Leftovers

• Deutsche Welle ☛ Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis': The future is now

  The story unfolds in 2026, our present day. It features one of the first robots to ever be depicted in film. The human-machine was the embodiment of artificial intelligence. Many of the fears that surround AI today can be felt already in the characterization — nearly a full century ago.

• Hackaday ☛ What Is A Computer?

  Our consensus was that it’s the Android operating system holding it back. Some of the applications you might want to run just aren’t there, and on the open side of the world, even more are missing. Is the platform usable if you can’t get the software you need to get your work done?

  But that’s just the computer-as-a-tool side of the equation. The other thing a computer is, at least to many of our kind of folk, is a playground. It’s a machine for experimenting with, and for having fun just messing around. Android has become way too polished to have fun, and recent changes on the Google side of things actively prevent you from installing arbitrary software. The hardware is similarly too slimmed-down to allow for experimentation.

• Seth Michael Larson ☛ I’ve added human.json to my website

  Vouching was a little more involved because I wanted to auto-discover who uses human.json from everyone that I follow using RSS. Then my vouches can be kept up-to-date as more people implement the protocol. The script below is what I ended up with: [...]

• Robin Rendle ☛ Kind eyes

  In recent years I’ve been shocked to learn how words utterly fail to teach me about software design. Books are wondrous, of course, but words alone are not enough. You can’t become a good designer or a good musician or even a good writer by reading. It helps, sure! Books expand your sense of the world and your place within it! But they still fail to do the work justice because no matter how great that book might be, the work is still the work.

• Matthew Weber ☛ The Internet Sucks

  They did eventually send someone out to fix it. The guy says it was a bad splitter. And it does seem better, though we had some time last night that the upload speed still went down to nothing.

• [Old] Crooked Timber ☛ Imperia: A European Culture Story, Part 1

  A nine meter tall, 18 ton statue of a medieval sex worker. She’s down at the harbor, on the lake. She rotates once every four minutes. Her name is Imperia.

  You may reasonably ask, what? And part of the answer is, she’s memorializing the Council of Constance, the great political-religious council that happened here 600-some years ago, from 1414 to 1417. And you may ask again, what?

  I’ll try to explain.

• [Old] Crooked Timber ☛ Imperia: A European Culture Story, Part 2

  Okay, so Imperia! Big concrete statue on the shore of Lake Constance. Medieval sex worker. 9 meters tall, weighs 18 tons, rotates once every four minutes. Here she is again: [...]

• [Old] Crooked Timber ☛ Imperia: A European Culture Story, Part 3 (and last)

  Imperia went up in April 1993, and I won’t even try to explain the insane backstory.

  Short version: some people in Constance wanted a cool statue to add luster to the waterfront. Most of them were thinking of something like a Statue of Liberty. A minority, however, had a more subversive idea. And those guys picked Peter Lenk, a sculptor with a reputation. But when the City Council of this fairly conservative small German city saw the plans… you can probably guess how that went over. There was, let us say, some pushback.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Pi Day: Breakthrough 'Obliterates' The World Record For Calculating Pi

    As Pi Day rolls around for another year, researchers at StorageReview, a leading publication in enterprise IT, have a fitting number to celebrate: A world-record calculation of the mathematical constant π (pi) to a mind-boggling but extremely satisfying 314 trillion digits.

  • Hackaday ☛ Take Pi For A Spin In This Orbital Simulator

    It’s Pi Day, and while we know that many of you celebrate privately, those that take a moment to put aside their contemplation of all things circular and join us on this mathematically-significant day will likely know the name [Cristiano Monteiro]. Since 2022 he’s made it a yearly tradition to put together a themed project every March 14th, and he’s just put the finishing touches on the 2026 edition.

  • Hackaday ☛ The Shockley 4-Layer Diode In 2026

    The Shockley diode, or 4-layer diode as it later became known, is as its name suggests a two terminal device with a 4-layer NPNP structure. It can be modeled as a pair of complementary transistors in parallel with a reverse biased diode, and the avalanche breakdown characteristics of that diode when a particular voltage is applied to it provide the impetus to turn on the two transistors. This makes it a voltage controlled switch, that activates when the voltage across it reaches that value.

• Career/Education

  • Sean Monahan ☛ you're not high status if you're a striver

    Luxury goods used to be a reliable indicator. But as Demna well knows, a Gucci cross-body bag is more likely to be worn by a drug dealer than an Ivy League alum. And even if an Ivy League student bought one, are we sure that student is even literate? Princeton isn't. The university may introduce proctors to its examinations for the first time since its honor code was introduced 133 years ago. But as the viral success of the cheating startup Cluely proves, honor codes don’t work in our newly low-trust culture. We are living through the 'looting the treasury' phase of the American empire, and there is no honor among thieves.

    That bag is a dupe and so is that degree.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Unplug the classroom — even for college students

    It’s no secret that higher education is in crisis. The rise of artificial intelligence, shifts in the political landscape and broader questions about the value of a college degree are forcing schools to adapt. While there’s no silver bullet for solving all of these problems, embracing unplugged learning would be a step in the right direction.

• Hardware

  • Semafor Inc ☛ AI bubble driving interest in chip alternatives

    Its device — a superconducting optoelectronic network, or SOEN — uses light to communicate data, while GPUs use electrons. The startup claims it can process videos more than 1 million times faster than conventional models running on standard GPUs, with less energy.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Future AI chips could be built on glass

    That’s where glass comes in. It can handle the added heat better than existing substrates, and it will let engineers keep shrinking chip packages—which will make them faster and more energy efficient. It “unlocks the ability to keep scaling package footprints without hitting a mechanical wall,” says Kulkarni.

  • Martijn Braam ☛ A rant about resolutions

    Well.. a lot of resolution definitions and the way people talk about them are subtly wrong in ways that don't matter much, but calling 2560x1440 monitors "2k" monitors is just extremely wrong.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-09 [Older] Babies exposed to measles getting preventive treatment every week in Manitoba

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-09 [Older] Ontario premier defends health-care record as hospitals say financial 'crisis' is coming

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-08 [Older] Canadian company seeks to stand out with domestically-made generic Ozempic

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-06 [Older] Ecosystem collapse could fuel the next global security crisis

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-08 [Older] Northern Manitoba mobile MRI unit parked in Thompson, struggling to keep staff, associations say

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Regenerative agriculture offers promise of crop, environmental improvement for Kansas farmers

    Wiltse is a staunch advocate of a growing farming trend: regenerative agriculture. The science-heavy method minimizes soil disruptions and man-made chemical use while restoring farmlands to a more natural state. He has drawn heavily on microbiology classes he took while earning an agronomy degree from Kansas State University.

    To explain his passion, Wiltse highlighted rainforests, where no fertilizers or other synthetic inputs are added.

    “Those systems just function,” he said. “That’s what we are trying to do — mimic those natural ecosystems.”

  • Bobby Hiltz ☛ Addicted to my phone again...

    I’ve got a problem. It’s a modern problem. I have too much time on my hands, and I’m wasting it using my thumbs to scroll.

    My eyes are in a perpetual state of strain and fatigue. My wrist aches and I have a sore neck and shoulder.

    I’m addicted to my phone and it isn’t the first time. Years ago the solution that I found to treat it was to jump on the digital minimalism and dumbphone bandwagon.

• Proprietary

  • The Verge ☛ PC makers are not ready for the MacBook Neo | The Verge

    If the Neo came out running iPadOS, sure, call it a consumption machine, but it runs macOS — a desktop OS that’s known for getting by better with less RAM than Windows. And, meanwhile, thanks to the ongoing RAM shortage, we may once again get more new laptops with 8GB of starting RAM on Windows. As RAM prices explode, Apple’s vertically integrated supply chain can continue to offer computers cheaper. Even if PC [sic] makers can match the specs, they’ll have a hard time matching the price.

  • John D Cook ☛ Why Mathematica does not simplify Sinh[ArcCosh[x]]

    Why didn’t Sinh[ ArcCosh[x] ] just return √(x² − 1)? The expression it returned is equivalent to this: just square the (x + 1) term, bring it inside the radical, and simplify. That line of reasoning is correct for some values of x but not for others. For example, Sinh[ArcCosh[2]] returns −√3 but √(3² − 1) = √3. The expression Mathematica returns for Sinh[ArcCosh[x]] correctly evaluates to −√3.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • International Data Corporation ☛ IDC Cuts 2026 PC Outlook to -11.3% as Memory Shortages and Supply Chain Disruptions Persist Into 2027

      “The era of bargain-priced PCs and tablets is behind us for now, as rising ASPs and component costs shift the market’s balance of power,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. “Memory shortages will persist well into 2027. While we anticipate some easing of prices beginning in 2028, the market is unlikely to return to the pricing levels seen in 2025. Instead, we expect a new normal defined by structurally higher ASPs and a corresponding softening in long-term demand.”

    • The Record ☛ European Council includes ban on nudification tools in its proposal for amending AI Act

      The European Council sets the overall political direction for the EU and its actions on the proposal are a significant step forward in what has been a long effort on the continent to simplify the AI Act, the EU’s digital legislative framework and a number of other EU rules regulating businesses.

      The European Commission had earlier proposed extending the date for when rules on high-risk AI systems take effect by up to 16 months. It also proposed amendments to the AI Act that would exempt more small companies from some of the regulations.

    • Kevin Underhill ☛ Judge Prepares Slide Deck of Lawyer’s Mistakes – Lowering the Bar

      According to the report, he told the judge he had used AI to “‘catch up’ on a draft filing after realizing he’d accidentally overwritten it.” At first I thought “overwritten” meant it was too long or too flamboyant, like the brief was in the style of Edgar Allan Poe or something. But it probably means he claimed to have lost a lot of work because he saved the wrong version. Whatever it meant, the court wasn’t buying it at all. In fact, this happened: [...]

    • Jes Olson ☛ abyss * tree-style_invite_systems_reduce_AI_slop

      • because invites are traceable, you are responsible inviting good community members

      in many ways, this system winds up resembling a tree of "vouches". that is to say, the system is based on trust.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ AI protest music is a thing now

      Last night at DNA Lounge, a room full of people chanted "No AI" along with Anton Corazza's song of the same name. The kids might be alright!

    • Elliot C Smith ☛ Are they software companies or do they just have software problems?

      Many of today's software companies just happen to use software as a distribution mechanism. Others are purely software. Knowing the difference is critical to assessing the long term impacts of AI.

    • David Revoy ☛ Forbidding generative AI and LLMs on Pepper&Carrot - David Revoy

      Following many Free/Libre and Open Source projects over the past week, last night I added a "Use of Generative AI" chapter to our Code of Conduct, clearly stating that we do not allow the use of Generative AI or LLMs. This also affects all our repositories on Framagit.

    • Rlang ☛ Current views on generative AI

      There are, however, at least four reasons why I am currently taking ‘LSE Position 1’ on using generative AI in graded work that relies on code: [...]

    • Pivot to AI ☛ AI chatbot kids’ toys are still an obviously terrible idea

      The bots could hold it together over a few minutes. But between ten minutes and one hour, all the bots’ guard rails broke down — presumably running over the chatbot context window.

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ When Using AI Leads to “Brain Fry”

      So the kind of AI use matters. The researchers found that AI use cases that required increased oversight (coding is one, using AI with sensitive internal data is another) increased the risk of burnout. This was particularly true because the people who used these tools were more likely to take on more work, pushing their total cognitive load beyond their limits. But using it for more straightforward repetitive tasks reduced the risk of burnout.

    • Logikal Solutions ☛ Amazon Tried to Replace Visa Workers with AI

      The new buzz-phrase in America is High Blast Radius. You’re going to see more and more high blast radius outages, not fewer. Why? Because MBAs have been purged of morals, ethics, and dignity. Throw anyone and anything under the bus for a fast buck.

      Real Software Engineering, which Agile is not: [...]

    • EntropyTown ☛ OpenClaw and the Dream of Free Labour

      There is a reason the security people became agitated so quickly, and it was not because they dislike ambition.

      OpenClaw’s model of value depends on broad permission. It is useful because it can read files, call tools, browse, message, schedule and execute. Remove too many of those capabilities and it stops being OpenClaw and becomes an unusually nosy chatbot. The entire product lives in the gap between helpful and over-privileged.

      That makes security not a side issue but a central engineering fact.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Nation ☛ A Sweeping Victory for Gen Z in Nepal—but Not Yet a “Revolution”

      The significance of the sweep, what Nepali commentators are calling a “tsunami,” can hardly be overstated. It’s the first time in Nepal’s modern political history—which encompasses a democratic revolution in 1990, a bloody Maoist insurgency or “People’s War” from 1996 to 2006, a royal autocratic coup, and yet another revolution in 2006 that abolished the monarchy and established a federal democratic republic—that any party has won an outright majority, much less a supermajority. Indeed, some analysts assumed that Nepal’s electoral system, with its many parties and its combination of “first-past-the-post” and proportional representation, made such an outcome impossible. Apparently not. Decades of corrupt, ineffectual, revolving-door coalition governments—the country has seen 32 governments since 1990, none of them completing a full five-year term—may now come to an end.

    • Chris Enns ☛ Voice Privacy Settings in Fortnite

      As much as I want to be a good guy, I don't want to babysit someone else's kid in Fortnite.

    • Mark Hysted ☛ testing ActivityPub

      This is a test of the updated version 8.0 of the WordPress ActivityPub plugin.

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-03-08 [Older] Waadhoeke council rejects anonymous Facebook groups focused on local politics

• Security

  • Europol ☛ 2026-03-04 [Older] LeakBase seized, arrests made as part ofglobal action

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] CISA Adds Five Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] Delta Electronics CNCSoft-G2

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] CISA Adds Two Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] Hitachi Energy Relion REB500 Product

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] Hitachi Energy RTU500 Product

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] Portwell Engineering Toolkits

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] Labkotec LID-3300IP

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] Mobiliti e-mobi.hu

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] ePower epower.ie

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] Everon OCPP Backends

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] Mitsubishi Electric MELSEC iQ-F Series EtherNet/IP module and Ethernet module

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Unmitigated Risk ☛ Signed, Auditable, Offline-Tolerant, PQ Secure QR Codes

      The result of applying that idea to the QR problem is MTA-QR, a working implementation of what I’ve been calling Merkle Tree Assertions for QR codes. The demo is live at mta-qr.peculiarventures.com, and the full source is at github.com/PeculiarVentures/mta-qr-demo. There are Go and TypeScript implementations, a browser-only demo that generates and verifies without any backend, and an interoperability test matrix that exercises all three signing algorithms against both runtimes in every combination.

      To be clear, this isn’t a production-ready library, but building it helped me identify things I had missed while whiteboarding it in my head.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • NYOB ☛ Conseil d'État upholds Criteo's €40M GDPR fine

      The French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) fined Criteo, a major online advertisement and tracking company in Europe, €40 million for violating the GDPR. This decision is based on complaints filed by noyb and Privacy International in December 2018. The CNIL found that the company failed to comply with data subject rights under the GDPR and could not prove that they obtained valid consent. The Conseil d’Etat rejected CRITEO's appeal and upheld the fine.

    • Techdirt ☛ Roblox Rolls Out AI-Powered Real-Time Rephrasing Of Profanity Within Chat

      The power of the latest generation of AI systems is such that previously impractical applications are not just possible, but scalable. For example, moving beyond basic early AI text translation tools, it is now possible to use live translation to communicate in another language in real time. For many people that will be a real boon, especially when they are traveling. But here’s something that is likely to prove more controversial: real-time rephrasing of profanity within chat. It’s a new AI-powered feature from Roblox that is designed to “keep gameplay fluid while maintaining civility within chat”: [...]

    • Techdirt ☛ A DOGE Bro Allegedly Walked Out Of Social Security With 500 Million Americans’ Records On A Thumb Drive And Expected A Pardon If Caught

      From the very beginning of the DOGE saga, many of us raised alarms about what would happen when a bunch of inexperienced twenty-somethings were handed unfettered access to the most sensitive databases in the federal government with essentially zero oversight and zero adherence to the security protocols that exist for very good reasons. We wrote about it when a 25-year-old was pushing untested code into the Treasury’s $6 trillion payment system. We published a piece about it, originally reported by ProPublica, when DOGE operatives stormed into Social Security headquarters and demanded access to everything while ignoring the career staff who actually understood the systems.

  • Confidentiality

    • TechCrunch ☛ 2026-03-02 [Older] Hacktivists claim to have hacked Homeland Security to release ICE contract data

    • Meduza ☛ Russia created an elite hit squad to target its opponents abroad. One of its agents was compromised by using Google Translate.

      In late 2022, Russia established a top-secret unit of elite intelligence agents with a sweeping mandate to carry out assassinations, abductions, and sabotage abroad. But according to a new investigation by The Insider, one officer has exposed the entire group by using Google Translate.

      Known internally as Center 795, this unit was established by a Russian General Staff order in December 2022 as part of an effort to expand intelligence operations following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to The Insider’s sources, it was designed to function as a “shadow army” and given full autonomy, allowing the unit to bypass the Defense Ministry’s cumbersome and ineffective bureaucracy.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-04 [Older] Article 2(4): The UN Charter's prohibition on using force

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] North Korea: Kim visits warship, oversees missile launch

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] Is Germany increasingly targeted by Iranian intelligence?

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-08 [Older] 'Shaken to our core': Jewish community urges action against antisemitism after GTA synagogue shootings

  • Defence Web ☛ 2026-03-04 [Older] US sanctions against Rwandan military could impact Mozambican security deal

  • Defence Web ☛ 2026-03-04 [Older] SA Army personnel prove their worth on border protection

  • International Business Times ☛ 2026-03-08 [Older] Explosion Rocks US Embassy in Oslo as Police Launch Major Investigation

  • Semafor Inc ☛ ByteDance sidesteps US restrictions to buy Nvidia chips

    ByteDance has gained access to the Blackwell semiconductors by hiring computing power from a Malaysia-based company, fueling the Chinese firm’s ambition of becoming a global AI leader, The Wall Street Journal reported.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Specialists Carefully Defuse a 550-Pound Bomb in Dresden—Eight Decades After It Fell During World War II

    The 550-pound bomb was discovered on the evening of March 10 during work to rebuild the Carola Bridge, which had partially collapsed over the Elbe River in 2024.

    Initially, police cordoned off a nearly 500-foot exclusion zone, according to the German broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR). They later expanded the exclusion zone to around 3,280 feet, and residents were told to evacuate.

  • Mike Brock ☛ On What We Are Permitted to Notice

    This man has manipulated the machinery of the United States federal government, operating under color of Article II of the Constitution, to bring us head-first into a war that Congress has not authorized and the American people did not choose.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Republicans' Nazi Problem Is Getting Worse. The GOP Should Care

    But that’s what’s been happening with increasing regularity, revealed by a recent string of unhinged text chains revealed among young Republican leaders. This isn’t an outlier or a one-off. It’s a pattern and a problem.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Whiskey Pete admits to committing war crimes

    "No quarter" literally means refusing to take prisoners and executing everyone instead. That has been considered a war crime since the Hague Convention IV and is banned under the Geneva Conventions.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ The Removed DOGE Deposition Videos Have Already Been Backed Up Across the Internet

    [...] torrent magnet link (only 5 seeders!)

• Environment

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-07 [Older] Mining in Ontario's Ring of Fire closer than ever, even without official fast-tracking

  • Vox ☛ 2026-03-06 [Older] The case for scrubbing the seas to save the climate

  • NL Times ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] Climate activists block access to multiple Amsterdam secondary schools

  • Vox ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] The false promise of energy independence

  • Vox ☛ 2026-03-04 [Older] Scientists have been underestimating sea levels — for decades

  • HRW ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] Pacific Islands: World’s First Regional Guidance on Climate Relocation

  • Truthdig ☛ 2026-03-03 [Older] Europe’s Climate and Sustainability Rules Were Shredded While Citizens Remained in the Dark

  • Futurism ☛ Americans' Anger Against AI Data Centers Is Boiling Over

    As flagged by 404 Media, the majority of people surveyed said they think data centers are bad for the environment, home energy costs, and quality of life for people living nearby.

    Compared to the amount of hate data centers got, there wasn’t a lot of love going around. A paltry 4 percent of Americans said data centers were “mostly good” for the environment, compared to 39 percent who said the opposite. Meanwhile, only 6 percent believed data centers have positive effects on their neighbors’ quality of life and home energy cost, versus 30 percent and 38 percent who said they were “mostly bad,” respectively.

  • 404 Media ☛ People Hate Datacenters, Survey Finds

    Datacenters are terrible neighbors. The buildings drive up the cost of energy for people who live nearby, consume massive amounts of water, and can produce noises and fumes that hurt locals. In Mississippi, locals are concerned about the pollution and noise caused by an xAI datacenter powered by gas turbines. A proposed datacenter project near Amarillo, Texas would be powered by four massive nuclear generators and pull water from an aquifer with dwindling reserves. In an effort to quell fears about power consumption, Trump made Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI sign a pledge to keep energy costs down. But a pledge isn’t a law. It’s not even an executive order.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Defence Web ☛ 2026-03-02 [Older] Project developers must prioritise human security as gas project restarts in Mozambique

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ How electronic warfare is threatening ships and their crews

      As a cybersecurity researcher studying critical infrastructure and maritime systems, I investigate how digital threats affect ships and the people who operate them.

      To understand the threat from GPS disruptions, it helps to first understand how GPS works. GPS systems determine location using signals from satellites orbiting Earth. A receiver calculates its position by measuring how long those signals take to arrive. Because those signals are extremely weak by the time they reach Earth, they are relatively easy to disrupt.

    • Hackaday ☛ Off-Grid Electricity And Hot Water From Scrap Wood

      The process for creating charcoal is fairly simple. All that needs to happen is for wood to be heated beyond a certain temperature in the absence of oxygen. At this point it will off-gas the water stored in it as well as some of the volatile organic compounds, and what’s left behind is a flammable carbon residue. Those volatile organics are flammable as well, though, so [Greenhill Forge] uses them to heat the wood in a self-sustaining reaction. First, a metal retort is constructed from a metal ammo box, with a pipe extending from the side and then underneath the box. A few holes are drilled in this part, and the apparatus is mounted above a small fire on a metal stand. With the fire lit the wood begins heating, and as it heats these compounds exit the pipe and ignite, adding further fuel to the fire. Eventually the small fire will go out, allowing the retort to heat itself on the gasses released from the wood alone.

    • SlashGear ☛ Americans Are Quietly Installing DIY Solar To Fight Skyrocketing Energy Bills

      Reports by outlets such as Canary Media, The Washington Post, and CNN indicate that savings can range from around $100 per year to $35 to $50 per month. Exact numbers depend on elements like location, existing utility rates, and the size and strength of the solar setup. While DIY solar does seem like a good idea, there's also the legal side of it to be aware of. Unfortunately, laws across the United States are a bit hazy on the matter, but that could change soon.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-03-09 [Older] Canada Lynx: Denial and Loss

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Bird losses are accelerating across North America, particularly in farming regions where agriculture is most intensive

      In a new study published in the journal Science, my colleagues and I found that bird populations are responding in the same way: Their declines are speeding up, particularly in regions dominated by intensive agriculture.

      It's not just that there are fewer birds each year. In some places, each year brings larger losses than the one before.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] Germany makes wolf-hunting legal again

• Finance

  • HRW ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] Germany: Proposed Bill Would Weaken Right to Social Security

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-09 [Older] How good is Alberta 'tax advantage' when it requires deficit borrowing?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] China sets lower growth target as domestic consumption lags

  • Terence Eden ☛ How Can Governments Pay Open Source Maintainers?

    When I worked for the UK Government I was once asked if we could find a way to pay for all the Open Source Software we were using. It is a surprisingly hard problem and I want to talk about some of the issues we faced.

    The UK Government publishes a lot of Open Source code - nearly everything developed in-house by the state is available under an OSI Approved licence. The UK is generally pretty relaxed about people, companies, and states re-using its code. There's no desire and little capability to monetise what has been developed with public money so it becomes public code.

    What about the Open Source that UK Government uses?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ FFRF proudly co-sponsors ‘No Kings III Day’ on Sat., March 28 — Freedom From Religion Foundation

    Nearly 7 million people attended No Kings last October and the goal is for an even larger turnout at thousands of peaceful rallies later this month. The “No Kings III” website features a map showing events near you, messaging and many resources, including a host toolkit, graphics and signs.

  • David L Farquhar ☛ Microsoft's 1986 IPO - The Silicon Underground

    The reason Microsoft had to go public in 1986 was because Bill Gates had been using stock to attract talent. Microsoft projected that by sometime in 1987, they would have 500 shareholders, which would require Microsoft to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, effectively turning them into a publicly traded company, but without the benefits of going public in the conventional way.

    Backed into this corner, Gates agreed in late 1985 to pursue an IPO.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • NPR ☛ Some Gen Z Americans can't stop 'Chinamaxxing'

      Yuan notes that it's probably no accident that Chinamaxxing has flourished on TikTok. While the app's algorithm isn't public, Yuan suggests that the platform may operate on multiple levels at once: "One track weakens American narrative authority by highlighting content that highlights U.S. dysfunction, and in the same time, the other track makes China look more attractive."

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Trump is using immigration policy to suppress speech, lawsuit claims

    This lawsuit, filed by The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Protect Democracy on behalf of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR), is important:

    “The suit accuses the administration of violating the First Amendment with an official policy to deny visas to or deport noncitizens who work on or study social media platforms, fact-checking or other activities the government deems "censorship" of Americans' speech. It argues that amounts to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”

  • The Moscow Times ☛ In Moscow, a Week of Mobile Internet Shutdowns Makes Life a Real Pain

    Regions across Russia have been living with mobile [Internet] disruptions for months due to the threat of Ukrainian drone attacks. Nor is this the first time that Moscow has had its mobile internet cut off.

    But given their duration and scale, the latest outages in Moscow have fueled speculation that the authorities may be readying a new clampdown on Russians’ digital freedoms.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Reach attacks BBC’s ‘aggressive expansion’ into local news

    Mirror publisher Reach has accused the BBC of damaging the local news ecosystem.

    The comments were included in Reach’s response to the Green Paper on the renewal of the BBC’s Royal Charter.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: AI “journalists” prove that media bosses don’t give a shit

    But in all honesty, I fear this would not make much of a difference, because I suspect that the people who oversee the design of modern news sites don't care about the news at all. They don't read the news, they don't consume the news. They hate the news. They view the news as a necessary evil within a wider gambit to deploy adware, malware, pop-ups, and auto-play video.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Scheerpost ☛ 2026-03-08 [Older] ‘Advocates Know How to Fight Attempts to Repress Black History’: CounterSpin interview with Naomi Bethune on anti-Black history

  • HRW ☛ 2026-03-09 [Older] Australia: Gender Equality Essential for National Security

  • Vox ☛ Bernie Sanders on the billionaire tax, data centers, and Iran

    Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is no stranger to singling out the richest of the rich. Along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Sanders recently introduced the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act, a 5 percent annual wealth tax on anyone in the US worth over a billion dollars.

    The act would affect 930 people — the very tippy-top of the 0.01 percent. Elon Musk would owe roughly $42 billion per year. Mark Zuckerberg would owe $11 billion.

  • International Business Times ☛ ICE Agents Caught Pretending to Be US Marshals at Chicago Courthouse as Staff Block Entry Raising Federal Misconduct Concerns

    Eyewitness accounts circulating online claim courthouse staff challenged and refused entry to the individual after doubts were raised about the claim of being a federal marshal. The alleged incident has not been officially confirmed, and the account is based on a single widely shared post and video on X by the user TheJFreakinC.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Corrupt anticorruption

    The corporate takeover of the housing market didn't fall out of the sky. It was a policy of the Obama administration, which directed the mass selloff of homes (foreclosed on by bailed-out banks) to corporate buyers:

    https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-senate-votes-to-block-private

    Sunsetting the American dream of home-ownership is the final straw. After all, once America killed off labor rights, the only path to wealth accumulation left for working people was assuming crippling debt to buy a house in hopes that its value would go up forever: [...]

  • University of Michigan ☛ Murder is murder

    In a nutshell: There is little legal precedent for holding federal law enforcement accountable when they commit extreme acts like murder. Whether America historically enjoyed a law-abiding federal police force — or, more likely, it simply looked the other way — isn’t too important. When it comes to the level of power we choose to grant an unchecked federal authority, our country has two paths in front of it; what matters most is the next step we take.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ 25 Years Of ADSL Speed

    Three whoppin’ megabits (not bytes) per second! Can you imagine that? I guess you can given the current average download speeds of… Wait, let me check speedtest.net… 280 MBps or, in other words, 93 times faster than the bleeding-edge 2003 speeds1. Try streaming your favourite YouTube video with a few megabits per second. YouTube didn’t exist until two years later (2005). Perspectives change.

    In that statement they mention they have 400k customers. Given the widespread adoption of [Internet] in Belgium, that number can be safely multiplied by ten nowadays.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Stephanie Stimac ☛ The Death of Curating, the Rise of Curation

    Netflix's shift to their own content isn't the problem though (except when they cancel good shows). The problem is the illusion of choice presented and an algorithm that is now guessing what it thinks I might like and showing me that.

    Netflix also has a habit of repackaging the same list of movies just reordered under a different category name, and there is nothing I find more annoying. If there's some data out there about people picking a movie they've already skipped over because it's under a new category title, I would love to see it. But to me, it feels like I am being shown a facade. "Look at all this media we have!" So you scroll and scroll, and then I've seen the same movies listed 3-4 times.

    I am being shown a fraction of the films I know are available. Am I actually browsing? Or am I being profiled and curated to?

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Rolling Stone ☛ Live Nation's Antitrust Trial Isn't Over as States Take Up Fight

  On Friday, March 13, attorneys general for more than 20 states, plus Washington D.C., withdrew a previously-filed motion for a mistrial. At a hearing, Judge Arun Subramanian said the trial would pick up again Monday, March 16 (per Inner City Press). This group of states had declined to sign onto the DOJ’s settlement with Live Nation, and failed to reach their own agreements with the company after attempted negotiations this week.

• Patents

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-03-06 [Older] The future of the patent profession: Are we looking into an AI abyss? [Ed: Can slop beat some lousy lawyers in the patent domain?]

  • 2026-03-06 [Older] USPTO and DOJ Statement of Interest in Collision Communications: Another Thumb on the Scale in Favor of NPE Patent Plaintiffs [Ed: In favour of patent trolls]

  • 2026-03-05 [Older] Oasis Tooling, Inc. v. Siemens Industry Software Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2026)

• Copyrights

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] A Real Abundance Agenda Starts by Rolling Back Patent and Copyright Monopolies

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-03-05 [Older] [Guest Post] Of Snakes and Artistic Value: Bologna IP Court Slithers Through Design, Shape Marks and Copyrights in a post-Cofemel landscape

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Politics and World Events

    • Language Oriented Worldbuilding

      Language oriented worldbuilding is a method of creating a world with a specific focus on the various languages that exist within it. By examining how languages are shaped by the world, and in turn how they alter the perception of that world, an author that uses language oriented worldbuilding asks the reader to create for him a landscape where such languages exist and make sense, and allows him to put in as much or as little detail as he desires in any aspect of life he desires.

    • 🖼️ xkcd: Planets and Bright Stars #3219