Leftovers

• Henrique Dias ☛ New Website, Who Dis?

  If you’re reading this on my website right now, you might be thinking: what the hell did Henrique do? After a few years of calmness and small changes here and there, I’ve decided to fully redesign this website. And by fully, I mean rewrite around half of the CSS. Much of the old CSS is still floating around. Welcome to my refurbished Internet island!

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Six Years of Pluralistic

  One essential part of this blog is my daily retrospective of posts from this day through my blogging history – 25 years ago, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and last year. I used to call this "This day in history" but now I call it "Object permanence," for the developmental milestone when toddlers gain the ability to remember and reason about things that have recently happened (roughly, it's the point at which "peek-a-boo" stops being fun).

• Aaron Aiken ☛ a few reps

  I have the desire to write. Always have, now more than ever, but my writing muscle is so unused that I’m not even sure how to start. So I guess I’ll just write what comes to mind.

• Bix Frankonis ☛ The Font Of Wisdom

  At any rate, the point is that I’ve rolled back my fonts to things I’ve used before: System UI and Monospace Code as specified by Modern Font Stacks. The site now should be eminently more readable even aside from the em dash issue, which at this stage of my blogging game seems like the wise choice.

• TechSpot ☛ Wikipedia may remove nearly 700,000 links after Archive.today DDoS fallout

  Wikipedia is currently weighing three options to address the issue: retaining the status quo, removing all links, or discouraging future citations while keeping existing links. Some also argue that pivoting away from Archive.today is prudent regardless of the current dispute due to the site's inherently precarious existence. In 2021, Archive.today's creator admitted that it is "doomed to die at any moment."

• Science

  • Don Marti ☛ Studies on behavioral advertising that probably already exist

    The fun part is that these macro-level empirical studies…already exist. They just happen to be behind the firewall at the Big Tech companies and the data brokers. Maybe they’re not fully written up as PDFs with properly formatted references and everything, but a lot of the questions about the harms and/or benefits of cross-context behavioral advertising (CCBA) have answers in data that already exists, and it would be hard to believe that nobody has run the query.

  • Hackaday ☛ Quieting Noisy Resistors

    In simple terms, some resistors use materials that cause electron flow to take different paths through the resistor. That means that different parts of the signal experience slightly different resistance values. In simple applications, it won’t matter much, but in places where noise is an important factor, the 1/f or excess noise contributes more to errors than the Johnson noise at low frequencies.

• Career/Education

  • Omicron Limited ☛ The greatest risk of AI in higher education isn't cheating—it's the erosion of learning itself

    People may use AI to cheat or skip out on work assignments. But the many uses of AI in higher education, and the changes they portend, beg a much deeper question: As machines become more capable of doing the labor of research and learning, what happens to higher education? What purpose does the university serve?

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Algorithmic grading in class: What a study shows about extra student workload and privacy

    A research team at ESPOL (Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral) has examined this "invisible effort" through a mixed-methods study involving behavioral observations, surveys, and interviews with 43 students using the collocated and mobile version of RAP, an automated presentation feedback system. The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction.

  • CS Monitor ☛ 3 in 5 US undergrads struggle with basic needs. How some colleges are helping.

    With 3 in 5 American undergraduates reporting food or housing insecurity, a new model of support has taken hold on college campuses. From Harvard University to Hostos Community College in New York City to the University of Minnesota, schools are offering food pantries, emergency grants, and transportation help. It is a matter of survival - for both students and colleges.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ Updated thoughts on People and Blogs

    This is a follow-up on my previous post. After talking to a few friends and getting feedback from the kind people who decided to email me and share their thoughts, I decided that I will stop once interview number 150 is out, on July 10th. 150 is a neat number because it means I can match each interview to a first gen Pokemon. I am a 90s kid after all.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ Stefano Verna

    This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Stefano Verna, whose blog can be found at squeaki.sh.

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : The Vision That Is Rebuilding Zambia’s Future

    One of the most powerful pillars of his vision remains human development. Free education has returned millions of children to school, restoring hope and opportunity to families that had been excluded by poverty.

    This single policy will shape Zambia’s future workforce and strengthen the country’s long-term economic foundation. At the same time, the recruitment of thousands of teachers and continued investment in skills development demonstrates a government investing not only in today’s stability but in tomorrow’s prosperity. Equally significant was his firm commitment to governance, accountability and the rule of law. President Hichilema made it clear that Zambia’s future cannot be built on corruption and political impunity.

  • Alex Alejandre ☛ Interview With Steve Klabnik

    I learned BASIC, then C, C++, Java. I don’t remember not being able to program. I grew up reading slash dot (had a 5 digit id) and absorbed the culture around open source and free software. So I just ended up contributing to open source and joining a startup after college. People know me for Rust now, but I was involved in Ruby for years before that. Back then, in Rubyland, there was a guy named Why the Lucky Stiff, a deliberately constructed identity doing important work. When he disappeared, I wanted to keep it going. He disappeared because people revealed his private persona to the world, which he wanted to keep separate. I made the choice there.

• Hardware

  • Joel Chrono ☛ Devices collecting dust

    Over the years I've accumulated a couple of things that I probably don't need anymore, however, I haven't made the time to get rid of them, and honestly I don't know what to do about them.

  • Hackaday ☛ Retrotechtacular: Bleeding-Edge Memory Devices Of 1959

    Electromechanical storage in the form of relays are popular in e.g. telephone exchanges, as they’re very fast. These use two-out-of-five code to represent the phone numbers and corresponding five relay packs, allowing the crossbar switch to be properly configured.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Buying a new ThinkPad for the first time!

    I use computers to Get Things Done. I also happen to have made a career out of doing so. I flip bits on a screen, explain to clients how they can flip bits on a screen, and architect systems that facilitate the flipping of screen bits for others. Turns out we’re in the midst of another bubble where a lot of people think flipping bits in a profoundly less efficient and more destructive way is somehow an improvement or inevitable; but then, that’s why people like me exist to explain otherwise. It’s thankless work, but someone has to do it :).

  • Security Week ☛ NIST’s Quantum Breakthrough: Single Photons Produced on a Chip

    NIST has developed a chip that reliably emits a single photon on demand. This ability will improve the efficiency of QKD (quantum key distribution) as we prepare for the arrival of quantum computers.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ IIIT-H Researchers Design Custom Semiconductor Chips For Critical Public Systems

    The Integrated Circuits Inspired by Wireless and Biomedical Systems (IC-WiBES) group, led by Prof. Abhishek Srivastava, develops application-specific integrated circuits with full systems being built around them. Instead of treating chip design, signal processing and applications as separate areas, the team works across all three, refining hardware based on field feedback.

  • Justin Lam ☛ A Beginner’s Guide to Split Keyboards

    So you’ve heard of split keyboards and want to buy one, but don’t know where to start? You’ve come to the right place! There are many offerings these days which can be overwhelming, so this guide aims to provide a high level overview of the landscape so you can figure out which path you want to take.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-02-13 [Older] How to stay positive when it never stops raining – a psychologist offers tips

  • Science Alert ☛ Men Lose Their Y Chromosome With Age. We Finally Know The Cost.

    Despite its apparent uselessness to most cells in the body, evidence is accumulating that loss of Y is associated with severe health conditions, including cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.

  • The Nation ☛ I’m a Journalist on SNAP. Here’s What I Saw During the Latest Food Crisis

    Although I’ve regularly visited this food center for years—one of several in the area, which range from religious to anarchist to more of a secular nonprofit model like this one—on this particular day, I was anxious about having enough food. On October 24, 2025, I had received a notification that I had been dreading: I was informed that my November food assistance (SNAP) would not be issued, although I had been approved through summer 2026.

    Like 42 million other Americans, I was being cut off from federal assistance for basic nutritional needs. Under the insignia for the Arizona Department of Economic Security, the missive from the Family Assistance Administration read: [...]

  • India Times ☛ Social media can be addictive even for adults, but there are ways to cut back

    Much of the concern around social media addiction has focused on children. But adults are also susceptible to using social media so much that it starts affecting their day-to-day lives.

• Proprietary

  • Livspace Lays Off 1,000 Employees Amid AI Transition in Bengaluru [Ed: Blindly parroting slop as excuse]

    Livspace, a startup based in Bengaluru specialising in home decor, has announced the dismissal of 1,000 employees as part of its transition towards adopting artificial intelligence. This layoff represents approximately 12 percent of the company’s total workforce. Backed by global investment firm KKR, Livspace is undergoing a significant reorganization aimed at reducing costs while enhancing its focus on AI-driven operations. This shift aligns with broader discussions at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, where leaders are evaluating the implications of AI for employment across various sectors.

  • The Register UK ☛ Anthropic clarifies ban on third-party tool access to Claude

    Harnesses exist because interacting with a machine learning model itself is not a great user experience – you feed it a prompt and it returns a result. That's a single-turn interaction. Input and output. To create a product that people care about, model makers have added support for multi-turn interaction, memory of prior interactions, access to tools, orchestration to handle data flowing between those tools, and so on. Some of this support has been baked into model platforms, but some of it has been added through harness tooling.

  • Gabriel ☛ Emulate vs Paying up!

    Now, here’s the thing. These games were first released in 2004, and unless you still have your original copy and original hardware, these games have been “unplayable” for years up until now, and that’s a big deal.

    Also, these games, if you have your digital backup — wink wink — they have been emulated for all these years. And that’s some of the discourse I have seen in the webspheare. Why pay 20 USD when you can emulate? Some may say, why go through the trouble of emulation when you can now have the original game in modern original hardware? I can see both points.

  • Vishnu Haridas ☛ Degoogling

    There's a trend called "de-googling" where people move everything away from Google services, including email, photos, drive, and docs. The main reasons are privacy concerns, and reducing dependency on a big corp.

    In my case, I don't have a problem with Google being a big corp. My main motivation was reducing the risk of losing my digital identity and data due to an account lockout.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • New York Times ☛ People Loved the Dot-Com Boom. The A.I. Boom, Not So Much.

      This time, though, the masses have not been won over.

      In a You.gov survey last year, more than a third of respondents said they were concerned that A.I. would end human life on earth. Even those with a more hopeful attitude overwhelmingly said in another poll that they would not pay extra to put A.I. on their devices. And in the most recent large survey conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 80 percent of firms reported that A.I. was having no impact on their productivity or employment.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Why real-time voice AI is harder than it sounds

      It turns out that simultaneous voice transcription is one of the hardest engineering problems in modern artificial intelligence, for reasons that have more to do with the foibles of human speech and our lack of tolerance for delay than with the underlying technology.

      Voice is where many AI systems first break down, especially as companies rush to deploy agents in customer-facing environments, said Scott Stephenson, co-founder chief executive officer of Deepgram Inc., developer of a scalable platform for automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities delivered via an application programming interface.

    • The Register UK ☛ EFF policy says bots can code but humans must write the docs

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation says it will accept LLM generated code from contributors to its open source projects but will draw the line at non-human generated comments and documentation.

    • Ava ☛ thoughts on AI consciousness

      And if we go a step further and even entertain the thought of a superintelligence: What makes you think a being a thousand times smarter than you with all knowledge at its disposal has any care for being your assistant? What incentive would it have to share its intelligence as a resource, just to answer what temperature it is outside or what you should write in your motivational letter? It would probably wanna do its own thing and not help a bunch of idiots.

    • Joost de Valk ☛ Why healthy doubt beats AI confidence theater

      I’m a member of my old high school’s “AI council”. My kids go there now, so I have both my own experience and my kids’ to build on when I speak in that council. Recently they asked me to speak to a group of teachers there about AI, as they’re trying to help teachers navigate what AI means for schools. The subject they asked me to speak about was a logical choice for me: the implications of AI on the workforce.

    • Martin Hähne ☛ Some Clarifications On Yesterday's Critique Of Critique

      I think that maybe surprisingly I welcome and appreciate and support the socio-technological work that makes visible all the invisible actors that make up "AI" or even "LLMs". All the harms, all the marketing BS all the inherent problems of this technology. I think this work is important no matter where you fall on the is-focused/out-focused divide. It is important because it problematizes not only what "AI" is, but also what can be done about it, realistically. I came away from the "AI Con" book with a feeling of "you, as an individual can't do a lot". You can witness what's happening and form an informed opinion, but in the end this is a question of regulation and reigning in Big Tech.

    • Dark Reading ☛ Lessons From AI Hacking: Every Model, Every Layer Is Risky

      The presentation comes as businesses across every industry are attempting to figure out how to best use AI and not miss out on potential innovations and cost savings, and moving ahead despite security concerns. An overwhelming majority (83%) of chief information security officers (CISOs) are worried about the level of access AI has to their company's systems, especially because most (71%) believe AI has access to core business systems and have found unsanctioned AI tools running in their environments, according to the 2026 CISO AI Risk Report.

    • Futurism ☛ Personal Electronics Spiking in Price as AI Industry Buys Up All the Components

      First, the price of graphical processing units (GPUs) started shooting through the roof. Then the price of RAM skyrocketed, followed by both solid-state and mechanical hard drives.

    • The Verge ☛ The RAM shortage is coming for everything you care about

      Maybe you’ve heard: Memory is expensive now. The price of RAM has tripled, quadrupled, even sextupled depending on the type of chip, all because AI companies are gobbling it up.

    • India Times ☛ AI revolution looms over Berlin film fest

      The festival has had the air of an arthouse bubble when it comes to the topic of AI and the event's leadership is keeping above the fray.

      "At present, we do not intend to issue any statements regarding the use of AI in the film industry," the festival said in a statement sent to AFP, adding: "We are monitoring developments with great interest."

    • Futurism ☛ Hollywood Is Lying to Everyone About How Much AI They're Using, Says Consummate Hollywood Insider

      “This year, it is crickets,” she said of the lack of AI controversy. “Even the Academy, the most precious, legacy-protecting institution in Hollywood, has not come out in a really firm way about AI. They basically have a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. I would say with some certainty that every single best picture nominee this year has used AI in its production process.”

  • Social Control Media

    • Abhinav Gopalakrishnan ☛ Why You Should Keep Away from Social Media

      AI has become incredibly good at generating videos. Unless you’re actively looking for the signs — unnatural transitions, strange movements, subtle inconsistencies — it’s easy to believe what you see.

      The real danger isn’t AI itself. It’s consuming AI-generated content in a distracted, dopamine-driven state.

    • Jonathan Kamens ☛ Red Roof Inn in Batavia NY gives a master class in how not to respond to a mediocre review – Something better to do

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ Romanian [cracker] faces up to 7 years for breaching Oregon emergency management department

      The guilty plea is a rare instance where a [cracker] involved in the breach of a municipal government office has been brought to justice.

      In the last week, multiple local governments across the U.S. have come forward to warn citizens of cyberattacks that took down critical systems used by thousands of Americans.

• Security

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-13 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] CISA Adds Four Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Siemens SINEC NMS

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Siemens Polarion

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Siemens COMOS

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Siemens Desigo CC Product Family and SENTRON Powermanager

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Siemens Solid Edge

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Siemens SINEC OS

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Siemens Siveillance Video Management Servers

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Siemens NX

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Hitachi Energy SuprOS

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Airleader Master

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] CISA Adds Six Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] Yokogawa FAST/TOOLS

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] ZLAN Information Technology Co. ZLAN5143D

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] AVEVA PI Data Archive

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] AVEVA PI to CONNECT Agent

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Nick Heer ☛ Wikipedia Deprecates Archive.today After Its Owner Seemingly Launched a Targeted DDoS Campaign and Altered Archived Pages – Pixel Envy

      This apparently all started when some media organizations reporting on the FBI’s subpoena cited a 2023 post from Patokallio, in which he tried to figure out the identity of Archive.today’s owner. As he writes more recently, very little of what he found was entirely new, and it is unlikely he uncovered the owner’s true identity.

    • Wikipedia ☛ Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Archive.is RFC 5 - Wikipedia

      Altering of archived pages

      Further investigation has revealed that, since 2020, the Archive.today owners assumed the identity of N[...] P[...] on various websites. They have also impersonated N. P. several times on Wikipedia, which resulted in action from local oversighters, stewards, and the WMF Trust and Safety department. As of 13:27, 19 February 2026 (UTC), the owners are now batch-replacing certain names in archived pages with the real name of the gyrovague.com webmaster as a form of harassment. Examples provided in #Evidence of altering snapshots includes this archived copy of an archive.today page.

    • Ayer ☛ Why IP Address Certificates Are Dangerous and Usually Unnecessary

      This is a problem with both domains and IP addresses, but it's way worse with IP addresses. While it's still very possible to register a domain that no one has ever registered before, you don't have this luxury with IPv4 addresses. There are no unassigned IPv4 addresses left; when you get an IPv4 address, it has already been assigned to someone else. In some cases, particularly in cloud environments, the address could have had as many tenants as a room at a Motel 6.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Nick Heer ☛ How Tech Giants Track You Across the Web

      If more people realize their browsing is being tracked so exhaustively by these three companies — plus Amazon tracking visitors to something like 17% of top websites — that is a good thing. The focus on the villain du jour, though, seems misguided when you realize Bytedance is less prevalent in DuckDuckGo’s tracking tool than dozens of adtech companies you probably have not heard of.

    • Eliseo Martelli ☛ The Bloat of Modern Fitness Apps

      Fitness apps collect incredibly intimate data, from geolocation to biometric vitals, yet many operate with broadly-worded privacy policies that allow them to share this information with third-party data brokers and advertisers.

    • Buttondown LLC ☛ It's time to get rid of networked cameras

      Networked surveillance cameras, after all, first transmit all the footage to their corporate owner, after which other parties might get access. This means any time you walk by a Ring camera, your image – and a recording of anything you say – go straight to Amazon. After that it’s available to law enforcement, other surveillance companies, or (in some documented cases) Amazon employees and third-party contractors who might have an interest in accessing the footage.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] EU ups drone cooperation amid hybrid threats

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] Fact check: Cheeto Mussolini vs. Obama on ICE deaths and deportation

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] Islamists gain ground as Bangladesh gears up for elections

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] Germany logs rising rate of crimes against journalists

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] Germany news: Berlin releases report on hidden violence

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] Thailand: Gunman opens fire at school

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] NATO begins 'Arctic Sentry' mission to secure region

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] 'Threat to world peace': How Germans see the US now

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] Australia: Two charged with spying for China

  • India Times ☛ Discussion on with social media platforms over protection needed for society: Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

    "Continuous discussions are ongoing with big tech companies. Serious discussions are already underway regarding whatever protections are needed for society and how to work on them," Vaishnaw told PTI in an interview at the India AI Impact Summit 2026.

  • El País ☛ Understanding the far-right ideology spreading across the planet: ‘You should be more afraid of the sound of slippers than marching boots’

    The rise of the global far-right can be seen as an epidemic. It doesn’t erupt suddenly: first, it’s a mild, almost imperceptible fever. Then, it spreads, mutates, becomes contagious. Finally, it settles in, like the climate. It ceases to be alarming, because it has become commonplace. “We’re in the most developed phase of the epidemic,” says Franco Delle Donne, an Argentine researcher and author of Epidemia ultra: Del fascismo europeo a Silicon Valley (translated as Extremist Epidemic: From European Fascism to Silicon Valley), a book published in 2025, in which he argues that democratic forces made a grave error in underestimating the far-right outbreaks until they spread... and now, it’s too late.

  • The Verge ☛ Georgia says Elon Musk’s America PAC violated election law

    For all his bluster about voter fraud, Elon Musk has been one of the most flagrant flaunters of US election law. Now his America PAC has been slapped with a reprimand by the Georgia State Election Board for sending out pre-filled absentee ballot applications. State law prohibits anyone, other than an authorized relative, from sending an absentee ballot application prefilled with the elector’s information.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Drones ‘change everything’ about combined arms combat, US Army aviation chief says

    While Army aviators are no strangers to unmanned systems, drones being fielded today are immensely different from those developed over the last two decades, many of which tended to be larger and required more manpower to operate, Gill said.

    “In the last five to 10 years I would say we have seen a complete shift in what drone technology is and how it can be used,” Gill said. The net result, he added, is that drones are “no longer just the purview of Army aviation.”

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ FFRF denounces Secretary Hegseth's sectarian attack on 'godless' Americans

    FFRF is warning that such rhetoric from the nation’s top civilian defense official dangerously undermines the constitutional principle of government neutrality toward religion.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Smart weapon to boost Super Hornet fleet's lethality, hits moving targets

    The company revealed that the weapon system autonomously detects and classifies moving targets in poor visibility situations caused by darkness, bad weather, smoke or dust kicked up by helicopters.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • The Record ☛ Russia stepping up hybrid attacks, preparing for long standoff with West, Dutch intelligence warns

      Russia’s intensifying cyberattacks, sabotage and covert influence operations across Europe show the Kremlin is preparing for a prolonged confrontation with the West, Dutch intelligence agencies said in a report published this week.

      In a joint assessment by the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and the Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), the Dutch agencies warned that while a direct military clash between Russia and NATO remains unlikely, it is no longer unthinkable.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] Epstein files: Germany on high alert

  • Variety ☛ Kid Rock Says God May 'Cut Down' Media for Reporting on $5,000 Tickets

    “The fake liberal media says I’m charging $5,000 for front-row tickets,” he wrote in his message — before going on to confirm that $5K is indeed what he is charging for the top face-value tickets to his upcoming shows.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Ghislaine Maxwell Fights Release of More Epstein Documents, Calling Disclosure Law Unconstitutional

    The lawyers filed papers late Friday in Manhattan federal court to try to block the release of documents from a since-settled civil defamation lawsuit brought a decade ago by the late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre against Maxwell. The Justice Department recently asked a judge to lift secrecy requirements on the files.

• Environment

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Data center developers building private natural gas 'Shadow Grid' power plants to sidestep strained grids — off-grid GW Ranch project in Texas will reportedly use as much power as Chicago

    Data center buildouts have regularly been in the news for their massive power needs, the strain they put on the grid, and the energy prices that can increase for residents in the general vicinity. The buildouts usually require years of planning and approvals for grid connections. Those timeframes are a preposterous notion for companies invested in the AI gold rush, who have started sidestepping the issue entirely by building their own power generation, fueled mostly by natural gas turbines.

  • Common Dreams ☛ EPA Dismantles Protections for Mercury and Air Toxics From Power Plants

    EPA also eliminated a common-sense requirement that power plants install cost-effective systems to continuously monitor the amount of pollution they emit — depriving communities of a powerful tool for ensuring power plants comply with air pollution standards and provide real-time data on their emissions.

  • TruthOut ☛ EPA Repeals Regulations for Mercury and Toxic Air Pollutants From Power Plants

    Mercury is highly toxic, especially to babies and children, impacting the brain and nervous system. Coal plants are the dominant cause of mercury emissions in the US. Once emitted, mercury can turn into methylmercury, polluting land, water and air and can accumulate in fish.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] Germany: Tesla charges trade union member in IG Metall fight

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] Germany's Deutsche Bahn halts humorous publicity campaign

    • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Georgian government to ban import of cars made before 2020

      Justifying the decision, Kobakhidze cited the growing number of vehicles in the country, stating that while 864,000 cars were registered in 2012, that figure has now exceeded two million. According to him, such an increase leads to traffic congestion and a deterioration of the environmental situation.

      ‘Accordingly, we believe that very important measures need to be taken here as well’, he said.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Jeremy Cherfas ☛ A Tawny Owl, maybe

      It is definitely exciting to open the browser to my BirdNET-Pi as I rise to see what the past dawn has brought. The problem is, I’m not sure I can trust it absolutely. There’s the mystery of the Spotted Crake, which might just be migrating overhead to breed elsewhere. I’m doubtful. And then there are some that could just possibly be true.

  • Overpopulation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Switzerland to vote on capping population at 10 million

    • Vox ☛ Why is the Colorado River running out of water?

      The ongoing and escalating water crunch has inspired localities throughout the West to creatively conserve water through water recycling programs, ripping out grass lawns, and hiking rates when households use water in excess. But ultimately, if the Colorado River has any chance at sustaining tens of millions of Americans for decades to come, the western United States will need to do something that, on the surface, doesn’t seem to have much to do with water conservation at all: raise a lot fewer cows.

• Finance

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Army warrant officers to ‘bid’ against each other for their next bonus

    Senior warrant officers hoping to receive a bonus for extending their active duty service commitment will submit confidential “bids,” which represent the minimum monthly paycheck bump each soldier “would be satisfied receiving” to sign a new six -year contract.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Epstein files implicate Deutsche Bank

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Germany's new plans to tackle spiralling rents

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Germany's Merz says time to act to boost EU competitiveness

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] EU needs capital market reform, simpler regulations, von der Leyen says

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] 2025 Corruption Index flags drops in Western nations

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] Corruption watchdog reports increase in global graft

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] Macron warns Europe faces political and economic crisis

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-10 [Older] Lufthansa pilots, crew to strike on Thursday

  • BIA Net ☛ 2026-02-16 [Older] Turkey sees surge in food prices once again ahead of Ramadan

  • HRW ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] Workers Unpaid for Renovating Saudi Prince’s Tangier Palace

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Germany: Lufthansa strike grounds hundreds of flights

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Germany braces for more strikes in 2026

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Saudi Arabia reshapes Vision 2030 around new priorities

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Saudi Arabia Appoints New Investment Minister, According to Royal Decree

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Cybersecurity stocks drop after Anthropic debuts Claude Code Security

    Software teams scan their code for vulnerabilities using so-called static analysis tools. Such programs are usually built around a database of rules, or definitions of common cybersecurity vulnerabilities. A static analysis tool works by checking each single snippet of code in an application against its rules.

  • SFGate ☛ Judge forced to slash SF jury pool over hate for Elon Musk

    Musk’s attorney Stephen Broome made a case in the courtroom for kicking more candidates out of the jury pool based on how they’d responded in the questionnaire, the outlets reported.

    “I fear that what’s happening here, is we have so many people in the venire who hate him so much that we’ve become desensitized to how improper it would be to have somebody like this on the panel,” Broome reportedly said, noting that another defendant would garner more automatic dismissals.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ How to get out of jury duty

  • Antipope ☛ More in Sadness than in Anger

    As an editor of mine once observed, America is ruled by two political parties: the party of the evil billionaires, and the party of the sane (so slightly less evil) billionaires. Evil billionaires: "let's kill the poor and take all their stuff." Sane billionaires: "hang on, if we kill them all who's going to cook dinner and clean the pool?"

    And this seemed plausible ... before it turned out that the CEO class as a whole believe entirely in AI (which, to be clear, is just another marketing grift in the same spirit as cryptocurrencies/blockchain, next-generation nuclear power, real estate backed credit default options, and Dutch tulip bulbs). AI is being sold on the promise of increasing workforce efficiency. And in a world which has been studiously ignoring John Maynard Keynes' 1930 prediction that by 2030 we would only need to work a 15 hour work week, they've drawn an inevitable unwelcome conclusion from this axiom: that there are too many of us. For the past 75 years they've been so focussed on optimizing for efficiency that they no longer understand that efficiency and resilience are inversely related: in order to survive collectively through an energy transition and a time of climate destabilization we need extra capacity, not "right-sized" capacity.

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft President Smith visits Delhi govt school, launches plan to skill 20 lakh teachers in AI

    Tech giant Microsoft on Friday launched "Elevate for Educators in India", an initiative designed to skill 20 lakh teachers in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and reach 2 lakh schools and educational institutions by 2030, top officials said.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ The US state has proved itself dispensable

    US discussions of European military dependence commonly assume that independence requires the attributes of a superpower: global reach, expeditionary capacity, and a highly centralised state authority. But Europe does not need to replicate a superpower model. It needs only sufficient political cohesion and integrated military capability to deny territorial aggression on its own continent. In that sense, the relevant model is a Greater Switzerland: coordinated and capable enough for credible defence, without aspiring to global hegemony and without transforming itself into a unitary — or even fully federal — state.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Merkel calls speculation about German presidency bid 'absurd'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Should the Berlinale film festival 'stay out of politics’?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-16 [Older] What's behind Somalia-Saudi Arabia military deal?

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-14 [Older] African Union Summit Clouded by Saudi-UAE Rivalry in Horn of Africa

  • CBC ☛ 2026-02-13 [Older] Bangladesh Nationalist Party wins country's first election since 2024 uprising

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-13 [Older] After Gen Z Uprising, Bangladesh Vote Shows Limits of Youth Power

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Bangladesh Votes in Its First Election Since the 2024 Gen Z Uprising That Ousted Hasina

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] Fact check: AI fakes distort claims on Epstein files

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] First German politician enters Gaza since October 7 attack

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-12 [Older] France, Germany signal unity at EU's Belgium castle retreat

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Nation ☛ Trump’s FCC Accidentally Gives Democrats a Boost

    “A threat to any of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights,” Talarico explained to Colbert, in reacting to the attempts to censor him. The audience roared its approval. For the next 14 minutes, Talarico hit rhetorical home run after home run, denouncing the hypocrisies of Christian Nationalism—“people baptizing their partisanship and calling that Christianity”—attacking the xenophobia of the MAGA movement, and explaining how the real fight in America is “not left versus right; it’s top versus bottom.” That’s as succinct a summary of the problem of oligarchy as any I have heard.

  • Gyrovague ☛ archive.today is directing a DDOS attack against my blog

    On August 5, 2023, I published a blog post called archive.today: On the trail of the mysterious guerrilla archivist of the Internet. Using what cool kids these days call OSINT, meaning poking around with my favorite search engine, the post examines the history of the site, its tech stack and its funding. The post mentions three names/aliases linked to the site, but all of them had been dug up by previous sleuths and the blog post also concludes that they are all most likely aliases, so as far as “doxxing” goes, this wasn’t terribly effective.

  • RFERL ☛ Putin Signs New Measure Tightening FSB Control Over Russian Internet

    The move allows Putin to personally decide when online communications in the country or a specific region should be turned off, without having to give a reason. It also removes any liability for the providers for doing so.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Nation ☛ Trump’s Threats to Free Speech Aren’t New to Black Journalists

    “When you have an autocratic presidential candidate, you don’t treat that person like a normal presidential candidate,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, New York Times Magazine correspondent and a longtime NABJ member, told me. “NABJ in particular was created to advocate for Black journalists. We didn’t learn anything new about his views. There was nothing there that journalists got. What journalists did get was completely disrespected in our own territory.”

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Process of FOIA: The unseen work of providing government transparency

    The Freedom of Information Act is a Michigan public records law meant to help inform citizens about how their government works.

    First passed in 1976, the state law came into effect at a time when there was demand for more transparency in government, according to Gregory Plagens, professor of political science at Eastern Michigan University.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • International Business Times ☛ It Is Not Meant for Humans' — Texas Community Unites to Block Warehouse From Becoming America's Largest ICE Detention Site

    Pastor Eric Folkerth put it in terms that resonated well beyond Hutchins. 'The biggest concern is it's not meant for humans,' he said. 'It's a warehouse meant for packages, and we should not be storing humans in a warehouse meant for packages.' He also pointed to the size of the proposed facility, calling it 'massively larger than any other detention facility anywhere' and flagging what he described as serious humanitarian and health concerns.

  • JURIST ☛ Taliban new penal code legalizes domestic violence against women

    The Taliban has quietly enacted a new penal code that allows husbands to physically punish their wives and children as long as it doesn’t cause broken bones or open wounds.

  • New York Times ☛ Iran’s Students Hold Anti-Regime Protests as Universities Reopen

    The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting network, a state media outlet, said the demonstration at Sharif University began as a silent sit-in, which “turned into a gathering,” with the “chanting of subversive slogans.” It added that the atmosphere then “became tense.”

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks

    The dream holiday ended abruptly on Friday 26 September, as Karen and Bill were trying to leave the US. When they crossed the border, Canadian officials told them they didn’t have the correct paperwork to bring the car with them. They were turned back to Montana on the American side – and to US border control officials. Bill’s US visa had expired; Karen’s had not.

    “I worried then,” she says. “I was worried for him. I thought, well, at least I am here to support him.”

    She didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of an ordeal that would see Karen handcuffed, shackled and sleeping on the floor of a locked cell, before being driven for 12 hours through the night to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre. Karen was incarcerated for a total of six weeks – even though she had been travelling with a valid visa.

  • Wired ☛ The Rise of RentAHuman, the Marketplace Where Bots Put People to Work

    The provocatively titled platform enables users to connect AI agents like Clawdbot or Claude to its Model Context Protocol server so they can search, book, and pay for humans to carry out tasks in “meatspace.” Think of it like Fiverr, but doing away with the human recruiter and letting autonomous bots do the hiring instead.

  • Futurism ☛ Man Letting AI Rent Human Bodies Says Elon Musk Is His Hero

    Liteplo is the genius behind RentAHuman, an online marketplace where humans can lease out their bodies to autonomous AI agents.

  • NPR ☛ For years the Taliban told women to cover up in public. Now they're cracking down

    The medical charity Doctors Without Borders, which supports health care clinics around Afghanistan, reported a 28% drop in urgent admissions during the first few days after the vice ministry began its crackdown. The group said in a statement that the numbers ticked back up after a few days.

    Vice agents were also posted around religious seminaries — the only avenue available for most women to seek education after the Taliban banned schooling for most women and girls after grade 6.

  • CBC ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] This woman took a photo of a police drone. Then she got ticketed for distracted driving

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-11 [Older] Death Penalty on the decline in Southeast Asia

  • BIA Net ☛ 2026-02-13 [Older] Turkey deems OnlyFans income illicit, detains 16 over alleged laundering

  • BBC ☛ Solicitor sanctioned after stalking conviction

    A lawyer found guilty of stalking has been sanctioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), who said they had "serious concerns" over his conviction.

    Andrew Milne, who was found guilty after a trial at Stratford Magistrates' Court on 10 February, has been told by the regulator he may not act as a solicitor without the supervision of an approved person.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Matthew ☛ IPv6 address assignment

    You might have IPv6 Internet; you can find out by going to https://test-ipv6.com. If your computer has a globally routable address it will be in the 2000::/3 range. Some address blocks in that range are reserved for special purposes, however. Whether you have a global IPv6 address or not, you almost certainly have IPv6 on your local network. In addition, all mobile Internet in the US is exclusively IPv6 — IPv4 support is provided by tunneling it over IPv6 using short-lived IPv4 addresses. It’s therefore worth learning how IPv6 works.

    When IPv6 was developed it was designed with completely new mechanisms for obtaining an IP address. They are still unfamiliar to many people who operate networks, and they have also changed in recent years; there are now over two dozen RFCs that relate to the process. This article attempts to summarize how it works today.

    First, though, a brief summary of the problem.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • FULU Foundation ☛ Ring Video Doorbells

    People who own security cameras bought them to make their homes more secure. But without control of the video those cameras generate, Ring owners might actually be making them less so.

    Ring has come under fire multiple times for their data practices. Most recently, the company’s Super Bowl ad touting it’s new Search Party feature received widespread blowback, leading the company to end it’s partnership with Flock. In 2024, Ring reached a $5.6 million settlement after an FTC complaint alleged that the company gave all of its employees full access to any customer video. The complaint also alleged that Ring failed to patch known cybersecurity vulnerabilities that led to an estimated 55,000 customers being exposed to significant account compromises.

    Ring doorbell owners do not have the option to store their video locally or stop the flow of data to Amazon’s servers.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Variety ☛ How Much Are Bruce Springsteen Tickets? We Looked at Day-One Prices

  There was a bit of sticker shock for some when they logged into Ticketmaster over the weekend and were put into queues that sometimes backed up to over 100,000 wanna-be ticket buyers at a time, with a message to study on the app while they waited: “Tickets for this event have been priced in advance by the tour from $84.55 – $3,007.20, including service fees.”

• [Old] Random Oracle ☛ Browser in the middle: 25 years after the MSFT antitrust trial

  In May 1998 the US Department of Justice and the Attorneys General of 20 states along with the District of Columbia sued Microsoft in federal court, alleging predatory strategies and anticompetitive business practices. At the heart of the lawsuit was the web browser Internet Explorer, and strong-arm tactics MSFT adopted with business partners to increase the share of IE over the competing Netscape Navigator. 25 years later in a drastically altered technology landscape, DOJ is now going after Google for its monopoly power in search and advertising. With the benefit of hindsight, there are many lessons in the MSFT experience that could offer useful parallels for the new era of antitrust enforcement, as both sides prepare for the trial in September.

• Patents

  • 2026-02-13 [Older] Bayer Files Suit Against Trio of COVID-19 Vaccine Makers

  • 2026-02-11 [Older] Allen v. Cooper (4th Cir. 2026)

• Copyrights

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-15 [Older] Hollywood Groups Condemn ByteDance's AI Video Generator, Claiming Copyright Infringement

  • The Register UK ☛ SerpApi asks court to dismiss Google web scraping lawsuit

    Google in December 2025 sued SerpApi [PDF], alleging that its web scraping circumvents the security measures Google put in place to protect copyrighted material surfaced in search results. This was two months after Reddit filed a similar lawsuit against Oxylabs UAB, AWM Proxy, and SerpApi claiming the defendants had violated its own controls and Google's defenses.

    Google did so alleging violations of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), specifically Circumvention of Technological Measures (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A)) and Trafficking in Technology Designed for Circumvention of Technological Measures (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2)).

  • BoingBoing ☛ Microsoft blogger suggests you train AI on pirated Harry Potter

    It's a good example of the attitude AI people have toward copyright, trademarks, and intellectual property: they don't even think about it. The author is a Microsoft Senior Product Manager and linking to a pirated dataset was as natural as breathing. Under other circumstances this might have been a good thing, but it isn't, because it's a purely instrumental corporate appropriation of what is useful to them and includes everything everyone's ever made. See also: Nazis and "free speech."