Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ Everything eventually sorta becomes mail

  I just think that’s interesting. We have all this technology, and have made all this progress, and so much of the mental model for interaction is still based around sending each other letters.

• David Bushell ☛ Big Design, Bold Ideas

  I’ve only gone and done it again! I redesigned my website. This is the eleventh major version. I dare say it’s my best attempt yet. There are similarities to what came before and plenty of fresh CSS paint to modernise the style.

• Career/Education

  • Pete Brown ☛ Outsourcing the core of your business seems like a bad idea.

    No, what I’m talking about here is all the businesses that are throwing their lot in with this scam. How, as a responsible leader, do you look at a sketchy tech product that has no sustainable business model and is being pushed by people with long, unbroken strings of failed promises and think to yourself “I want to build this thing into my core internal processes and value chain and be completely dependent on companies who will happily degrade the service and crank up the costs at the drop of a hat”?

  • Ava ☛ privacy professionals: working at a messaging/social media platform

    Welcome to a little series I'm starting, where I ask people working in the privacy field 7 questions about their work! This includes Data Protection Officers, Managers and Consultants, and other members of Privacy & Compliance teams.

    I find career advice and more specific information about the field to be lacking online, so I want to change that and host it myself :)

• Hardware

  • HowTo Geek ☛ The upgrade argument for desktops doesn't stand up anymore

    One of the key benefits touted for desktop computers, as opposed to (for example) laptops, is that you can upgrade anything you want later down the line. Upgradability makes financial sense and offers you endless options down the road. However, the upgrade argument for desktop computers may not be as strong as it once was.

  • HowTo Geek ☛ How to set up a perfect “rescue USB” that can save any PC

    The requirements are pretty straightforward. A high-quality USB flash drive with at least 16GB or 32GB of storage is recommended to accommodate multiple tools and operating system images. The first step involves selecting the software that will make the drive bootable. While older methods required formatting the drive for a single specific tool using software like Rufus, modern solutions such as Ventoy have revolutionized the process. Ventoy allows the user to install a bootloader onto the USB drive once, after which the drive functions as a standard storage device where various disk image files, known as ISOs, can simply be copied and pasted directly into the folder structure.

  • HowTo Geek ☛ Ignore the advice to 'stop' partitioning: Why I still split my SSDs

    Partitions are logical divisions of a physical drive. Your operating system sees multiple "drives" that exist on the same physical disk, but from software's point of view, these are no different than physically separate disks.

    That's extremely useful, and SSDs are largely unaffected in terms of performance when it comes to partitioning. Historically, with older HDDs, outer tracks performed better, allowing partitions to isolate data there. Modern drives and OSes handle this automatically though.

    Now, if you're using a small SSD (1TB or less), then I will admit that partitioning doesn't always make sense, but if you have a larger SSD then it can be useful to separate your OS, data, applications, and games. You can encrypt certain volumes but not others, limit where apps can install data, and so much more.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Kev Quirk ☛ Step Aside, Phone!

    As a benchmark, my screen time this week averaged around 2.5 hours per day on my phone and 1.5 hours per day on my tablet. That's bloody embarrassing - 28 hours in one week sat staring at (mostly) pointless shite on a fucking screen.

• Proprietary

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft confirms power outage at data center; says services impacted include Microsoft Store and Windows Update

    Microsoft confirms a power outage at a data center broke Windows 11's Microsoft Store and Windows Updates. In a statement, Microsoft said, "A power outage at a datacenter is impacting customers’ ability to complete operations in the Microsoft Store and Windows Update. As a result, some users may experience failures or timeouts when installing or updating Microsoft Store apps, or when downloading Windows updates."

  • The Cyber Show ☛ Freedom from ThE B0llOcKS

    Every time you say "AI", you make the whole world mumble and gaze at its shoes a little more.

    [...]

    Stallman has a punk way of cutting through the epic miasma of bullshit generated by corporate American tech. You won't hear him mumble words like "AI" or "Cloud". He doesn't use those words because they are meaningless marketing terms designed to subtract clarity from conversation. It's hard not to respect, even admire those who refuse to adopt the language of the enemy.

    [...]

    When Kate interviewed Aaron Balick on "AI Psychosis" I had to step aside. It was all I could do to stop myself attempting to preface the whole discussion by defining "AI", or worse, like Stallman, asking a guest not to use the term "AI" at all. That would have been ridiculous and a disaster, and would make me a very bad producer.

    [...]

    The phrase "AI" is the linguistic form of what Neil Postman called "abject surrender before technology". It is a profound dumbing-down of public discourse around a complex range of technologies now under scrutiny and consideration. Its widespread use is an admission of defeat by everyone, right up to the highest levels of government, prime ministers, civil servants and heads of intelligence services, that they've lost the will to be clear what they're talking about when it comes to digital technology. Moreover, not only do they not want to have to think about tech too hard, they don't really want other people to think too hard about it either.

  • HowTo Geek ☛ Visual Studio Code is eating up hundreds of gigabytes on Linux [Ed: Proprietary and Microsoft, what else can one expect?]

    If you're running out of space on your Linux desktop or laptop, Visual Studio Code might be the culprit. There's a bug that causes some VS Code installations to never delete files after you trash them, potentially eating up hundreds of gigabytes of storage.

    When you delete a file or folder in Visual Studio Code, the data is usually moved to your system's trash directory or recycle bin. That way, you can restore the file if needed, at least until you empty the trash. However, when Visual Studio Code is installed as a Snap package on a Linux computer, the file is moved to a trash folder within the Snap package, instead of the system trash bin.

    This behavior prevents files from being recovered by opening the system's trash folder. More importantly, Visual Studio Code is not cleaning out that trash directory. If you 'deleted' a file in your project six months ago, it might still be in the Snap container's trash directory.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Register UK ☛ Indian police commissioner wants ID cards for AI agents

      In a lengthy post on X, commissioner V.C. Sajjanar noted “Autonomous robot agents have entered highly critical sectors such as banks, hospitals, and power grids. However, with these digital agents performing tasks independently without human intervention, there is widespread concern that we are at risk of losing control over them.”

      Sajjanar worries that agents can make mistakes and also raised “a threat of cybercriminals hijacking the behavior of these agents and forcing them to commit wrongdoings.”

    • Nick Heer ☛ Engagements on Canada’s Next A.I. Strategy

      It is entirely accurate, yes, but it is so funny to me to summarize the arguments raised by critics in this breezy, balanced matter. It says nothing and yet gives the impression that these are of similar weight.

• Security

  • HowTo Geek ☛ I invited hackers to attack my home server, and the results were a wake-up call

    Self-hosting is both an entertaining hobby if you like computers, and a reasonable way to save a few dollars if you swap out your subscription services for something you host yourself. It does come with a bit of risk, however, if you put your self-hosted services online so they're accessible from the internet. I was curious about what kind of attacks my server was getting, so I set up a honeypot to see what happened.

    In the cybersecurity world, a honeypot is a tool that is designed to attract the attention of hackers (or other kinds of cybercriminals). Honeypots take a few different forms and provide a few important functions.

    Sometimes a honeypot can take the form of a fake download that is used to harvest the IP addresses of people trying to collect illegal content.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Semafor Inc ☛ New EU biometric system creates long airport waits

      The new Entry-Exit System requires non-EU citizens to have their fingerprints and a photograph taken at an automated kiosk when they first enter the EU’s Schengen free-movement zone; the registration lasts three years and will replace ink stamps in passports, but it is creating bottlenecks as millions of people use it for the first time.

      Airports warned that during peak travel times, delays could reach six hours.

    • Miguel Batista ☛ Re-Identification vs Anonymization Strength

      Most discussions of anonymization focus on buzzwords like k-anonymity and differential privacy, but few dig into what actually happens to a dataset as anonymity strength increases.

      In this post, we conduct a full experimental walkthrough to quantify how raising the k-anonymity level impacts both privacy (re-identification risk) and data utility.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Death by cold: Russia is attempting to freeze millions of Ukrainian civilians

    Three years ago, when Ukrainians first began calling Russia’s winter bombing campaign a “kholodomor” (literally “death by cold”), some Western observers dismissed this language as excessive. Few would make the same criticism now. In recent months, Russia has unleashed the most extensive winter bombardment of the war, leaving millions of Ukrainians without access to heating and electricity amid arctic weather conditions. The term “kholodomor” now looks like an accurate and objective description of what is clearly a deliberate Russian strategy to cause a humanitarian catastrophe across Ukraine.

  • The Atlantic ☛ ‘The trust has been absolutely destroyed’

    But multiple secretaries of state who received the document told us they viewed it as a threat, given recent events. The FBI had just seized 2020 election materials in Georgia, and President Trump had announced his desire to “nationalize” elections, a state responsibility under the U.S. Constitution. The Department of Justice has sued more than 20 states to obtain their election rolls, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is conducting an investigation of U.S. voting technology. The upshot is that a yearslong partnership between state and federal authorities—in which the feds have provided assistance on election security and protected state and local voting systems from threats—is now in danger of falling apart. Instead of “partners,” some state authorities now view federal officials involved in election efforts with deep suspicion.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Sunday thought: Cry, the Beloved Country

    They’re sobbing because they’re sickened by what has happened to America.

    Cry, our beloved country.

    I understand the tears. I have wept, too.

    But let’s not just weep.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Crisis, No. 11

    In the streets. In the courtrooms. In the state legislatures that have begun to say no. In the nine million who marched. In the generals who broke silence. In the judges who held. Something is forming that has not had a name, and now it does: the greatest political revolution in the history of the modern world.

    I do not use the word lightly. I have spent ten papers building toward it. The principle is established: the People are sovereign. The enemy is named: those who would concentrate sovereignty in the hands of the few. The conspiracy is documented: seize the record, override the governance, blind the witnesses.

    Now the revolution takes its step. And now the danger begins.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • US News And World Report ☛ FBI Concluded Jeffrey Epstein Wasn’t Running a Sex Trafficking Ring for Powerful Men, Files Show

    But the documents, which include police reports, FBI interview notes and prosecutor emails, provide the clearest picture to date of the investigation — and why U.S. authorities ultimately decided to close it without additional charges.

    Dozens of victims come forward

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Stewart C Russell ☛ Crosstown is finally open and I am 😐…

      It’s years late and many millions over budget, but — at last — the TTC Line 5 Eglinton Crosstown is open today! I am slightly happy for them, as finally they’ll have to stop making excuses about why it’s closed.

    • J B Crawford ☛ forecourt networking

      Well, I don't mean to turn this into yet another discussion of the significant environmental hazard posed by leaking underground storage tanks. Instead, we're going to talk about forecourt technology. Let's start, then, with a rough, sketchy history of the forecourt.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Scapegoating: Keir Starmer miscalculated Morgan McSweeney resignation

    People won't be fooled by the resignation of Morgan McSweeney today. McSweeney may well have generously and courageously offered the resignation to save his boss in the short term. Starmer had the choice and could have chosen to fall on his own sword instead.

    McSweeney is Irish and the Irish have been used as scapegoats before. People are alert to that phenomena.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • El País ☛ The Europeans banned from the US for fighting misinformation: ‘Elon Musk has pushed the nuclear button. He doesn’t like us’

      “It was a shock. It’s never nice to be singled out like that, especially hours before Christmas Eve, when all you want to do is wrap presents and peel vegetables,” Melford told EL PAÍS via email. On December 24, she received an email from the ESTA program, the system that manages U.S. visas. Her trip had not been authorized. “They didn’t give me any explanation, nor have they at any point,” she says. She still has not decided whether or not she will take legal action against the decision.

    • European Parliament ☛ EP leaders reject the visa ban imposed on former Commissioner Breton | News | European Parliament

      “The European Parliament firmly rejects the visa ban imposed by the US authorities on former Commissioner Breton, which is solely motivated due to his role in the development and implementation of the Digital Services Act, a law proposed by the European Commission and adopted by the co-legislators to protect users online. This is an unacceptable personalisation of EU policy, a dangerous precedent for the independence of the European Institutions and an attack on the EU’s regulatory sovereignty.

    • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: I used to think historians in the future will have too much to work with. I could be wrong

      Historians who study ancient Greece often have to work with fragments of text or just a few pottery shards. Nowadays we preserve so much that historians 1000 years from now will have an easier time. Indeed, they may have too much to look at; and have to sort through news, fake news, opinions, and satires, to figure out what was true.

    • The Daily Beast ☛ Military Pressured to See ‘Melania’ Against Their Will

      Weinstein said that manipulating troops to spend their leisure time on ideologically driven activities negatively affects unit cohesion.

      “It tears it down,” he said. “It’s like injecting cancer into the body of the military unit.”

    • Business Insider ☛ US Military Members Were 'Pressured' to See 'Melania' Doc, MRFF Says

      The screening was designated as one of the commander's "Unit Activity Events," morale-boosting activities that can range from flag football and barbecues to movie nights, the email said. The military member who sent the email said the unit is required to attend at least three of the four UAEs that are scheduled each month or face a penalty. Asked if any of the MRFF members who contacted him skipped the movie, Weinstein said: "Every one of our clients who came to us either went to see it or suddenly got sick."

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Iranian Nobel laureate sentenced to over 7 more years

    Iran has sentenced Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi to several more years in prison, her lawyer said on Sunday.

    News of the extended years of imprisonment comes after Mohammadi embarked on a hunger strike.

  • Human rights Activists News Agency ☛ Day 43 of the Protests: Pressure and Threats on Universities and Political Activists

    One important development on the forty-third day was the Golestan prosecutor’s remarks regarding the identification of defendants’ property and the pursuit of “compensation for damages.” Raising such issues signals that the authorities’ approach is not limited to arrest and conviction alone, but may extend toward financial pressure, asset-focused measures, and the imposition of economic costs on protesters and their families.

    Such statements, particularly when viewed alongside numerous reports of widespread summonses and forced confessions, present a picture of a “combined deterrence” policy, in which judicial threats are coupled with economic and social tools. Under this approach, the impact of repression extends beyond the detained individual to encompass their family and broader social environment.

  • RTL ☛ National security crimes alleged: Hong Kong sentences pro-democracy mogul Jimmy Lai to 20 years in jail - RTL Today

    The 78-year-old founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper was found guilty in December on two counts of foreign collusion under a sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing, as well as one count of seditious publication.

    His sentence is by far the harshest handed out under the national security law, surpassing the previous record of 10 years given to legal scholar Benny Tai in 2024.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Hong Kong: Media tycoon Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years

    Two of those years will overlap with Lai's existing prison term, meaning that he will serve an additional 18 years, the judges wrote. He has been in prison since 2020.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Jimmy Lai jailed for 20 years in Hong Kong after nat. security conviction

    Lai was accused of using his tabloid, Apple Daily, to lobby foreign nations to impose sanctions, blockades, or other hostile activities upon China and Hong Kong. He was also accused of inciting hatred against the authorities with 161 op-eds he allegedly wrote and published in the now-shuttered newspaper.

    He faced judges hand-picked to preside over national security cases and was denied his first choice of lawyer.

  • The Age AU ☛ Jimmy Lai sentence: No mercy for Hong Kong media tycoon

    “The rule of law has been completely shattered in Hong Kong. Today’s egregious decision is the final nail in the coffin for freedom of the press in Hong Kong,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalism.

    “The international community must step up its pressure to free Jimmy Lai if we want press freedom to be respected anywhere in the world.”

  • CPJ ☛ Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong’s biggest media trial

    “The rule of law has been completely shattered in Hong Kong,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Today’s egregious decision is the final nail in the coffin for freedom of the press in Hong Kong. The international community must step up its pressure to free Jimmy Lai if we want press freedom to be respected anywhere in the world.”

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong pro-democracy figure, sentenced to 20 years in prison for national security offences

    Claire Lai said the sentence was “heartbreakingly cruel” given her 78-year-old father’s declining health, while her brother Sebastien Lai called the sentence “draconian” and “devastating”.

    The sentencing is the culmination of a years-long saga that critics say represents Hong Kong’s transformation from a mostly free city to one where dissent is fiercely suppressed by the Chinese Communist party-controlled authorities.

  • The Verge ☛ Section 230 turns 30 as it faces its biggest tests yet

    Thirty years ago today, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a bill credited with creating the groundwork for the modern internet, became law and set off a chain of events that would make it a lightning rod for the techlash.

    The statute has survived everything from the dot-com bubble to a Supreme Court challenge that struck down the surrounding text in the CDA. But as it marks this major milestone, Section 230 is facing what could be among its biggest threats to date, as prominent lawmakers plot to bring it down and a mountain of legal challenges give courts the chance to narrow its scope.

    Section 230, once dubbed “the twenty-six words that created the internet,” reads: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In other words, online platforms that host user-generated content can’t be held responsible for what those users choose to say on their platforms. Its “Good Samaritan” provision allows for those platforms to moderate content in good faith, shielding them from civil liability for blocking access to obscene, violent, or harassing content. The law does not shield platforms from claims under criminal law.

  • The Next Move ☛ TPUSA’s Halftime Show Is An All-American Tragedy

    Apparently, the Super Bowl is not American enough for MAGA. Over the past week, thousands of pro-Trump Americans have taken to social media to call for a boycott of the nation’s biggest sporting event. They’ll be changing the channel tonight, not because they hate the players or the game, but because they hate the halftime show.

  • The Wrap ☛ Olympian Quits Social Media After Receiving 'Threats' for Anti-Trump Comments

    “When I chose to utilize one of the amazing things about the United States of America (Freedom of speech) to convey how I feel as an athlete competing for Team USA in a troubling time for many Americans I am now receiving a scary amount of hate/threats for simply using my voice WHEN ASKED about how I feel,” Glenn wrote in her Instagram stories Saturday.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Seattle's new minimum pay for app deliveries raised base pay, but tips fell

    On-demand delivery services facilitated through online platforms have grown significantly in the past decade, generating work opportunities for independent drivers who can self-schedule their work. In a new study, researchers examined how a new minimum pay requirement for app-based delivery workers in Seattle, Washington, affected workers' earnings and employment.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Unions Are Going to Die Unless Something Big Changes Soon

    The labor movement isn’t just the weakest it’s been in a century. Without a radical and aggressive shift in organizing, US unions could effectively cease to matter in the very near future.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Verge ☛ YouTube Music starts putting lyrics behind a paywall

    Once that limit is reached, users will only be able to see the first couple of lines. Everything beyond that will be blurred out, and they’ll be prompted to “Unlock lyrics with Premium.” The banner warning users about their limited lyric views remaining appears prominently when you open the tab, complete with a countdown.

  • Gregory Hammond ☛ If I had to keep only one digital subscription

    I do want to note a couple of things first, I consider a digital subscription to be one you pay for online. Magazines may not be considered a digital subscription for you because you get a physical magazine, however with so many being offered digitally and cheaper than a paper copy, I’m including an alternative here. Some people may consider anything that you either pay monthly or yearly for to be a subscription, and while I mostly agree, I don’t consider something like paying an accounting firm to complete year-end taxes to be a digital subscription.

  • [Old] Habr ☛ Exploiting signed bootloaders to circumvent UEFI Secure Boot / Habr

    I was wondering is it possible to bypass first boot key enrollment through shim. Could there be some signed bootloader that allow you to do more than the authors expected? As it turned out—there are such loaders. One of them is used in Kaspersky Rescue Disk 18—antivirus software boot disk. GRUB from the disk allows you to load modules (the insmod command), and module in GRUB is just an executable code. The pre-loader on the disk is a custom one.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Scotsman ☛ 'People will do whatever it takes to get a ticket': the rising cost - and stress - of securing gig tickets

  Mr Crow estimates that in 1982, aged 17, he would have been earning around £35 a week as a trainee civil servant. A weekly minimum wage is now £471 - meaning today’s typical ticket prices of upwards of £100 for a stadium gig would be almost double in comparison to salaries what he paid for his AC/DC gig in the band’s heyday.

• Don Marti ☛ fix liability and ad libraries: anti-fraud policy ideas from Canada

  From the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP): World of Scams: The Fraud Problem at the Heart of Online Advertising. The body of the report is an excellent summary of the fraud crisis. For those who read Mark Ritson’s Martin Lewis shouldn’t be alone in calling out Meta’s lucrative scam ads and want to catch up and see how bad it is, this is a good place to start. Consumers are the direct victims of the shift to a low-trust economy driven by Big Tech, but legit businesses suffer, too. The CAMP report explains: [...]