Leftovers

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Relive the PC magazine cover disk era with 758-strong archive.org CD-ROM collection — 1.2TB treasure trove also includes Floppy Disks from as early as 1993

  PC Gamer’s headline highlights the 758 cover disks on the Internet Archive, but there are actually even more gems to be found. Our search uncovered over 1,500 PC Gamer software archives, thanks to a trove of floppy disk offerings from yesteryear. The total collection spans 1.2TB of material, according to the site.

• Kevin Boone ☛ Is Fahrenheit 451 becoming relevant again?

  In the US, and elsewhere, moves are afoot to force the vendors of computer operating systems to carry out age verification at the platform level. Doing this properly – not in the half-arsed way it’s currently being done – would turn every computer into a surveillance platform.

• James G ☛ Waffles and coffee

  Diners make delicious waffles. My favourite order is a Belgian waffle with fruit. I like the fruit to be on the side so that I can put it on the waffle myself. A mixture of melon and orange and grapes and berries or really any fruit makes a great topping. [2] And if there is conversation in the background? I am doubly happy.

• Anil Dash ☛ Discovering Prince, Ten Years Later

  Above all else, Prince wanted to encourage people to create and be creative, to have mastery over their work and their lives, to be their true selves, and to be loving and compassionate towards others. Like everyone, he was flawed and complicated and weird and contradictory. But unlike anyone, he was able to create new worlds that millions of people got to live in inside their imaginations, and to fight impossible battles against all the odds and still somehow prevail.

  That's still an inspiring example everyone can follow, no matter who your are, or how you create in the world. And best of all, Prince has created a perfect soundtrack to help you do it.

• Science

  • ARRL ☛ Helping NASA Track Artemis II’s Orion Spacecraft

    Faculty advisor Juan Manfredi, NAØB, said the club responded to a request from NASA to submit a proposal. “We submitted our proposal in September 2025 and were notified in November that our proposal was accepted,” said Manfredi. “But the real challenge was just beginning and we needed to gather the equipment, test it, and make sure we could make contact.”

    For their part, the club’s members needed to find and track a carrier signal from the spacecraft. Usually, a 9-meter dish antenna would be needed, but with help from the university’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), they were able to purchase a 1.2-meter dish and a software-defined radio (SDR).

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Look Up This Week to See the Peak of the Lyrid Meteor Shower. Humans Have Documented This Dazzling Annual Display for 2,700 Years

    It’s once again time for the Lyrid meteor shower, an annual affair that humans have watched for at least 2,700 years—one of the earliest ever documented, according to NASA. The event is known for producing fast and bright meteors, and the best time to view the “shooting stars” is during the late evening of April 21 through dawn the next day, since the shower should peak at 3:15 p.m. Eastern time on April 22, per EarthSky.

  • John D Cook ☛ More on Newton’s diameter theorem

    A few days ago I wrote a post on Newton’s diameter theorem. The theorem says to plot the curve formed by the solutions to f(x, y) = 0 where f is a polynomial in x and y of degree n. Next plot several parallel lines that cross the curve at n points and find the centroid of the intersections on each line. Then the centroids will fall on a line.

    The previous post contained an illustration using a cubic polynomial and three evenly spaced parallel lines. This post uses a fifth degree polynomial, and shows that the parallel lines need not be evenly spaced.

    In this post

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Occasional paper: Inconstant moon

    So an interesting fact about moons: if a moon orbits above geosynchronous orbit, it will tend to very slowly spiral outwards, raising its orbit and moving further away from its planet. (2) (“Very slowly” here means over billions of years.) Our own Moon is doing this, drifting away a few centimeters per year. Contrariwise, if a moon orbits /below/ geosynchronous orbit, it will tend to spiral /inward/, gradually getting closer to its planet.

• Career/Education

  • Small Cypress ☛ on middle schoolers | small cypress

    I think the only thing I want to add on middle schoolers is that they're at the age where they realize adults are screwing up all the time and they don't really have the answers. They're realizing we're fallible and it messes with their own world view because it puts a little of the burden of figuring things out on them. Too many of my kids have parents with addictions and have been parentified to older siblings since early elementary, so they have little trust in adults at all.

  • Amber Settle ☛ A kind word

    For the first time today one of my former students came into my classroom. He came in, reintroduced himself (his face was familiar although I couldn’t immediately place which class he’d taken with me), and reminded me that he’d taken the second programming class with me. He then went on to say that he’s now in the second data structures class and that he frequently finds that he uses the programming skills that I taught him. He said he just wanted to thank me for teaching him what I did because it continues to help him in his classes.

• Hardware

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Piezo Waiters

    I blame the manufacturers of the beepers for having such an incredibly annoying and never-ending piezo beep. I do think piezo beeping is useful tech and not every instance needs to be replaced by an actual speaker and sound chip, but, the ambiance used to be the main draw of this particular place! If they had put in like birdsong or something, that’d’ve been perfectly charming.

    Instead what used to be a serene place with mismatched old-style furniture and quaint paintings and nostalgic breakbeats on the speakers is now home to an incessant beep-beep-beeping.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Søren ☛ Focus: Kids-Time — Søren's Blog

    My idea is to make the phone dumber.

• Proprietary

  • GeekWire ☛ Opinion: Whither Microsoft? A view from the neighborhood

    Microsoft’s stock decline and the softening of real estate in this corridor (both affecting me personally) were the prompts to write it down. The material was already sitting in front of me.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Design for Repairability

    To me, the biggest problem is the SSDs. Not only can you not replace them, but you can’t even use a modern Mac with an external SSD if the internal one is damaged. It bricks the whole computer.

  • 9to5Mac ☛ Here’s how much a MacBook Neo repair will cost you - 9to5Mac

    For users without AppleCare, there is a flat fee of $149 for battery service, while other damages will require an inspection: [...]

  • Ars Technica ☛ Apple's MacBook Neo makes repairs easier and cheaper than other MacBooks

    But the most significant change in the Neo is that the keyboard is its own separate component. For essentially all modern MacBooks, going back at least as far as the late-2000s unibody aluminum MacBook designs, the keyboard has been integrated into the top part of the laptop case and is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to replace independently.

  • MacRumors ☛ MacBook Neo Teardown: Modular Ports, Glue-Less Battery, Zero Tape

    A teardown of the new MacBook Neo by Australian YouTube repair channel Tech Re-Nu reveals what may be the most modular and repair-friendly Mac laptop in recent times.

  • SchwarzTech ☛ How Apple Used to Design Its Laptops for Repairability

    I had a white iBook G3 (Late 2001 model for those keeping score at home) and while it was infinitely repairable, parts weren’t always easy to find and I found that it got obsolete before concerns like a battery replacement came into play—I got about three years out of it before I wanted something more powerful. RAM still had a limit of 640MB (128MB soldered + up to 512MB added), the hard drive was a pain to access, and the AirPort (Wi-Fi) card was modular because most people weren’t adding it—I think I got one about a year and a half into owning my iBook.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ How to delete your Vinted account

    Thankfully deleting your account is pretty easy, you just need to make sure that you don’t have any balance on your account or orders in place. I had a couple of orders but decided to cancel them as they were low price items and I didn’t want to give Vinted anymore money.

  • Six Colors ☛ Silence! Listen, here’s how to control sound from your devices

    Before telling you how to suppress, silence, or control audio output, let’s first look at what might provoke a sound and which settings control whether it’s produced. Then I’ll dig into Silent mode and other volume-control options.

    Here’s what can trigger audible alerts across your Apple devices, and what controls each: [...]

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Hanff & Co AB ☛ Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop

      I was working on a personal project, debugging a Native Messaging helper I had written for it. In the process I needed to check what Brave Browser had registered on my laptop. What I found was a file I had never put there. It was not mine. I had not installed it. I had not authorised it. I had not even been told about it.

      It was from Anthropic.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Security Week ☛ Bluesky Disrupted by Sophisticated DDoS Attack

      The DDoS attack appears to have started late on April 15 (Pacific Time) and continued into the next day. The company described it as a sophisticated attack that caused intermittent app outages.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Security Week ☛ Senate Extends Surveillance Powers Until April 30 After Chaotic Votes in House

      That plan also would enhance criminal penalties on those who unlawfully conduct such inquiries or disclose the surveillance information, Scott said. It provides a way for members of Congress and certain staff to access the proceedings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, which handles such requests.

      But the final product, a 14-page amendment, did not go far enough for some holdouts in either party.

  • Confidentiality

    • GreyCoder ☛ VeraCrypt: Encrypt Your Files

      VeraCrypt lets you create an encrypted “volume” that looks like a normal drive once it’s unlocked. Everything inside that volume is encrypted on the fly, including file names and free space, so nothing is readable without the correct password or keyfile.

      Under the hood, VeraCrypt supports modern ciphers such as AES, Serpent, Twofish, Camellia, and Kuznyechik, with options to “cascade” them for extra paranoia. It uses secure hashing (for example SHA‑256 and SHA‑512) and runs many iterations when deriving keys from your password, making brute‑force attacks significantly harder.

    • Filippo Valsorda ☛ Quantum Computers Are Not a Threat to 128-bit Symmetric Keys

      AES-128 is safe against quantum computers. SHA-256 is safe against quantum computers. No symmetric key sizes have to change as part of the post-quantum transition. This is a near-consensus opinion amongst experts and standardization bodies and it needs to propagate to the rest of the IT community. The rest of this article backs up this claim both technically and with references to relevant authorities.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Independent UK ☛ Mobile phones to be banned in schools in England under government plans

    Shadow education minister Baroness Barran’s proposal includes a potential carve-out for sixth formers, medical devices and some boarding school settings, and faces further scrutiny in the Commons, which has previously rejected it.

    The Education Secretary has previously written to headteachers in England to stress that schools should be phone-free throughout the school day. However, guidance on mobile phones has been non-statutory.

  • teleSUR ☛ Finland Mobilizes Reservists After Ukrainian Drone Incidents

    Volunteer reservists will be trained to assist active-duty military personnel in air surveillance tasks and the protection of territorial integrity across the country. According to the Defense Forces, there is currently no military threat against Finland.

  • RFA ☛ North Korean operatives use fake identities to apply for tech jobs

    An independent researcher turned a routine job interview into an intelligence operation when he identified a North Korean IT worker applying under a false identity.

  • Futurism ☛ Nvidia CEO Loses His Cool at Tough Question

    During a taping of tech guy Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast spotted by Tom’s Hardware, the Nvidia CEO became agitated when questioned about whether selling advanced AI chips to China poses national security risks to the United States.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Air Force reverses course, extends A-10 service into 2030

    Stub-nosed and relatively slow for a jet fighter, the A-10 entered service in the late 1970s, designed as a low-flying, tank-killing attack plane built to take on Cold War-era Russian tank formations. The A-10 saw action against air and ground forces in the Gulf War and then in the Balkans during NATO operations in the Yugoslav wars.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Why Gen Z isn’t interested in ‘No Kings’

    If you were to ask most people, they would say the “No Kings” protests are dominated by the Baby Boomer generation, and they wouldn’t be completely wrong. According to researchers, the median age of a “No Kings” protester nationwide is 67. While older people take to the streets, something discourages Generation Z from joining in.

  • Techdirt ☛ Palantir Goes Mask-Off For Fascism. It Won’t End Well.

    Last year, we wrote about the disturbing trend of tech founders and VCs nodding along to the neoreactionary pitch that democracy is holding back innovation, and that what the industry really needs is a “tech-friendly” strongman to sweep away institutional guardrails. We argued this was both morally bankrupt and strategically suicidal, since real innovation requires exactly the kind of stable, open, competitive institutions that authoritarianism systematically destroys.

    Palantir has apparently decided to volunteer as the case study. Palantir — the very company whose entire sales pitch is built around using technology to make better strategic decisions and predict how things will play out.

  • TruthOut ☛ Palantir Posts Manifesto Lamenting Post-War “Neutering” of Nazi Germany

    The post, described as comically evil by critics, is concerning coming from a company with growing influence within the federal government. Just over the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, the company’s stock more than doubled in value, as it scored over $11 billion worth of contracts with the federal government.

    The company’s powers within its government work include decisionmaking powers in wartime, widespread surveillance of immigrants and Americans writ large, and spying on Americans, a longstanding practice of the company in both its federal and local law enforcement partnerships.

  • US Navy Times ☛ Unregulated prediction market may endanger US national security, experts and lawmakers warn

    Meanwhile, individuals around the world were placing bets online, guessing which day the officer would be rescued. They did so on the prediction market Polymarket, hoping to cash out with the correct pick.

    The pushback was swift.

  • 404 Media ☛ Forbes Prediction Market Gamifies Story About Mass Shooting of 8 Children

    ForbesPredict is an attempt to gamify news consumption and keep users scanning the website. Rather than cash, players earn tokens. “Tokens that have no cash value but matter within the ForbesPredict ecosystem as a signal of judgment over time. The tokens unlock greater status, gameplay advantages, and non-monetary rewards along the way,” Gould told Publishing Insider in an interview about the launch of ForbesPredict.

  • The Cyber Show ☛ At sea with technology

    The article on Tom's Hardware was saddening and worrying, not because of what it described but because of what it omitted. The piece lacked analysis. It entirely missed the main point and had a general air of glib acceptance and technical passivity.

    Okay to be fair Tom's Hardware isn't Foreign Affairs or Jane's Weekly. Indeed I think the publication, as writers or editors, deliberately avoided the key issue and dumbed-down the commentary because the inevitable conclusion is that in this case the military adversaries of the Dutch Navy are Samsung, Apple and Amazon, two US American and one South Korean threat actor.

    Only we're 'not allowed' to call them "threat actors" despite the clear and present threat they pose. Isn't that worth examining by curious minds?

  • Yle ☛ Flags fly to honour Finland's internally displaced

    During the Second World War, Finland ceded large areas of territory to the Soviet Union.

    Around 430,000 people were permanently displaced within Finland, while nearly 200,000 were temporarily evacuated. At the time, this made up 11 percent of Finland’s population, according to the interior ministry.

  • TechCrunch ☛ Sweden blames Russian hackers for attempting 'destructive' cyberattack on thermal plant

    Bohlin did not name the plant, but said the attack was blocked “due to a built-in protection mechanism.” The minister said the cyberattack points to “riskier and more reckless behavior” on the part of the hackers.

    A spokesperson for the Russian government did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

    This is the latest known attack on critical infrastructure linked to Russian hackers in recent years, as government hackers increasingly target energy and water systems with the aim of causing real-world disruption to public services.

  • TechRadar ☛ Russia hits European thermal power plant in attempted ‘destructive’ cyberattack – Pro-Kremlin hackers are engaging in ‘riskier and more reckless behavior’ in latest attempt to cripple Western critical infrastructure

    The Swedish government said that the attackers had “connections to Russian intelligence and security services,” with the attack showing Russia-aligned groups were engaging in “riskier and more reckless behavior.”

  • Politico ☛ Russia ramps up ‘destructive’ cyberattacks on Europe, says Sweden

    Bohlin warned of more aggressive tactics and said Swedish targets are increasingly in the crosshairs. He pointed to a foiled attempt on energy infrastructure last year as a sign of Russia's increasingly aggressive playbook.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Meduza ☛ Ukrainian prankster infiltrates Russian Industry and Trade Ministry drone meeting, hears official say 90% of electrical components are foreign

    The edited recording, just over a minute long, shows that the meeting concerned drone production, as indicated by a presentation visible to participants on the video call.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ Is "Satoshi Nakamoto" Really Adam Back?

    I can’t remember if I ever met Adam. I was a member of the Cypherpunks mailing list for a while, but I was never really an active participant. I spent more time on the Usenet newsgroup sci.crypt. I knew a bunch of the Cypherpunks, though, from various conferences around the world at the time. I really have no opinion about who Satoshi Nakamoto really is.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Person Playacting as President May Be Getting Addicted to Snuff Films

    The claim that Trump got updates by phone materially conflicts with a different WSJ story linked in the piece, which provided a very detailed description of the rescue just the day after it happened.

    That story describes Karoline Leavitt, not known for her candor, claiming that Whiskey Pete went to the Oval Office to brief Trump directly.

    [...]

    Let’s be honest: if Trump had been fully briefed during the operation, he would have disclosed important details, as he did immediately after it ended.

    As a result, WSJ dodges the full import of all these tweets, treating select ones as agency – a “chest-thumping president” making an “audacious gamble” – rather than reflecting Trump’s fundamental unfitness.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Kash Patel’s Erratic Behavior Could Cost Him His Job

    But Patel, according to multiple current officials, as well as former officials who have stayed close to him, is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy. He has good reasons to think so—including some having to do with what witnesses described to me as bouts of excessive drinking. My colleague Ashley Parker and I reported earlier this month that Patel was among the officials expected to be fired after Attorney General Pam Bondi’s ouster, on April 2. “We’re all just waiting for the word” that Patel is officially out of the top job, an FBI official told me this week, and a former official told my colleague Jonathan Lemire that Patel was “rightly paranoid.” Senior members of the Trump administration are already discussing who might replace him, according to an administration official and two people close to the White House who were familiar with the conversations.

  • NPR ☛ Who owns presidential records? Trump's Justice Department says it's him

    Now, he's shrugging off a law Congress passed decades ago to preserve White House papers — and historians are taking him to court.

    At stake is the fate of millions of papers and electronic messages – not just for Trump's second term in office, but for future presidents and people who want to understand them.

• Environment

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ First evidence found of cocaine pollution affecting fish in the wild

    Notably, this is the first time researchers have shown that drug pollution makes wild fish behave differently in nature, rather than just in a controlled laboratory setting.

  • NPR ☛ Data centers are expensive, unpopular — and could be a tipping point in the midterms

    But the strain they place on the physical environment — from energy to the environment to aesthetics — has ignited fierce opposition in many communities across the country. It has become a voting issue for many people ahead of the midterm elections.

    "It has become a kitchen table issue, and it has become a very relevant political issue," said Christabel Randolph, associate director of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, a technology nonprofit that promotes fairness and accountability.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • North Dakota Monitor ☛ North Dakota has the cheapest electricity in the country, data shows

      There are growing concerns in North Dakota and elsewhere that large power users, like data centers, could drive up the cost of electricity for residential consumers. MDU and Otter Tail representatives said they hope the new industries will actually benefit existing power customers over time.

      Otter Tail’s Hoff said the utility’s customers are not going to have to pay more for electricity to compensate for new infrastructure needed by a single large customer, like a data center.

    • Ludlow Institute ☛ How to Actually Spend [Cryptocurency] in Real Life

      Although Zcash is a superior private currency, most of the [cryptocurrency] world still relies on other surveillable systems, like Bitcoin. Thankfully, cryptocurrencies can be easily converted from one to another so it’s easy to pay in a vendor’s cryptocurrency of choice even if you only keep a balance in Zcash. There are lots of ways to do this, but many are clunky and require you to be quite careful about exchange rates, conversion fees, and payment processing times.

    • Hackaday ☛ Quirky Electric Car Rides The Rails

      We wouldn’t be surprised if you’d never seen the Spira before. The lightweight three-wheel vehicle is closer to a go-kart than a traditional car, and that’s before you even get to the foam body panels. But even the most niche of products enjoys a certain fandom, and [Matt Spears] certainly seems to love working on his Spira. His latest video documents the new modifications he’s made to the car in an effort to ride it on abandoned railroad tracks in the western United States.

    • Hackaday ☛ 2026 Green Power Challenge: NFC Powers Command Write And Wake Of MCU

      One of the more interesting categories of our ongoing Green Power Challenge is “anything but PV” — and since the radiated power of Near Field Communication is decidedly not photovoltaic, this hack by [caspar] to control a Pi Pico W from his phone using a tuned antenna absolutely counts.

  • Overpopulation

    • Western Water ☛ Colorado River faces new emergency actions

      The Colorado River supports more than 40 million people, along with farms, cities, and power systems. When water levels drop too far, the impacts can ripple quickly.

• Finance

  • European Parliament ☛ Housing crisis: why prices are rising and what the EU is doing about it | Topics | European Parliament

    Rising house prices and rents are a big concern for many Europeans. Read on for key facts and what the EU is doing about the issue.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Rolling Stone ☛ The Onion Reaches Deal to Relaunch Alex Jones’ Infowars as Parody Site

    The deal was first discussed in September 2024 when The Onion bid $1.75 million for Infowars during a bankruptcy auction after families of Sandy Hook victims won a defamation suit against Jones and Infowars. A judge blocked the sale two months later. It was finally solidified via a deal on Monday with Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed Infowars site manager, but it’s not final until a judge rules.

  • US Navy Times ☛ Anduril, HD Hyundai expand partnership with first autonomous surface vessel in production

    Anduril and HD Hyundai are expanding their partnership of designing and building autonomous surface vessels as the first ship in their new class enters production.

  • Ubuntu ☛ Canonical expands Ubuntu support to next-generation MediaTek Genio 520 and 720 platforms

    Canonical is pleased to announce the early access launch of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for MediaTek’s Genio IoT platforms. Building on the companies’ strategic partnership, this release introduces optimized Ubuntu images for the brand-new Genio 520 and 720, while continuing to provide robust support for the Genio 350, 510, 700, and 1200.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Tim Cook to step down as Apple CEO, John Ternus named next successor

    Cook, who has led Apple since 2011, will become executive chairman of the board.

    The company said the decision followed a long-term succession plan approved unanimously by directors. Cook will remain CEO through the summer to oversee the handover.

  • Macworld ☛ Tim Cook to step down as Apple CEO in shock announcement

    In a tandem announcement, Apple also announced that Johny Srouji will take over Ternus’s role as Apple’s Chief Hardware Officer.

  • The Verge ☛ Live: John Ternus is taking over from Tim Cook as Apple’s CEO

    Apple has appointed Johny Srouji as its new chief hardware officer, “effective immediately,” according to an announcement on Monday. He is stepping into the shoes of current hardware engineering head John Ternus, who will replace Tim Cook as CEO in September, while Cook becomes the chairman of the board.

  • The Verge ☛ Read Tim Cook’s letter to the Apple world as he departs as CEO

    You can read Cook’s full letter here: [...]

  • Jarrod Blundy ☛ Ternus will succeed Cook as Apple’s CEO

    While no one can know right now how his leadership will differ from Cook’s, Ternus appears to be a worthy candidate: product-focused, likable, with a proven track record: [...]

  • The Verge ☛ Apple names Johny Srouji as chief hardware officer

    Apple has appointed Johny Srouji as its new chief hardware officer, “effective immediately,” according to an announcement on Monday. He is stepping into the shoes of current hardware engineering head John Ternus, who will replace Tim Cook as CEO in September, while Cook becomes the chairman of the board.

  • Apple Inc ☛ Tim Cook to become Apple Executive Chairman John Ternus to become Apple CEO - Apple

    Apple announced that Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors and John Ternus, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple’s next chief executive officer effective on September 1, 2026. The transition, which was approved unanimously by the Board of Directors, follows a thoughtful, long-term succession planning process. Cook will continue in his role as CEO through the summer as he works closely with Ternus on a smooth transition. As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Grievance Poisoning in the First Degree

    As an undergrad, I spent a couple of years as a philosophy major, before dropping out. Therefore I never quite reached the level of solving the mystery of consciousness, or understanding what the fuck Wittgenstein was talking about. The main thing that I took from my small philosophy education was much more practical: the ability to tell when someone is just talking out of their ass.

  • Andy Wingo ☛ on hayek's bastards

    I based this conclusion partly on Quinn Slobodian’s Globalists (2020), which describes Friedrich Hayek’s fascination with cybernetics in the latter part of his life. But Hayek himself died before the birth of the WTO, NAFTA, all the institutions “we” fought in Seattle; we fought his ghost, living on past its time.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ Internet Shutdown Adds To The Costs Of War For Iranians

    But the comparison understates the scale: Iran's population over 90 million is roughly 15 times larger than Libya's was at the time, making this arguably the largest government-directed communications outage in recorded history, with Internet monitoring watchdog NetBlocks describing it as "unsurpassed in scale and severity in a connected society."

  • Meduza ☛ Moscow court fines Russian rapper Morgenshtern on ‘foreign agent’ charges

    The charges stemmed from posts Morgenshtern published on Telegram, Instagram, and YouTube between March and June 2024 without the required foreign agent disclaimer. Prosecutors had sought a fine of 8,206,000 rubles.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Penis costume protester prevails in court

    City prosecutor Marcus McDowell said it wasn't a free speech case but argued "no one has a Constitutional right to dress up as an erect penis and stand on the side of the road."

  • Literary Hub ☛ These were the 11 most challenged books in 2025.

    One of the most telling statistics to come out of this report, though, is that 92% percent of challenges to books were driven by “pressure groups and government officials,” up from 72 percent in 2024. The ALA reports that “less than 3 percent of challenges against books came from individual parents.” The call is coming from outside the house.

    These were the most targeted books of 2025: [...]

  • American Library Association ☛ American Library Association releases 2025 Most Challenged Books List as National Library Week Begins

    As the nation’s libraries unite to celebrate the start of National Library Week and communities everywhere recognize the valuable contribution of America’s libraries and the people who power them, library workers around the country continue to grapple with censorship challenges and threats to their livelihood.

    ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) tracked 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025, the second highest ever documented by ALA. The highest ever documented was 4,240 in 2023.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Kash Patel sues the Atlantic for $250m over article alleging heavy drinking and absences

    In a court filing with the Washington DC district court, Patel has sued the Atlantic, and the author of the piece, Sarah Fitzpatrick. According to the filing, Patel seeks $250m in damages, listing the nature of the suit as “libel, assault and slander”. A full copy of the complaint was not immediately available.

    The article cites a number of conversations with current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, who claim that the FBI director drinks to excess and has been unreachable at times during his tenure in office. The piece also stated that Patel is concerned he might soon be fired.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Kash Patel sues The Atlantic over story claiming he often drunk or missing at work

    Patel had threatened to sue if they published ("Print it, all false, I'll see you in court—bring your checkbook.") and followed through after the weekend. The lawsuit, filed with the Washington D.C. district court also names Fitzpatrick. It's not been made available to read, yet, but The Guardian has some quotes from it.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ Reporter Wins Victory Against FAA's ICE No Fly Zones

    “This is a big win,” Levine stated. “It was heartbreaking to have my drones grounded at a time of such importance to my community, but I’m looking forward to getting back up there and getting back to my journalism as soon as possible.”

    RCFP attorney Grayson Clary declared, “We’re glad to see the FAA rescind its original order, which was an egregious overreach that had serious consequences for reporters nationwide. But this kind of arbitrary back-and-forth from the FAA is exactly the problem, and we intend to make clear to the D.C. Circuit that this restriction never should have been implemented in the first place.”

  • Katie Hawkins-Gaar ☛ Three conversations I can't seem to shake

    I appreciate this focus because I am reminded, again and again, of how much journalists care about the communities they serve and the lengths they’ll go to keep local news alive. I’ve interviewed dozens of one- or two-person operations, spoken to reporters who continue to cover topics long after the mainstream media has moved on, and gotten to know leaders who find surprising ways to keep their publications running.

  • Karl Bode ☛ CBS Just Can't Stop Kissing Donald Trump's Ass

    What's left of U.S. corporate media is utterly dedicated to demolishing whatever's left of their already soggy, feckless reputation. It's a cascading failure, driven by corruption, that shows no sign of slowing down.

  • Doc Searls ☛ For broadcasters, digital tech isn’t a lifesaver. It’s a new land for fish with legs and lungs.

    What’s the problem?

    Alas, radio itself. Listening is moving from narrow-purpose instruments called radios to universal instruments called phones. Last night at a party, I asked a bunch of people what radio stations, if any, they listen to. All of them said they listen to podcasts and streams, some from public radio sources (shows more than stations). And most of these people were retired or close. (One was 20. To her, podcasts and streams are radio, like Netflix and TikTok are TV.)

    My point is that public radio has a growing wedge of a shrinking pie, and it’s a pie that tastes like death. But of broadcast. AM is in hospice. Over-the-air TV is on death row. FM is terminal, but in denial. (Give it time. I’d say about a decade.)

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • BBC ☛ Amy Winehouse's dad loses court case over auction

    Lawyers for Winehouse told the court the two women had "deliberately concealed" the sales and said he turned to legal action because it was his "only means of obtaining answers".

    Deputy High Court judge Sarah Clarke KC ruled against this and said Winehouse "could have discovered what disputed items the defendants had with reasonable diligence".

    The judge said Winehouse was "understandably sensitive about anyone who he perceives as exploiting Amy's memory... but also, in my judgement, he is equally sensitive about ensuring that the family continue to benefit financially."

  • Techdirt ☛ Caught In The Crackdown: As Arrests At Anti-ICE Protests Piled Up, Prosecutions Crumbled

    Over the past 10 months, President Donald Trump’s administration has made much of its success in sweeping through U.S. cities, capturing unauthorized immigrants and arresting people who publicly oppose the operations, routinely accusing dissenters of being domestic terrorists or extremists. Federal agents have arrested hundreds of U.S. citizens like Orellana — including protesters, activists observing the immigration enforcement operations, bystanders and, in some cases, the family members of people targeted for deportation.

    Less clear to the public is what has happened to those charged.

    To find out, ProPublica and FRONTLINE combed through social media, court records and news stories. Reporters identified more than 300 protesters and bystanders who were arrested by federal agents during immigration sweeps and were accused of crimes such as assaulting or interfering with law enforcement.

  • Harvard University ☛ Voting goes to court — Harvard Gazette

    As political candidates prepare to face off in the November midterms, lawyers around the country have been fighting on another important front — the election’s administration.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Copyrights

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Tokyo court rules movie and anime 'spoiler articles' are copyright infringement in landmark criminal case — detailed, monetized plot summaries land man in Japanese prison

      The case was filed by CODA, on behalf of Kadowaka Corporation and Toho's complaints. It surrounds two specific articles written between 2018 and 2023. The first article was about an episode of the anime Overlord that aired in 2018, owned by Kadokawa. The second article detailed the movie Godzilla Minus One, which came out in 2023, owned by Toho, the largest studio in Japan, and a name infamous for stringent trademark protection.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ India's Expanding Site Blocking Orders Hit Legal Wall at Delhi High Court

      Justices at India's Delhi High Court disagree on the future of India's world-leading site-blocking regime. The same court that pioneered "Dynamic+" injunctions to target pirate sites, issued a new ruling that sees these post-judgment expansions as fundamentally incompatible with the law. According to Justice Gedela, there is an "urgent and alarming" need for Parliament to intervene.