Leftovers

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] Humans’ closest invertebrate ancestors date back much further than thought – how we discovered the fossils that show this

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] Our modern vision evolved from an ancient one-eyed worm creature

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] The world’s supply of helium is being threatened by the Iran war

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-01 [Older] Could a solar storm derail the Artemis II mission?

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-01 [Older] The unseen challenges of life on the Moon

• Proprietary

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] German public sector keen to end reliance on US tech

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] UK police question suspect after Derby car incident

  • India Today ☛ GoPro joins Oracle, Microsoft in layoffs, to cut 23 per cent global workforce

    American action-based camera maker GoPro has announced that it will be cutting a significant part of its workforce as part of an internal restructuring. The company plans to lay off almost a quarter of its employees in an effort to save costs and return to profitability.

• Security

  • 2026-04-06 [Older] Two data security incidents affected immigration law firms and their clients

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] Siemens SICAM 8 Products

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] Yokogawa CENTUM VP

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] Hitachi Energy Ellipse

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-01 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Anritsu Remote Spectrum Monitor

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] PX4 Autopilot

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

• Defence/Aggression

  • CBC ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] How a Montreal-based security firm stands to cash in on U.S. immigration crackdown

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Haiti: At least 70 killed in 'massacre,' says rights group

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] Finland reports drone crashes, alleges territorial violation

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] France: Two new arrests over foiled Bank of America attack

  • BBC ☛ Iran Strait of Hormuz warning adds to shipping uncertainty

    Ships in the Gulf have received a warning from Iran's navy that any vessels seeking to cross the Strait of Hormuz without permission "will be targeted and destroyed", the shipping brokerage firm SSY has confirmed to BBC Verify.

    A two-week ceasefire was agreed on Tuesday evening on the condition that "safe passage" through the narrow waterway is guaranteed - but only a few vessels have since crossed.

    The strait has become a focal point of the US-Israel war with Iran after Tehran effectively choked off one of the world's most important shipping lanes, carrying about a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas.

    The disruption, over the past five weeks, has sent shock waves across the world economy, pushing up energy prices and exposing just how reliant international supply chains are on the strait, which is only about 33km (21 miles) wide at its narrowest point.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Were Grandma and Grandpa Nazis?

  • HRW ☛ 2026-04-03 [Older] Deadly Attack in Nigeria Highlights Persistent Insecurity

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Germany: Conservatives link immigration with crime

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Paradox of Power: Judgment of Gender and Modern Warfare

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Pam Bondi Attempts to Duck Congressional Epstein Testimony

    President Donald Trump announced last week he had removed Bondi from her position. Bondi had borne the brunt of the fallout over the administration’s bungled attempts to keep large swaths of evidence related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein out of the public eye.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Trump Administration Is Trying to Erase Its Own History

    If the opinion stands, it will allow Trump to destroy the records of his administration’s actions, or take records with him at the end of his term. Combined with alleged violations of PRA in his first term, this could make Trump the most poorly documented president since at least Richard Nixon, and perhaps going back even further. (As my colleague Henry Grabar writes, the actual library part of his planned presidential library is an afterthought at best.) Yet Trump’s habit of making policy without deliberation, and often with stream-of-consciousness speeches and posts on social media, means that his administration is a paradox: simultaneously one of the most transparent and most opaque in American history.

  • American Oversight ☛ DOJ Proposal Would Shield Its Lawyers from Ethics Accountability

    DOJ’s proposed rule would give the attorney general sole discretion to effectively pause or block state bar investigations into ethical complaints against current and former DOJ lawyers, undermining longstanding systems of independent oversight and accountability. The department’s efforts come amid mounting concerns about the conduct of DOJ attorneys and increasing judicial skepticism of government representations in court, underscoring the need for independent ethical oversight.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Why Is the New York Times Laundering the Reputation of a Sleazy AI Startup?

    The Times should be retracting this story. Instead, when I opened its app this morning, it was featuring the story in its “In Case You Missed It” section.

  • Futurism ☛ Why Is the New York Times Laundering the Reputation of a Sleazy AI Startup That's Selling GLP-1s via a Dishonest Dumpster Fire of Fake Doctors, Phony Before-and-After Pictures, and Other Glaring Red Flags?

    The NYT‘s tech coverage is generally pretty solid. But the framing of its story, and what it left out, left us pretty stunned. That’s because back in May of last year, we ran our own investigation of Medvi — and not only was what we found far more disturbing than the NYT‘s credulous story let on, but the situation has gotten even worse since then.

  • Tedium ☛ The Puppeteer Behind The Fake GIMP Movie Trailer

    It was not only the perfect target for a parody, but its lead, a warthog puppet named Pork Johnson, was just as compelling as the idea itself. In fact, a scene from the fake film, showing the character’s shock as he catches his significant other using Photoshop, only confirmed that this was awesome.

    Strangely, its production values completely dwarfed its modest view count—which compelled me to figure out where this came from.

    And so I reached out to Dustin Grissom, a director and video editor with behind-the-scenes experience in Hollywood. He describes Pork Johnson as a labor of love, along with an important introduction to puppetry, an artform he hadn’t experimented with previously.

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ Moon Astronaut Captures Shot of Earth That Lets You See Its Razor-Thin Atmosphere Perfectly

    On December 7, 1972, NASA astronaut and Apollo 17 crew member Harrison Schmitt took a stunning photo of the entirety of the Earth, an image later dubbed “The Blue Marble.”

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Freshwater Fish Migrations Are Disappearing Across the Planet, Finds UN Report

    Dams, habitat loss and overfishing are causing freshwater fish around the world to disappear, reports the United Nations’ Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) in a global assessment. The report found that migratory freshwater fish populations worldwide have declined by about 81 percent since the 1970s. It also identified 325 species as candidates for urgent international conservation actions.

  • TruthOut ☛ Texas’s Tax Breaks for Data Centers May Be Largest for Any State in US

    Lawmakers approved the tax break more than a decade ago, when data centers were smaller and required fewer resources. From 2014 to 2022, the exemption amounted to between $5 million and $30 million in lost state revenue per year. By 2023, that skyrocketed to more than $150 million, and this year Texas is forgoing at least $1.3 billion — a number that is rapidly increasing every year, based on state projections.

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ xAI's Memphis Water Treatment Plant 'on an Indefinite Pause'

    Part of xAI’s deal with the city of Memphis included an $80 million greywater facility designed to reduce the amount of water the company needs for cooling its data centers. The Mid-South sits atop the Memphis Sand Aquifer that provides us with some of the very best water in the country. It is our best natural resource by far, and one that many people have worked hard to protect.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Adding tech to recycling is a nice idea in theory

    Anyway! This happens in Australian food courts too, and places like IKEA. Most have red bins for rubbish, and yellow bins for bottles and cans. Naturally, there’s a small subset of people who don’t care, and stuff their rubbish into the yellow bins which then some poor soul has to sort through after the fact. Ask me how I know how that feels!

  • Overpopulation ☛ New paper defends a pragmatic definition of overpopulation

    Distinguishing ecologically sustainable from excessive human populations is necessary to understand humanity’s environmental challenges and pursue our best options for addressing them. A new publication from TOP presents a definition of human overpopulation based on plausible scientific and ethical criteria, rather than wishful thinking.

  • CBC ☛ Federal Ghost Gear Fund to return, bringing hope to some organizations in the Maritimes

    Lost, abandoned or discarded fishing gear is a major source of plastic and litter in the ocean

  • India Times ☛ TikTok to build a second billion-euro data centre in Finland

    While Finland's defence ministry had approved the investment in 2024, politicians had not been informed. Finland's then-minister of economic affairs Wille Rydman last year called for the project to be "reconsidered" due to security concerns and lack of openness around the company's plans.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ Hybrid chip delivers 4x more current for AI data center power

      Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new chip architecture that could reshape how data centers handle power.

      The design focuses on improving how graphics processing units convert high-voltage electricity into the lower levels required for computation.

    • Hackaday ☛ Variable-Pitch Propellers For More Efficient Quadcopter

      Quadcopters tend to have very poor efficency because of their high disk loading. High disk loading– that is, how much weight each square meter of area swept by the propellers must carry–is almost unavoidable with conventinal quadcopters, which are controlled by throttling the four props. Make the propellers too big, and their inertia slows down that control loop, leading to stability problems. [rctestflight] had an idea to solve this, by borrowing a technology from the world of fixed-wing aviation: variable-pitch propellers.

    • The Nation ☛ A New Economic Superpower Could Spark a Retreat From Fossil Fuels

      Many of those governments will gather in Colombia on April 28 and 29 for a conference to begin a global transition away from oil, gas, and coal. Critically, the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels will not be governed by UN rules, which require consensus, but by majority rule, thus preventing a handful of countries from sabotaging progress as petro-states did at COP30. What’s more, the underlying terrain of this conference will no longer be principally politics but economics: not the words that canny negotiators can keep in or out of a diplomatic text but the implacable market forces that shape the world economy, including the potential emergence of a de facto economic superpower.

    • The Register UK ☛ Investors are going nuclear to keep UK's AI datacenters fed

      It points to the growth in power-hungry AI infrastructure in the UK, driven partly by the government's AI Opportunities Action Plan, published last year, in combination with "geopolitical energy volatility" as factors driving this trend.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Germany: Wolf bites woman in Hamburg

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Germany: Stranded humpback whale moving again

• Finance

  • NL Times ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Dockworkers plan nationwide strike over social security reforms

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] [Guest Post] The WTO's Tale of Two Dispute Systems [Ed: A rich people's kangaroo tribunal]

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] US trade chief lambasts WTO after failed talks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-04-05 [Older] [Guest post] The TRIPS non-violation moratorium has expired: What happened in Yaoundé, and what comes next

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Senegal: President signs off on LGBTQ law doubling maximum jail term for same-sex relations

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Serbian local elections: Is Vucic's party losing its grip?

  • The Independent UK ☛ American-born Pope Leo may not visit US while Trump is president after diplomat meeting disaster: report

    The American-born Pope has also pushed back after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has insisted on mixing his militant version of Christianity with his role as the top military official in the U.S.

    In March, Hegseth called on Americans to pray for U.S. victory in Iran "in the name of Jesus Christ." The comment did not sit well with the Pope, who noted that Jesus "does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them."

    On Easter Sunday, the Pope called for global peace.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Tech industry lays off nearly 80,000 employees in the first quarter of 2026 — almost 50% of affected positions cut due to AI

    78,557 workers in the tech industry have reportedly been laid off from January 1 to April 2026, with more than 76% of the affected positions located in the U.S. Nikkei Asia reports that 37,638 of these cuts, or 47.9%, have been attributed to the reduced need for human workers because of AI and workflow automation. Despite that, Cognizant Chief AI Officer Babak Hodjat says that it will still take more than a year before we completely see the impact of modern AI technologies on the workforce.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Lies, Damned Lies, and Cybersecurity Metrics

    Tim Brown, the former CISO of SolarWinds who led response and remediation after the massive attack; Sherrod DeGrippo, general manager of Global Threat Intelligence at Microsoft; Theresa Payton, CEO and founder of Fortalice Solutions and former White House CIO; and David Boda, chief security and resilience officer at Nationwide Building Society discussed the disconnect between investment and outcomes. What emerged from the discussion was a set of assumptions the industry continues to rely on for successful defense, even as the results suggest otherwise.

  • The Verge ☛ Microsoft’s executive shake-up continues as developer division chief resigns

    Microsoft is losing another veteran executive. Julia Liuson, head of Microsoft’s developer division (DevDiv), is resigning from the software giant after 34 years. Liuson spent the past 12 years leading Microsoft’s developer business, during a period Microsoft focused more on open source projects and acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion.

  • The Verge ☛ OpenAI made economic proposals — here’s what DC thinks of them

    On Monday, OpenAI published a 13-page policy paper addressing the impact that artificial intelligence would have on the American workforce. The company also proposed what it believed was the solution: putting higher capital gains taxes on corporations replacing their workers with AI and using that money to create a bigger public safety net. Its solutions included a public wealth fund, a four-day workweek funded by “efficiency dividends,” and government programs to help transition workers into “human-centered” work, all financed by the abundance that artificial intelligence would deliver.

    Unfortunately, it was released the day that The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz published a meticulously reported, 17,000-word-plus article chronicling Sam Altman’s history of lying to everyone around him, including to his Silicon Valley backers, his employees, his board, and — relevant in this case — lawmakers trying to regulate AI. The New Yorker article reinforced a long-standing narrative about Altman, and OpenAI by extension: They may spout idealistic values, but would quickly jettison them for financial and political gains.

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Anticipates Job and Spending Cuts for FY2027

    President Donald Trump proposed a nearly $2.2 trillion discretionary spending request for the coming fiscal year on Friday, a nearly 21 percent increase over the current year’s level because of a proposed boost in defense funding. The election-year spending blueprint proposes to make reductions to various domestic agencies and programs, including the FCC and NTIA.

  • CNET ☛ After Cutting Down on 'Side Quests,' OpenAI Bought a Talk Show

    OpenAI said it was acquiring Technology Business Programming Network, better known as TBPN, which runs a 3-hour show streamed on weekdays that delves into the biggest topics -- and brings in the biggest names -- in tech business.

  • Nick Heer ☛ The New Yorker Profiles Scam Altman – Pixel Envy

    These guys are obsessed with artificial general intelligence in concept and seem to think of the world in those terms. Between that and the palling around they do with similarly rich and disconnected colleagues, I cannot imagine any of them can be trusted with developing these technologies in ways that are beneficial for the rest of us — even if they are being honest.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ The bottleneck shifts to distribution

    But I don’t quite agree with the thesis. Whether you’re famous or not, the way to get a following for your code is to solve a real problem better than anyone else. It’s true that distribution platforms can be kingmakers, but starting small by building real relationships with people you’re trying to help in ways that don’t scale is still a good way to get off the ground. That means building something genuinely differentiated rather than something that’s a few degrees off from what everyone else is doing. For small players with no networks and no names, that’s always been the best way to start, and I think it likely still is.

  • Futurism ☛ Inside Sources Say Scam Altman Is a Sociopath

    In a seeping new investigative piece from The New Yorker, numerous tech insiders paint a picture of OpenAI CEO Scam Altman as a relentless liar who wants everyone to like him while manipulating even the people closest to him to get what he wants. AI safety, in this slippery portrait of Altman, is merely a bargaining chip he dangles like a carrot to get concerned engineers — and anyone else worried about the tech’s far-reaching consequences — on board, before going back on his word.

  • New Yorker ☛ Scam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?

    Even people close to Altman find it difficult to know where his “hope for humanity” ends and his ambition begins. His greatest strength has always been his ability to convince disparate groups that what he wants and what they need are one and the same. He made use of a unique historical juncture, when the public was wary of tech-industry hype and most of the researchers capable of building A.G.I. were terrified of bringing it into existence. Altman responded with a move that no other pitchman had perfected: he used apocalyptic rhetoric to explain how A.G.I. could destroy us all—and why, therefore, he should be the one to build it. Maybe this was a premeditated masterstroke. Maybe he was fumbling for an advantage. Either way, it worked.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Data center switch maker Aria Networks raises $125M

    The primary difference between the two Ethernet implementations has to do with a component called the SerDes. Processors represent information as multiple parallel streams of data. Before a chip can transmit information, it has to consolidate it into a single data stream. That task is the responsibility of the SerDes. The reason 1.6T Ethernet is faster than the 800G edition is that its SerDes provides twice the throughput.

  • International Business Times ☛ Tucker Carlson Calls Trump 'Anti-Christ' in Furious Rant Over 'Praise Allah' Easter Message

    A political storm has erupted after media personality Tucker Carlson launched an intense and highly controversial attack on Donald Trump, accusing him of behaving like the 'anti-Christ' in response to a viral Easter message that included the phrase 'Praise Allah.'

  • Derek Thompson ☛ The Substack-ification of American Religion

    If true, this would mean the abrupt end to the largest wand fastest period of secularization in American history. But Ryan Burge, the author of the Graphs About Religion Substack, says something weirder is going on. Yes, the share of Americans who say they have “no religious affiliation” has stopped rising—for now. But the religious revival among young people is more mirage than divine miracle.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Record ☛ TikTok removes covert networks ahead of Hungary vote as disinformation concerns grow

      TikTok told Recorded Future News it had since December banned more than 300 accounts for impersonating Hungarian election candidates and elected officials. It said it had also taken action against six covert influence networks, the majority of which TikTok said spread narratives favourable to the Fidesz political party, with some of the smaller networks targeting Hungarian audiences with narratives critical of Fidesz and Orbán.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • JURIST ☛ Florida allows state designation of domestic terrorist organizations

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law Monday HB 1471, which grants the state’s chief of domestic security authority to designate domestic terrorist organizations.

  • Citizen Lab ☛ A Cat-and-Mouse Game of Russian Internet Restrictions and Evasion - The Citizen Lab

    As Russian authorities block apps and websites, sometimes even turning off mobile internet, some are finding their ways around censorship, while others may be settling for state-controlled apps.

  • New York Times ☛ A Cat-and-Mouse Game of Russian Internet Restrictions and Evasion

    The Russian authorities have deepened their crackdown on popular foreign apps and have begun periodically turning off mobile internet across the country, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build up censorship technology that they plan to expand.

    Here is how the government is going about its assault on internet freedom and what Russians are doing to evade the ever-expanding restrictions.

  • Site36 ☛ Trump plans anti-Antifa summit, may push for EU terror listing – with right-wing Fidesz and AfD warming up

    The Trump administration is planning an international summit to counter “Antifa” and other left-wing groups, Reuters reported, citing three sources. The conference, set for June or July, will bring together government officials to discuss strategies.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Semmelweis proved handwashing works — then died in an asylum

    In 1847, a doctor at Vienna General Hospital cut the maternity ward death rate from 18% to 2% by requiring handwashing in chlorinated lime solution. The medical establishment repaid him with years of ridicule and eventually committed him to an asylum.

  • Observer Voice ☛ Why Doctors Rejected the Man Who Discovered That Handwashing Saves Lives - Observer Voice

    But instead of celebrating him, the medical establishment rejected, ridiculed, and eventually destroyed him. Senior doctors were insulted by the suggestion that they were causing deaths. The idea that invisible “particles” from corpses caused disease contradicted established medical theory. Despite overwhelming evidence—death rates dropping dramatically with handwashing—doctors refused to accept Semmelweis’s discovery.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ ‘Admission Is Now a One-Way Ticket’: Kremlin Escalates Crackdown on Western Universities

    Yale, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, is one of at least 18 Western universities, educational alliances and programs to have been labeled “undesirable” over the past five years, The Moscow Times has calculated.

    For the thousands of Russian students studying at these institutions, the designation can make it risky to return to their home country.

    “I didn’t know I was leaving [Russia] forever,” said a Russian student at Yale University who asked to remain anonymous. “Now [emigration] is not really my choice, it’s just a reality.”

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Moscow’s Mobile Internet Is Back. But for How Long?

    Though mobile [Internet] is back online now, Muscovites are living in a situation defined by unpredictability, Vladimir Ryazansky, head of the SobDoma.RF project, told The Moscow Times.

    This, in turn, leads to widespread mistrust, he said.

    “Internet calls can drop at any moment, even through unblocked services like Zoom. The only stable means of communication for Muscovites are VKontakte and MAX,” he said, referring to the state-backed messenger that the Kremlin has promoted as an alternative to Telegram.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Hungarian elections: CPJ calls on all candidates to commit to 10 key steps to restore press freedom 

    Hungary’s media landscape has declined severely in the last 16 years under the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. His ruling Fidesz party — which faces a serious challenge in Sunday’s election from the opposition Tisza party, under Péter Magyar — directly or indirectly controls around 80% of the country’s media market, making it one of the most sophisticated systems of media capture seen yet within the European Union.

  • The Record ☛ Two prominent Egyptian journalists targeted with elaborate spearphishing campaign

    The attackers pretended to be legitimate people and services and they used multiple channels to connect with the victims. Lookout and Access Now are not able to definitively say where the hack-for-hire organization is based, but said they believe it has ties to Asia.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Hack-for-hire spyware campaign targets journalists in Middle East, North Africa

    An apparent hack-for-hire campaign from a group with suspected Indian government connections targeted Middle Eastern and North African journalists and activists using spyware, three collaborating organizations said in reports published Wednesday.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Attacks On Public Media Blocked By Judge (But It’s Too Little, Too Late)

    The original executive order resulted in Congress obliterating the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) budget of $1.1 billion for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. With no money left to function, the CPB voted to dissolve itself last January. PBS noted this week that the Trump EO resulted in mass layoffs and the destruction of kids’ programming before Congress even acted: [...]

  • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Journalist Afgan Sadigov briefly detained in Azerbaijan after deportation from Georgia

    Later in the evening, Tamta Mikeladze, director of the SJC, reported — after speaking with Sadigov — that he had been on the street when he realised ‘he was being followed’. Police then approached him and told him he had to accompany them to the station.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Law Society Gazette ☛ SRA bars employee from roles at firms following drug convictions

    A planning administrator has been disqualified from holding certain roles at firms regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority after she admitted being a drug dealer.

    Ellie Walters, who is not a solicitor, was arrested and subsequently charged in June 2025 with being concerned in the supply of drugs. That month, appearing at Leeds magistrates court, Walters admitted and was convicted of being concerned in the supply or heroin and crack cocaine, two charges of possession with intent to supply a controlled drug of class A (heroin and crack cocaine), possession of an offensive weapon in a private place and concealing/disguising/coverting/transferring or removing criminal property.

  • EFF ☛ Another Court Rules Copyright Can’t Stop People From Reading and Speaking the Law

    UpCodes created a database of building codes—like the National Electrical Code—that includes codes incorporated by reference into law. ASTM, a private organization that coordinated the development of some of those codes, insists that it retains copyright in them even after they have been adopted into law, and therefore has the right to control how the public accesses and shares them. Fortunately, neither the Constitution nor the Copyright Act support that theory. Faced with similar claims, some courts, including the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, have held that the codes lose copyright protection when they are incorporated into law. Others, like the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a case EFF defended on behalf of Public.Resource.Org, have held that, whether or not the legal status of the standards changes once they are incorporated into law, making them fully accessible and usable online is a lawful fair use.

  • Truthdig ☛ Attacks on Mail-In Ballots Are an Attack on the Working Class

    Trump’s real fear: that voting by mail gives Democrats an edge. In reality, broad, cross-partisan swaths of our electorate benefit from access to this convenient means of exercising our most basic democratic right.

    Low-income Americans of all political stripes have a particularly large stake in defending our existing patchwork of mail voting systems — and in efforts to make this option universal.

  • 404 Media ☛ Data Center Tech Lobbyists Fearmonger in Attempt to Retroactively Roll Back Right to Repair Law

    “You look at who is backing this bill, it is large firms like Cisco and IBM. They sell information technology equipment to tens of thousands of Colorado businesses, and they are looking to create a de facto monopoly on that service, which exists in the states that have denied this business to business right to repair,” Paul Roberts, a cybersecurity expert and founder of SecuRepairs testified. “The big tech companies backing the bill are using a very real concern about cybersecurity and resilience of US critical infrastructure to pad their bottom line, locking in a monopoly on service and repair. Cyber attacks on US critical infrastructure are rampant and have nothing to do with information covered by Colorado’s right to repair law.”

  • Tennessee Lookout ☛ Bill requiring citizenship database checks for voter registration heads to governor’s desk

    The bill (SB2204/HB2185) by Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson of Franklin and House Leader William Lamberth of Sumner County, both Republicans, is dependent on whether the United States Department of Homeland Security makes the data available to state election officials via a secure web service known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE).

    Current law already requires voters to attest to their citizenship status when registering to vote: the state then verifies citizenship using state and federal data sources.

  • Counter Punch ☛ The Subminimum Wage: 35 Years and Still Waiting for Change

    Make no mistake, and many customers do, the tip intended as a gratuity is in part a wage-subsidy provided to employers in lieu of them paying workers the full minimum wage (which is also woefully low and outdated). While the tip credit is $5.12 at the federal level, at the state level where higher minimum wages are coupled with low tipped wages, customers are burdened with paying larger shares of higher hourly wages to tipped workers: 86 percent (or $12.87) in Nebraska, 83 percent (or $10.64) in Virginia, and 76 percent (or $12.11) in Rhode Island. How is this “fair”?

  • Wired ☛ Men Are Buying Hacking Tools to Use Against Their Wives and Friends

    Over six weeks earlier this year, researchers at the algorithmic auditing group AI Forensics analyzed nearly 2.8 million messages sent across 16 Italian and Spanish Telegram communities that are regularly posting abusive content targeting women and girls. More than 24,000 members of the Telegram groups and channels took part in posting 82,723 images, videos, and audio files over the course of the study, the analysis says. Many posts target celebrities and influencers, but men in the groups also frequently victimize women they know.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Andrew Shell ☛ Defending the Open Web Is Not Enough

    77% of news publishers now focus on subscriptions. Independent journalists are fleeing to Substack. Podcasters signed 9-figure Spotify exclusives. Not because they opposed openness but because openness stopped paying the bills.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• EFF ☛ 2026-04-02 [Older] Weakening Speech Protections Will Punish All of Us—Not Just Meta [Ed: GAFAM-funded EFF is defending GAFAM with GAFAM talking points]

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ New robot to charge EVs and inflate tires in one go, BYD files patent

      The patent, titled “A Robot,” was filed with China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) on March 24, 2025, and outlines a vehicle automatic charging and inflation robot capable of completing the entire service cycle without human intervention.

      According to the patent details, the system integrates six functional modules into a single robotic unit.

    • The Autopian ☛ Ford's Next Infotainment System Could Use Interior Cameras To Read Your Lips And Facial Expressions If It Can't Hear You Speak

      In addition to reading lips, the patent application proposes using the cameras to use facial expressions alone to issue commands. Considering how expressive I get behind the wheel sometimes for no reason at all, I’m not so sure about that one. Either way, it’s worth taking a closer look at how all of this works.

    • Valnet Inc ☛ Ford Patents In-Car Communuication Tech That Can Read Your Lips

      If the vehicle decides it's in convertible mode, it then measures cabin noise. If the cabin noise is higher than a certain threshold, the vehicle switches to what Ford is calling an enhanced communication mode. Here's where it gets a little weird.

      Enhanced communication starts with the basics, turning up the volume of the speakers. Using multiple in-car microphones, the system can also work to actively cancel out noises from wind and tires, so that the person on the other line can better hear you. If it gets extremely loud in the vehicle, even this might not be enough. From there, the patent focuses on your physical interactions.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Arte: Can the EU stop the spread of deepfake porn?

      A high-profile scandal around deepfake porn has ignited public debate in Germany about online misogyny and the dangers of AI. Women across Europe, famous or not, have been targeted, and legal loopholes are allowing the phenomenon to spread unchecked.

• Copyrights

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-04-05 [Older] [Guest post] No cultural funding from a collecting society at its own discretion and not for unauthorised parties

  • Digital Music News ☛ Epidemic Sound v. Meta Summary Judgment Battle Ramps Up

    Nearly four years later, the ugly Epidemic Sound v. Meta copyright infringement lawsuit still hasn’t resolved. Now, both sides are pushing for summary judgment, and the Facebook parent is looking to explore the impact of the Supreme Court’s Cox v. Sony decision.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Multiple Tracks Officially Removed from Kanye West’s ‘Bully’

    Regardless of your feelings on Ye, or the album itself, it’s undeniable that the release has been mired with problems. Distributors Gamma/Vydia have reportedly been constantly updating the release to correct metadata issues, titling problems, and tons of demands to update tracks—either from artists who did not consent to their work being sampled, or from Kanye himself.

  • The Register UK ☛ UK National Data Library plan needs work, study finds

    However, the ODI has published an "NDL-Lite" prototype, with access to more than 100,000 public datasets. It found some of the datasets – particularly on data.gov.uk – are badly labelled, out of date, or effectively invisible to AI tools. When authoritative data is hard to access, AI systems turn to other sources, such as news reports or commercial data, which do not always give accurate information, the ODI warned.

    The prototype gathered 38 GB of data from six public sector sources, processing and standardizing more than 100,000 files into a single resource. While the study showed the NDL could be built at relatively low cost, it also highlighted the work needed to make the data AI-ready.