence and extremism, and the dehumanization that is integrated with that viewpoint, comes when you stop thinking that you have a shared future with other people,” Auchincloss said during a discussion on the topic Wednesday evening at Harvard Kennedy School.

      Instead of bringing people together, social media algorithms attuned to political identity “just tear us apart,” Cox said. “We don’t have any real friends, but we can hate the same people together on social media and so that becomes our tribe.”

    • Manuel Moreale ☛ Digital resistance

      But the existence of personal sites, run by people who are willing to live and share their experience of what’s happening around them, remains an incredibly valuable tool in the context of digital resistance.

      Judging by the reports I saw, there are attempts to crack down on Signal groups and the other ways people use to communicate and organize, so I think the more spread out, the more distributed, the more decentralized these movements are, the harder it becomes to keep them under control.

    • Bitdefender ☛ Four arrested in crackdown on Discord-Based SWATting and doxing

      How badly do you want to win an online argument? I certainly hope it's not enough to put the life of the other person at risk.

      Police in Hungary and Romania have arrested four young men suspected of making hoax bomb threats and terrorising internet users through SWATting and doxing attacks.

    • Kyle Ford ☛ Too Much Kyle – House of Kyle

      Over the past several years I’ve actively worked to decentralize my online presence and reduce (as much as is realistic) my use of giant social media platforms.

      The downside to this approach is that I post a lot across lots of places. If, against all odds, you want to keep an eye on all of this action, I’ve now built a little aggregator site called Too Much Kyle.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Futurism ☛ The Worst People Alive Are Obsessed With Meta's Video Recording Glasses

      Unfortunately, these recordings are generally legal if they’re taken in public spaces, even in states that have two-party consent laws. Debating its legality, though, may be missing the point, argues Brad Podray, a content creator who formerly went by the name Scumbag Dad.

      “I know it’s legal. I don’t care,” Podray told Mashable. “That’s not the discussion. I think it’s weird and creepy, and it shows a very predatory mindset.”

    • 404 Media ☛ Senators Push for Answers on ICE's Surveillance Shopping Spree

      The letter touches on many of the surveillance technologies and companies that 404 Media has been writing about in recent months, including Flock license plate readers, Penlink social media and location data monitoring, Clearview AI’s facial recognition tech, Paragon Solutions’ phone hacking technology, as well as other social media scanning and biometric collection databases used by DHS in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

    • The Record ☛ NSA pick champions foreign spying law as nomination advances

      Section 702 is set to expire on April 19 but, thus far, no renewal legislation has been introduced. Congressional and administration officials say that while there have been discussions with the White House about some kind of extension, the decision ultimately rests with Trump himself.

      Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) pressed Rudd if he believed a warrant should be required to search the massive 702 database, except in emergency situations.

    • Michael Geist ☛ Government Says There Are No Plans for National Digital ID To Access Services

      The government has confirmed that it has no plans to create a national identification system. The issue arose in a sessional paper response released this week to a question from Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu. Gladu asked “With regard to the government’s implementation of a digital identification that will be mandatory to access government services and pay taxes: what is the plan and progress of the government on the implementation of a digital identification and what are the implementation dates for each phase?” The government’s short answer: “the Government of Canada is not implementing a federal or national digital identification credential.”

      The longer answer: [...]

    • Mission:Libre Ltd ☛ Who's Spying on You?

      Whenever you use your computer, phone or a "smart" device, you're creating thousands of little bits of information that can tell someone all about you. You don't always have a lot of control over who uses this information or what they do with it.

      Knowing who might be invading your privacy can help you make informed choices to protect yourself. We're going to look at two of the most common ways your information is taken from what you do on your computer. The first is surveillance by government spy agencies. The other is tracking through websites and apps.

    • Doc Searls ☛ Now We Begin

      Note that the Introduction and the Annexes are informative, meaning not part of the standard itself. Between them is the normative, or operative, part of the standard.

      The standard itself is simple. Here is a diagram that predates the one in the standard, but says the same thing: [...]

  • Confidentiality

    • Alexandre Oliva ☛ compromising encryption keys

      Think again, or your data sovereignty will be at risk.

      Cryptography can indeed keep your private data safe, but only if you guard the keys privately and safely.

      Microsoft's practice of uploading your keys to its own servers is the opposite of that.

      That malpractice just makes it easier for Microsoft to comply with orders from terrorist governments that don't respect human rights.

      But it's actually much worse than that!

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ Estonia warns Russian veterans could flood Europe after Ukraine war, urges EU entry ban

    Estonia is pushing for an EU-wide entry ban on former Russian soldiers who participated in the war against Ukraine, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said on Jan. 29.

    "There cannot be a path from Bucha to Brussels," Tsahkna told reporters in the Belgian capital, adding that he would raise the proposal at a meeting of EU foreign ministers later that day.

  • RFERL ☛ EU Designates Iran's Revolutionary Guards As Terrorist Organization

    The United States, Canada, and Australia have already designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization. Within the EU, Germany and the Netherlands have long urged the bloc to follow suit, arguing that the group's involvement in repression at home and destabilizing activities abroad warrants such a step.

  • Vox ☛ Where to donate, volunteer in Minnesota and beyond to resist ICE

    Among the options that Stand With Minnesota offers are funds for purchasing safety equipment or links to buy dash cams for legal observers documenting ICE activities. These resources are important because they help volunteers safely capture the way ICE operates in their neighborhoods, shedding a light on their activities and ultimately offering evidence for accountability if abuse occurs.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Russian ship loitering near transatlantic data cables chased off by Royal Navy attack helicopter — sat within three quarters of a mile of five undersea data cables, including two linking Britain to New York

    According to the report, a cargo vessel by the name of Sinegorsk sailed into the Bristol Channel on Tuesday night, dropping anchor at around 11 pm local time. The ship loitered until 2 pm the next day, before the Royal Navy dispatched a Wildcat helicopter from Yeovilton naval air station in Somerset. The solo chopper was enough to encourage the rogue vessel to upsticks and leave, with no reports of any damage or sabotage in its wake. The vessel's last recorded call to port was three weeks ago, at the headquarters of the Russian Navy's Northern Fleet.

  • Wired ☛ ICE Pretends It’s a Military Force. Its Tactics Would Get Real Soldiers Killed

    As a veteran of the war on terror, I have spent the past year watching Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers expand their operations across the country on a heretofore unprecedented scale and with a new faux-military bearing. From equipment to weapons to tactics, ICE and other immigration enforcement bodies want to be seen as combat forces carrying out their missions. Witness on Thursday, when White House border czar Tom Homan talked about Minneapolis as a “theater” for his agents. Overlooking that ICE is not, in fact, part of the armed services of the US—it’s a civilian law enforcement agency—it is useful to break down their operations through a military lens to find the strategic implications. Because if an agency wants to cosplay as a military force, it deserves to be evaluated as one.

    Let’s start with the tools of the trade: equipment, uniforms, and armament. [...]

  • Molly White ☛ Issue 100 – Freedom of all kinds is worth fighting for

    As masked agents execute people and terrorize communities, [cryptocurrency] executives who spent years posting about freedom fall conspicuously silent — except when writing checks for the politicians enabling it

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Crisis, No. 8

    The Director of National Intelligence has no legitimate role at a domestic law enforcement action. The intelligence community’s remit is foreign threats—the enemies beyond our borders, the spies and saboteurs. An FBI raid on a county election office is a domestic matter, whatever pretext is offered. And yet there she stood.

    Senator Mark Warner named the only two possibilities: either Gabbard believes there is a foreign intelligence angle and failed to brief the intelligence committees as required by law, or she is turning the intelligence community into a partisan instrument. There is no third option.

  • Marisa Kabas ☛ Calling Greg Bovino a "b*tch" raises thousands for Minn. immigrant rights

    This name-calling may seem beneath me, but it’s important to understand two things: one, no it’s not; and two, humiliating fascists is a surprisingly successful tool of resistance. The genesis of bitch diagnosis started last June when I called US Border Czar Tom Homan one on Bluesky in response to some awful thing he’d said. I know it’s a loaded word for some that can be viewed as misogynistic, but when directed at cruel men in power, it just feels right. I meant a bitch in the sense that he’s a whiny baby who takes no responsibility for his actions and blindly follows orders from the Trump administration. Well, this characterization so tickled one of my followers that they sent me $25 on Venmo with the note, “To support calling Tom Homan a bitch.” Naturally I shared a screenshot of the payment, and a few thousands dollars in donations to The Handbasket later, a meme was born. And now it’s helped raise more than $18,000 for immigrant rights in Minnesota.

  • The Next Move ☛ An Astronaut's Worldview: Alliances Over Adventurism

    From Greenland to Venezuela, the United States is trading stability for erratic adventurism. Donald Trump calls it “the Donroe Doctrine,” but there’s no coherent strategy in the personal whims of a flattery-prone president. Americans need a thoughtful foreign policy that delivers consistent peace and prosperity rather than quick photo ops and Truth Social posts.

    As a former astronaut and commander of the International Space Station, I know a little bit about the “big picture” view from 30,000 feet (or from 1.32 million feet, aboard the ISS). Here is what my strategic approach to the world would look like: [...]

  • Paul Krugman ☛ The World Files for Economic Divorce from America

    Unlike Donald Trump, who thinks of international trade as a zero-sum game, the Europeans and the Indians understand that a free trade agreement between them is a very good deal for both parties. They are two very big economies. Although Trump administration officials like to sneer at European economic performance, the economy of the European Union is roughly the same size as ours. And India, which a few decades ago had a huge population but a small economy, has made massive economic strides and is now a major player on the world economic scene: [...]

  • Techdirt ☛ Speak Its Name: Yes, This Is Naziism

    And it is important to start now, because, again, the story of Nazi Germany offers even more important lessons. One is that there will come a tipping point after which it may be impossible to stop the horrors the government is perpetuating without risking war. Furthermore, even if the atrocities the American government is committing were to stop today—and at last there finally seems some political enthusiasm for trying to get them stopped—hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people have already been traumatized, tortured, or killed by these monsters we allowed to run around among us for the last year wearing our flag. There is no undo button for what has befallen them. But if we act now we can save others. As well as ourselves.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • FAIR ☛ US Media Keen on Iranian Unrest—Less So on US and Israel’s Role in It

    The US establishment media, ever on hand to assist with the vilification of Iran and pave the way for imperial aggression, have jumped at the chance to expose alleged government savagery. This diligence hasn’t generally been deemed necessary in the case of, for example, the US-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip—which most media can’t even bring themselves to call a genocide. The mass slaughter in Gaza, which proceeds apace under the guise of a “ceasefire,” has officially killed over 70,000 Palestinians since October 2023, although last year UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese warned that the “real death toll” might already have reached 680,000.

• Environment

  • Michigan Advance ☛ PFAS is poisoning Detroit’s future: Rouge River shows why rules must be strengthened, not weakened

    Today, one of our most iconic waterways, the Rouge River, faces a quiet but growing threat from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These so-called “forever chemicals” are the source of a serious and rapidly escalating public health crisis in the Detroit area. Our rivers, which are a particularly vulnerable pathway for PFAS, are essential to the health of our city, sustain local ecosystems, and connect us to the entire Great Lakes region.

  • The Register UK ☛ US gas power projects tripled in 2025 on AI demand

    In other words, the US is looking at adding nearly 50 percent to its existing world-leading fleet of gas-fired power plants. More than a third of those new plants are directly linked to datacenter projects, GEM said.

    If all the new projects in development end up being fired up, that'll equate to around 53.2 billion tonnes of lifetime CO₂ emissions, GEM global oil and gas plant tracking project manager Jenny Martos told The Register. 12.1 billion tonnes of that addition will come from US projects alone. For reference, the existing global fleet of gas and oil-fired power plants is estimated to account for 54.3 billion tonnes of lifetime emissions.

  • Jeremy Cherfas ☛ Plastic Loophole

    Ah, she told me, in Italy, many packages of plastic plates etc. are labelled saying they can be re-used. Problem solved.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Futurism ☛ Crypto Bros in Meltdown as Bitcoin Crashes

      Now, as [cryptocurrency] analysts speculate whether further downfalls are in Bitcoin’s future, [cryptocurrency] bros are struggling to maintain a cohesive narrative in the face of such epic volatility. Some were frustrated that a rising tide in the stock market didn’t lift the Bitcoin boat.

      “Stocks go up, [cryptocurrency] stays flat. Stocks go down, [cryptocurrency] goes down,” posted [cryptocurrency] guru João Leite on X-formerly-Twitter. “Amazing tech.”

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ How the grid can ride out winter storms

      Typically, the grid operator doesn’t announce details about why an outage occurs until later. But analysts at Energy Innovation, a policy and research firm specializing in energy and climate, went digging. By examining publicly available grid mix data (a breakdown of what types of power plants are supplying the grid), the team came to a big conclusion: Fossil fuels failed during the storm.

    • Jeff Geerling ☛ Ode to the AA Battery

      One problem is many devices don't have a proper BMS integrated into the charging circuit, that will cut power before the battery is below a critical threshold. Li-ion cells start to have problems below 3V, and often suffer permanent damage below 2.5V.

      Devices from even the most stalwart right-to-repair companies suffer from undervoltage issues.

  • Overpopulation

    • Overpopulation ☛ What Are Floors Without Ceilings?

      Anyway, the point is: it’s time for a set of social boundaries to complement the planetary boundaries and social floors. These might push governments to identify (and create space to rein in) the most excessive forms of consumption. Planetary boundaries as proxies aren’t cutting the mustard and social floors without social boundaries perpetuate the myth that rising tides raise all boats. That is absolutely not true. The rising tides—triggered by melting ice, thermal expansion, and drying lands4—will not rise most boats, which are weak and weather-beaten, but will sink them (assuming the Trump Administration doesn’t blow them up first).

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Haaretz ☛ Apple Buys Israeli Startup Specializing in Sound, Facial Detection in $1.5B Deal

    The Israeli company, which has so far operated under the radar, filed a patent application last year to use 'facial skin micromovements' to detect mouthed words, identify a person and assess their emotions, heart rate and other indicators

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Aviation Week podcast: What the FCC’s UAS ban really means

    As I’ve reported extensively on The Drone Girl, this isn’t just another incremental restriction on Chinese-made drones.

    The FCC’s drone ban was initially rolled out as a near-total ban on foreign uncrewed aircraft systems and components, with Chinese manufacturers such as DJI and Autel Robotics squarely in the crosshairs — but far from the only companies affected. The FCC did come out shortly after with some exemptions, including companies on the Department of Defense’s Blue UAS Cleared List and other drones that are 65% U.S.-made by cost but not necessarily wholly American-made.

  • [Old] Medium ☛ Letter from America: How Alistair Cooke Would Describe Us Today

    Alistair Cooke, graduate of Cambridge and a reporter for the Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) and the BBC for many years, entertained us with his erudite and wry insights. Following two years at Yale on a scholarship, he immigrated to the United States in 1937, and became a U.S. citizen six days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the following decades, he acted as a bridge between the two countries, explaining each to the other’s people. A favorite quote of mine: “I am afraid there are still many Englishmen who think of an American as an Englishman somehow gone wrong.” During the 1976 Bicentennial, Congress invited him to address both chambers.

    In these troubled times, I often ask myself, “What would Alistair Cooke be saying about America?” In an effort to channel him, I plunged into the BBC’s archives to reacquaint myself with the man, his freestyle thinking, his personal delivery and his uncanny ability to capture the soul of Americans and render his findings in his very honest, yet heartfelt manner. Herewith, humbly, is the outcome of my effort. I incorporate Cooke’s actual language in boldface type.

  • Don Marti ☛ two obsolete heuristics

    And yes, open source worked for Linux and other high-profile projects with lots of interested developers, but for “Privacy Sandbox,” not so much. The project was spread over (FIXME: actually count these) n different GitHub repositories with m different owners, and discussed at a variety of online and in-person meetings. (Chaff doesn’t block radar, it returns extra radar signals so the real bomber is hard to pick out.) Just sticking an open source license on something doesn’t make it honest, as long as Google can count on concealing it through complexity—and the people qualified to review "Privacy Sandbox" had more urgent issues on their to-do lists. Dealing with Google’s current ever-changing advertising shenanigans took priority over reviewing hypothetical future ones.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • TruthOut ☛ TikTok Takes Down Gaza Journalist Bisan Owda’s Account Mere Days After US Deal

    Owda announced the censorship of her account in a video on Instagram on Wednesday, saying that TikTok had banned her permanently. She had 1.4 million followers on the platform, she said, as a result of years of audience-building under Israeli occupation and genocide.

    “I had 1.4 million followers there. I have been building that platform for four years now,” she said.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Vietnamese Magazine ☛ Why the Press is Shut Out of Việt Nam’s 14th Party Congress

    Technically, the press is allowed to be present. Credentials are issued not only to state media but also to foreign outlets such as the BBC and Reuters. During the opening session of the 14th Congress, journalists could be seen in a designated area on an upper level, observing the main hall from behind a railing.

    However, that's the limit of their access. Reporters are permitted to attend only the opening and closing ceremonies. These sessions are largely performative, consisting of report readings, general goal announcements, and broad personnel introductions. They feature no debates, no voting, and no exercise of “real power.”

  • The Nation ☛ Citizen Journalists Are Minneapolis’s Unsung Heroes

    But in spinning their latest web of lies, Trump and his aides didn’t reckon with the ingenuity and courage of Minnesotans who witnessed Border Control officers shooting Pretti—and Renee Good before him—and recorded the encounters on their cell phones. Without that evidence, the government’s version of the facts would have had the upper hand in shaping the public narrative. With that evidence, however, it’s obvious that “Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked,” as Pretti’s “heartbroken but also very angry parents” wrote in a statement the next day. “He had his phone in his right hand, and his empty left hand is raised above his head trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down.” Likewise, bystander videos of Renee Good’s shooting show that she was turning her vehicle away from ICE agent Jonathan Ross when he fired three deadly shots through her windows.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Papers Please ☛ TSA plans illegal ID and fee shakedown starting Feb. 1, 2026

    Now the TSA is threatening, yet again unlawfully, that starting February 1, 2025 it will prevent any traveler from passing through a TSA or TSA-contractor checkpoint at a US airport with no ID or “non-compliant” ID unless they (1) pay an illegal $45 per person fee and (2) submit to as-yet undisclosed new “identity verification” procedures that are likely to include illegal demands for additional personal information.

    What will happen on February 1st if you try to fly without ID, or without REAL-ID, and without paying the $45 fee or answering more questions? Will the TSA stop you from flying? If so, how can you challenge the TSA’s denial of your right to travel?

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Disappearances in Minnesota

    That list showed that ICE was routinely snatching people who were lawfully in the country and then defying judicial orders to give them a bail hearing or release them.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Nick Heer ☛ Publishers Are Restricting Internet Archive, Access Attempting to Avoid A.I. Scraping

    Hahn may find the Wayback Machine “less risky” than the official API, but that was the reason Reddit cited when it blocked the Internet Archive last year. I feared this likely outcome. Publishers’ understandable desire to control the use of their work is going to make the Internet Archive less useful because neither A.I. scrapers nor the Internet Archive matches the robots.txt rules at the original domain with their policies on archival websites.

  • [Old] Neocities ☛ The "fast lane" to [Internet] civil war

    Yesterday I announced that we are throttling access to the FCC’s IPs on Neocities to dialup modem speeds until they pay us for bandwidth.

    More than a few people have criticized it for being a stunt. Yes, it was a stunt, that was the point. The stunt highlights just how nasty things are going to get if we let the FCC rip apart and throw away Net Neutrality.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Techdirt ☛ Stop Killing Games Gets Over 1 Million Petition Signatures Verified By EU

    I’ve been talking about the Stop Killing Games movement for some time now, so important is its mission to me. This collection of volunteers focused on video game and cultural preservation is attempting to whip up public support for legislation to achieve those goals. Currently focused in the EU, the campaign is built primarily on legislating the following rules: [...]

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