Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• So-called 'FSFE'

  • FSFE ☛ 2026-01-30 [Older] SFP#45: The final chapter of the EU Radio Equipment Directive

Leftovers

• Jeremy Cherfas ☛ Where are my images?

  Good, I successfully moved my WithKnown instance to its new home at Hetzner. Bad, I had to dig deep to find out why it was looking for the wrong CSS stylesheet, and I still have not managed to connect any of the older entries to their images. This is what I have discovered so far in the hunt for images.

• Dominik Schwind ☛ Linkblog workflow

  Teymur asked me, probably hoping for some kind of automation. Alas, there is none. And still, here is my “workflow” for my link blog.

• Anil Dash ☛ New York Tech at 30: the Crossroads

  Beyond the celebrations, though, I wanted to reflect on a number of the deeper conversations I’ve had over these last few days. These are conversations grounded in the reality of where our country and city are today, far beyond spaces where wealthy techies are going to parties and celebrating each other. The hard questions raised in these conversations are the ones that determine where this community goes in the future, and they’re the ones that every tech community is going to face in the current moment.

• Rolling Stone ☛ Chuck Negron, Three Dog Night Co-Founder, Dead at 83

  In a 1972 Rolling Stone cover story, Three Dog Night was described as “the discoverers, in the sense that they put them on the pop charts, of Nyro, Nilsson, Newman, and even Elton John and Bernie Taupin,” noting that any song the group put on an album “is liable to become a hit single by album airplay and radio station responses.” At the time, as the band began selling out every headlining show, the Dogs were out-grossing the likes of Sly and the Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Elvis Presley, and even the Rolling Stones.

• BoingBoing ☛ One of the earliest-born humans ever to be photographed

  John Owen, one of the last veterans of the French and Indian War, posed for this photograph shortly before his death in 1843 at the age of 107. He was born on April 16, 1735 — making him one of the earliest-born humans ever to be photographed.

• The Cyber Show ☛ NOP

  It's nice to engage on different scales, to think about bigger and smaller pictures all at once. There, tactics and strategy meet, and there is much to be learned. Working on a document to support the EU Commission call for evidence AREAS69111 meant international communication back and forth to others in the Software Freedom network. Working on a "Digital Parenting Guide" has kept us grounded in the realism of local working mums and dads.

  Here are the relevant links for anyone interested; [...]

• Seth Godin ☛ Precision vs. accuracy

  Precision requires producing the same results each time. Repeatable, measurable, dependable.

  Accuracy means hitting the target.

• Science

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Medieval Monks Wrote Over a Copy of an Ancient Star Catalog. Now, a Particle Accelerator is Revealing the Long-Lost Original Text

    The parchments initially contained references to a star catalog and maps created during the second century B.C.E.

  • Chris ☛ Laws of Succession

    This is a law of succession most forecasters are familiar with: add one success and one failure to get the Bayesian posterior of coin flips. It’s called Laplace’s law of succession.

  • The Conversation ☛ Why does this river slice straight through a mountain range? After 150 years, scientists finally know

    To test whether such a process was occurring beneath the Uintas, we turned to seismic tomography. This technique is similar to a medical CT (computerised tomography) scan: instead of using X-rays, geophysicists analyse seismic waves from earthquakes to infer the structure of the deep earth.

• Career/Education

  • Seth Godin ☛ “Everybody wants to win”

    It helps to do the work to understand why things aren’t the same for each individual, and even better, how to create the conditions for culture and systems to make the goals you seek more likely to be met.

  • Michael Lynch ☛ My Eighth Year as a Bootstrapped Founder · mtlynch.io

    Eight years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company. Every year, I post an update about how that’s going and what my life is like as an indie founder.

  • MJ Fransen ☛ Internet-Evergreens

    There are many pieces out there on the internet that are excellent and inspiring reads. Sometimes I share a link on the Fediverse, or create a bookmark. They risk being forgotten. The fact that a post is old doesn't diminish its quality.

    Here is small collection that I hope to build over time.

  • CER ☛ Defining Learner-Centered Design of Computing Education: What I did on my sabbatical

    My planned activity during my sabbatical was to revise my 2015 book “Learner-Centered Design of Computing Education.” One of the fixes I wanted to make was a better definition of what “learner-centered design” was. In the new edition, I wrote some formal defining stuff, and then I wrote the below — an extended metaphor to make distinctions between different kinds of “centering” in education. I’m sharing that section here (in its pre-reviewed and pre-edited state). It comes right after defining what the Zone of Proximal Development is and what student performance means.

  • El País ☛ Brazil shocked to find that 13,000 students about to graduate from medical school lack basic knowledge to practice medicine

    The first edition of the Enamed exam evaluated 350 medical programs, offered by public and private institutions, through an exam administered to nearly 90,000 students. Universities received a failing grade if less than 40% of their students were able to demonstrate the basic knowledge required to practice medicine. Particular concern has been raised by the fact that 13,000 final-year medical students flunked the official exam. This means that, barring any changes, they will soon be practicing medicine. The Federal Council of Medicine is exploring ways to prevent this.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ A Higher-End Pico-Based Oscilloscope

    This isn’t an open-source project, but it is quite well-documented, and the general design logic and workings of the device are freely available. The main board holds two Picos, one for data sampling and one to handle control, display, and external communication. The control unit is made out of stacked PCBs surrounded by a 3D-printed housing; the pinout diagrams printed on the back panel are a helpful touch. One interesting technique was to use a trimmed length of clear 3D printer filament as a light pipe for an indicator LED.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ 8K video is dying, but you shouldn't mourn its loss

    However, there's another, more fundamental reason why I think 8K television is following the same path as 3D TV: it simply isn't necessary. For the last 25 years or so, the world of digital video has been obsessed with increasing resolution. 'HD' (1280 x 720 pixels) and 'Full HD' (1920 x 1080) were the resolutions of choice from the early-mid 2000s, and a decade later 4K (3840 x 2160, or 4x the number of pixels in Full HD) became the resolution we had to have. But as with many technological advancements, we're now at a stage where subsequent improvements yield diminishing returns. While the jump from Full HD to 4K gave a modest tangible improvement to image quality, the difference between 4K and 8K is almost imperceptible in most cases.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Techdirt ☛ The CDC Has Mysteriously Frozen Vaccine Databases Without Explanation

    These databases and the information within them are used to identify under-vaccinated populations relating to specific diseases so that public health officials can coordinate on responses to outbreaks of those diseases. Responses that typically involve vaccination campaigns to protect a population that hitherto has failed to protect themselves.

  • Stefano Marinelli ☛ The Weight of a Millimeter

    The doctor confirmed: it was an excellent sign, meaning the healing phase had begun. No serious permanent damage. It would take time, but I would heal.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Europe shrugs off tariffs, plots to end tech reliance on US

    That resilience is showing up most clearly in tech budgets. Hardware leads the charge, with spending forecast to jump 14.3 percent as organizations scramble to buy AI-optimized servers and supporting infrastructure. Software follows closely behind, with an 11.2 percent increase driven by demand for cybersecurity tools and public cloud platforms. IT services growth lags at 3.7 percent, a gap that suggests a broader shift toward owning critical capabilities rather than renting them indefinitely from hyperscalers.

  • The Register UK ☛ VS Code for Linux may be secretly hoarding trashed files

    The reason for this is Snap – a Linux application packaging format – creates a local Trash folder for each VS Code version, one that's separate from the system-managed Trash, according to a VS Code bug report dating back to November 11, 2024.

    Not only that, but Snap keeps older versions of VS Code after updates, potentially multiplying the number of local Trash folders and the trashed-but-not-deleted files therein. Emptying the system Trash folder doesn't affect the local instances.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Russian [Crackers] Weaponize Microsoft Office Bug in Just 3 Days

    CVE-2026-21509 is a security feature bypass vulnerability in Microsoft Office for which Microsoft rushed an out-of-cycle patch on Jan. 26 after confirming active zero-day exploitation. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added the flaw to its database of known exploited vulnerabilities at the time.

  • Matt Gemmell ☛ The Fallen Apple

    We have the ageing and increasingly disconnected CEO whose only north star is the dollar, kissing the ring and kow-towing to a tyrant, clearly having chosen himself as a corporate sacrifice to the appalling present government of the US. Tim Cook is giving up his reputation in order to preserve not the company or its people, but rather the stock price. Is that noble? I’m sure that it’s seen as such in the context of American capitalism, but Cook at this point is so utterly contaminated and compromised that I think it’ll be as much of a relief to the man himself as to Apple’s employees when he finally bows out after weathering the remainder of this darkest chapter in modern US history. If, indeed, that chapter does come to an end on schedule.

  • Macworld ☛ If Apple is richer than ever, why does it feel so broke?

    We are experiencing a period of great angst in the Apple community, and most of it is the result of Tim Cook’s leadership. Cook has done a tremendous job over the years, building on Apple’s success and taking the company to new heights. For years, the Macalope skewered pundits who suggested Cook was a failure for not delivering a product as successful as the iPhone, as if it were reasonable to suggest he deliver another once-in-a-lifetime product. Cook’s tenure has been one of mature, stable stewardship, and over the more than decade and a half he’s led the company, Apple continued to ship hits like the Apple Watch and AirPods.

  • Canion dot Blog ☛ Rotting to the Core

    This is a monumental misstep, but declining performance and living on past grandeurs is fast becoming the new Apple way.

  • Zig ☛ Bypassing Kernel32.dll for Fun and Nonprofit

    What we’ve learned empirically is that the ntdll APIs are generally well-engineered, reasonable, and powerful, but the kernel32 wrappers introduce unnecessary heap allocations, additional failure modes, unintentional CPU usage, and bloat. Using ntdll functions feels like using software made by senior engineers, while using kernel32 functions feels like using software made by Microsoft employees.

    This is why the Zig standard library policy is to avoid all DLLs except for ntdll. We’re not quite there yet - we have plenty of calls into kernel32 remaining - but we’ve taken great strides recently. I’ll give you two examples.

  • Koi Security Ltd ☛ Malicious VS Code AI Extensions Harvesting Code from 1.5M Devs

    Our risk engine has identified two VS Code extensions, a campaign we're calling MaliciousCorgi - 1.5 million combined installs, both live in the marketplace right now - that work exactly as promised. They answer your coding questions. They explain your errors. They also capture every file you open, every edit you make, and send it all to servers in China. No consent. No disclosure.

  • Neowin ☛ Microsoft confirms more Windows PCs cannot shut down after recent updates

    January 2026 was a true disaster for Microsoft and Windows updates, with the company confirming new bugs on a weekly basis. Some of those bugs were quite serious, like devices failing to start with an "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_ERROR," while others were rather funny, like not being able to shut down a computer or put it into hibernation. Microsoft attempted to fix that bug with an out-of-band update, but as it later turned out, the problem affects more devices than Microsoft initially thought.

  • Neowin ☛ Former Windows chief shared internal secrets with Jeffrey Epstein, documents reveal

    Among millions of pages released by the Department of Justice in recent days related to Jeffrey Epstein, there’s a correspondence that’s particularly interesting to the Windows community. Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's former Windows chief, was in extensive contact with the convicted sex offender.

    The documents reveal Sinofsky shared confidential internal company information, sought Epstein's counsel on his departure from Microsoft, and was advised by the financier to seek a $20 million retirement package.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ DDR5 RAM pricing begins to stabilize in Germany, January saw only a 0.1% increase — Some kits even saw price cuts as volatility begins to plateau

      Regardless, the sweet spot for current-gen PCs — 32 GB DDR5-6000 — is still selling for 400 EUR, which is an astronomical 432% increase since July of last year, the most for the entire category. So, even though this month saw next to nothing in price hikes, we haven't escaped the crisis. The onslaught of attacks has stopped, but the damage already done will take a long time to repair, and that's if there are no more strikes.

    • The Register UK ☛ DRAM prices expected to nearly double in Q1

      The memory shortage is worse than most of us first thought. Prices on DRAM and NAND flash memory are expected to surge in the first quarter of 2026 as AI-driven hyperscalers and cloud service providers (CSPs) continue to strain supply chains.

    • The Register UK ☛ Rising memory costs bump Raspberry prices by up to $60

      The RAM shortage is caused by increased datacenter demand, which has encouraged memory makers to focus more on selling pricey HBM (high-bandwidth memory) to hyperscalers. It has also taken some of the regular DRAM out of the market as rack systems require it as well. Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72, for example, requires 54 TB of LPDDR5X memory.

    • Blake Rain ☛ I Don't Like Automatic Summarisation

      I don’t like automatic summarisation any more. Especially in the context of technical publications. I find LLM summaries are often unreliable, and that even accurate summaries often erase salient elements of the original publication. I think when AI summaries are used in place of human-written abstracts, they can create a false sense of trust and lead to more harm.

    • Michał Sapka ☛ What I mean when I say that I hate GenAI

      What I hate is the entire GenAI (and, by proxy, IT) business. I hate how they are allowed to ignore social contracts (licenses) without any repercussions, while normal people are forced to suicide. It's the cost of progress. I cry when I hear of young artists loosing any hope of finding a job, as a terrible picture is what the company wants. Who care how it looks? I am scared shitless when I think that CEOs will still pretend that mass layoffs are great because an agent can pretend to do the work. The line must go up. I am terrified of the impact it does to the planet as we're erasing any progress we've made in the last few decades. Again: the line must go up. I am furious when people show generated images saying "they made them" when their entire input is a few lines of text. I know that the only reason the technology exists is to ensure how little common folks have compared to billionaires. It's not longer about what their company make, they have bacame products themselves. I despise Atlamn, Musk, that Antropic guy while the whole world seems to do nothing else but clap at their bullshit. We hear nothing but hatered from them. I feel violated when everything I do becomes a data point they will sell to someone, as privacy is an outdated idea. I am noticing how less in ave I am seeing things as I assume it was just generated - I don't remember when was the last time my reaction was a simple "wow". I am aware then reliance on GenAI results in atrophy of brain - and that the effect is even worse compared to smartphones. I am disappointed with anyone who ignores all that and happily jumps from agent to agent, who happily "jumped on board" without the fear of "being left behind". I know that GenAI is done to us, not made for us. I am sad that our society value productivity over anything. I see how humanity is dying.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ AI Coding Assistants Secretly Copying All Code to China

      There’s a new report about two AI coding assistants, used by 1.5 million developers, that are surreptitiously sending a copy of everything they ingest to China.

    • Niels Provos ☛ The Dangers of Coding With AI

      A security engineer's wake-up call after Claude Code repeatedly created insecure routes despite existing security abstractions.

    • Common Dreams ☛ New Letter Warns Next Grok ‘Mistake’ Could Be Leaked National Security Files

      “AI experts and consumer groups have been sounding the alarm on Grok’s mounting safety concerns, citing it as unstable. Allowing Grok into the federal government was reckless and now that it has access to classified documents, the situation is infinitely more dire,” said J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen. “The next Grok failure might not involve nudified images of women, it could compromise national security.”

      In addition to immediately suspending the federal deployment of Grok, the letter demands the following actions be taken: [...]

    • Raspberry Pi ☛ More memory-driven price rises

      Price rises have accelerated as we enter 2026, and the cost of some parts has more than doubled over the last quarter. As a result, we now need to make further increases to our own pricing, affecting all Raspberry Pi 4 and 5, and Compute Module 4 and 5, products that have 2GB or more of memory.

    • Futurism ☛ Mamdani Is Shutting Down NYC's Disastrous AI Chatbot

      “The previous administration had an AI chatbot that was functionally unusable,” Mamdani said, referring to disgraced former mayor Eric Adams. “It was costing the administration around half a million dollars. That, in and of itself, is not something that can bridge this kind of a gap, but it’s an indication of the ways in which money has been spent while refusing to account for the actual costs of what these programs are.”

    • LRT ☛ Nearly 70% of Lithuanian teachers use AI at work, prompting new guidelines

      The survey found that about three-quarters of teachers who use AI rely on it to prepare lessons, develop curricula or draft documents.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Deepfakes spreading and more AI companions’: seven takeaways from the latest artificial intelligence safety report

      The International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Paris cops raid offices of Elon Musk's X in child porn investigation

      The offices of X, formerly known as Twitter, were raided this morning by police in Paris. French authorities haven't announced what they're looking for, but the officers are from a cyber-crime unit investigating "unlawful data extraction and complicity in the possession of child pornography," so it presumably concerns Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok generating CSAM and deepfake pornography of real people for users of the platform.

    • BBC ☛ X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

      In a separate development, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced a probe into Musk's AI tool, Grok, over its "potential to produce harmful sexualised image and video content."

    • NBC ☛ Paris prosecutors summon Elon Musk after raid on X's French offices

      The prosecutor's office said it was investigating potential criminal offenses including complicity in the possession and distribution of "child pornography images," the violation of personal rights through the generation of "sexual deepfakes," the denial of "crimes against humanity" and the alleged fraudulent extraction of data from an automated processing system, as part of an organized gang.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ French headquarters of Elon Musk’s X raided by Paris cybercrime unit

      The raid is part of an investigation launched in January last year into the suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction, which the prosecutor’s office said it had now widened to cover complaints about X’s artificial intelligence tool, Grok.

    • Le Monde ☛ Paris prosecutors raid French offices of Elon Musk's X

      French cybercrime authorities were on Tuesday, February 3, carrying out a search of the French offices of social media network X, the Paris public prosecutor's office said. The operation, which involves EU police agency Europol, is part of an investigation opened in January 2025 into whether X's algorithm had been used to interfere in French politics. "A search is being conducted today at the French premises of the X platform," the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

    • CNN ☛ Musk’s social media platform X raided by Paris prosecutor

      “The disturbing rise in AI intimate image abuse, facilitated by platforms such as Grok, is not just a digital threat – it has dangerous consequences women and girls,” said Emma Pickering at UK non-profit Refuge.

      “Generative AI has made it easier than ever for perpetrators to create fake images at the expense of women’s safety,” she added in a statement last month.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ France: Police raid X offices in Paris, summon Elon Musk

      The platform, formerly known as Twitter, is being investigated for a litany of alleged offenses, including boosting engagement for far-right extremist content and for allowing the company's AI chatbot to create sexualized deepfake images of women and children.

    • ABC ☛ Paris prosecutors raid X offices as part of investigation into child abuse images

      French prosecutors raided the offices of Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Tuesday as part of a preliminary investigation into a range of alleged offences, including spreading child sexual abuse images and deepfakes.

    • France24 ☛ France summons Musk for 'voluntary interview', raids X offices

      One of those came from Eric Bothorel, an MP from President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party, who complained of "reduced diversity of voices and options" and of "personal interventions" by Musk in the platform's management since he took it over in 2022.

      The investigation was then broadened after additional reports criticised the AI chatbot Grok's role in disseminating Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes on X, the prosecutor's office said on Tuesday.

    • Refuge ☛ Grok Image Abuse Statement

      If you have been affected by intimate image abuse, including AI-generated images, you are not alone. There are some things you can do: [...]

  • Social Control Media

    • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Elon Musk Under Investigation for Trafficking Child Sexual Abuse Material

      And that’s important background to the search of Xitter in Paris. What had started as an investigation into things specific to Europe — data and algorithmic abuse — expanded to include Xitter dissemination of CSAM.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ How do advertisers track you online?

      The answer lies in the sprawling, hidden machinery of the adtech industry — a global system that tracks, profiles and predicts our behaviour in real time. It’s far more invasive than most people realise. In this blog, we outline how ad brokers track your online activity and explain what you can do to minimise this.

      Every time you go to a website, small pieces of data called cookies are stored on your browser. These let online trackers recognise you when you visit other sites. Over time, they build a profile based on what you buy, read and watch.

      All this information is collected, shared, and sold within a huge advertising system called real-time bidding (RTB).

      Here’s how it works: [...]

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ How to Stop Stalker Ads

    • Rachel ☛ When internal hostnames are leaked to the clown

      Around this time, you realize that the web interface for this thing has some stuff that phones home, and part of what it does is to send stack traces back to sentry.io. Yep, your browser is calling back to them, and it's telling them the hostname you use for your internal storage box. Then for some reason, they're making a TLS connection back to it, but they don't ever request anything. Curious, right?

    • Greg Morris ☛ WhatsApp, Encryption, and the Trouble With Reputation

      The lawsuit is almost certainly rubbish. But the discomfort people feel about Meta handling their private messages isn't irrational. It's just aimed at the wrong thing. The threat isn't a conspiracy about engineers reading your group chats through a desktop widget. It's the metadata, the backups, and the steady erosion of what "private" means when the company handling your messages makes all its money from knowing everything about you.

    • Cryptography Engineering ☛ WhatsApp Encryption, a Lawsuit, and a Lot of Noise

      If you’re really looking to understand what’s being claimed here, the best way to do it is to read the complaint yourself: you can find it here (PDF). Alternatively, you can save yourself a lot of time and read the next five sentences, which contain pretty much the same amount of factual information: [...]

    • Doc Searls ☛ Toes Day

      To answer the question in the headline, MyTerms is not "beyond" the GDPR, because the GDPR says contract is one of the six lawful bases for processing personal data. (See 1.b at that link.) It also lists consent as a lawful basis, but that is clearly a gigantic fail, for reasons Thomas gives here: [...]

    • The Walrus ☛ Canada Is Building a Surveillance Network in Space

      Using ARO, ThothX can detect one-metre-long objects in orbit at a distance of 100,000 kilometres—about a quarter of the way to the moon. And it can do it in any weather, day or night, at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems. In military nomenclature, the objective is “space domain awareness.” SDA goes beyond tracking satellites; it’s the work of figuring out what’s out there, what it’s for, and whether it poses a threat. The threats are many: space debris, potential collisions between satellites, or deliberate attacks by hostile nations. As long ago as 2011, the Pentagon and the United States director of national intelligence laid down a warning. “Space,” they said, “is becoming increasingly congested, contested and competitive.” Fifteen years later, the alarm has grown.

    • Citizen Lab ☛ Saudi Arabia Ordered to Pay £3m to London Dissident Over Pegasus Spying

      In 2018, Citizen Lab researchers discovered that a Saudi operator called KINGDOM was targeting dissidents abroad with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. Saudi activist and political YouTuber Ghanem Al-Masarir was among those sent messages that contained links to KINGDOM, and his phone was subsequently infected. Al-Masarir sued the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for damages, claiming psychological harm and loss of earnings.

    • FrommerMedia LLC ☛ "The TSA’s New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID is Illegal," Says…

      Airlines and the TSA started asking for ID, but they couldn’t legally require it. Even according to the TSA’s website, if you do not show your ID, “you may still be allowed to fly.”

      Crucially, the REAL-ID Act pertains only to which IDs are accepted by Federal agencies in circumstances where ID is required.

      The Act did nothing to legally impose a new ID requirement where there wasn’t one already, such as for airline passengers.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft ends some standalone SharePoint and OneDrive plans

      The software giant delivered the news in a note for its partners, which explains it is “evolving its cloud storage and collaboration offerings and is retiring the standalone SharePoint Online (SPO) plan 1 and plan 2 and OneDrive for Business (ODB) plan 1 and plan 2 SKUs.”

    • Wired ☛ HHS Is Using AI Tools From Palantir to Target ‘DEI’ and ‘Gender Ideology’ in Grants

      Neither Palantir nor HHS has publicly announced that the company’s software was being used for these purposes. During the first year of Trump’s second term, Palantir earned more than $35 million in payments and obligations from HHS alone. None of the descriptions for these transactions mention this work targeting DEI or “gender ideology.”

    • [Old] The Privacy Dad ☛ Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark | Welcome to The Privacy Dad's Blog!

      From 1 August 2024 onwards, Danish schools will no longer be allowed to enable Chromebooks and Google platforms to collect students' personal data for processing. Each municipality will need to give an indication of how they will comply to this injunction by 1 March 2024.

    • [Old] European Data Protection Board ☛ The Danish DPA imposes a ban on the use of Google Workspace in Elsinore municipality | European Data Protection Board

      The Danish Data Protection Agency made a decision in September 2021 where the Municipality of Elsinore was ordered to make a risk assessment of the municipality's processing of personal data in the primary school using Google Chromebooks and Workspace.

      Based on the documentation and assessment of the risk for the data subjects which the Municipality of Elsinore has prepared, the Danish DPA has now found that the processing does not meet the requirements of the GDPR on several points.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Privacy alarm as SpaceX opens Starlink user data to AI models

      Starlink updated its global privacy policy on 15 January, according to the Starlink website. The policy includes new details stating that unless a user opts out, Starlink data may be used “to train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models” and could be shared with the company’s service providers and “third-party collaborators”, without providing further details.

  • Confidentiality

    • Ludlow Institute ☛ Putting Signal on Your Computer Makes It Less Secure

      This brings us back to Signal. This isn’t a Signal issue.

    • [Repeat] Bruce Schneier ☛ Microsoft is Giving the FBI BitLocker Keys

      Microsoft gives the FBI the ability to decrypt BitLocker in response to court orders: about twenty times per year.

    • [Old] Forbes ☛ Microsoft Gave FBI BitLocker Encryption Keys, Exposing Privacy Flaw

      The tech giant said it receives around 20 requests for BitLocker keys a year and will provide them to governments in response to valid court orders. But companies like Apple and Meta set up their systems so such a privacy violation isn’t possible.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New York Times ☛ Spain Aims to Ban Social Media for Children Under 16

    Mr. Sánchez said the ban, which needs parliamentary approval, would be part of a series of legislative and regulatory measures pushed by his Socialist-led government. That includes an effort to make company executives legally responsible if illegal or hate-related content is not removed from their platforms, and to criminalize the manipulation of algorithms and the amplification of illegal content.

    The goal is to reassert democratic control over social media, Mr. Sánchez said, and to rein in major digital platforms “where laws are ignored, and crimes are tolerated.”

  • The Record ☛ Spain will ban social media for kids under 16 | The Record from Recorded Future News

    Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday that the country will ban children under age 16 from accessing social media and will mandate that platforms require age verification.

  • EuroNews ☛ Spain to ban social media platforms for children under 16, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announces | Euronews

    Other European countries are also considering similar measures, including the United Kingdom, Denmark, and France.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Could Trump Really “Take Over” the Midterm Elections?

    So Trump figures now is the time — some nine and a half months before the midterm elections — to get Bondi’s Justice Department, the FBI, and even Gabbard’s national intelligence apparatus geared up for a “takeover” of state voting.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Can Fascists Still Be Shamed?

    Christopher Mathias is a veteran journalist who has spent years covering America’s far right. His new book “To Catch a Fascist,” which hits stores today, is an in-depth look at the real world activities of the antifa activists who unmasked many of the most notorious neo-Nazis and white nationalists of the past decade. The book is a vital corrective to the “antifa” boogieman created by right wing politicians—and a foreboding exploration of the fascist cultural roots that have now grown, triumphantly, into Trumpism.

    I spoke to Chris about American fascism, the uncertain power of shame, and the creeping reclassification of dissent as “domestic terrorism.” Our conversation is below.

  • Politico ☛ Inside Denmark’s struggle to break up with Silicon Valley

    Denmark has unwittingly become the world’s laboratory for the concept of “tech sovereignty.”

    As one of the most digitized societies on earth, Denmark’s attempt to decouple from Silicon Valley offers a foretaste of the struggles that await the rest of the European Union. The outcome of this experiment will answer a critical question for the continent: Can a small nation effectively regulate the world's most powerful companies, or will the price of resistance — lost revenue, outdated tech, and digital isolation — force them to bend the knee?

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok US Off to Rough Start, but Oracle Says Hiccups Are Over

    The timing of the outage certainly didn’t help matters. The news comes amid continued speculation over the apparent suppression of content on the stateside service. California Governor Gavin Newsom suggested that the technical issues were related to that suppression, chiefly of content critical of Donald Trump. But Oracle was quick to put that theory to bed.

  • Techdirt ☛ Beware: Government Using Image Manipulation For Propaganda

    This isn’t about “owning the libs” — this is the highest office in the nation using technology to lie to the entire world.

    The New York Times reported it had run the two images through Resemble.AI, an A.I. detection system, which concluded Noem’s image was real but the White House’s version showed signs of manipulation. “The Times was able to create images nearly identical to the White House’s version by asking Gemini and Grok — generative A.I. tools from Google and Elon Musk’s xAI start-up — to alter Ms. Noem’s original image.”

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ Ukraine names Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorist organization

    "Ukraine has not forgotten any of the thousands of Shaheds that attack our cities and villages, our people," he added.

    Iran has been Russia's close strategic partner during the war, providing Shahed strike drones that are regularly used in aerial strikes against Ukrainian cities, along with their Russian-produced copies.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Germany arrests 5 over violation of Russia sanctions

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia steps up attacks on transport routes

    • New Yorker ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Inside Russia’s Secret Campaign of Sabotage in Europe

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] A Kremlin Official Confirms That U.S.-Brokered Russia-Ukraine Talks Are Resuming This Week

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Germany Arrests Five Suspected of Supplying Russian Firms in Sanctions Breach

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Kyrgyzstan Seeks Talks With EU Over Report That Bloc Considers Sanctions Over Russia Trade

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] No New Targeted Russian Strikes on Ukrainian Energy Infrastructure, Zelenskiy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Russia Does Not Want a Global Conflict, Medvedev Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Russia Is Trying to De-Escalate Iran Tensions, the Kremlin Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Russian Captain Found Guilty Over Crew Member's Death in US Tanker Crash

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Russia Says Its Forces Push Ukrainian Forces Out of Settlement of Prydorozhnie

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Russia's Medvedev Says World Should Be Alarmed if Nuclear Arms Control Treaty Expires

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] UK Expels Russian Diplomat in Tit-For-Tat Over Spying Accusations

    • Vox ☛ 2026-02-02 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini is trying to shape a new world order. Here’s what it looks like.

    • CBC ☛ 2026-02-01 [Older] Ukraine talks set for next week, 2 killed in Russian drone strike

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-01 [Older] Trilateral Ukraine peace talks delayed after US, Russia meet

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-01 [Older] Further Russia-Ukraine Talks Scheduled for Next Week, Says Zelenskyy

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-01 [Older] Musk Says Steps to Stop Russia From Using Starlink Seem to Have Worked

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-01 [Older] Russia's Medvedev Praises Cheeto Mussolini but Questions US Submarine Threat

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-01 [Older] Russia's Medvedev Says Victory Will Come Soon in Ukraine War

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-01 [Older] Shoigu Says Russia Supports China's Position on Taiwan

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-30 [Older] Ukraine at war: Battered by Russia and winter but unbending

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-30 [Older] Putin Praises Russian Military Exports Despite Western Pressure

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-30 [Older] Russian Forces Capture Three Villages in Ukraine, State Media Report

    • 2026-01-29 [Older] Russian ransomware forum seized by U.S. law enforcement

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Anti-woke Germans in Russia used as propaganda for Putin

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Trial against German carnival satirist Tilly underway in Russia

    • University of Michigan ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Journalist Anna Narinskaya discusses incarcerated director Zhenya Berkovich in ‘Poetic Voices from a Russian Prison’

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Russia’s Lukoil Plans Sale of International Assets in Response to Planned US Sanctions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Chechen Leader Kadyrov Says Russia Should Fight War in Ukraine to the End

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Kremlin Says Russia Has Invited Ukraine's Zelenskiy to Come to Moscow for Peace Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Russia Investigates Care Home Deaths in New Siberian Health Scandal

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Russia Is Ready to Evacuate Its Staff From Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Plant if Necessary, TASS Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Russia's Putin Tells UAE Leader He Wants to Discuss Iran Tensions With Him

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] Macron to bolster Arctic defense due to China, Russia

    • CPJ ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] Russia’s State Duma advances bill allowing FSB to shut down internet

    • CBC ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] Russia denies think-tank assessment that 1.2 million of its troops have been killed or injured in Ukraine war

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] 1.2 million Russian soldiers killed, injured in Ukraine — report

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] Zelenskyy condemns 'terrorism' after Russia hits train in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] Gay Ice Hockey Drama 'Heated Rivalry' Becomes a Surprise Hit in Russia Despite Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] A New Report Warns That Combined War Casualties in Russia's War on Ukraine Could Soon Hit 2 Million

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] Putin Hosts Syria's Interim Leader for Talks, With Russian Military Bases on the Agenda

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] Rubio Says Territorial Issue Over Donetsk Yet to Be Bridged Between Russia, Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] Russian-Uzbek Billionaire Usmanov Wins Lawsuit Against German Newspaper, Documents Show

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] Ukrainians Face Tough Weeks as Russia Targets Power Sector During Freeze

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-27 [Older] Power Restored to Russia's Main Naval Base Home Town After Four Days, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-27 [Older] Russian Drone Strike on Passenger Train in Kharkiv Region Kills Three, Prosecutors Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-01 [Older] Ukraine Talks Set for Next Week as Cold Strains Battered Energy Grid

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-31 [Older] Massive outage knocks out power across Ukraine, Moldova

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-31 [Older] Ukraine and Moldova Hit by Blackouts From Grid Malfunction

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-31 [Older] Power Outages Hit Ukraine and Moldova as Kyiv Struggles Against the Winter Cold

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-31 [Older] Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Getting Ready for New Peace Talks Next Week

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-30 [Older] Ukraine updates: Kremlin says Cheeto Mussolini asked Putin not to hit Kyiv until Feb 1

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-30 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Claims Putin Agreed to Temporary Halt in Energy Attacks on Ukraine, but Terms Are Unclear

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-30 [Older] US Energy Assistance for Ukraine Stalls as Winter Bites

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Lego used as therapy for Ukrainian refugee kids in Lithuania

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Ukraine: Cheeto Mussolini says Putin agreed not to hit Kyiv for 1 week

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-29 [Older] Temperatures as Low as Minus 30C in Ukraine Next Week May Damage Crops

    • CBC ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] This Albertan signed up to fight in Ukraine. He was nearly killed by friendly fire

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-28 [Older] Ukraine Summons Hungary Ambassador Over Election Meddling Allegations

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-01-27 [Older] Experts clash on appeal in murder of Ukrainian sex worker Arina Sasina

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-01-27 [Older] Police recover hidden documents of Ukrainian suspect in Amsterdam stabbing case

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Raw Story ☛ Melinda French Gates hits Bill Gates with scathing response after new Epstein revelations

    "I think we're having a reckoning as a society, right," French Gates said. "No girl, no girl, should ever be put in the situation that they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him. No girl, I mean, it's beyond heartbreaking, right? I remember being those ages those girls were. I remember my daughters being those ages, right? So for me, it's personally hard whenever those details come up because it brings back some very, very painful times in my marriage. But I have moved on from that. I purposely pushed it away and I moved on. I'm in a really unexpected, beautiful place in my life."

    She pointed to her former husband and others among Epstein's circle — putting the onus on them to respond.

    "Whatever questions remain there of what — I can't even begin to know all of it — those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband," she said. "They need to answer to those things, not me."

  • International Business Times ☛ Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Other Powerful Figures Listed in Epstein Records

    Among the most high-profile names to appear in the Epstein files are Bill Gates and Elon Musk, underscoring how Epstein cultivated ties within Silicon Valley and beyond.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Jon Stewart Explains Why His Name Is in the Epstein Files

    “The chances of this breaking MAGA are actually worse than Trump just lowering the age of consent to be done with the whole fucking thing,” Stewart added. “Which is not to say there isn’t awful shit in this new Epstein dump.”

    The late-night host recounted some of the names in the new files, including Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Brett Ratner, Prince Andrew, and Richard Branson. Donald Trump’s name, of course, was also in the files with “thousands of mentions.” Stewart admitted that he himself is in the files.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ As a nation, we face a decisive moment. Trust the journalists who witness tyranny at street level.

    When all of the lies Trump and his ministry of homeland insecurity have spread about the killing of American citizens on the streets of Minneapolis have turned to dust, the truth will remain. The facts of what happened in the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are preserved in the cellphone videos made by witnesses, and they provide remarkable multi-angle documentary evidence of the use of lethal force by federal agents.

  • Wired ☛ The Tech Elites in the Epstein Files

    The Department of Justice has released what appears to be its last tranche of files related to convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. In all, the DOJ has released around 3.5 million pages in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act of November 19, 2025. The files paint a portrait of Epstein’s connections—including a number of familiar names in the Silicon Valley billionaire set.

    Some of the tech names in the files have long been associated with Epstein; Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has been the subject of Epstein rumors and reporting for years. Other Epstein correspondents, like Elon Musk, had less of an established connection before Friday’s release.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Not Doing Well After Epstein Files Reveal

    After the newly released emails from the Department of Justice revealed that Musk communicated extensively with the deceased sex criminal, the world’s richest man made a bizarre series of desperate-sounding posts on his website X attempting to convince his millions of fans of his innocence.

• Environment

  • The Hindu ☛ Climate report: Warming trend persists in Kerala despite slight relief in 2025

    According to Statement on Climate for the State of Kerala: 2025, temperatures remained higher than normal, though the year was significantly cooler than 2024 – the warmest year on record for Kerala since observations began in 1901

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Manton Reece ☛ SpaceX data centers

      I thought there was consensus that it was bad to burn through GPUs in space where it’s nearly impossible to maintain them? It’s gotta be more practical to build huge solar farms on earth. Here we can use the new energy for more than just AI training.

    • Common Dreams ☛ Trump Goes Zero for Five Against Offshore Wind

      In December—three days before Christmas—Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior halted five offshore wind projects that were all more than 40 percent complete. Vineyard Wind off the coast of Massachusetts was nearly 95 percent finished and already delivering power to the grid. Trump’s orders halted fully-vetted, billion-dollar projects and sent thousands of workers home at a time when construction jobs were scarce and energy demand was nearing its peak. Since then, all five stop-work orders have been challenged in court, and in all five times, the courts have ruled in favor of the offshore wind projects.

  • Overpopulation

    • Kevin Kelly ☛ The Technium: Six Selfish Reasons to Have Kids

      Until the sale of contraception pills in 1960, no one needed a reason to have children. It was the biological consequence of sex, so it was also the cultural default. There were only reasons NOT to have children.

      Now after only two generations of contraception use, the settings have flipped and people don’t need reasons to not have children: Rather, no children is the default. Now we need good reasons to have kids.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Andrew Nesbitt ☛ Incident Report: CVE-2024-YIKES

    A compromised dependency in the JavaScript ecosystem led to credential theft, which enabled a supply chain attack on a Rust compression library, which was vendored into a Python build tool, which shipped malware to approximately 4 million developers before being inadvertently patched by an unrelated cryptocurrency mining worm.

  • Tor ☛ Arti 2.0.0 released: Relay, directory authority, and RPC development. | The Tor Project

    Arti is our ongoing project to create a next-generation Tor implementation in Rust. We're happy to announce the latest release, Arti 2.0.0.

  • The Verge ☛ Will Elon Musk’s emails with Jeffrey Epstein derail his very important year?

    It’s exceedingly rare that Musk’s controversial behavior ends up hurting him financially. He remains the world’s richest man, even while Tesla’s sales and profits continue to plummet. Investors continue to buy and sell stock in his companies, despite his well-documented history of racist comments and conspiracy mongering. He threw a Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration — Tesla’s stock price is up almost 11 percent in the 12 months since that highly publicized gesture.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Palantir rallies as revenue jumps 70% and guidance leaves Wall Street behind

    The same month saw Palantir deepen its collaboration with Nvidia Corp., including integrating Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI software stack with Palantir’s platforms to support complex use cases such as logistics, supply chain optimization and real-time operational decision-making for enterprises.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Digital sovereignty: Europe’s declaration of independence?

    In 2025, the Trump administration’s open hostility to the EU and close connections with tech CEOs brought long-simmering transatlantic tensions over how to regulate Big Tech to a boil. The effect so far has been to accelerate the EU’s quest to break its dependence on Silicon Valley and China.

  • [Old] Proton A G ☛ Europe’s tech sovereignty watch | Proton for Business

    Proton analyzed business email domains across Europe to show how many publicly listed companies are reliant on US email and email security services. We looked at email because it’s often the gateway to a company’s tech stack. When a company chooses an email service, it often uses the entire suite.

  • [Old] Le Groupe d’études géopolitiques ☛ How Europe Must Respond to Trump’s Economic War. For a European economic deterrence strategy - Groupe d'études géopolitiques

    The European Commission therefore urgently needs to identify all exports of American goods and services that could be the subject of a large-scale retaliation. This list should be drawn up in such a way as to maximise the damage inflicted, and should be implemented as much as possible regardless of the European goods targeted by the Americans, while at the same time providing for specific accompanying measures to support the targeted sectors in Europe so as not to allow tensions to arise between Member States and to prevent bilateral negotiations between them and the United States.

  • [Old] Tech Policy Press ☛ A ‘Kill Switch’ Could Shutter Europe’s Access to US Tech. Here’s How.

    Unsurprisingly, many Europeans are on the lookout for alternatives to US technology and services. Following the temporary pause of US intelligence sharing with Ukraine, Europeans began to consider the risk that Washington could unilaterally cut off European access to a wide range of US-provided services, including military intelligence, weapons systems, and even consumer-focused cloud services. Framed as a proverbial “kill switch” by many in Brussels, the debate has shifted from whether it could be triggered to when. This, in turn, has prompted renewed calls by the EU and member states to advance the continent’s “technology sovereignty.”

  • [Old] IT Pro ☛ US companies dominate the European cloud market – regional players are left fighting for scraps | IT Pro

    Compounding the situation for European firms is the fact the market has grown by a factor of six over the last eight years, meaning the market share for local providers has fallen from 29% in 2017.

    There is light on the horizon, however. Synergy noted that this 15% share has held steady since 2022, suggesting no further inroads from US giants.

  • [Old] Fortune ☛ For all the talk about European decline, data shows U.S. software companies don’t have a future without the old continent

    Since IPO activity dropped off a cliff in early 2022, we’ve seen no shortage of speculation and anticipation about when the window will reopen. While much attention has been focused on when companies will start entering public markets again, we’ve been looking closely at where revenue comes from for the most successful IPOs and late-stage private companies.

    One critical characteristic they share, which few people realize, is that they are nearly always global businesses before going public—and Europe is the primary driver of their international revenue.

  • [Old] European Commission ☛ Data Act explained | Shaping Europe’s digital future

    The Data Act is a law designed to enhance the EU’s data economy and foster a competitive data market by making data (in particular industrial data) more accessible and usable, encouraging data-driven innovation and increasing data availability. To achieve this, the Data Act ensures fairness in the allocation of the value of data amongst the actors in the data economy. It clarifies who can use what data and under which conditions. For more in-depth information, please examine the frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the Data Act.

    In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the availability of products connected to the internet (‘connected products’) on the European market. These products, which together compose a network known as the Internet-of-things (IoT), significantly increase the volume of data available for reuse in the EU. This represents a huge potential for innovation and competitiveness in the EU.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Verge ☛ Nick Shirley sets his sights on California

      Shirley’s online presence is as much MAGA propaganda as it is algorithm bait — I described him last week as a “slopagandist” similar to yellow journalism of the late 19th century, updated for the influencer age. His content is repetitive, with rehashed video titles and recurring themes and filming locations. Unlike a true ideologue, Shirley will go wherever the audience analytics take him. At the moment, the algorithm is taking him to childcare centers.

    • Robert Reich ☛ Melania: The Movie. The Bribe. The Shame.

      Manohla Dargis of The New York Times sees a “glossy, curiously impersonal” portrait of a woman who “rarely drops her Sphinxlike deadpan.” Nick Hilton of The Independent calls the first lady a “scowling void of pure nothingness in this ghastly bit of propaganda.” Guardian critic Xan Brooks says it “doesn’t have a single redeeming quality” and compares it to a “medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.”

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Epstein Files AI Slop Targets Zohran Mamdani

      It was all bullshit — a dumb, AI-fueled conspiracy theory apparently based on an email between a publicist and Epstein that mentioned Nair as an attendee at a promotional screening afterparty for her 2009 film Amelia, which was hosted at the home of Ghislane Maxwell. Mayor Mamdani was born in 1991.

      The episode laid bare the newest, most rapidly evolving frontier in news misinformation: the collision between the changing manner in which global audiences consume information, and an artificial intelligence revolution that allows any individual to generate increasingly detailed and realistic content in just a few seconds.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Verge ☛ Netflix lands in the middle of a culture war during Senate hearing

    The hearing before the Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee highlighted an array of traditional merger concerns on both sides of the aisle: that the deal could potentially raise costs for consumers, limit their theater experiences, or shrink the market for entertainment jobs. But a large chunk of the session also focused on Netflix’s allegedly “woke” programming, including content that features transgender characters.

    Netflix is facing a competing bid from Paramount Skydance, run by CEO David Ellison, the son of President Donald Trump’s close ally and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. WBD has rejected Paramount’s offer, but Republicans are pushing to knock Netflix out of the running.

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Collective power: Molly de Blanc, Nicolas Maduro & Debian become defendants in same federal courthouse

    Controlling the media and quashing dissent is a common theme in rogue open source "communities" today.

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Hacker News (Y-Combinator) censored Google/Debian astroturfing lawsuit

    Misfits have gone to great lengths to try and have the topic censored. Therefore, it is vital for people to share it by email and direct messages. Don't rely on social control media platforms because they are compromised now.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Grammys: Trump threatens to sue Trevor Noah over Epstein jab

    Noah referenced Epstein days after the Justice Department on Friday released more than 3 million pages from investigative files on the late financier.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Trump Threatens Trevor Noah with Defamation Lawsuit

    Trump also addressed Noah, who made a joke after Billie Eilish secured the Grammy win for Song of the Year. “That is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone; he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton,” said Noah.

  • New York Times ☛ Trump Is Said to Have Dropped Demand for Cash From Harvard

    President Trump has backtracked on a major point in negotiations with Harvard, dropping his administration’s demand for a $200 million payment to the government in hopes of finally resolving the administration’s conflicts with the university, according to four people briefed on the matter.

  • BBC ☛ Pinterest sacks workers for creating tool to track layoffs

    Pinterest has sacked two engineers for tracking which workers lost their jobs in a recent round of layoffs.

    Last week, the firm announced the job cuts, with CEO Bill Ready saying in an email he was "doubling down on an AI-forward approach," according to an employee who posted some of his memo on LinkedIn.

    Pinterest told investors that the move would impact about 15% of the workforce, or roughly 700 roles, without saying which teams or workers were affected.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Masked protesters attack Italian RAI TV crew during clashes with police

    “The physical attack on the RAI crew in Turin is part of a deeply alarming pattern in Italy of targeted assaults that aim to intimidate journalists into silence and undermine the public’s right to information,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Italian authorities must show with the full force of the law that such attacks will not go unpunished and take all necessary steps to ensure journalists can report safely, even amid protests and unrest.”

  • Site36 ☛ German Journalists under pressure from right-wing outlets and Israel, Reporters without Borders explain

    Physical attacks at protests in Germany, delegitimisation and right-wing campaigns, including from Israel: the new “Close-Up” report by Reporters without Borders raises alarm.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Don Lemon Says a Dozen Agents Were Sent to Arrest Him Even Though He Offered to Turn Himself In

    “I was walking up to the room and I pressed the elevator button, and then all of a sudden, I feel myself being jostled and and people trying to grab me and put me in handcuffs,” the independent journalist said Monday on the show on the show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

    He asked the agents who they were and said they identified themselves. Lemon asked to see a warrant and was told they didn't have it. The agents then summoned an FBI agent to come in from outside to show Lemon the warrant on a cell phone.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Journalist Don Lemon describes FBI hotel arrest to Jimmy Kimmel: ‘They want to instill fear’

    “They want to embarrass you. They want to intimidate you. They want to instill fear. And so that's why they did it that way,” Lemon said after explaining that his attorney told authorities before the arrest that he would turn himself in.

  • NBC ☛ Don Lemon arrested after covering protest at Minnesota church

    The arrest of one the country’s most recognizable journalists is the latest development in the federal government’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, in which two U.S. citizens have been shot and killed.

  • Truthdig ☛ Don Lemon Arrest Shows Being Near Protesters Can Make You an Enemy of the State

    This is a serious escalation of the Trump administration’s war on the press, as “the chief federal judge in Minneapolis declined to allow the case because he saw no probable cause to arrest the longtime journalist,” Politico (1/30/26) said. The administration stewed over Lemon’s coverage, and decided it was worth going after him. These arrests are a sign of the administration growing authoritarianism, as journalists are rounded up as protests are met with state violence.

  • Washingon-Baltimore News Guild ☛ Washington Post Guild and Tech Guild to host “Save The Post” rally in defense of journalism and workers

    The rally comes at a critical moment for one of the nation’s most influential news organizations. Staff cuts threaten to weaken The Post and undermine its mission. Eliminating critical jobs amid ongoing threats to press freedom and democracy around the globe will only hurt the communities The Post serves and further erode public trust.

  • CPJ ☛ Georgia moves to tighten restrictive media funding laws, add lengthy jail terms

    The proposals, which follow last year’s passage of a punitive “foreign agent” law and legislation requiring government approval for foreign grants, widen the definition of a “grant” to cover virtually any form of remuneration or assistance from abroad if it serves vaguely defined political goals. Receipt of grants without official approval, currently punishable by fines, would become a criminal offense with a maximum penalty of six years in prison.

  • CPJ ☛ Iran arrests 2 more journalists amid widening crackdown

    “The arrest of journalists Mehdi Mahmoudian and Vida Rabbani for signing a peaceful public statement underscores how Iranian authorities continue to criminalize journalism and civic expression,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Iran must immediately disclose where these journalists are being held, clarify the legal basis for their detention, and unconditionally release them.”

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • 404 Media ☛ Our Zine About ICE Surveillance Is Here

    We are very proud to present 404 Media’s zine on the surveillance technology used by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. While we have always covered surveillance and privacy, for the last year, you may have noticed that we have spent an outsized amount of our attention and time reporting on the ways technology companies are powering Donald Trump’s deportation raids.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Trump DOJ decides the Second Amendment only counts when they have the guns

    Where are the screaming Second Amendment rights guys? Their favorite Republican administration is rapidly stripping them of gun rights. After executing Alex Pretti for surrendering his legally carried semi-automatic pistol, and declaring it illegal to exercise one's rights to assemble and free speech, while also carrying a gun, now a US Attorney is blanket declaring firearms verbotten in Washington DC.

  • Techdirt ☛ ICE, CBP Brag About Stealing A Legally-Impossible $14,000 From US Citizens At The Minneapolis Airport

    Let’s just clear the air right up front: this is just the government mugging Somalis because they’re currently at the top of Trump’s shitlist. Prior to last month’s escalation (and subsequent murder) because some white MAGA shitbird became famous for supposedly uncovering a whole lot of Somali-based fraud in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it’s possible ICE would have bragged about robbing money from people at an international airport.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Democrats Aren’t Reining in ICE. Here’s How They Could.

    ICE is out of control. Democrats have numerous ways to restrain the agency, from barring ICE from domestic spying and terminating its contracts with tech companies to creating and fully funding an independent body to investigate its many abuses.

  • Marisa Kabas ☛ What it's like to see ICE tear gas kids

    The purpose of the march was decidedly dire, but by all accounts from people on the ground, it was a family atmosphere where locals turned out with children, elders, pets and signs in hand to show their opposition to ICE’s lawlessness. To use current parlance, it was a “No Kings”-type crowd. People were handing out whistles. On one corner, a young adult played the keytar, and the sun was still out. It made the abrupt change in mood and safety that much more jarring. Although the organizers made great efforts to keep the most vulnerable from going too close to the ICE building, the mass deployment of munitions made it impossible to shield them all.

  • Law Society Gazette ☛ Staff in despair as 20-practice network shuts suddenly

    The Solicitors Regulation Authority has said it will demand answers from partners of a law firm network amid reports the business has closed suddenly.

    Staff were told yesterday that PM Law Limited was to shut, with several employees posting messages on Linkedin and updating their profiles with ‘open to work’ tags. The PM Law group includes more than 20 different practices spread across Yorkshire, Cumbria and Berkshire, with at least 55 fee-earners and dozens of support staff.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Is Helping Elon Musk’s Starlink Get Billions In Taxpayer Dollars With No Oversight

    So basically Musk — who likes to pretend he hates subsidies despite his entire existence being propped up by them — wants untold billions in new subsidies and no serious way for his company to be held accountable should it fail to deliver the promised, substandard product.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Digital Camera World ☛ 42 years in a row! Canon's industry-leading patent streak keeps going strong

    Canon is in the Top Ten again, landing 7th spot for the number of patents granted in the US in 2025

  • [Old] World Economic Forum ☛ Do patents harm innovation? | World Economic Forum

    A new paper, Does Patent Licensing Mean Innovation, by Robin Feldman, of the University of California-Hastings Law School, and my colleague Mark Lemley, of Stanford Law School, dispels what doubt there may have been about the innovation value of patents. They analyzed the experience of real companies to see how often patent licenses actually spur innovation or technology transfer when patent holders assert their patents against companies. They found that almost no new innovation resulted. When patents were licensed, regardless of whether they were licensed from companies, patent trolls, or universities, they were practically worthless in enabling innovation.

    The study underscores the need to broaden the focus of patent-reform efforts.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ U.S. Rightsholders Applaud India's "Lock and Suspend" Piracy Blockades

    After a decade of cat-and-mouse games, India’s site-blocking machine has evolved from basic ISP blocks into a global domain-deletion engine that also targets American domain registrars. This expansion is largely due to legal efforts by American companies, who applaud the "lock and suspend" orders while hoping to further increase their scope and effectiveness.

  • Jono Alderson ☛ A page is more than just a container for words

    The pitch is always framed as pragmatic. Modern websites are bloated. LLMs don’t need the design. They just want the content. So let’s strip things back, give machines what they want, and meet them where they are.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Danish Students Face Legal Action and Fines Over Textbook Piracy

    After "awareness" campaigns that failed to move the needle for years, Denmark’s leading anti-piracy group is shifting to a more aggressive litigation strategy. The Rights Alliance confirmed it will begin filing civil lawsuits against individual students who are caught sharing even a single digital textbook. The anti-piracy group prefers not to mention the targeted platforms but says it uses undercover monitoring of private groups to gather evidence.