Leftovers

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-12 [Older] WAFCON 2026: A 'combination of factors' behind postponement

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-12 [Older] Senegal lawmakers back tougher anti-LGBTQ+ law with up to 10 years in prison

• RTL ☛ Led investigation into Trump: Former FBI chief Robert Mueller dies age 81

  After his tenure at the FBI, he was tapped as a special counsel for the Department of Justice to lead a probe between 2017-2019 into whether Trump’s presidential campaign conspired with Russia to get him elected.

• Jacobin Magazine ☛ Celebrities Can’t Save Opera. Public Funding Can.

  Many jabs at Chalamet focused on his inability to compete with the sheer artistic talent of dancers and singers, while others insisted on the enduring power of classical performing arts.

  These objections miss the point. Opera and ballet are in genuine financial and cultural crisis, and anemic celebrity white knighting does little to expand their audience.

• New York Times ☛ Paul Brainerd Dies at 78; Pioneered Desktop Publishing With PageMaker

  Paul Brainerd, a former newspaper executive who founded Aldus Corporation, whose PageMaker software brought publishing into the digital era, allowing anyone with a computer and a printer to become a modern-day Johannes Gutenberg, died on Feb. 15 at his home on Bainbridge Island, in Washington. He was 78.

• The New Leaf Journal ☛ Introducing N.A. Ferrell’s NLJ Blogroll

  At its core, a blogroll is a “list of links to other blogs” (Alison Hawke at Quantum Tee. July 9, 2002). Its purpose is to serve as “[a] list of other blogs that a blogger might recommend by providing links to them” (Kimberly Michelle. May 26, 2010). Or, as the IndieWeb Wiki puts it, “[a] blogroll is a list of other sites that you read, are a follower of, or recommend” (IndieWeb Wiki).

• Manuel Moreale ☛ My 2-step process for AI-free blogging

  Following the 7-step approach and the 1-step approach, and also channelling the spirit of the longstanding tradition of learning how to draw owls on the [Internet]: [...]

• Leon Mika ☛ TUIs Are Underrated

  I won’t bury the lead here: I think TUIs (Terminal User Interfaces) are underrated as a UI paradigm.

  Now I’m someone who likes a good TUI. I like using them. I like building them. So I may have a slight bias here. But I’m wondering if TUIs are starting to see a bit of a resurgence, at least in software development. The modern example is Claude Code and it’s ilk, but it’s also seeing people using Vim and Emacs for their coding tasks. There are more than a few that are doing that where I work.

• Kev Quirk ☛ Three Men Tried To Steal My Motorbike While I Was On It!

  As I soon as I'd hit the guy to my right, I took off like the absolutely clappers, running a red light in the process (thank goodness nothing was coming the other way). My BMW is a fast bike, at 1000cc and over 170BHP. They were on dirt bikes, which are nowhere near as quick as mine. I also had knowledge of the local roads, which I hoped they didn't. As I flew off, they gave chase but quickly dropped back. A brief glance of my speedo showed I was doing over 120MPH, but it was working.

• James G ☛ Tinkering

  I love making incremental improvements to my website. All the changes I make to this website build up to what you see. This has me thinking that websites are both a place to reflect on, discuss, and make change, as well as being something that can, and does, change over and with time. My website grows with me.

• Ankur Sethi ☛ Waiting is fun

  When I’m waiting for something to happen, that time is already spoken for. It’s earmarked for sitting in the doctor’s office, or in an airplane, or for the long drive to a friend’s place. I’ve scheduled nothing “productive” in that time, because it’s not possible to get anything useful done during that time. It’s dead time. It’s time where I’m not eating or sleeping or watching TV or working. Where I’m not pressured to be productive, because there’s no way to get anything useful done while I’m in a waiting room and the doctor’s assistant is interrupting me over and over again.

• Career/Education

  • The Nation ☛ From Foreign Correspondent to Uber Driver

    At the time, losing my job slammed the door on my wishes to stay in Canada. It weakened my immigration status, and I would never be asked to apply for permanent residency. The great and kind Canada, the country where I thought I would live at least until my children were adults, had chewed me up and spit me out. I couldn’t even drive for Uber.

    When I lost my job, my entire family lost access to Canada’s publicly funded healthcare coverage, and there is virtually no private health insurance there. We had no family doctor, and, God forbid, if any of us had to go to the hospital, it would have to be paid for out of pocket. Despite having good local contacts, I couldn’t find an employer willing to sponsor me. The clock was ticking on our legal right to reside in Canada. We were no longer welcome.

• Hardware

  • Clayton Errington ☛ Review MageGee MK-Star Mechanical Keyboard

    I’ve been using a new mechanical keyboard for about a week now and here are some first impressions. I first heard of this brand by reading the review Adam’s Desk wrote up. Everyone at work had a mechanical keyboard of some kind, some expensive, some cheaper. Even the new hires got some cheaper RGB keyboard instead of the standard Dell keyboard you get with your computer. With mechanical keyboards you get drawn in now based off the colors and fancy light shows more than the use of the keyboard I think.

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ Typewriter Plates for Collectors?

    Obviously one would want these to be lovely and tasteful so as not to overwhelm a machine, potentially leave space for others in the future, and be somewhat more permanent than other tags one might have on their machines for identification. They could also be done and hidden inside body panels like some shops did for labels they used for dating clean, oil, and adjustments. Obviously one would like something better than messily hand-carving their name and social security number into the body of a machine like I’ve seen done with a variety of machines, or which Tom Hanks has done with sharpie on the hoods of typewriters he’s donated away from his collection.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-12 [Older] Iran war could spark the next global food crisis

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-12 [Older] Iran war: Experts warns bombing oil infrastructure in Iran to leave lasting environmental damage

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ This High School Student Invented a Filter That Eliminates 96 Percent of Microplastics From Drinking Water

    “It inspired me to design a filter without the use of membranes, to decrease the costs and maintenance needs associated with water filtration,” says the now 18-year-old student at Kettle Run High School. Through her school, she also attends a half-day program for math, science and technology at nearby Mountain Vista Governor’s School.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Let's Talk About Fertilizer

    So this is having a direct impact on U.S. farmers. The price of urea is way, way up. And there’s something that I’ve recently been alerted to, which is quite scary. The planting season is coming up, says somebody who has no idea what agricultural life is like, but that’s what I’m told.

    And the farmers have long since contracted for their fertilizer. They’ve already paid or at least signed the contracts. The prices are locked in. But will there actually be fertilizer available? It’s not at all hard to imagine that the suppliers will declare force majeure, say there’s a war on, which is normally a valid excuse for backing out of contracts. and simply fail to supply the fertilizer. That would be a real catastrophe.

  • Luigi Mozzillo ☛ We need the illusion that we matter to someone

    When I reached 92 kg (~203 lbs), the nutritionist told me she had nothing more to say, that I could continue on my own, that I had adopted a new lifestyle, and that I no longer needed to come to her office. There was no need. I had reached my goal. She had given me the all-clear.

  • [Old] Matt Prast ☛ Learning from running

    When it comes to aerobic exercise, the rule is "low and slow." Low-effort, high-mileage, luxurious, slow-cooked runs. You need to take an easy pace that makes heavy use of your aerobic system and hold it for long enough to kick off adaptation. Do this right and you'll improve your ability to take in and utilize oxygen - your heart will get stronger, your lungs will get more efficient, and your muscles will develop extra capillaries (and extra mitochondria! I know that sounds crazy but it's true.)

    To target the anaerobic system, on the other hand, you should run very hard (probably harder than you want to.) You need to get to the point where your body exhausts its ability to deliver oxygen to your muscles. Interval workouts (like the dreaded mile repeats) are good for this, as there's only so long you can really book it before something gives out. This type of training triggers a different set of changes - for example, the threshold at which your anaerobic system kicks in will go up, and you'll get better at clearing lactic acid from your muscles.

• Proprietary

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ Musician admits to $10M streaming royalty fraud using AI bots

    North Carolina musician Michael Smith has pleaded guilty to collecting over $10 million in royalty payments through a massive streaming royalty fraud scheme on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music.

    54-year-old Smith bought hundreds of thousands of songs generated using artificial intelligence (AI) from an accomplice, uploaded them to these streaming platforms, and used automated AI bots to stream the AI-generated tracks billions of times.

    According to court documents unsealed when he was charged in September 2024, Smith fraudulently inflated listening stats on his songs on these digital platforms between 2017 and 2024 with the help of an unnamed music promoter and the Chief Executive Officer of an AI music company. To avoid detection by anti-fraud systems, Smith also had the bots access the streaming platforms using virtual private networks (VPNs).

    On October 4, 2018, he emailed his coconspirators to say, "to not raise any issues with the powers that be we need a TON of content with small amounts of Streams," and added that, "We need to get a TON of songs fast to make this work around the anti fraud policies these guys are all using now."

    At the peak of the operation, Smith was using over 1,000 bot accounts to artificially boost streams. On October 20, 2017, he also emailed himself a financial breakdown outlining how he operated 52 cloud service accounts, each with 20 bot accounts.

  • Futurism ☛ Atlassian in Trouble for Firing Employee Who Mouthed Off to CEO

    Fresh off of annihilating a tenth of its workforce, Atlassian is being accused of illegally firing an employee.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ US Departments of Justice and Defense crush four massive botnets totaling 3,000,000 devices — botnets responsible for a combined 316,000 DDoS attacks globally

    The bulk of those infected devices belong to the rather large Aisuru and Kimwolf botnets, both of which were in the news recently due to the scale of the DDoS attacks performed through them. Notably but not exclusively, the largest attack was performed pretty recently in late January, smashing worldwide records at a record 31.4 Tb/s, enough bandwidth to take entire countries offline.

    The Aisuru botnet primarily targets networking and adjacent gear, such as home and office routers, IP cameras, Wi-Fi access points, and gateways. Kimwolf's favorite nourishment, meanwhile, is Android-based streaming devices such as TV boxes, Smart TVs, Android tablets, and digital photo frames. Many of these devices come with the Android debugging mode wide enabled from the factory, and sometimes with preinstalled exploitable firmware, namely on cheap, no-name IPTV piracy set-top boxes.

  • The Record ☛ US seizes domains and infrastructure used in sprawling botnet campaigns

    The four botnets were composed of about three million compromised devices around the world, many of which are Internet of Things (IoT) devices like cameras, routers and video recorders. Court documents said there were hundreds of thousands of devices compromised in the U.S. The KimWolf and JackSkid botnets were known to also target devices that were behind firewalls.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Patch Now: Oracle's Fusion Middleware Has Critical RCE Flaw

    Attackers can execute arbitrary code without authentication if Oracle's Identity or Web Services Managers are exposed to the Web.

  • TechCrunch ☛ Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded across the US

    A cyberattack on a U.S. vehicle breathalyzer company has left drivers across the United States stranded and unable to start their vehicles.

    The company, Intoxalock, says on its website that it is “currently experiencing downtime” after a cyberattack on March 14. Intoxalock sells breathalyzer devices that fit into vehicle ignition switches, and is used by people who are required to provide a negative alcohol breath sample to start their car.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ MacBook Neo review: I wish this had an M1 inside

    In my experience, the MacBook Neo performs worse across the board than that M1 MacBook Pro. Yes, the single-core performance is higher, but there are fewer cores, and the efficiency cores are even slower. There’s also half the RAM, which I think is probably the biggest bottleneck in this device. Paired with the significantly slower SSD (about 2/3 the speed of M1 drives and 1/5 the speed of M5 drives), the system has to rely on swapping to the SSD even more. So while I can open a good number of apps at once and the experience is okay, it’s worth noting that the experience is worse than doing the same things on an M1 with 16GB RAM. If I could have the MacBook Neo with its outstanding construction and hardware trade-offs, but put an M1 with 16GB RAM in it, I would choose the M1 every single time. I think that’s critical context.

  • BoingBoing ☛ HP forced 15-minute waits even when agents were free

    The strategy amounted to deliberately degrading a service people were already paying for. HP wasn't short-staffed. It wasn't dealing with a surge; it was punishing customers for picking up the phone.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Spectator AU ☛ How AI is reshaping the Iran war

      The Israeli military used AI systems to analyse years of intel and reconnaissance on Khamenei to anticipate his movements. Leading up to the February operation, Israeli cyber intelligence had hacked into nearly every traffic camera in Tehran, bugged communications systems, and directed transmissions to the IDF intelligence headquarters in Tel Aviv. Israeli intelligence specialists then employed AI-based algorithms to analyse details such as duty schedules, guard breaks and commuting routes, making it easier to predict Khamenei’s movements and schedules.

    • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - I.T. is Eighty, an Ageing Boomer

      In this analysis, the “PC”, “Internet” and “AI” discontinuities are compared and considered within the I.T. Rogers’ curve.

    • The Verge ☛ Ghost in the Machine’s Valerie Veatch isn’t drinking the AI Kool-Aid

      Instead of focusing on the potential (if highly improbable) benefits to society that gen AI accelerationists swear are just around the corner, Ghost in the Machine explores the technology’s history to explain why it works the way it does now. When I recently spoke with Veatch about the film, she told me that she wanted to chronicle gen AI’s genesis to give people a clear view of the very intense cycle of industry hype we’re currently living through. First, however, she had to cut through AI firms’ purposeful obfuscation of the entire concept.

      “In order to use the phrase ‘artificial intelligence,’ we have to know what the fuck that phrase means,” Veatch told me over a video call. “The truth is, it doesn’t mean anything; it’s a marketing term and always has been.
It’s a completely misleading, stupid phrase that has taken on its own cultural meaning, and I think being really clear about the words we use and the meaning of those words is essential.”

    • Nick Heer ☛ In a ‘Test’, Google Is Automatically Rewriting News Headlines in Its Search Results

      I am not arguing this is good or normal — the examples Hollister shows are extremely poor reflections of the articles in question — but I do not understand why it is only gaining traction now, nor how it meaningfully differs from what Google has been doing all along. It is indeed frustrating.

    • Third Door Media LLC ☛ Google confirms AI headline rewrites test in Search results

      Why we care. Google Search is already sending fewer clicks. Now you also have to contend with Google generating entirely new headlines with AI, risking changes to meaning, brand voice, and click-through rates.

      Dig deeper. Google changed 76% of title tags in Q1 2025 – Here’s what that means

    • Becky Spratford ☛ RA for All: Just Say No to AI: Refusal as Instruction Equipping Patrons to Resist AI, Data Brokers, Big Tech, & More

      But here we are with another ALA group, Core and their Information Technology and Libraries, peer reviewed journal with the exact opposite viewpoint. It is written by Hannah Cyrus, from Bangor Public Library, and she is my new hero. It is also open source so all of you can read it for free at this link.

      Here is the Abstract from the article landing page so you know what you are getting yourself into: [...]

    • Information Technologies and Libraries ☛ Refusal as Instruction: Equipping Patrons to Resist AI, Data Brokers, Big Tech, & More | Information Technology and Libraries

      Abstract This column explores the ways in which library workers can better align technology use and instruction in library settings with library values, through championing the refusal of technologies that conflict with values like privacy and intellectual freedom. Drawing on experiences with individual patron instruction, class design, and passive programming, the author shares practical steps for helping patrons to understand and fight back against exploitation by digital technologies. Rejecting the myth that any technology is “neutral,” the column argues that libraries as values-driven organizations have a role to play in facilitating patrons’ rejection of technology, just as much as in their adoption of it.

    • Armin Ronacher ☛ Some Things Just Take Time

      AI writes code fast which isn’t news anymore. What’s interesting is that we’re pushing this force downstream: we seemingly have this desire to ship faster than ever, to run more experiments and that creates a new desire, one to remove all the remaining friction of reviews, designing and configuring infrastructure, anything that slows the pipeline. If the machines are so great, why do we even need checklists or permission systems? Express desire, enjoy result.

    • The New Stack ☛ Anthropic's response to the AI tool that caused lines around the block in Shenzhen

      I want to quickly mirror one of Azeem Azhar’s points — that while Apple has done nothing notable in the AI software space, their hardware is well-suited for running agentic (i.e., actual computing) tasks. Their family of Apple Silicon chips, replacing Intel chips, is well-suited for local on-device inference. This is why the Mac Mini, a computer that a whole generation has probably never heard of, is selling out in stores.

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ AI is changing the style and substance of human writing, study finds

      It might seem easy or fast, or a neat way to push out more content with less effort. But the software really does change the substance of your writing in what I would call objectively bad ways: it makes it less personal and less emotional, and it actively changes its underlying meaning in the process. It’s less human. Sure, ask it to give you feedback, if you want, but don’t actually let it polish your writing itself.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump’s New AI Framework Raises Red Flags for Experts

      “This roadmap is a poison pill for states’ rights,” says Rumman Chowdhury, a former U.S. science envoy for AI. “By dictating congressional behavior and again targeting state-level regulation, Trump is expanding presidential authority further.”

      In one section, the framework says that “states should not be permitted to penalize AI developers for a third party’s unlawful conduct involving their models.” This is a red flag for critics, who say this could result in a way to shield AI companies from being held liable for harms.

    • BoingBoing ☛ AI coding feels like doomscrolling — and that's a problem

      Developer Tao Bojlén noticed something uncomfortable about his days spent coding with Claude. After a long session, he didn't feel the pleasant tiredness of real work. "Instead, this jittery craving for more," he wrote. "It's the same unsatisfied hunger that I feel after doomscrolling."

    • Tao Bojlén ☛ Just one more prompt

      We’re already seeing the most AI-pilled engineers report high levels of fatigue and “AI brain fry.” Our brains cannot keep up. I think that we’re going to see more and more scenes of engineers doomscrolling while their agents work. Not because those engineers are dumb, or lack self-control, but because agentic coding and doomscrolling share the same highly addictive pattern. You scroll, or write a prompt, and there’s a decent chance your brain gets rewarded with a good Reel or a solved bug! You’re pulling the slot machine lever, over and over. In an environment flooded with cheap dopamine, in and outside work, it’s only going to get harder to resist it.

    • Addy Osmani ☛ AddyOsmani.com - Comprehension Debt - the hidden cost of AI generated code.

      Comprehension debt is the growing gap between how much code exists in your system and how much of it any human being genuinely understands.

      Unlike technical debt, which announces itself through mounting friction - slow builds, tangled dependencies, the creeping dread every time you touch that one module - comprehension debt breeds false confidence. The codebase looks clean. The tests are green. The reckoning arrives quietly, usually at the worst possible moment.

  • Social Control Media

    • Futurism ☛ Things Are Suddenly Looking Incredibly Bad for Trump's Social Media Company

      President Donald Trump’s struggling Truth Social social network, traded on the stock market as Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), revealed earlier this month that it had burned through a staggering $712.1 million last year — while only making $3.7 million.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Zuckerberg predicted a billion users. Horizon Worlds never topped a few hundred thousand

      Reality Labs posted a $6.02 billion operating loss in Q4 2025 alone. In January, Meta cut more than 1,000 employees from Reality Labs, including studios that had been developing VR titles. The company restructured its VR division in February.

    • CNBC ☛ Meta is shutting down Horizon Worlds in the metaverse

      The metaverse has proved to be a costly bet. The Reality Labs unit posted billions in losses each quarter after its launch. In fourth-quarter earnings posted in January, the unit reported an operating loss of $6.02 billion.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ California city reports ransomware attack as LA transit agency finds ‘unauthorized activity’

      Like many states, California has been battered by ransomware gangs over the last four years, with multiple attacks taking out government systems. Municipalities in the Bay Area specifically have been targeted, including Oakland, San Francisco and Hayward.

      The attack on Foster City took place hours before a ransomware gang claimed it attacked the city of Los Angeles. City officials did not respond to requests for comment, but the Los Angeles Metro service reported technical issues on Friday morning.

• Security

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-13 [Older] CISA Adds Two Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-12 [Older] Trane Tracer SC, Tracer SC+, and Tracer Concierge

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-12 [Older] Siemens RUGGEDCOM APE1808 Devices

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-12 [Older] Siemens SIDIS Prime

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-12 [Older] Siemens SIMATIC

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-12 [Older] Siemens Heliox EV Chargers

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-12 [Older] Inductive Automation Ignition Software

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-11 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Apeman Cameras

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Lantronix EDS3000PS and EDS5000

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Honeywell IQ4x BMS Controller

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Ceragon Siklu MultiHaul and EtherHaul Series

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-09 [Older] CISA Adds Three Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-11 [Older] Has Cambodia really cut cybercrime by half?

    • Unmitigated Risk ☛ The WebPKI and Client Authentication Are at a Crossroads

      The timing isn’t accidental. Chrome Root Program Policy v1.6 is forcing a structural realignment of the WebPKI, and client authentication is caught in the middle. All PKI hierarchies in the Chrome Root Store must now be dedicated solely to TLS server authentication. Chrome stopped accepting new intermediate CA applications with mixed EKUs in June 2025, and by June 15, 2026, Chrome will distrust any newly issued leaf certificate containing clientAuth EKU from a Chrome Root Store hierarchy. Multi-purpose roots get phased out entirely. Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft are all aligning with this direction. Every major public CA has published a sunset schedule. Sectigo stopped including clientAuth by default in September 2025, DigiCert followed in October, and Let’s Encrypt is phasing it out through ACME profiles. By mid-2026, you will not be able to get a publicly trusted TLS certificate that also works for client authentication.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ Congress Is Dropping the Ball with a Clean Extension of FISA

      It’s important to note RISAA was just a reauthorization of this mass surveillance program with a long history of abuse. Prior to the 2024 reauthorization, Section 702 was already misused to run improper queries on peaceful protesters, federal and state lawmakers, Congressional staff, thousands of campaign donors, journalists, and a judge reporting civil rights violations by local police. RISAA further expanded the government’s authority by allowing it to compel a much larger group of people and providers into assisting with this surveillance. As we said when it passed, overall, RISAA is a travesty for Americans who deserve basic constitutional rights and privacy whether they are communicating with people and services inside or outside of the US.

      Section 702 should not be reauthorized without any additional safeguards or oversight. Fortunately, there are currently three reform bills for Congress to consider: SAFE, PLEWSA, and GSRA. While none of these bills are perfect, they are all significantly better than the status quo, and should be considered instead of a bill that attempts no reform at all.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-11 [Older] How Poland is flexing its economic muscle in Western Europe

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-11 [Older] Polish opposition's PM candidate looks to attract far right

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-11 [Older] Germany news: WWII bomb forces major evacuation in Dresden

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-11 [Older] Germany, others partially release oil reserves amid Iran war

  • TruthOut ☛ Sanders Joins Minnesota Rally as “No Kings” Protests Grow Nationwide

    The Vermont Independent plans to join other progressive elected officials, labor leaders, and organizers in Minneapolis on the afternoon of Saturday, March 28, as Americans hold more than 3,000 related No Kings events across the United States.

  • Mike Brock ☛ An Open Letter to the Governors of America - by Mike Brock

    You swore an oath.

    Not to a party. Not to a president. Not to your donors or your ambitions or the comfortable arrangements of political life that make the exercise of power feel like its own justification. You swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and to the constitution of your state. And that oath is not a formality. It is not a ritual utterance at the beginning of a term of office, to be set aside when honoring it becomes inconvenient.

    It is a promise to the people you govern. And the people you govern need you to keep it. Now. Today.

  • The Next Move ☛ Venezuela Now - by Jay Nordlinger

    We end our podcast on this question: How did Venezuela unravel so quickly—falling from a democracy into a dictatorship—and what lesson might that provide to other peoples and nations?

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Democratic Backsliding Reaches Western Democracies, with U.S. Decline “Unprecedented”

    As the report points out, the midterms will be a litmus test. Will it be a free and fair election — or something else? Time will tell. Election-specific indicators in the report are only reassessed in election years, so the 2025 LDI score is actually held up by the quality of the 2024 elections. If the 2026 elections are compromised, our score will plummet.

    And it’s not just us.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] US authorities search Jeffrey Epstein's former ranch

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-11 [Older] UK government releases Mandelson US appointment files

  • The Atlantic ☛ We’d Be Winning This War if It Weren’t for Your Coverage

    There is no other way of putting this. The Fake News’s contumacious insistence on reporting what is actually happening in Iran rather than what Donald Trump would prefer was happening is setting back the war effort. So we at the FCC would like to provide you with some suggestions for updating your coverage. This is not a threat. However, please remember that we are in the process of consolidating every media company under the control of a man with a named boat who hates all the programming and has preemptively given Donald Trump his kidney, “just in case it ever comes in handy.”

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ Birds Are Getting Hooked on Cigarettes

    Even some species of birds are getting hooked on cigarettes — but not for the reason you might think. Instead of suffering from a debilitating nicotine addiction, blue tits across Europe are hoarding cigarette butts to ward off parasites using the natural and artificial toxins in tobacco and cigarette butts, as the New York Times reports. It’s a bizarre evolutionary outcome resulting from an otherwise ecologically damaging side effect of our collective smoking addiction.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Trump is forcing coal plants to stay open. It could cost customers billions.

    Despite their costs, three of the five plants being blocked from retirement haven’t produced electricity since the emergency orders went into effect, either because they need extensive repairs or because power demands have been met without them.

  • Rebecca Solnit ☛ If Fossil Fuels Are War, Renewables Can Bring Peace

    The war and the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz are pushing more people to recognize that fossil fuel is politically as well as environmentally devastating. Donald Trump never seems to think of consequences and the long game (sometimes he seems to imagine there will be none whether he's taking over the Kennedy Center or starting a war in the Middle East, perhaps because he imagines his is the only power that matters). But the longterm consequences of this war may be the opposite of what his fossil-fuel backers hope for: an accelerated energy transition. Of course, he's also fighting a war at home again renewable energy, slashing funding, withdrawing permits, and even considering bribing (with your money and mine) the French builders of US offshore wind farms to cancel. Here's a periodic reminder that in the summer of 2024 he told fossil fuel executives that if they gave him a billion dollars, he'd give them everything they want. They gave. They're getting.

  • Protesilaos Stavrou ☛ The responsibility to keep flowing

    Complacency is typically made manifest in views that tout humankind as exceptional in this world. “God loves you”, is an oft spoken claim. “You” in particular? How cute! Will the application of the rules be suspended just because of “you”, darling? Of course not. I think it is more appropriate, for the sake of artistic expression, to say that the gods do not tend to our wellness in particular, either individually or collectively, but to the cosmic balance at-large. The rest is your problem. If, for example, you do not account for the mechanics of the living universe that you are a part of, and if you thus proceed to destroy the elements of it whose functioning you do not understand, then no god will come to your rescue once calamity inevitably strikes.

  • Josh Withers ☛ On this flight home from Sydney I achieve Qantas Lifetime Gold status.

    14,000 status credits means

  • BoingBoing ☛ Eight gas turbines turned a Virginia suburb into a noise zone

    Loudoun County calls itself "Data Center Alley." It hosts 200. Vantage was supposed to run the turbines temporarily, but Dominion Energy told the company it would be three years before it could connect to the grid. County officials didn't realize Vantage was "running in island mode" — generating all its own power on-site — until the turbines were already operating. County VP Michael Turner: "There are no zoning rules to cover this."

  • Politico LLC ☛ A data center opened next door. Then came the high-pitched whine.

    Shaw’s experience is a possible cautionary tale for President Donald Trump, who is pitching a new wave of data-center-specific power plants as the solution to easing voters’ anxieties about the economic costs of the artificial intelligence boom. A pledge he signed last Wednesday with leaders of Amazon, Google, OpenAI and other tech giants calls for data companies to “build, bring, or buy the new generation resources and electricity needed to satisfy their new energy demands,” while “paying the full cost of those resources.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Iran war sends oil prices soaring. These countries are better protected thanks to renewables

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] India news: 'No plans to increase fuel prices'

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Iran war: How long before Gulf nations stop pumping oil?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Iran war roils oil trade, casting doubt on US fossil fuel push

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Germany news: Volkswagen to cut 50,000 jobs by 2030

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Germany news: Pilots at Lufthansa to stage two-day strike

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Disruption hits undersea power cable between Finland and Sweden

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] EU chief: Phasing out nuclear power was 'strategic mistake'

    • University of Michigan ☛ Ann Arbor Public Schools receives grant for electric buses

      AAPS, which received the most of any school district, has a goal of transitioning all of its buses to electric vehicles by 2035.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Howard Oakley ☛ Natural history paintings of Bruno Liljefors 1

      Bruno Liljefors was born in Uppsala, in the east of Sweden, in the same year as Anders Zorn. He doesn’t appear to have been as precocious a painter, and started his studies at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm four years later than Zorn, in 1879. He left the Academy after three years, and went to Dusseldorf to learn to paint animals.

• Finance

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-03-11 [Older] The Day Million-Dollar Earners Get Richer by Stiffing Social Security

  • Jensen Huang calls out CEOs laying off workers in the name of AI: ‘You’re out of imagination.’ Why he’s questioning Nvidia’s biggest customers [Ed: Mr. Circular Financing, selling a Ponzi scheme to keep demand for GPUs subsidised by the seller. Fake visionaries propped up by bribed publishers to hype up a bubble waiting to implode and take down the whole economy.]

    Jensen Huang had a message for the tech industry's wave of AI-driven layoffs this week and it wasn't polite. Sitting down with Jim Cramer at Nvidia's GTC conference in California on Tuesday, the company’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) founder and CEO was asked why tech giants keep announcing job cuts and crediting his chips as the reason: AI is letting us do more with less, the logic goes, so we need fewer people.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Pivot to AI ☛ OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX to trash stock market IPOs for 2026

    These three listings will give the investors their desired payoff — it’ll provide a few actual dollars, but mostly it’ll give them a high valuation of company stock to write in the books. The analyst note talks about “exit value”, which is not quite the same thing as money.

  • BoingBoing ☛ 4chan responded to a UK fine with a hamster picture

    The fine breaks down into three parts: £450,000 for failing to implement age checks that would prevent children from seeing pornography, £50,000 for failing to assess the risk of illegal material on the site, and £20,000 for failing to set out protections from criminal content in its terms of service.

  • BBC ☛ 4Chan responds to £520,000 Ofcom fine with AI picture of hamster

    The fines also include £50,000 for failing to assess the risk of illegal material being published and a further £20,000 for failing to set out how it protects users from criminal content.

    4Chan has refused to pay all previous fines from Ofcom.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ The AI fake news tsunami and MND Kids: Our CEO's take

      Yet these clickbait stories and videos “worked” well — devastatingly well. In a world of scrolling images that we often look at for just a second, they worked to create misinformation and misunderstanding, frighten people, and ultimately resulted in massive cancellations by visitors to Mexico. I have talked to people in the tourism and real estate sectors from across the country — Oaxaca, the Riviera Maya, Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta — who have all lamented the significant shock to their businesses that were suffered as a result of the “post-Mencho” fake news media circus. Real livelihoods, real financial losses — all caused by fake content created and spread in minutes.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Meduza ☛ The Kremlin appears to be blocking Telegram. Meduza asked its Russia-based readers how well the crackdown is working.

    An overwhelming majority of our Russia-based readers reported problems with Telegram: 88 percent of the 7,439 people who responded to our survey said the app doesn’t function properly. For 17 percent, it doesn’t work at all. For the largest share — 46 percent — it still runs, but slowly and unreliably.

    Another quarter say the issues come and go. But for an app meant to keep people connected, even intermittent failures can feel almost like a full block.

  • New York Times ☛ Internet Blackout Keeps Iranians From Reaching Loved Ones During Nowruz Holiday

    Three weeks have passed since Iran’s [Internet] blackout came into effect, according to the watchdog organization NetBlocks. The group said in a social media post on Saturday that only a few circumvention tools were still functioning, as authorities intensify the crackdown on satellite use and virtual private networks designed to bypass restrictions.

  • EFF ☛ FCC Chair Carr’s Threats to Punish Broadcasters Are Unconstitutional

    Everyone agrees that news reporting should strive for accuracy, but Carr’s threats have little do with that. Instead, his allegations of "falsity" are a proxy for retaliation based on (1) Carr’s subjective policy disagreements; (2) any criticism of Trump and the administration broadly; (3) treatment of anything that is not the official US government line about the Iran War as “false.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • NL Times ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] DPG Media tightens security after "disturbed" man damages Duivendrecht headquarters

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Discrimination is a widespread phenomenon in Germany

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Australia: 5 Iran national team players granted asylum

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

  • Scheerpost ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] The United States Is On The Path To Fascism; How To Change Course

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico week in review: USMCA, digital economy and record heat

    The most consequential development of the week for Mexico’s economic future was the formal launch of USMCA review negotiations. Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard sat down with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in Washington on Wednesday, with both sides marking the official start of talks that will shape North American trade for years to come. Canada is expected to join the process in May. Mexico’s stated priorities are the removal of U.S. tariffs on automotive, steel and aluminum. By Thursday, Sheinbaum said her government had responded point-by-point to the 54 non-tariff barriers raised by Washington, declaring the majority of concerns settled.

• Copyrights

  • EFF ☛ 2026-03-10 [Older] Copyright Bullying vs. Religious Freedom

  • BoingBoing ☛ Britannica sues OpenAI for scraping nearly 100,000 articles

    There's also a trademark angle. Britannica alleges Lanham Act violations when ChatGPT produces hallucinated information and falsely attributes it to Britannica, presenting made-up facts as if they came from the encyclopedia.

  • TechCrunch ☛ The dictionary sues OpenAI | TechCrunch

    Britannica also accuses OpenAI of violating copyright laws when it generates outputs that contain “full or partial verbatim reproductions” of its content and when the AI lab uses its articles in ChatGPT’s RAG (retrieval augmented generation) workflow. OpenAI’s RAG tool is how the LLM scans the web or other databases for newly updated information when responding to a query. Britannica also alleges that OpenAI violates the Lanham Act, a trademark statute, when it generates made-up hallucinations and attributes them falsely to the publisher.

    “ChatGPT starves web publishers like [Britannica] of revenue by generating responses to users’ queries that substitute, and directly compete with, the content from publishers like [Britannica],” the lawsuit reads. Britannica also alleges ChatGPT’s hallucinations jeopardize “the public’s continued access to high-quality and trustworthy online information.”

  • Engadget ☛ Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI for copyright and trademark infringement

    Along with claims of copyright violations, Britannica argued that OpenAI was also responsible for trademark infringement. According to the lawsuit, ChatGPT generates "made-up content or 'hallucinations' and falsely attributes them" to Encyclopedia Britannica. The lawsuit doesn't specify an amount for monetary damages, but Britannica is also seeking an injunction to prevent OpenAI from repeating these accusations.

  • Reuters ☛ Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI over AI training

    Britannica's lawsuit said that ​OpenAI unlawfully copied nearly ​100,000 of ⁠its articles to train GPT large language models. The complaint said that ChatGPT produces "near-verbatim" copies of Britannica's ​encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions and other content, diverting ​users who ⁠would otherwise visit its websites. Britannica also accused OpenAI of infringing its trademarks by implying that it has permission to reproduce its material ⁠and wrongfully ​citing Britannica in false AI "hallucinations."

  • Futurism ☛ Encyclopedia Britannica Hits OpenAI With Scary Lawsuit

    In the complaint, which Reuters reported on Monday, Britannica claimed that OpenAI unlawfully copied nearly 100,000 of its online articles and encyclopedia and dictionary entries to teach its GPT family of models. ChatGPT will even produce “near-verbatim” copies of its entries and dictionary definitions, it alleged providing several examples, something that is commonly observed across many chatbots.

    But more than that, OpenAI “cannibalized” Britannica’s web traffic by showing ChatGPT users an AI-generated summary of its content, Britannica said, hurting its bottom line.

  • Heise ☛ Copyright: Encyclopaedia Britannica sues OpenAI over AI training

    Britannica's action against OpenAI is one of numerous legal disputes that media companies and authors have initiated against tech corporations because they use their material to train AI models without authorization. OpenAI repeatedly faces accusations of copyright infringement. The New York Times accuses the company of having unlawfully used articles from the newspaper for AI training. The parent company of PCMag and IGN, the media house Ziff Davis, also sued OpenAI for copyright infringement, as did several major Indian media outlets and a coalition of major Canadian media houses.

  • Civil Society Alliances for Digital Empowerment ☛ Encyclopaedia Britannica sues OpenAI over alleged use of its content to train AI models

    Encyclopaedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in a federal court in Manhattan, accusing the company of improperly using their copyrighted materials to train AI models.

    The complaint, reported on 16 March 2026, claims that OpenAI used articles from Britannica’s online encyclopedia as well as dictionary entries from Merriam-Webster to train its large language models, including the chatbot ChatGPT.

  • The Verge ☛ Encyclopedia Britannica is suing OpenAI for allegedly ‘memorizing’ its content with ChatGPT | The Verge

    The lawsuit goes on to include examples of responses from OpenAI’s models side by side with Britannica’s text, in which entire passages appear to match word for word. Britannica also claims that OpenAI has been “cannibalizing” its web traffic by generating responses that “substitute, or directly compete” with Britannica’s content, rather than directing users to its website the way a traditional search engine would.