Leftovers

• Vintage Everyday ☛ 32 Amazing Photos of Charles Chaplin on the Set of “City Lights” (1931)

  Chaplin was known for shooting scenes dozens or even hundreds of times to get them exactly right. A famous example is the opening flower-selling scene between the Tramp and the blind girl, it reportedly required 342 takes. He obsessed over tiny details of expression, gesture, and timing, even asking Cherrill to speak her lines aloud during filming (though the film is silent) to capture the right emotional nuance.

• Science

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Medieval Writings and Tree Rings Helped Researchers Track a Solar Storm From 800 Years Ago and Reconstruct Past Solar Cycles

    In February of 1204, Japanese poet Fujiwara no Teika recorded a strange sight. He penned diary entries about red lights illuminating the night sky for three consecutive nights.

    Now, more than 800 years later, those observations, along with other historical sources and tree rings, have helped researchers track down a historical solar event a few years before the auroras Teika observed. The findings, described in a study published April 10 in the journal Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B, not only present a new approach for finding similar events long ago, but also suggest that the sun’s activity cycle was a few years shorter during the early 13th century than it is today.

  • Rlang ☛ My Domain: proteome-wide scanning of TMDs

    After a little bit of searching, I couldn’t find any answers. So I decided to use R to retrieve the necessary info from Uniprot and calculate it myself. I thought I’d post it here in case it’s useful for others.

• Career/Education

  • Kelly Hayes ☛ Repair Is a Survival Skill Under Fascism

    In the second part of my conversation with Tanuja Jagernauth, we talk about why conflict transformation can be so difficult, what happens when efforts at repair break down, and why conflict resolution skills are survival skills in fascist times.

  • Dr Molly Tov ☛ my most and least favorite people: examples

    Common Denominator: People who get SUPER EXCITED about whatever it is they are DOING and NEED YOU TO KNOW ABOUT IT so you can be EXCITED TOO.

  • Anirudh Oppiliappan ☛ The founder box

    The programmer box is tight. It’s well-bounded and there are clear membership criterea. You write code, you’re good at it, and there are legible, well-defined steps to get better at it. Understanding, nay, grokking computer systems and building an intuition for it is a tractable process.

  • Anil Dash ☛ The Power of Possibility

    It’s rare that you get to see work that directly helps those who most deserve it, but I want to tell you about the opportunity we so seldom get to actually contribute in a way that we know will have real impact.

    I’ve been on the board of the Lower Eastside Girls Club for about a decade, getting a front row seat to seeing what a truly community-focused and effective organization can do for those in need when things are done the right way. This is the model of what we want our public institutions to be — laser-focused on the needs of its members, extremely ambitious in its goals, and measurably effective in its outcomes.

  • The New Stack ☛ Who will maintain the web when PHP's veterans retire?

    A new Perforce report finds PHP's developer base is aging out faster than it's being replenished — and AI-generated code may be making the problem worse, not better.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ You Own Your Role, We Own The Outcome

    There’s a productive tension here, obviously. You can’t go fully one way or the other. But if you treat a team as a community, and the team leader as the facilitator of that community, you can navigate these nuances more easily.

  • Dan Q ☛ My Salary History

    Jeremy Keith posted his salary history last week. I absolutely agree with him that employers exploit the information gap created by opaque salary advertisement, and I think that our industry of software engineering is especially troublesome for this.

• Hardware

  • Scoop News Group ☛ We’re only seeing the tip of the chip-smuggling iceberg

    A string of federal indictments has exposed a pervasive shadow network of data centers and fake products spanning Southeast Asia. To secure national security, the U.S. must move enforcement from the airport gate to the factory floor.

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ AI drags down smartphone sales

    After two and a half years of steady growth, the smartphone market is heading sharply back into the red. First-quarter shipments to distributors fell 4.1%, according to IDC estimates. The primary culprit: surging prices, particularly at the entry-level end of the market, driven by a dramatic spike in memory chip costs. “This is just a taste of what’s to come,” warns analyst Anthony Scarsella. For the full year, IDC is forecasting a historic 12.9% collapse, which would bring the market down to its lowest level since 2013.

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ Acquired Odell No. 4 Index Typewriter and Wooden Case (Farquhar & Albrecht, 378-388 Wabash Avenue, Chicago, IL)

    I’ve slowed way down on acquisitions in my typewriter collection, but when I saw this magnificent exemplar with Art Nouveau decoration pop up at thrift, I could not resist. For a near complete exemplar, it seemed to be better priced than most of the market that I looked at before purchasing.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ Teens Alarmed at What AI Is Doing to Their Minds

    A new study out of Drexel University shows just how self-aware the kids have become. In a wide-ranging survey of hundreds of Reddit posts, a team of information scientists found that adolescent users of AI chatbots are increasingly conscious of the negative side effects the tech is having on their lives, even as they sometimes display signs of intense addiction.

  • The Georgia Recorder ☛ US House Dems at ag hearing excoriate Trump cuts proposed for farm and food aid

    The proposed USDA budget for fiscal 2027 would cut $4.9 billion, or nearly one-fifth of the department’s budget. Already, due to the Republican spending and tax cuts law last year, 2.5 million people have lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the department’s major food assistance initiative.

  • Western Water ☛ EPA targets “forever chemicals,” water workforce gaps

    About 3,000 water systems will receive direct outreach and support.

  • The New Lede ☛ Drinking water systems cite struggles with costs and timelines for cleaning up PFAS

    The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last year announced a proposal to delay the deadline for utilities to comply with new regulation limiting toxic types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) chemicals in drinking water supplies. But even with the potential for a two-year cushion – compliance for meeting new standards may be pushed from 2029 to 2031 – utilities are faltering, industry experts said.

• Proprietary

  • Don Marti ☛ Another ad safety* report

    The report is down to three pages from the six they put out last year, and this time it’s mostly a Google Gemini fan post. (Yes, the same LLM that’s behind the 91% right AI Overviews feature.)

    I’m going to repeat the point I had last time: if a company is trying to brag on exposing people to less bad stuff, and they’re reporting the amount of bad stuff they blocked, they’re losing. When you ask how many rat turds are in the chocolate chip cookies, and the answer is “we swept up 99 million rat turds at the bakery last year!” that doesn’t make you want a cookie any more.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • InfoQ ☛ Claude Code Used to Find Remotely Exploitable Linux Kernel Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years [Ed: Marketing of slop]

      Anthropic researcher Nicholas Carlini used Claude Code to find a remotely exploitable heap buffer overflow in the Linux kernel's NFS driver, undiscovered for 23 years. Five kernel vulnerabilities have been confirmed so far. Linux kernel maintainers report that Hey Hi (AI) bug reports have recently shifted from slop to legitimate findings, with security lists now receiving 5-10 valid reports daily.

    • Software Freedom Conservancy ☛ Eternal November - the new influx of users, and why it's way better than the last one

      Many people may recall Eternal September (in 1993) — when Usenet membership increased overwhelmingly — marking the annual September rush of student joins. The ensuing moderation challenges changed the culture of Usenet (the largest Internet discussion fora back then). Many early Usenet adopters left; they reconnected with their communities elsewhere. While this onslaught of “newbies” knew little of Usenet's traditional cultural norms, they nonetheless benefitted greatly from these novel connections to discuss and learn together with people worldwide. The times were turbulent then, but eventually new cultural norms emerged.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Calls grow to curb obscene content generated by Hey Hi (AI) in China

      Some sell prompt keywords related to clothing, hairstyles and poses to make the generated content more precise.

    • New York Times ☛ I Feel So Sorry for My Hey Hi (AI) Sunglasses

      Plenty of people hate Mark Kapo-berg’s superintelligent, supercharged spectacles. I was ready to hate them, too.

    • Futurism ☛ There’s Something Fundamentally Wrong With LLMs

      "Our sense of the world may become distorted in ways we have barely begun to comprehend."

    • Futurism ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Is Inflicting Massive Damage to His Public Image by Posting Offensive Hey Hi (AI) Slop

      "I will not defend blasphemy."

    • Futurism ☛ Man Who Threw Molotov at Scam Altman’s House Warned Hey Hi (AI) Will Exterminate Humankind

      "If by some miracle you live, then I would take this as a sign from the divine to redeem yourself."

    • Futurism ☛ Berklee College of Music Students Furious That It’s Offering an Hey Hi (AI) “Songwriting” Class

      "As a Berklee grad, I'm appalled at the questionable use of Hey Hi (AI) in creative classes."

    • Futurism ☛ Companies Just Learned a Brutal Lesson About Training Hey Hi (AI) to Do Human Jobs

      The seedy underbelly of the Hey Hi (AI) industry is really starting to show.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Why having “humans in the loop” in an AI war is an illusion

      But the debate over “humans in the loop” is a comforting distraction. The immediate danger is not that machines will act without human oversight; it is that human overseers have no idea what the machines are actually “thinking.” The Pentagon’s guidelines are fundamentally flawed because they rest on the dangerous assumption that humans understand how AI systems work.

      Having studied intentions in the human brain for decades and in AI systems more recently, I can attest that state-of-the-art AI systems are essentially “black boxes.” We know the inputs and outputs, but the artificial “brain” processing them remains opaque. Even their creators cannot fully interpret them or understand how they work. And when AIs do provide reasons, they are not always trustworthy.

    • The Cyber Show ☛ What "AI" means (part 2)

      Kate asked me for a quick layman's summary of what "AI" really is, why the world is turning against it, and why it's a problem that professionals should avoid.

      That's actually a helluva challenge! "AI" is a meaningless term to us computer scientists. We get a kind of academic paralysis when asked this straight and simple question, because in a way, the more you know about this subject the harder it is to speak clearly yet simply amidst all the hype and noise.

      I thought it might help to list by taxonomy a set of algorithmic ideas according to task, then relate those to negative effects by way of example. Here goes. We'll consider a small set of these broad ideas; [...]

    • Thomas Rigby ☛ It is not your fault

      I feel non-technical people get along with LLMs better than tech workers because, to them, the computer has always done magic stuff they don't understand. They just treat it like a person and deal with the "hallucinations" because humans are fallible.

      There are so many ways an LLM can provide an incorrect answer; the most common being "any answer is higher scoring than zero in the probabilistic sense".

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Human Trust of AI Agents

      Interesting research: “Humans expect rationality and cooperation from LLM opponents in strategic games.”

    • Matthew Brunelle ☛ The Claude Coding Vibes Are Getting Worse

      I've seen a continuous degradation to the UX of Claude Code over the last two months. Now with the release of Opus 4.7 it's really evident.

    • Karl Bode ☛ AI, Artifice, And Authenticity

      It's the golden age for hyperscaled, badly-automated bullshit, overseen by the least ethical assholes America has to offer. "If a lot of people click on it it must be good" is the gold standard for the country's deepest thinkers and top titans of industry.

      Peppered within this morass are islands of educators, artists, writers, and other creatives wondering where we go from here. Does America finally get devoured by a deadly homogenized hyper-commercialized sameness, or does badly automated artifice at impossible scale create a renaissance for authenticity?

    • Futurism ☛ What It Really Means That a Failing Shoe Brand "Pivoted to AI" and Its Stock Soared 700 Percent

      “If you don’t believe we are in a bubble you are in denial,” AI skeptic Ed Zitron wrote in a post in response to Allbirds’ stock market boost.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Shoe company Allbirds pivots to AI — and the stock goes up 580%

      This is the sort of deal you see in a bubble — when a company that’s near-dead exploits its one asset, its stock market listing.

    • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: Machine Learning and Complexity

      At Oxford I focused my research and discussions on how we can use the tools of computational complexity to help us understand the power and limitations of machine learning. Last week I posted my paper How Does Machine Learning Manage Complexity?, a first step in this direction. Let me give a broad overview of the paper. Please refer to the paper for more technical details.

      Instead of focusing on the machine learning concepts like neural nets, transformers, etc., I wanted to abstract out a model defined in terms of complexity, as time-efficient non-uniform computable distributions with minimum probabilities. Let's unpack this abstraction.

    • Kyle Kingsbury ☛ The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Where Do We Go From Here?

      I want you to think about “AI” in this sense.

      Some of our possible futures are grim, but manageable. Others are downright terrifying, in which large numbers of people lose their homes, health, or lives. I don’t have a strong sense of what will happen, but the space of possible futures feels much broader in 2026 than it did in 2022, and most of those futures feel bad.

      Much of the bullshit future is already here, and I am profoundly tired of it. There is slop in my search results, at the gym, at the doctor’s office. Customer service, contractors, and engineers use LLMs to blindly lie to me. The electric company has hiked our rates and says data centers are to blame. LLM scrapers take down the web sites I run and make it harder to access the services I rely on. I watch synthetic videos of suffering animals and stare at generated web pages which lie about police brutality. There is LLM spam in my inbox and synthetic CSAM on my moderation dashboard. I watch people outsource their work, food, travel, art, even relationships to ChatGPT. I read chatbots lining the delusional warrens of mental health crises. [...]

    • Nature ☛ Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real

      Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

    • Flyngpenguin ☛ The Boy That Cried Mythos: Verification is Collapsing Trust in Anthropic

      I’ve been getting more and more curious about the risk from Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview. So I pulled the system card, a whoppingly inefficient 244-page document that devotes just seven pages to the claim that the model is too dangerous to release. In fact, the 23MB of PDF I had to download was 20MB of wasted time and space. Compressing the PDF to 3MB meant I lost exactly nothing.

      Foreshadowing, I guess.

      Spoiler alert: the crucial seven pages out of 244 do not contain the word “fuzzer” once. That’s like a seven page vacation brochure for Hawaii that leaves out the word beaches.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Straits Times ☛ TikTok removes underage accounts after Indonesian government push

      YouTube and Roblox remain the only high-risk platforms yet to fully comply, a minister said.

    • The Zambian Observer ☛ YouTube suspends pro-Iran channel posting lego-style clips mocking Donald Trump

      In response to the suspension, the group criticised the platform, writing on X: “Seriously! Are our LEGO-style animations actually violent?” Despite the removal, the group continues to distribute its content on other platforms, including X and Telegram. Its presence on Instagram has also faced restrictions, though alternative accounts remain active.

      The videos typically portray Trump as a cartoonish figure with exaggerated features, often placing him in satirical or humiliating scenarios. One widely shared clip referenced the phrase “Trump always chickens out,” depicting a fictionalised version of events involving global leaders and military conflict.

    • Digital Music News ☛ YouTube Now Lets You Turn Off Shorts Completely

      YouTube has read the room, and now allows you to put a zero-minute time limit on Shorts from the app’s time management settings. This essentially means you can remove them from your app on both Android and iOS. It’s an update to the time management options first announced in October and expanded in January, which previously only let you set a minimum time limit of 15 minutes.

    • Matthew Weber ☛ Less Reading More Tiktok

      What I didn’t realize, and what I should have known, is that there is a direct correlation between my reading and the amount of time I spend on TikTok. The more time I spend on the shit app, the less time I spend reading. Seems obvious, but it didn’t feel that way until this time when I got to thinking about how unmotivated I’ve been to even search out my next book.

    • Blain Smith ☛ Unbounded Concurrency is a Foot Gun

      Bluesky went down for half its users for about 8 hours on Monday. Jim Calabro wrote up an excellent post-mortem that is worth reading in full, but the root cause is something I keep seeing across languages and runtimes, and it's worth talking about on its own.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Register UK ☛ Git identity spoof fools Claude into giving bad code the nod

      This is not a Git vulnerability – commit metadata has always been relatively easy to fake unless additional controls like signing are enforced. The problem arises when that metadata is treated as a signal of trust. In this case, the model appeared to give weight to the author's claimed identity rather than independently assessing whether the change itself was sound.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ How Push Notifications Can Betray Your Privacy (and What to Do About It)

      There are two points where notifications may betray your privacy: when they’re transmitted over cloud servers and once they land on the device. Let’s start with the cloud. It might seem like push notifications come directly from an app, but they are typically routed through either Apple or Google’s servers first (depending on if you use iOS or Android). According to a letter sent to the Department of Justice by Senator Wyden, the content of those notifications may be visible to Apple and Google, and at the very least the companies collect some metadata about what apps send a notification and when. App providers have to make the decision to hide the content from Apple and Google and implement that functionality; Signal is one app that does this.

    • Techdirt ☛ The Right Wing Origins Age Verification Laws Don’t Disappear Just Because They’re Going Bipartisan.

      I think it’s important to understand that, despite claims to the contrary, age verification is, inherently, a right-wing effort. While it’s currently true that age verification laws are being supported globally by those on the political right and left, they started as very much a right wing effort to suppress disliked speech by claiming it was harmful to children. Even if some of the laws now have bipartisan support, we need to understand its origins.

    • Techdirt ☛ Oh Look, The MAGA FTC Built The Censorship Industrial Complex It Was Screaming About

      That means every single one of the five major advertising agency holding companies in the United States has now been successfully pressured by the federal government to stop using NewsGuard’s ratings. All of them. Entirely because NewsGuard expressed opinions about conservative news outlets that some powerful people found inconvenient.

      I seem to recall some fairly dramatic freakouts from supposed ‘free speech absolutists’ about government pressure on media organizations constituting a massive First Amendment crisis. Strange that none of those people are speaking up about this. Many seem downright supportive.

    • Human rights Activists News Agency ☛ A Citizen Arrested in Marvdasht for Selling VPNs

      According to Fars News Agency, a citizen was arrested in Marvdasht. Colonel Fariborz Mardani, the police commander of Marvdasht, stated that following cyber police intelligence monitoring on social networks, an unidentified Telegram channel engaged in extensive advertising for VPN sales was identified.

    • Wired ☛ Europe’s Online Age Verification App Is Here

      After that, when a person using the app wants to access a social network (minimum age: 13), pornographic site (minimum age: 18), or any other age-protected content, if they are logged in from a computer, they need only scan the QR code shown on the site they want to visit. If, on the other hand, the person logs in from a smartphone, the app sends the proof of age directly. The platform does not access the document with which the user proved it in the first place.

    • Idiomdrottning ☛ E-leg — from bad to worse

      It’s insane to me that the Swedish police will be literally requiring every citizen to be a customer of one of these two American tech giants that among the richest megacorps in the world. That’s beyond any cyberpunk dystopia I’ve ever seen.

• Defence/Aggression

  • JURIST ☛ Former Brazil intelligence chief arrested in US

    US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Brazil’s former intelligence chief Alexandre Ramagem on Monday after he fled Brazil to avoid a 16-year prison sentence for his role in an alleged coup attempt. The detention was first brought to light by a Brazilian senator.

  • France24 ☛ 'If we don't divide the land we're heading to apartheid': Ex-head of Israel's Shin Bet

    In an interview with FRANCE 24, Ami Ayalon, former head of Israel's domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, warned that Israel is "heading to apartheid" unless it divides the land with the Palestinians. He argued that "there is a limit to what we can achieve by the use of military power" in Iran and that without "an agreement with the Palestinian people", there can be no stability in the Middle East.

  • Site36 ☛ Third crash of Israeli Frontex drone, details remain secret – military in Malta claims to have recovered wreckage

    Once again, a Frontex drone has crashed into the Mediterranean – this time off Malta. Officially, the authorities speak of an emergency landing due to technical problems. Flights with a twin drone were briefly halted in Greece after the incident.

  • [Repeat] Site36 ☛ Germany imprisons Kurdish grandmother with multiple health conditions as alleged PKK member

    The Kurdish woman Zübeyde Akmese is being held in German custody on suspicion of supporting terrorism due to risk of absconding – even though the ailing 71-year-old has lived in Munich with her children and grandchildren for 40 years and is strongly socially connected there.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Indonesia, France agree to boost defence industry ties

    Jakarta had just concluded a defence pact with the US and an oil deal with Russia too.

  • The Strategist ☛ ADF must master the fight tonight before betting on tomorrow’s autonomy

    In the span of five years, first-person view (FPV) racing drones have graduated from local parks to the front lines of modern warfare. The Ukraine–Russia conflict has irrevocably demonstrated the democratisation of air power.

  • New York Times ☛ What Happened After Denmark Adopted a Ruined City in Ukraine

    The Danish government has contributed more than $250 million to Mykolaiv, as the Convicted Felon administration pushes a more business-focused plan.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 10 Taiwanese charged with spying for China

    Ten Taiwanese people, including former and active military personnel, were indicted Tuesday for allegedly spying for Beijing, Taiwanese prosecutors said. China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its territory and has ramped up military and political pressure on the island in recent years. The two sides have been spying on each other for decades, but analysts say […]

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Chinese, Vietnamese leaders sign cooperation deals

    Vietnam’s President To Lam met with China’s leader Pooh-tin Jinping in Beijing on Wednesday, Chinese state media said, hoping to deepen ties he says are a top priority. The visit is Lam’s first trip abroad since the Communist Party leader was elected last week as president — the number two position in Vietnamese politics.

  • Futurism ☛ Man Engineers Giant Robot Hand to Smash His Enemies

    "I built a 5,000 kg giant robot arm just to see if my friend could survive the ultimate slap!"

  • The Strategist ☛ Indonesia shouldn’t give blanket airspace access to the US

    Giving blanket access to US military aircraft through Indonesian airspace, as proposed in a classified US defence document reported by international media this week, risks compromising the country’s sovereignty and national security.

  • ADF ☛ Ban on Mineral Exports Gives Zimbabwe Leverage With China

    When Zimbabwe announced an immediate ban on the exports of all raw minerals and lithium concentrates in February, international analysts called the move audacious. At home, however, Zimbabweans saw it as a practical matter of protecting the country’s national security.

  • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man’s Go-To Justification for Contentious Decisions: National Security

    The administration has invoked national security in a variety of matters, including the White House ballroom and offshore wind farms, drawing rebukes from some judges.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Xi tells Vietnam’s Lam keeping socialist path is ‘top priority’

    It is rare for the Chinese President to make such a strong case for the Communist Party’s rule when he meets foreign leaders.

  • France24 ☛ 'War on women and girls' : Sexual violence the 'blueprint and strategy' of Sudan's brutal civil war

    As Sudan's brutal civil war enters its fourth year, Angela Diffley is joined by Idil Absiye, Regional Policy Advisor for Women, Peace and Security at the UN Women East and Southern Africa Regional Office. Drawing on field data, partner testimonies, and recent institutional reporting, she examines how the conflict has evolved into a systematic campaign of violence against women and girls, a weapon of war. As sexual violence instils terror and fractures communities, there is an urgent need for accountability, sustained international attention, and direct support to women-led organisations operating on the frontlines of this crisis.

  • France24 ☛ Live: Reports of possible Israel-Lebanon ceasefire

    Israel's security cabinet will convene ​on Wednesday to discuss a possible Lebanon ceasefire, a senior Israeli official said, more than five weeks into a war with Hezbollah that spiralled out of the US-Israeli conflict with Iran. Israeli Prime ​Minister Benjamin ‌Netanyahu's security cabinet will meet at 8 p.m. (1700 GMT), the official ⁠said. Senior Hezbollah official Ibrahim al-Moussawi told Reuters that diplomatic efforts by Iran and other regional states could produce a ceasefire soon. FRANCE 24's Noga Tarnopolsky reports from Jerusalem.

  • The Walrus ☛ I Went to Greenland and Saw a Warning for Canada

    Soon, Greenland’s government released a preparedness handbook advising households to keep at least five days’ worth of essential supplies on hand: food, water, medicine, warm clothes, radios, hunting weapons, and ammunition. The new guidance was, as one minister described it, an “insurance policy.” Like many, Køhler took the messaging seriously and began stocking up. He wasn’t political by nature. Nor was he prone to violence or violent thoughts. He was happily married, and enjoyed sailing in the fjord with his family. He had lived in Nuuk for half his life and couldn’t imagine moving anywhere else. The city made him feel as if he was living at the edge of the world—and, in some ways, he was.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ White House offers no hint of Iran war cost as it seeks military funding surge

    The cost of the war with Iran, which Trump began alongside Israel on February 28, has remained an open question on Capitol Hill. An initial $200 billion request for additional funding for the war met with stiff opposition in Congress last month.

  • TruthOut ☛ Palantir Paid No Federal Income Tax in 2025 as It Partnered With ICE, Pentagon

    Its $0 tax bill comes despite the company raking in $1.6 billion and landing a $10 billion military contract last year.

  • Watts Martin ☛ Ready for the revolution

    Silicon Valley’s outlook tended toward what I called technolibertarianism, the socially liberal but anti-regulation philosophy of Stewart Brand and Wired magazine. Yet, there’s long been a technofascist streak, exemplified by neo-reactionaries like Curtis Yarvin and in even larger part by PayPal Mafia members Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and David Sacks. In the last decade and change, tech billionaires have come to see fascism as the best way to keep what they have.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Defense in Depth, Medieval Style

    The system comprised four defensive lines arranged in formidable layers: [...]

  • Robert Reich ☛ He is Seriously, Frighteningly, Utterly, and Completely Losing His Mind

    He’s been losing it for a while now, but in the last few months it’s become far worse.

    In 2017, 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals concluded in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump that Trump’s mental condition posed a “clear and present danger” to the nation.

    In 2021, members of Trump’s own Cabinet — horrified by the January 6, 2021, violence at the Capitol and Trump’s lack of urgency in stopping it — discussed whether to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office due to mental incompetence.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Neo-Confederate Party

    I want to make an argument that will make some people uncomfortable. Not because it is radical. Because it is obvious, and the obvious thing has not been said plainly enough.

    The Republican Party is the Confederate Party.

    Not metaphorically. Not as a rhetorical flourish. As a structural description of what the party is doing, who it is serving, and what historical project it has aligned itself with. The evidence is not ambiguous. It is on the record, in the executive orders, in the base names, in the statues, in the pardons, in the theory of demographic replacement that now constitutes mainstream Republican ideology.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: A Pascal’s Wager for AI Doomers

    Because there's a sense in which Bengio and I are worried about exactly the same thing. I'm terrified that our planet has been colonized by artificial lifeforms that we constructed, but which have slipped our control. I'm terrified that these lifeforms corrupt our knowledge-creation process, making it impossible for us to know what's true and what isn't. I'm terrified that these lifeforms have conquered our apparatus of state – our legislatures, agencies and courts – and so that these public bodies work against the public and for our colonizing alien overlords.

    The difference is, the artificial lifeforms that worry me aren't hypothetical – they're here today, amongst us, endangering the very survival of our species. These artificial lifeforms are called "limited liability corporations" and they are a concrete, imminent risk to the human race: [...]

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • ADF ☛ Zimbabwe Warns Citizens of Russian Recruiting Efforts

      Thousands of kilometers from the front lines in Ukraine, another African country recently discovered that dozens of its citizens have been embroiled in Russia’s brutal, high-casualty war of attrition.

    • New York Times ☛ Russian Oil Revenues Nearly Doubled in March

      The surge in revenue provided a critical lifeline for Moscow, which has struggled to fund the war in Ukraine amid record-high deficits.

    • New York Times ☛ Dodging Bombs and Drones, This Postman in Ukraine Still Delivers

      Oleksiy Klochkovsky has driven mail and parcels around the front line in Ukraine for four years. He keeps one ear tuned for danger from above.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuanian court overturns entry ban on Russian rapper Morgenshtern

      Lithuania’s top administrative court on Wednesday overturned a 10-year entry ban on Russian rapper Alisher Morgenshtern, ruling that the decision lacked sufficient legal grounds.

    • [Repeat] Stanford University ☛ ‘Disappointed but not surprised’: Russia designates Stanford an ‘undesirable’ organization

      The decision could further limit international academic exchanges.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania’s ruling coalition split on defence priorities, Seimas speaker says

      Speaker of the Seimas Juozas Olekas said Wednesday that while Lithuania’s ruling coalition agrees on the importance of defence, it remains divided over how best to strengthen national security.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuanian court sentences couple for spying for Belarus

      The Klaipėda Regional Court on Wednesday found Mindaugas Januitis and Tatjana Beleckaja guilty of spying for Belarus and sentenced them to prison.

    • ADF ☛ Angola Disrupts Russian Influence Effort

      The Angolan government has charged two Russian nationals with terrorism, espionage and influence peddling as part of a false information campaign designed to fuel antigovernment protests ahead of upcoming presidential elections.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Xi assures Russia of China’s friendship as ties grow with other nations

      The countries are expected hold a summit sometime in 2026 to affirm Sino-Russian partnership.

    • New York Times ☛ ‘We Cannot Lose Sight of Ukraine.’ Europeans Promise More Aid to Kyiv.

      The focus in recent weeks has been on the conflict in Iran, but European leaders said it was crucial to keep aid flowing to Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Deadly Russian Attacks Persist As Ukraine Bolsters Defense Ties With Germany And Norway

      Russian attacks killed five people in the frequently targeted city of Dnipro and a child in Cherkasy on April 14, Ukrainian authorities said, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received promises of further support from Germany and Norway.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Launches Hundreds Of Drones In Deadly Attack On Ukraine

      Russian shelling destroyed children's sports facility and an administrative building in the center of Slovyansk in the Donetsk region, as Moscow launched hundred of drones on Ukrainian regions.

    • LRT ☛ Unblocking Ukraine loan is ‘absolute baseline’ for Hungary’s new govt – Lithuanian FM

      Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys on Tuesday said he expects Hungary’s election winner, Péter Magyar, to stop blocking key European Union decisions, including a 90 billion euro loan package for Ukraine, calling it the “absolute baseline” for the new administration.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvian family goes on charity bike ride in Ukraine

      On Wednesday, April 15, a charity bike ride will kick off in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia. During the event, the Grandāni family from Latvia will collect donations to bring 500 bicycles to children affected by the war. Meanwhile, donors in Latvia are actively responding to the call to donate bicycles for the children, Latvian Television reported.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Court House News ☛ TikTok whistleblower asks Ninth Circuit to vacate sanction order

    Yu began working for ByteDance in 2017, but was fired in 2018 as part of a 16-person layoff, according to ByteDance. Yu, however, says he was fired for blowing the whistle on ByteDance’s unethical and illegal practices, claiming that the Chinese Communist Party influenced TikTok to spread anti-Japanese sentiment and suppress content about pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

    ByteDance claims Yu signed four different agreements that required he go through arbitration to challenge adverse employment actions. Yu said his signatures on those documents were forged, and offered an anonymous witness declaration claiming to have witnessed Yu sign a key document that would have aided his claim.

  • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight, Historians Seek Emergency Court Order to Block Trump Effort to Evade Presidential Records Act

    Tuesday, American Oversight and the American Historical Association filed a motion for a preliminary injunction seeking immediate court action to block the Trump administration from disregarding the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and to prevent the destruction or loss of presidential records. The motion argues that without urgent court intervention, records documenting presidential decision-making could be “lost to history.”

  • The Nation ☛ To My Fellow Journalists: We Need to Do Better

    A few weeks before the 2020 presidential election, I wrote “An Open Letter to My Old Tribe,” urging “every reporter who is covering this election at any level” to focus on a crucial question—whether the public would trust the election procedure and the losing candidate would accept the result as legitimate. “It does not seem an exaggeration,” I wrote then, “to say that the future of American democracy, perhaps its very survival, depends on the answer.”

    More than five years later, with less than seven months to go before the midterm elections, that question is before us again, but in far starker terms than I could have imagined in 2020. So, here’s an updated letter to the media tribe I once belonged to, with suggestions broadly similar to those I made five years ago, but with a far sharper sense of urgency, even fear.

• Environment

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ The ocean off California keeps breaking heat records

    An extreme marine heat wave in the Pacific Ocean off California is breaking daily temperature records, with scientists warning the deep, persistent system could affect coastal weather and ecosystems for months.

  • FAIR ☛ Climate Coverage Plunges, Though Crisis More Dire Than Ever — FAIR

    The UN just released its 2025 Global Climate Report, and, predictably, the outlook for our earth is incredibly dire. The past 11 years were the 11 warmest on record, and Earth’s energy imbalance—the amount of solar energy absorbed versus the amount Earth radiates back into space—is also the highest on record. Greenhouse gas emissions continued to increase through 2025, despite the world crossing the 1.5°C threshold marked in the Paris Agreement above which the worst effects of global heating will take place.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Germany explores vast lithium reserves in 300-million-year-old rocks

    Germany has launched a new research initiative to assess whether lithium trapped in ancient saline brines found nearly 14,000 feet underground can be extracted to help power Europe’s electric vehicles (EVs).

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Straits Times ☛ Indian officials see Iran war oil shock as disruptive as Covid-19

      Even if hostilities end soon, it could take years for supplies of energy products to normalise.

    • TruthOut ☛ Europe Has “Maybe 6 Weeks” of Jet Fuel Left, Top Energy Official Says

      Other energy experts have similarly warned that a systemic jet fuel crisis is coming to Europe in the next few weeks, with one economist telling CNBC that there may be “severe cuts” to flights once that happens.

    • FreeBSD ☛ Let Sleeping CPUs Lie — S0ix

      Supporting both is very complex for vendors, so most don’t bother, especially considering most major operating systems support S0ix just fine now. Luckily, FreeBSD is well on its way to adding support for suspend-to-idle and S0ix.

      You can see if your system supports suspend-to-idle by checking the kern.power.supported_stype sysctl, and you can configure ACPI to enter suspend-to-idle on certain events through the hw.acpi sysctl tree. Then, if your system supports it and FreeBSD sup- ports it, an S0ix state should be entered automatically.

      Currently, there is no unified way of checking this, but if you’re on an AMD system with an SMU chip, you can use the aforementioned SMU sysctls.

    • The Journal ☛ Europe only has six weeks’ supply of jet fuel left, world's energy watchdog warns

      Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), warned there could be flight cancellations “soon” if oil supplies remain restricted by the Iran war.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Hackaday ☛ Robot Bird Decoys Work For Good

      While some decoys are static, others are motorized to replicate mating rituals. The goal: lure real birds to safer areas to breed. Particularly, they want the birds to avoid areas around the Jackson Hole Airport. The robots are built with help from local students and robotics teams. While some of the construction is made of fabric and foam, actual bird feathers are also used.

  • Overpopulation

    • Western Water ☛ Colorado lawmakers push water funding release

      The Colorado River, which supports seven Western states, is producing far less water than it did in the past. That shrinking supply is creating tension among states that rely on it for cities, farms, and industry.

• Finance

  • Federal News Network ☛ GSA looks to automate a million work hours, after losing nearly 40% of its workforce

    GSA is nearly halfway to its goal, and began this work internally. But its deputy administrator said the project could expand outside GSA if deemed successful.

  • New Yorker ☛ Cory Doctorow on the High Cost of Living with the Ultra-Rich

    The writer and internet critic discusses books that reflect different facets of living in a society run by billionaires.

  • New York Times ☛ Middle East War Will Slow Global Economic Growth, I.M.F. Warns

    The conflict could also fuel another bout of inflation, according to the International Monetary Fund.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Trump Wants Regime Change at the Fed

    Hi, Paul Krugman here. Today, I’m going to do a video rather than a proper post because I just have too much stuff going on. I’ve been too busy to actually do the charts and quantitative analysis that would be involved in actually writing a post about this stuff. I’m recording this on Wednesday afternoon.

    The news to which I’m reacting is that in the midst of everything else that’s going on, Trump is doubling down on his attempt to turn the Federal Reserve into a personalized institution that will do what he wants, and never mind the fact that it’s set up to have substantial independence, never mind the fact that there’s a long tradition of respecting the Fed’s independence. Trump thinks that he should be, as George Bush would say, the decider on monetary policy.

  • New York Times ☛ Amid Iran War, Companies Look to Extend a Record Profit Run by Raising Prices

    Higher inflation is leading companies to raise prices without sacrificing margins.

  • The Conversation ☛ How Iran cryptocurrency demands explain a key role of money throughout history

    When Iran began demanding payment in exchange for safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz, it offered the option to pay in cryptocurrency. Likewise, the shadowy network of tankers that have smuggled Russian oil to world markets since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have often been paid this way.

  • Circle Technology Services LLC ☛ CCTP: Pay First, Settle Later

    A platform that pays contractors with USDC across multiple chains has a few options. It can run CCTP per payout: one burn, one attestation, one mint, every time. That works. But at volume, it means hundreds of crosschain transactions a day, signing infrastructure on every destination chain, and treasury cadence locked to individual payouts.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Michigan: Elections clerk allegedly canceled, changed voter registrations

    Victoria Bishop pledged to “restore election integrity in Antrim County.” Now she may be improperly unregistering voters.

  • JURIST ☛ Rights group urges new Hungary government to restore rule of law

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday urged Hungary’s incoming government to take immediate steps to restore fundamental rights and dismantle laws and institutions used to suppress dissent, following opposition leader Péter Magyar’s landslide victory in Sunday’s elections that is set to end 16 years of rule under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. 

  • LRT ☛ AI or deindustrialisation? Layoffs surge in Lithuania

    The number of layoffs in Lithuania has tripled in the first months of the year, with group redundancies also rising, as industry struggles and technological changes reshape the labour market, officials and business representatives said.

    About one-third of job cuts have occurred in the metal industry, while demand has also declined for information technology and other high-skilled workers, according to data from the country’s employment service.

  • Memphis Flyer ☛ From Porn to Sex Trafficking: Lawmakers Want Warning Labels for Adult Businesses

    Adult-oriented businesses could soon have to post a warning label akin to those on tobacco and alcohol products. They would read — “Attention: By engaging in this type of entertainment, you may be contributing to an increase in domestic assault, rape or sexual assault, and human trafficking.”

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Many states don’t report losses from data center tax breaks, study says

    The study found that Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah all failed to report data center incentives, which generally include sales, use and property tax breaks.

    For years, states have used incentives and tax breaks to compete for data centers, sought for their massive investment in construction and equipment. Currently, 38 states offer dedicated tax incentives for data centers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

  • Good Jobs First ☛ Data Center Tax Abatements: Why States and Localities Must Disclose These Soaring Revenue Losses - Good Jobs First

    Fourteen states and scores of localities across the U.S. fail to disclose how much revenue they lose to data center tax abatement programs. Yet such losses are known to be soaring in states that do disclose, with three states already losing $1 billion or more per year.

    Most of these failures to disclose violate Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), as set forth by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). Since FY 2017, those principles require most governments to disclose lost revenue when they themselves grant tax abatements. They also require other governments which routinely lose revenue passively to also disclose.

  • 9NEWS ☛ Pete Hegseth quotes fake Pulp Fiction Bible verse during Pentagon sermon

    The first few lines of the prayer were written by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary in the film Pulp Fiction. In the movie, the character played by Samuel L Jackson falsely claims they are from the Bible passage Ezekiel 25:17.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Why a President Should Never Pick a Fight with a Pope

    You’ve got to hand it to Pope Leo, who used a speech today in Cameroon to express “woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”

  • Mike Brock ☛ When Leaders Should Resign

    There is a concept in public life that has almost entirely disappeared, and its disappearance explains more about the current crisis than most of the things we spend our time arguing about. The concept is this: the seat does not belong to you.

    If you hold public office, the authority you exercise belongs to the people who granted it. If you sit in the C-suite, the fiduciary duty you carry belongs to the shareholders, the employees, the customers whose lives are entangled with the institution you lead. If you command a military unit, the loyalty you receive is owed to the mission and the people who serve under you. In every case, the position exists to serve interests that are not your own. You are a steward. You were entrusted with something. The moment your presence in the seat becomes a distraction from the purpose of the seat, you have an obligation to leave it.

    This is not punishment. It is the basic condition of the job.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Unpersoned Outlaws

    Helping the bad guys does feel bad but pushing them into the arms of organized crime feels worse. If you’re declaring them dead this way you might as well pull the trigger for real. One of the best arguments against the death penalty is that it fosters desperation and escalation (“I’m already bound for the mercy seat so I might as well kill a couple of dozen more”) and I agree with that and I do oppose the death penalty and that argument applies even more here, way more actually since they’ll still be living and be even more dangerous and desperate than they would’ve been if they were in the grave.

  • YLE ☛ Henna Virkkunen makes Time's 100 most influential people

    Virkkunen, who works as the EU's digital commissioner, was included in the publication's leaders category. Other categories include artists, innovators, and pioneers.

  • Time ☛ Henna Virkkunen Is on the 2026 TIME100 List

    That groundedness matters, because her portfolio as Executive Vice President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy may be the most consequential of this commission. Virkkunen must hold the line on Europe’s digital rule book, fulfilling citizens’ expectations while under sustained pressure from Washington, and simultaneously streamlining regulation and building genuine (open) technological sovereignty—through plans to nurture AI on the Continent, better foster digital infrastructure, and put forth a package of proposals to support tech sovereignty. Add cybersecurity and undersea cables to the brief, and the stakes become clear.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Meduza ☛ Russian propagandist’s interview sparks debate over whether he deserves sympathy

      Sobchak filmed part of the interview at Krasovsky’s apartment, with icons and a portrait of Vladimir Putin in the background, and part of it in a police transport van as they drove around central Moscow. They discussed their shared past — Sobchak and Krasovsky have known each other for many years — his firing from RT, his views on the war, and his feelings toward former friends who oppose it. Here are the most striking quotes from Krasovsky: [...]

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russian Websites Begin Blocking VPN Users as Internet Controls Tighten

    Major Russian websites and online services have begun blocking users who try to access them with virtual private networks, or VPNs, as the government ramps up its efforts to restrict the censorship-circumvention tools.

    The e-commerce platform Ozon and the streaming service Kinopoisk are among several platforms now displaying “access denied” or similar messages to website visitors using a VPN, The Moscow Times was able to confirm.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ At 15, He Became One of Russia’s Youngest Political Prisoners. He Now Faces New Charges.

    More than 100 teenagers are currently facing prosecution in such cases, Memorial told The Moscow Times.

  • Meduza ☛ Report: Putin secretly authorized jailing of Russians without trial for opposing war in Ukraine

    Putin’s “decision” had not previously been reported, and the document itself was never made publicly available. Department One learned of it from a document issued by Russia’s Investigative Committee, which found no violations in one such detention despite a complaint filed by the human rights activists.

  • TMZ ☛ Pope Leo's Brother Receives Bomb Threat Amid Donald Trump Feud, Cops Say

    On Wednesday, the New Lenox Police Department in Illinois said officers responded to a "reported bomb threat" directed at a residence on Sojourn Road ... reportedly the home of the Chicago Pope's brother, Louis Prevost.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ WSJ legal victory over Convicted Felon means his $10bn BillBC lawsuit likely to fail

    Florida court upholds principle that US libel claimants must prove malice.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong Journalists Association warns stalking of journalists has ‘chilling effect’ on press freedom

    A Hong Kong press union has warned that the stalking of journalists has a “chilling effect” on press freedom, after the Security Bureau slammed the group over “groundless speculations” that law enforcement may have tailed reporters.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Standard website transfers to Independent with around 30 staff leaving

    Press Gazette understands that out of 75 total Standard staff at the start of year, 36 have left the business, 23 have transferred over to Independent Media and 16 remain to work on the weekly print edition. There were no compulsory redundancies.

    The new Standard Digital operation covers the brand’s digital journalism, commercial solutions, adtech and data management.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Apple News revenue helped BBC Science Focus double size of team

    BBC Science Focus was originally part of the BBC’s magazine division before being sold in 2011. This was followed by Immediate taking over the title, before it became fully owned by the company’s former subsidiary Our Media this year.

    It is still produced under licence from the BBC, meaning it adheres to stricter ad guidelines than most commercial titles, such as not being able to endorse products or imply political bias.

  • CPJ ☛ Algeria re-arrests freelance journalist Hassan Bouras ahead of Pope’s visit

    Provincial security forces arrested Bouras on Sunday in front of his home in El-Bayadh. Later that evening, officers raided his residence, conducted a comprehensive search, and confiscated a laptop. His arrest came on the eve of Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Algeria, where he met religious leaders and the local Catholic community as part of a regional tour.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • El País ☛ ICE detains an immigration interpreter in Texas despite her decades of working legally in the US

    Meenu Batra, an interpreter with more than 20 years of experience in immigration courts and a life built over three decades in the United States, was detained by immigration agents at an airport in South Texas while on her way to work. Her case adds to a series of arrests involving people who have lived and worked in the country for years with official authorization.

  • CBS ☛ Longtime courtroom interpreter detained by ICE says she worked in U.S. legally for decades: "You can't sleep because you're afraid"

    Meenu Batra, a single mother of four adult U.S. citizens, was arrested March 17 by federal immigration officers at Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas, while on her way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on a work trip.

    Batra has been a certified court interpreter for more than 20 years, and her language skills in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu are requested nationwide.

  • Texas Observer ☛ Longtime Immigration Court Interpreter Arrested by ICE at South Texas Airport

    Last month, Meenu Batra, 53, who has lived in the South Texas border colonia of Laguna Heights since 2002, was on her way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to work another case. She’s been a court interpreter for over 20 years, the only one licensed in Texas for Hindi, Punjabi, or Urdu. Her language skills are requested nationwide, where she’s contracted to help people making their way through the immigration court system, just as she did for herself 35 years ago when she immigrated from India to New Jersey before settling in Texas.

  • The Indiana Capital Chronicle ☛ Civil rights advocates fear citizenship verification law could block 'many' naturalized voters

    Civic groups say the votes of naturalized Hoosiers could be at risk amid the state’s election integrity campaign targeting those with temporary credential numbers in their voter registrations.

    “Our understanding is that many United States citizens have been and continue to be erroneously flagged as noncitizens through this process,” said Ami Gandhi, the director of Midwest voting rights programs for the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.

    “And as a result, many of these eligible voters are likely to be disenfranchised in the upcoming election,” Gandhi added.

  • Techdirt ☛ ACAB: Cops Are Bringing ‘Delinquency Of A Minor’ Charges Against Adults Who Assist Students During Anti-ICE Protests

    So, it comes as no surprise that cops who shouldn’t have any skin in the anti-ICE game are stepping up to punish people for daring to criticize the actions of those federal officers. And there’s probably a bit of backlash involved here as well, as this following report details the actions of California law enforcement officers who (one assumes) aren’t thrilled the state’s residents have managed to reclaim much of the power that has always been owed to the people.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Google Broke Its Promise to Me. Now ICE Has My Data.

    "Google had already disclosed my data without telling me. There was no opportunity to contest it."

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Register UK ☛ Iran has something the US can only dream of: cheap broadband

    Telco broadband contracts in North America have an average monthly cost of $98.40. The US is ranked 167th out of the 214 countries studied, with an average price for net access of $80.

    But the costliest [Internet] is found in remote areas, where there may be few subscribers for telcos to sign up. Wallis and Futuna, a set of islands in the South Pacific with a population of about 11,000, came bottom of the league table with an average price of $373.88 per month.

  • Google ☛ IPv6 – Google

    We are continuously measuring the availability of IPv6 connectivity among Google users. The graph shows the percentage of users that access Google over IPv6.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • EFF ☛ Stop New York's Attack on 3D Printing

    New York's proposed 2026-2027 budget currently includes provisions that will require all 3D printers sold in the state to run print-blocking censorware—software that surveils every print for forbidden designs. This policy would also create felony charges for possessing or sharing certain design files. The vote on the state budget could happen as early as next week, so New Yorkers need to act fast and demand that their Assemblymembers and Senators strip this provision from the budget.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • New York Times ☛ Live Nation and Ticketmaster Illegally Monopolized Ticketing Market, Jury Finds

    In a verdict that could have far-reaching consequences in the music industry, the live colossus that includes Ticketmaster was found to have violated antitrust laws.

  • Macworld ☛ What's the point of the App Store, if it can't protect users?

    • Macworld examines Apple’s App Store vetting failures after a fake Ledger Live app drained $9.5 million from crypto wallets and Freecash was banned for data harvesting.

    • These incidents highlight growing concerns about scam apps, fleeceware VPNs, and misleading software infiltrating Apple’s supposedly secure platform despite processing 150,000 weekly submissions.

    • Apple’s delayed responses and inadequate screening undermine the App Store’s security promise, raising questions about whether comprehensive protection is feasible or if sideloading should be permitted.

  • Trademarks

    • Right of Publicity

      • 404 Media ☛ App Stores Push Users Toward Nudify Apps, New Research Shows

        In January, TTP published research that showed how the app stores host dozens of “nudify” and undressing apps. This new research, released on Wednesday and first reported by Bloomberg, shows how the stores don’t just passively host those apps, but push them toward users through search and advertising.

  • Copyrights

    • International Business Times ☛ Justin Bieber's $200M Catalog Sale Explained: Truth Behind the 'Financial Collapse' Allegations

      According to The Hollywood Reporter, that collapse created a long tail of financial pain. The outlet, citing sources familiar with the contracts, reported that Bieber owed around $20 million to tour promoter AEG after receiving a $40 million advance for a global run that never fully materialised.

    • Hollywood Reporter ☛ Justin Bieber’s Crisis of Faith? Why Fans, Insiders Are Concerned

      Concern for Bieber’s well-being turned into a full-on public discourse when, in January, he unfollowed a number of his former friends and associates — including Braun and deputy Allison Kaye (who, after running point on all things Bieber for the better part of two decades, resigned in January), Good (who was the best man at his wedding) and longtime security chief Kenny Hamilton (who shielded him from music industry vultures, bad actors and others, like accused sex trafficker Diddy, according to multiple people present at the time), among others.

      Now, former friends and ex-associates excised from his world, along with musical collaborators, his record company and, of course, his fans, are coming to terms with a new chapter in the book of Bieber. And some are questioning the choices he’s making.

    • Michael Geist ☛ Win, Lose or Draw?: The Federal Court of Appeal Overrules a Key Copyright Case on Procedural Grounds

      The case arises from years of litigation between Blacklock’s Reporter, a paywalled news service based in Ottawa, and the Canadian government. Blacklock’s had launched a series of lawsuits against various government departments, arguing that some of its articles were distributed within departments beyond the limits of its licences. The Federal Court ruled against it in 2016, concluding that fair dealing applied to two articles sent to department officials by a non-government paying subscriber and then shared among several media personnel in the department.

    • Matt Birchler ☛ Where did the MP3s come from?

      I would love to know what percentage of the music on MP3 players back in the early 2000s was pirated, but the number has to be astronomical. According to this article, in 2005, 20% of people were downloading music via peer-to-peer networks like LimeWire and BitTorrent. It's impossible to find specifics, but the impression most people seem to have is that the vast majority of music on people's iPods and Rios and Zunes were pirated. iTunes certainly helped here, but you gotta think the damage was done.