Leftovers

• Victor Kropp ☛ 15 Years of kropp.name

  On February 1, 2011, I acquired kropp.name. According to the whois data, it’s been registered 10 years before, but unused. Since then, it’s been my personal homepage and my Internet identity.

  I don’t have any screenshots of old pages, and the Git history dates back to April 2012. So the first few years are lost to time. But thanks to the wonderful Wayback Machine I could still take a look at them.

• Mark Hysted ☛ things I might dump in 2026 - april update

  In late 2025 I put together a list of things I would dump in 2026. Three months of the year are done, so how have I been getting on? A mixed bag: [...]

• Kev Quirk ☛ Why Have a Dedicated Music Device?

  While moving to a local library is something that I've thought about many times, I don't understand why people are buying these little music players.

  The big selling points generally seem to be: [...]

• Caio Bianchi ☛ The Downfall and Enshittification of Microsoft in 2026

  For years, Microsoft survived on inertia. Windows was the default. Office was the default. GitHub, after the acquisition, became the default forge for software teams. That kind of position lets a company coast for a long time.

  In 2026, Microsoft looks less like a platform steward and more like a company trying to squeeze every surface it owns for one more strategic advantage, usually AI-shaped, often at the expense of product quality. That is the heart of enshittification: the gradual replacement of user value with company priorities, while still insisting the user is being helped.

• Wired ☛ John Perry Barlow, JFK Jr., and a Night of Grief I Can’t Forget

  Barlow, who died in 2018 at age 70, was known for many things. He was the self-described junior lyricist of the Grateful Dead, a proselytizer of the Internet, cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a networker nonpareil. Not to mention a key figure in WIRED’s early days. He was also among the closest friends of the so-called American prince, the son of our martyred president. The friendship was no secret—Barlow was an inveterate name-dropper. Still, the pairing was fascinating and said something about both parties.

• Unmitigated Risk ☛ The Illusion of Constant Acceleration

  What I think is closer to the truth is that we have gotten used to confusing motion with progress, and delay with inevitability. Some things are moving very quickly. Others are barely moving at all. We treat the former as inevitable and the latter as unavoidable.

  Neither is true.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] The revolution in dinosaur science started 50 years ago – here’s what we have learned

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Why has it taken so long to return to the Moon?

  • The Register UK ☛ White House axes NASA budget as Artemis II breaks record

    'Proposal resurrects an existential threat to US leadership in space science and exploration'

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ The Late Apollo 8 and 13 Commander Jim Lovell Recorded Message for Artemis II Crew - 512 Pixels

    Here’s what Lovell said: [...]

  • Gannett ☛ Here's Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell's message to Artemis II before flyby

    Jim Lovell, who flew on two Apollo-era missions in 1968 and 1970, recorded a message for the astronauts before his death in 2025. They heard it before they became the first humans to fly near the moon in more than 50 years.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

    Furthermore, Trump appointees have already been strangling science by sharply reducing the rate at which research grants are approved. Here, for example, is the number of new grants approved by the National Science Foundation: [...]

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Space

    I miss the olden days when I could manage to give even one fractional shit about human spaceflight.

    When every news article didn't require navigating whether it was propaganda, or a grift, or both (because it's never science).

  • Chris ☛ Readership maths skills

    Many of you get notified of new articles via rss, and some of you stay tuned through the email newsletter. The email subscribers have, in the past three weeks, answered a survey on their understanding of maths topics. I asked three questions of increasing difficulty: [...]

• Career/Education

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Michigan lawmakers discuss new classroom cell phone ban with students

    Tisdel and Linting walked students through the thought process on why the need to bring a bill forward was necessary, backed by studies that supported banning cell phone use during class time, to the compromises that took place in crafting legislation that went from a “bell to bell” ban to one that limited cell phone use during instruction time only.

  • American Library Association ☛ Trump administration withdraws appeal, securing historic victory for libraries and IMLS

    On April 6, a federal court granted the Trump Administration’s request to withdraw its appeal of a federal judge’s earlier ruling that struck down the Administration’s dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)—the only federal agency dedicated to providing funding for the nation’s libraries.

    The dismissal brings to an end a lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of 21 states in April 2025. In a decision issued on November 21, 2025, the federal District Court for the District of Rhode Island nullified the administration’s actions to dismantle IMLS and permanently barred the administration from taking further steps to eliminate the agency.

• Hardware

  • The Register UK ☛ Intel trapped in Elon's reality distortion field

    In case you were wondering, Musk has never built a wafer fab before. Neither has any of his companies. So when the world's richest man revealed a pie-in-the-sky plan to build a factory capable of churning out enough chips to make his dream a reality, folks were understandably skeptical.

    Fabs are among the most complex and expensive facilities in the world. It can cost $30 billion and take as long as five years to bring a modestly-sized facility online, and that's if you already know what you're doing.

  • Hackaday ☛ A History On The “Impossible” VLIW Computing

    A computer does one thing at a time, even if it feels like it’s doing multiple things at once. In reality, it’s just switching between tasks very quickly. But a VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) computer is different. Today, [Asianometry] tells us about VLIW computing and its history.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Derek Thompson ☛ Why 'Cost Disease' Is the Secret Force Behind America's Toxic Solitude

    Look across the U.S. economy. Cinemas are fighting to stay relevant, but Netflix is a growing juggernaut. Restaurants feel squeezed, but DoorDash has healthy profit margins.

    This is a consistent pattern. Companies in the business of bringing people together for shared experiences are struggling. Meanwhile, products that increase the time we spend alone are doing great.

  • Allen Downey ☛ Trust and Well-Being

    In a previous article, I claimed that Young adults are not very happy. Now the World Happiness Report 2026 has confirmed that young people in North America and Western Europe are less happy than they were fifteen years ago, and less happy than previous generations.

    In this article, we’ll look at results from three related questions in the General Social Survey (GSS): [...]

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ OpenInfra General Manager on sovereignty and kill switches

    Sovereignty was a big topic was at last week's Kubecon, and Thierry Carrez, the General Manager of the OpenInfra Foundation, shared strong feelings around it that included raising the idea that tech companies might be forced by their countries' governments to deploy "kill switches."

  • Wired ☛ Iran-Linked [Attackers] Are Sabotaging US Energy and Water Infrastructure

    In a joint advisory published Tuesday, a group of US agencies including the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned that a group of [attackers] affiliated with the Iranian government has targeted industrial control devices used in a series of critical infrastructure targets including in the energy sector, water and wastewater utilities, and unspecified “government facilities.” According to the agencies, the [attackers] have targeted programmable logic controllers (PLCs)—a type of device designed to allow digital control of physical machinery—in those facilities, including those sold by industrial tech firm Rockwell Automation, with the apparent intention of sabotaging their systems.

  • Six Colors ☛ A PC user spends two weeks with the MacBook Neo

    When we bought her that laptop for personal use a year or so back, price was one of the primary drivers—until the MacBook Neo, the $500-ish computer range was a market in which Apple simply didn’t compete. But when the Neo arrived last month, I thought this seemed like an ideal time to see what would happen if we took advantage of Apple’s two-week return period and tried to replace her personal PC with a Mac. So, I ran down to our Apple Store one Sunday and picked up an Indigo MacBook Neo with 512GB of storage for her to put through its paces.

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Russia [Breached] Routers to Steal Microsoft Office Tokens

    Hackers linked to Russia’s military intelligence units are using known flaws in older Internet routers to mass harvest authentication tokens from Microsoft Office users, security experts warned today. The spying campaign allowed state-backed Russian [attackers] to quietly siphon authentication tokens from users on more than 18,000 networks without deploying any malicious software or code.

  • PC World ☛ Why the FCC's router crackdown could leave you stuck with older Wi-Fi

    The FCC’s March decision to block Wi-Fi consumer routers made or designed on foreign soil immediately crippled the market: virtually all routers are made or designed overseas, either by foreign companies or contract manufacturers.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Why AI health chatbots won’t make you better at diagnosing yourself – new research

    • The Nation ☛ “The Nation” Is Siding With Humanity

      So far, however, Congress has tended to sideline itself, while the president and his administration rush to embrace the financial overlords during this transformative moment. That embrace is so shameless, so transparent, that messages and images emanating from the White House seem like dystopian cinema. “The future of AI is ‘personified,’” first lady Melania Trump declared at a March 25 White House event where she appeared with robots and asked Americans to “imagine a humanoid educator named Plato” replacing teachers.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Which journalists and news outlets are most cited by AI?

      Specialist journalists and publications appear to be among those most likely to be cited in AI answers.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Expert maps out more than 80 different Microsoft Copilot products, but there may be more than 100 — 'What happens when you name everything Copilot,' an AI consultant mapped out the myriad products

      So, we have a chart of 80 Copilots, and who knows what the final figure may be, and how many more Bannerman can uncover?

    • PC World ☛ 80 Copilots later, Microsoft is finally confronting the mess

      PCWorld reports that researcher Tey Bannerman discovered 80 distinct instances of Microsoft’s Copilot brand across various products and services.

      This extensive branding creates significant fragmentation and potential user confusion, despite each Copilot serving specific functions within different apps like Dynamics 365 and GitHub.

    • TechCrunch ☛ Copilot is ‘for entertainment purposes only,’ according to Microsoft’s terms of use

      “Copilot is for entertainment purposes only,” the company warned. “It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk.”

    • Medium ☛ Why Microsoft Says Copilot Is “For Entertainment Only” (And Why Engineers Should Care) | by Sebastian Buzdugan | Apr, 2026 | Medium

      From a lawyer’s point of view, that phrase is a shield. From an engineer’s point of view, it is a constraint.

      If you are using Copilot to write code, draft incident reports, or help with architecture, you are already operating inside that constraint.

      You just might not be treating it that way.

    • PC World ☛ Microsoft says Copilot AI is intended for 'entertainment purposes'

      Microsoft states in its terms of service that its Copilot AI tool is intended solely for “entertainment purposes” and should not be used for important decisions or advice, reports Tom’s Hardware. The company also warns that AI can make mistakes, provide misleading answers, and may not always work as intended. “Use Copilot at your own risk.”

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Cybersecurity in the Age of Instant Software

      AI is changing cybersecurity as well. In particular, AI systems are getting better at finding and patching vulnerabilities in code. This has implications for both attackers and defenders, depending on the ways this and related technologies improve.

      In this essay, I want to take an optimistic view of AI’s progress, and to speculate what AI-dominated cybersecurity in an age of instant software might look like. There are a number of unknowns that will factor into how the arms race between attacker and defender might play out.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Associated Press dumps journalists for AI

      The Associated Press is getting rid of journalists and pivoting a bit more toward AI. It offered 120 journalists a buyout offer on Monday and it wants to cut 5% globally. [AP]

      The AP ignored a request for discussion from the union, the News Media Guild, last week.

    • Rob Bowley ☛ METR’s developer productivity research: 2026 update

      METR believe GenAI coding productivity is improving – but say they can no longer measure it reliably with this study design and are reworking their approach. Personally I don’t see how you can practically design an effective controlled experiment considering everyone uses it now.

    • Mike Brock ☛ Garbage In, Garbage Out

      Last month, a survey of 59 AI safety summit attendees reached a conclusion that surprised almost no one who has been paying attention: risks from aligned AI — power concentration, authoritarian lock-in — deserve far more attention than they currently receive. Strong consensus across the field’s leading thinkers. The people most focused on whether AI will do what we want have identified, as their primary concern, the question of who “we” is.

      They are right. But they do not yet see why.

    • Kane Narraway ☛ AI Tools Are Eroding Your Zero Trust Foundations | Kane Narraway

      We’ve spent the last decade building zero trust architectures. Device posture checks, tiered application access, network segmentation, conditional access policies. All designed around a core principle: don’t implicitly trust anything, verify everything, and limit the blast radius when something goes wrong.

      AI tools are quietly undoing a lot of that work.

    • BoingBoing ☛ OpenAI pulls plug on Sora after realizing it built a money incinerator

      OpenAI didn't kill its splashy AI video app, Sora, because of copyright chaos or "focus" issues; it shut it down because it was chewing through obscene amounts of compute while users quickly lost interest in the endless stream of AI-generated junk.

    • Futurism ☛ Sam Altman Opens Up About Telling CEO of Disney That It Had All Been Smoke and Mirrors

      And there was also the not-so-surreal: photorealistic depictions of people shoplifting, and other faked crimes, proliferated. The former raised significant concerns over potential copyright infringement, while the latter fueled discussions over the app being yet another source of effortless misinformation.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Register UK ☛ Brits are falling out of love with the [Internet]

      But nine out of ten [Internet] users are still using at least one social media platform, rising to 97 percent among those aged 16 to 34. Messaging and calling remain the most common activities, although younger adults are far more likely to watch videos than older people.

      Only 59 percent of respondents now believe that the benefits of being outweigh the risks, down from 72 percent last year. Just 36 percent of social media users say these services are good for their mental health, and 67 percent report spending too long online most days.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ Cyberattack hits Northern Ireland’s centralized school network, disrupting access for thousands

      The vast majority of schools in the region are connected to C2K, which provides online services including access to teaching materials, assignments, exam revision and communication tools.

    • BBC ☛ Cyber attack: Pupils back to school in holidays to reset passwords

      Some schools have opened during the Easter holiday to help pupils taking GCSEs, AS and A-levels who have been affected by IT problems.

    • Dark Reading ☛ Storm-1175 Deploys Medusa Ransomware at 'High Velocity'

      "The threat actor's high operational tempo and proficiency in identifying exposed perimeter assets have proven successful, with recent intrusions heavily impacting healthcare organizations, as well as those in the education, professional services, and finance sectors in Australia, United Kingdom, and United States," the blog post stated.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Hasbro confirms cyberattack, recovery weeks away

      Hasbro, the company behind Transformers, Dungeons & Dragons, Monopoly, Magic: The Gathering, and My Little Pony, confirmed a cyberattack after detecting unauthorized network access on March 28 and disclosed the incident to the SEC on April 1. The company took some systems offline, hired third-party cybersecurity experts, and says recovery could take "several weeks" while it assesses the full scope.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • The New Stack ☛ Open-source leaders question whether Meta's Alexandr Wang will truly give away its AI models

      Wang will no doubt have taken all these factors into account before deciding to open-source a selection of new AI models.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Dark Reading ☛ Axios Attack Shows Complex Social Engineering Is Industrialized

      The attack on the popular NPM package Axios is just one of many targeting maintainers and has shone a light on how threat actors can scale sophisticated social engineering campaigns.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ EU Parliament Blocks Mass-Scanning of Our Chats—What's Next?

      But no one should celebrate just yet. We said there is more to it, and voluntary scanning is a key part. Unlike in the U.S., where there is no comprehensive federal privacy law, the general and indiscriminate scanning of people’s messages is not legal in the EU without a specific legal basis. The e-Privacy derogation law, which gave (limited) cover for such activities, has now expired. Does that mean mass scanning will stop overnight?

    • Ludlow Institute ☛ Is the Government Running a Dragnet on VPN Users?

      In March 2013, something interesting happened that almost nobody noticed at the time, but became enormous news three months later.

      Senator Ron Wyden was questioning James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, in an open hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Wyden asked him a simple question: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

      To understand why this question mattered, you have to understand what the NSA is supposed to be. The National Security Agency is a foreign intelligence agency. Its job is to spy on foreign governments, foreign militaries, and foreign nationals abroad. This kind of work would be flatly unconstitutional if pointed inward. Domestic investigations are supposed to belong to the FBI, which has to play by Fourth Amendment rules and requires warrants, probable cause, and judicial oversight.

    • Wired ☛ Europe Gets Serious About Age Verification Online

      A year later, in March 2026, the investigation reached its preliminary conclusions. The European Commission determined that all four sites allow minors to access their services by relying on simple one-click confirmation pages. Regulation found that mechanism to be completely inadequate in relation to the legal requirements. The same finding was made for the social media platform Snapchat, which, according to another Commission investigation, allegedly may have violated the DSA by exposing minors to attempts at grooming and recruitment for criminal purposes, as well as to information on the sale of illegal goods, such as drugs, or age-restricted products, such as e-cigarettes and alcohol.

    • Kev Quirk ☛ Obfuscating My Contact Email

      The short version is that spambots scrape your HTML looking for email addresses. If your address is sitting there in plain text, they'll hoover it up. But if you encode each character as a HTML entity, the browser still renders and uses it correctly, while most bots haven't got a clue what they're looking at.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ New Mexico's Meta Ruling and Encryption

      Mike Masnick points out that the recent New Mexico court ruling against Meta has some bad implications for end-to-end encryption, and security in general: [...]

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Hong Kong Police Can Force You to Reveal Your Encryption Keys

      According to a new law, the Hong Kong police can demand that you reveal the encryption keys protecting your computer, phone, hard drives, etc.—even if you are just transiting the airport.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Your boss wants to use surveillance data to cut your wages

      What industry calls "personalized pricing" is really surveillance pricing: using digital tools' flexibility to change the price for each user, and using surveillance data to guess the worst price you'll accept:

      https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/

      At root, surveillance pricing allows companies to revalue both your savings and your labor. If you get charged $2 for something I only pay $1 for, the seller is essentially reaching into your bank account and revaluing the dollars in it at 50 cents apiece. If you get paid $1 for a job that I make $2 for, then the boss is valuing your labor at 50% of my labor: [...]

  • Confidentiality

    • Danny McClelland ☛ How I use VeraCrypt to keep my data secure

      I’ve been using VeraCrypt for encrypted vaults for a while now. I mount and dismount vaults multiple times a day, and typing out the full command each time gets old fast: --text, --mount, --pim=0, --keyfiles="", --protect-hidden=no. There’s nothing wrong with the CLI, it’s just repetitive, and repetitive is what aliases are for.

• Defence/Aggression

  • International Business Times ☛ 2026-04-05 [Older] Million Worth US Drone on Sale for as Low as $100—Iraqi Kids Sell Downed UAV on TikTok Live, Viral Post Reveals

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ A call to action on Democracy Day

    The Vermont Democracy Alliance (a coalition of Vermont pro-democracy organizations) and Vermont Indivisible are calling on voters to demand that state legislators pass legislation that will protect Vermonters from federal overreach. The two groups are organizing a Democracy Day rally at the State House on Thursday, April 16, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

  • TruthOut ☛ Trump’s Genocidal Threats on Iran Are Enabled by a Vast Apparatus of Destruction

    Somehow, in a war already bent on turning Iran into a failed state, Donald Trump’s threats against the country have become increasingly disturbing. For days now, Trump has threatened to bomb key civilian infrastructure in Iran, from bridges to power plants. On April 5, in a terrifying screed, he wrote: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped in one, in Iran.” He went on to say, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

  • CS Monitor ☛ Iran war: Do Trump’s threats to Iran amount to a war crime?

    The president’s threats have raised concerns among legal and political observers across the spectrum – including more than 100 legal experts who signed a letter of concern – that he is signaling his willingness to order the U.S. military to violate international law.

  • TruthOut ☛ Dems Call for 25th Amendment Remedy to Remove Trump — Is It Plausible?

    The 25th Amendment deals with presidential succession, detailing who becomes president in the event of a president’s death, illness, or other situation rendering them incapable of serving. Section 4 of the amendment provides a means for the vice president and the cabinet to remove a president if they deem them unfit to serve.

    That section reads: [...]

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Trump’s Goal Is to Suppress Votes, Not Prevent Election Fraud

    Donald Trump says the SAVE Act is about stopping noncitizens from voting. But the real target is the millions of working-class citizens who don't have an updated passport or paper birth certificate sitting in a drawer.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Iran: President Trump’s apocalyptic threats of large-scale civilian devastation demand urgent global action to prevent atrocity crimes

    “International humanitarian law strictly prohibits direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects. The US President’s threat of extermination and irreparable destruction brazenly shreds core rules of international humanitarian law, with potentially catastrophic consequences for over 90 million people. It may constitute a threat to commit genocide, a crime defined by the Genocide Convention and by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as committing one or more defined acts ’with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.’

  • Wired ☛ The Hack That Exposed Syria’s Sweeping Security Failures

    “We still do not know exactly what happened. Whether the accounts were directly hacked or accessed through weak or reused credentials, the conclusion is much the same: very poor digital security practices,” says Noura Aljizawi, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, a research organization that monitors threats to civil society in the digital age.

    The ministry said it had coordinated with account administrators and X to “restore control and strengthen security,” promising new regulatory measures soon. The perpetrators have not been publicly identified.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-04-04 [Older] Donald Cheeto Mussolini's Ukraine Peace Move Is Plot to Cripple China, Modern Nostradamus Claims

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-03 [Older] Ukraine: Kharkiv under repeated attack on 1,500th day of war

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Ukraine: Top EU diplomats mark 4 years since Bucha massacre

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-06 [Older] Russians living in exile cope with grief far from home

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-06 [Older] Ukraine: 3 killed in Odesa, Kyiv targets Russian oil exports

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-05 [Older] In Estonia, rumors are circulating that the city of Narva wants to secede and join Russia. Is it true?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-05 [Older] Serbia, Hungary say explosives found at Russian gas pipeline

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-04 [Older] Ukraine: 14 people killed in 'massive' Russian attack on 1,500th day of war

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-04-04 [Older] White House App Reportedly Shares User Data With Third Parties and Relies on Russia-Founded Firm Linked to Staff Data Exposure

    • CPJ ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] CPJ, partners condemn Russia’s labeling of IWMF as ‘undesirable organization’

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-04-01 [Older] Russia expels Dutch journalist, cites ‘harassment’ of Russian reporters

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-01 [Older] Russian military plane crash in Crimea kills at least 29

    • HRW ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Russia: Internet Shutdowns Escalate

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Russian oil tanker docks in Cuba, the 1st since US blockade

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] WW3 Fears Erupt: Russia Accuses Britain of Masterminding 'Special Operation' in Baltic Sea

    • Truthdig ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Russian Oil Tanker Reaches Cuba

    • Scheerpost ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Declares ‘Cuba Is Finished’ While Letting Russian Oil Tanker Break Illegal US Blockade

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • TMZ ☛ Bill Gates to Testify in House Committee's Jeffrey Epstein Investigation

    Congressman Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), who sits on the House Oversight Committee, tells TMZ ... the former Microsoft boss will sit for a transcribed interview before the Committee on June 10.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump’s Office Of Legal Counsel Says Trump Doesn’t Need To Follow The Presidential Records Rules

    The Presidential Records Act was summoned into existence by Nixon’s resignation and his subsequent efforts to destroy records generated by his office as he was fumbling his way towards impeachment. It’s only fitting that the only president to challenge this law is someone who makes Nixon’s corruption look semi-competent.

    No one was asking — at least outside of the White House — for the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to weigh in on this law. But weigh in it did, tipping the scale heavily towards “Let Trump do whatever he wants,” despite Supreme Court precedent to the contrary. (h/t Jamal Greene)

  • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight and Historians Sue to Block Trump’s Effort to Evade Presidential Records Law - American Oversight

    American Oversight and the American Historical Association have filed suit challenging a sweeping memorandum from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that declared the Presidential Records Act (PRA) is unconstitutional and that President Donald Trump “need not further comply” with its requirements, effectively encouraging the president to violate federal law. The lawsuit argues that the memo relies on virtually no judicial authority and defies binding Supreme Court precedent outright, representing a radical attempt to nullify a law that has governed presidential records for nearly half a century.

    The memo reflects a broader push to concentrate power in the presidency, at the expense of the public’s right to know. If allowed to stand, the administration’s position could have sweeping consequences far beyond President Trump’s own records, threatening to upend decades of established law governing presidential transparency. Legal experts and historians warn that applying the opinion could block public access to hundreds of millions of records — including more than 700 million White House emails — and disrupt the established process for releasing records from prior administrations.

• Environment

  • The Register UK ☛ Shots fired over proposed datacenter in Indianapolis

    Ron Gibson, a city-county representative for Indianapolis's 8th District, was woken in the early hours of Monday by gunfire. He found that 13 shots were fired at his front door, and a note left on the doorstep reading "No data centers."

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Maine House advances data center moratorium

    The bill, LD 307, places a moratorium on data centers with a load of 20 megawatts or more. House lawmakers passed the bill by a vote of 82-62 Monday, advancing it to the Senate.

  • 404 Media ☛ Maine Is Close to Passing a Moratorium on New Datacenters

    Anger against datacenters is mounting across the country. The massive complexes aren’t good neighbors. They use public land, increase the electricity rates of everyone near them, and have negative effects on water quality and noise levels. The deals to construct them are sometimes cut in secret and local communities have little to no say in what’s being built near them. In Texas, a 6,000 acre datacenter plans to consume water from a dwindling aquifer to power nuclear power plants in the desert. In Michigan, a township is pushing back against a $1.2 billion AI datacenter meant to service America’s nuclear weapons scientists.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Maine Could be First State to Pause Data Center Construction

    The pause, which would last until November 2027, is meant to give regulators the chance to assess the impact those centers have on the environment and the electric grid, according to reason.com. The Maine House of Representatives recently passed House Bill 307 to prohibit “approval for the development, construction or operation of a data center with a load of 20 megawatts or more” anywhere in the state.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deseret Media ☛ Travelers will face limits on how many chargers they can carry as airlines try to reduce fire risks

      The rule aims to reduce lithium battery fire risks on flights, says Southwest's Dave Hunt.

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Data centers are straining the grid. Can they be forced to pay for it?

      This boom coincides with a dramatic rise in U.S. electricity prices, driven by inflation and the rising cost of adapting to wildfires, hurricanes, and other extreme weather. But these massive facilities have also strained the grid — and in some cases — contributed to rising prices. For instance, last year, an independent monitor for PJM, the grid operator that serves 13 northeastern states and Washington, D.C., projected that powering data centers would result in higher electricity generation costs, which would ultimately be passed on to consumers. And in cases where the buildout hasn’t yet led to price hikes, utilities and grid operators expect that it’s just a matter of time if tech companies follow through on their plans. Indeed, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimates that with data center electricity demand expected to double in the next five years, wholesale power prices could rise by as much as 50 percent.

    • [Old] Shippax ☛ AURORA BOTNIA now back in service with the largest RoPax battery installation to date | Shippax

      From the initial planning of Wasaline’s AURORA BOTNIA, the company set the target of achieving fully carbon-neutral operations by 2030 — something that will be achieved well ahead of time due to a recently signed biogas contract with Gasum and a FuelEU Maritime pooling agreement with Stena Line, the latter of which also acquired Wasaline in November last year with closing expected to take place at the beginning of this year.

    • [Old] Wasaline ☛ World’s largest battery capacity for a RoPax vessel installed at Aurora Botnia – Wasaline

      Wasaline has successfully completed sea trials following a major battery upgrade on board Aurora Botnia, which now features the largest battery capacity ever installed on a RoPax vessel worldwide.

      The vessel’s battery capacity has been expanded from 2.2 MWh to an impressive 12.6 MWh. The upgraded system has been approved for operation in traffic by DNV.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Chuck Grimmett ☛ A few thoughts on DEC NY’s 2026 trout stocking

      I’m intrigued by the rainbow trout below the Croton dam, in the east branch, and in the Titicus River. Last year the Titicus was so low it wasn’t worth fishing. With plenty of rain this spring it might be worth visiting in May. Below the Croton dam is good in June, because the NYC DEP has to release cold water through the end of June, when everywhere else is starting to heat up.

  • Overpopulation

    • Deseret Media ☛ Weber Basin Water Conservancy District responds to drought with 20% restriction

      With 98% of the state now in drought, the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District is asking all users to cut back on their usage this coming season by 20%.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Cyble Inc ☛ EU CSAM Law Lapse Puts Child Safety At Online Risks

    The main issue lies in the expiration of a temporary EU legal framework that allowed online service providers to scan private communications for CSAM voluntarily. This legislation, originally introduced as a derogation under ePrivacy rules in 2021, officially lapsed on April 3, 2026.

    With lawmakers failing to agree on an extension, technology companies now face an uncertain legal environment that could undermine years of progress in combating child sexual exploitation online.

  • Rebecca Solnit ☛ Between the Impossible and the Inevitable: The Case for Defiance (aka Never F**king Surrender)

    The cake, the future is being made in the present, including by how we show up or fail to. If we know what's going to happen, we cannot participate in deciding what happens, and vice-versa. To pretend to have the power of being in charge of the former is to surrender the motivation to impact the latter in an active and intentional way. It's to give up the very real power we have for a pretense at a power that is really merely a posture. And yet claims we have no power to impact what happens are nevertheless an intervention in what will happen, by discouraging participation, by encouraging passivity, surrender, acquiescence. If you insist that a given outcome is inevitable, you are lobbying against resistance. At best, you've surrendered; at worst you're complicit in the outcome.

  • Karl Bode ☛ Tim Cook Is An Embarrassing Coward

    Apple CEO Tim Cook represents soulless, rudderless contrition, unburdened by consistent ethics or any sort of overt moral compass, desperate to delude you into believing that fascism can be a reasonable partner open to meaningful dialogue.

  • Bitdefender ☛ Life imprisonment for Cambodian scam compound operators - but will it make a difference?

    Cambodia has taken a dramatic step in its fight against scam compounds that have imprisoned innocent people, and forced them to work as virtual slaves defrauding victims via the [Internet] around the world with romance scams and dodgy investment schemes.

    But with Amnesty International simultaneously revealing that state-licensed casinos are directly linked to torture and trafficking, serious questions linger about whether enforcement will match the rhetoric.

  • The Nation ☛ The Pentagon Is Going “AI First”

    The new AI acceleration strategy will give even greater power and influence to private companies by increasing the reliance on AI funding from venture-capital firms, forming new partnerships with emerging military-tech companies, and drawing up open-ended contracts to help ensure that military systems can incorporate the latest technology within weeks.

    The shift in approach is already under way: The Army just awarded Salesforce a 10-year, $5.6 billion contract to provide AI-enabled systems for the so-called Department of War, which the company says will “increase mission readiness” by consolidating fragmented data sources into “one interoperable platform,” allowing war fighters to make “quicker, more effective decisions.”

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Kyle Kingsbury ☛ The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess

      Around 2019 I attended a talk by one of the hyperscalers about their new cloud hardware for training Large Language Models (LLMs). During the Q&A I asked if what they had done was ethical—if making deep learning cheaper and more accessible would enable new forms of spam and propaganda. Since then, friends have been asking me what I make of all this “AI stuff”. I’ve been turning over the outline for this piece for years, but never sat down to complete it; I wanted to be well-read, precise, and thoroughly sourced. A half-decade later I’ve realized that the perfect essay will never happen, and I might as well get something out there.

      This is bullshit about bullshit machines, and I mean it. It is neither balanced nor complete: others have covered ecological and intellectual property issues better than I could, and there is no shortage of boosterism online. Instead, I am trying to fill in the negative spaces in the discourse. “AI” is also a fractal territory; there are many places where I flatten complex stories in service of pithy polemic. I am not trying to make nuanced, accurate predictions, but to trace the potential risks and benefits at play.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Letter to the Editor: Who is left out of Open Town Meeting? | Opinion

    To the Editor: As April 11 approaches, it’s worth asking: who is effectively silenced before the meeting even begins?

  • The Nation ☛ Why Fascists Fear Free Speech

    Evidence of that repression is quietly mounting all around us. Among the more alarming examples is the federal government’s recent threat to revoke broadcasting licenses if the administration finds content displeasing.

  • CPJ ☛ Egypt arrests commentator Ahmed Douma over article and posts

    “This is the sixth interrogation in less than two years in which political commentator Ahmed Douma has been accused of spreading false news, underscoring the systematic crackdown on writers and the press in Egypt,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Douma should be released immediately, and the charges against him dropped. Egyptian authorities must stop weaponizing ‘false news’ accusations to silence journalists.”

  • [Old] Neritam ☛ Facebook Accidentally Blocks Users From Posting About Linux

    DistroWatch reached out to Facebook. But initially, the company refused to relent.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ How US media consolidation endangers press freedom

    In particular, rather than keeping media consolidation in check, the agency has instead wielded its authority over broadcast licenses – often in clear violation of its own norms and regulations – so that a concentrated number of companies now control an expanding share of what Americans watch.

    This consolidation of outlets in the hands of a few owners – who have signaled willingness to comply editorially with the current US administration – carries significant implications for the public’s right to know.

    Here are five things you need to know about media consolidation and the threats it poses to press freedom in the United States: [...]

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Teen who attended L.A. 'No Kings' rally shot, blinded by DHS agent, attorney says

    “We’ve unfortunately seen in other instances where law enforcement has targeted the press with violence,” he told The Times. “Instead of targeting people who were throwing things into the crowd, they were targeting someone who was documenting and taking photos of the crowd.”

  • Federal News Network ☛ Former Voice of America employees call for ‘fork in the road’ agreements to be voided

    “The agency’s clear intent was to induce employees to accept these offers as an alternative to being separated by the RIF, and all appellants accepted the offers on that basis,” the plaintiffs wrote in their MSPB filing, obtained by Federal News Network. “Because both parties mistakenly believed the agency could conduct a RIF, the agreements were based upon a material mistake of fact and are voidable.”

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ APNIC Policy 101: How policy shapes operations — and how Policy Fellows are making participation easier

    Internet number resource (INR) policy determines how IPv4, IPv6, and Autonomous System Number (ASN) resources are managed and distributed across the Asia Pacific. Policy can sometimes seem abstract or administrative, but it has real consequences.

    Policy can affect routing, contactability during incidents, the accuracy of registry data, and how networks interact with the wider Internet.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Switzerland’s Goldilocks fiber

    Most people in the US can't get fiber at all, and if you can get it, it's probably 1Gbit, and available from a single provider (that's nearly my situation in Los Angeles, where I can buy 2Gbit symmetrical fiber from AT&T, who run a shared connection on old Worldcom fiber they've lit up). Some (very foolish) people say that Starlink represents a competitive alternative to fiber. This is nonsense – first, because Starlink is another natural monopoly (how many competing satellite constellations can we cram into stable orbits before they start smashing into each other?), and second, because satellite is millions of times slower than fiber: [...]

Monopolies/Monopsonies