Leftovers

• The Guardian UK ☛ Hal Williams, actor best known for Sanford and Son and 227, dies aged 91

  “There’s a lot more Black companies now,” he said in 2022. “There are a lot more Black producers, writers and directors than they ever were before. They’re all young. But we opened the doors.”

• New Republic ☛ Trump Is Literally Frying a Rare Copy of the Emancipation Proclamation

  Bedrock civil rights milestones are at risk of withering away under the Trump administration—including in the physical sense. Hot conditions in a new National Park Service exhibit under the Lincoln Memorial are imperiling rare 1860s copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment, Emma Uber of City Cast DC reported Wednesday.

• Robert Birming ☛ Lagom

  It may sound a bit boring, but I think it's a great life motto. I also feel it's one of the most difficult things to master. Finding that magic middle way.

• Lalit Maganti ☛ What I'm Changing After A Year Of Blogging

  Writing for the world is something which has ebbed and flowed for me over time. I’ve always liked sharing my thoughts, starting with websites all the way back when I was a kid. In times when I sustained it, I had various “blog”-like things for technical projects which would often veer into sharing personal beliefs as well.

  It’s been a year since my latest attempt at what I expect to be a lifelong endeavor. So I’ve been reflecting on how it’s gone, and that’s led me to make some decisions on how I want to rework things going forward.

• Kyle Reddoch ☛ Tech Support Is Mostly Trust Support

  That second question changes the job. The broken setting, locked account, or fake pop-up still needs an answer, but making the screen behave again is only part of the work. The person also needs to know what happened, whether anything is still at risk, and what to do if it happens again.

  Good tech support restores that footing without making the person feel foolish for losing it.

• James G ☛ Website superpowers

  At Homebrew Website Club this week, Thomas mentioned the term “tag healing” during a discussion about tags. The definition I caught was that tag healing is related to reviewing and, if necessary, consolidating, tags used for blog posts or documents. Someone (Tabitha?) said that “tag healing” sounded like a superpower, which inspired me to ask: if you could have a website-related super power, what would it be?

• Hugo Daniel ☛ Start here

  I've been writing here since 2016. It started as a weekly diary of trying to bootstrap a company in Portugal, and drifted through WebGL, web components, WebGPU, and tiny languages. Lately it's about what making software feels like now that machines make it too. That's a lot of ground for a first visit, so this page is the map.

• Internet Archive ☛ Google Summer of Code Contributors Improve Open Library’s Patron Experience | Internet Archive Blogs

  “The Internet Archive’s focus for 2026 is: tools for participation. Participation must be earned by building an experience patrons want to return to.” said Mek, program lead for Open Library. “The work that both Chisom and Tanishq are doing is central to creating a more reliable Open Library experience, where readers can repeatedly discover, access, and enjoy books.”

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Omicron Limited ☛ The starry night redux: Dark energy camera captures stars, nebulae, clusters, and more in a rich, van Gogh-esque scene

    This image was captured by the 570-megapixel DOE-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the NSF Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. With a total of 74 detectors and a lens nearly a meter (3.3 feet) across, DECam is capable of taking high-resolution images that capture the details in every cosmic brushstroke.

  • Hackaday ☛ GOES-19 Goes Down, NOAA Investigating

    Launched in June of 2024, GOES-19 is one of four operational weather satellites that NOAA operates to provide forecast data and severe weather monitoring for the entire Western Hemisphere. The satellite is specifically responsible for covering the continental United States, Central and South America, as well as the Atlantic Ocean. This makes it a particularly critical asset even under normal circumstances, but the fact that it’s gone blind during the Atlantic hurricane season and while smoke from the raging Canadian wildfires is drifting over the Northeast and making the skies over Boston and New York City look like Mars is something of a worst-case scenario.

  • Hackaday ☛ Even Chemical Bonds Obey Einstein’s Relativity

    Although Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is typically associated with really large and really heavy things like planets in solar systems and big things in universes in general, it turns out that even at an atomic scale its effects can be measured. These are the findings of Brown University scientists, whose measurements on very heavy elements indicate the presence of relativistic bonds.

  • Maury ☛ NGC 7497, etc.

    Well, it's not actually in the background: the nebula is closer than the galaxy.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Academic publishing as a public good

    Academic publishing has long been dominated by commercial players. That fact is well-known, as are many of the problems. But there is a growing movement towards new models, under the labels of “open access” and “open science.” Until two weeks ago, I’ve held a role as co-editor of an interdisciplinary journal, which allowed me to see some of the problems from close. But I’ve also learned more and more about solutions.* What follows are some personal reflections on these issues – if you’re familiar with the problems, you might want to jump directly to the solutions part below.

• Career/Education

  • FreeBSD ☛ FreeBSD Foundation Welcomes New Board Member: Dave Cottlehuber

    FreeBSD Community member and former Core Representative, Dave Cottlehuber, was elected to the FreeBSD Foundation Board during the Annual Meeting on June 15, 2026. We sat down with Dave to learn more about his history with FreeBSD and what he’s most looking forward to accomplishing during his tenure.

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ Building education technology that children can trust

    A growing body of research and public commentary links the use of social media, smartphones, and algorithmic platforms to declining mental health and attention in young people. Public attitudes are shifting in response, and parents, teachers, and governments are increasingly demanding action. Phone bans in schools and restrictions on social media are spreading across many countries. The technology sector can no longer take public trust for granted.

  • Zachary Kai ☛ People and Blogs: Brennan Kenneth Brown

    Sure thing, hello! Taanshi! My name is Brennan Kenneth Brown, I'm a Queer Red River Métis writer and web developer. I'm 30-years-old and I've been writing and chronically online for over fifteen years now. I love writing about a wide variety of topics, and using my software development skills to make open-source projects that I hope will benefit others.

• Hardware

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Buzz Aldrin Used This Humble Felt-Tip Pen to Save the Apollo II Astronauts. It Just Sold for More Than $850,000

    Aldrin and Armstrong had just finished a three-hour walk on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility when they decided to get some sleep. Aldrin was settling in when he noticed a small black button on the floor of the lunar module Eagle. After a bit of investigating, the astronauts realized the “little button” was a circuit breaker switch for the engine arm—the “worst… switch to break, since without it we were not going to lift off from the lunar surface,” Aldrin writes in the provenance letter.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ TSMC commits another $100 billion to Arizona for at least four more 2nm fabs — 2026 capex could hit $64 billion following another record quarterly earnings

    A leading-edge 2nm-class fab module with a capacity of roughly 20,000 wafer starts per month costs roughly $25 billion to $35 billion to build and equip, so $100 billion funds approximately four modules, matching the "at least four" plants Wei referenced. It also puts the Arizona site around the halfway mark of the 12-fab, four-packaging-facility endgame reported in April as part of the broader U.S.-Taiwan agreement.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ A beige industrial PC case

    Honestly though, I’m half tempted! This is clearly designed for industrial applications, but this would be an awesome little box for installing projects into, or setting up a remote ZFS target with a couple of large drives in a mirrored vdev for backups.

  • David Oberhollenzer ☛ The Zilog Z80 has turned 50

    As of writing, the Zilog Z80 processor was officially launched 50 years ago, in July of 1976, less than 4 years after the last human had walked on the moon, decades closer to WWII than to the present day, roughly at a half way point between the Kennedy assassination and the fall of the Berlin wall, closer to the Korean war than to 9/11 which is itself an event that happened a quarter of a century ago. (Sorry…)

    The processor was extremely successful, being used in many 8 bit microcomputers, including early personal computers, home & hobby computers, as well as many embedded, industrial applications.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Wired ☛ The Explosive Diarrhea Outbreak Is About to Get Much Bigger

    The country is grappling with a large and fast-spreading outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a parasitic infection that causes extreme gastrointestinal distress. There are nearly 7,000 potential cases, more than 3,300 of which are in Michigan alone as of Tuesday, and state officials have identified tainted lettuce as the likely culprit.

    The actual case count is almost certainly higher, though, because most people don’t seek medical care when they get diarrhea. And even when they do, labs don’t routinely test for cyclosporiasis, says Jeanne Marrazzo, CEO of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. She estimates the number of cases is at least double the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tallies.

  • Cooking Wild Mushrooms ☛ Amanita notes

    Boiled to remove its toxins, Amanita muscaria can usually be eaten with impunity. David Arora serves it on his forays; Russians call it mukhumor and delight in its nutty flavor; and the Japanese reputedly prefer it to Boletus edulis. Recently, Lawrence Millman and Tonya Haff had an experience of A. muscaria somewhat different from the purely culinary experience they intended to have.

    Tonya cut two large (18 x 8 cm) muscaria buttons into ¼" strips and placed them in two quarts of boiling water. The mushrooms were cooked for 3 ½ minutes (they were actually in the boiling water for 5 minutes), and after they were drained, both of us sampled a few pieces. We found the taste pleasant, indeed agreeably nutty, although Lawrence thought they also had a slightly metallic aftertaste. We browned several more slices in olive oil and found them quite pleasant, too. The remaining slices were breaded, then browned. Altogether we ate almost all of the two buttons.

    Twenty minutes later both of us started to feel distinctly "off." Lawrence found himself staring vacantly at some LBMs we were trying to identify. Tonya noticed that he was holding his stomach and looking uncomfortable. Once we agreed that muscaria was the culprit, we called David Arora and asked him what we should do. "Take notes!" David said. So what follows are the notes we took during the experience: [...]

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Microsoft Patch Tuesday July 2026 Fixes 622 Security Flaws

    Microsoft Patch Tuesday July 2026 delivered the company’s largest security update to date, addressing 622 Microsoft CVEs, more than tripling the roughly 200 vulnerabilities patched in June. Among the fixes are two zero-day vulnerabilities—CVE-2026-56164 and CVE-2026-56155—that Microsoft confirmed are being actively exploited, making them the highest-priority updates in this month’s release.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Golden Gate Squircle Jail

  • Aftermath Site LLC ☛ Unions File Unfair Labor Complaints Against Microsoft Over Decision To ‘Unlawfully’ Fire Xbox Workers

    Last week, Communications Workers of America, the union that helped organize thousands of workers across numerous Microsoft-owned video game studios, promised that it would “take all necessary legal and contractual action to defend our members and their rights” following layoffs of 1,600 employees. Now it’s making good on its word.

  • Unions take legal action against Microsoft for allegedly mishandling Xbox layoffs

    Microsoft is now dealing with legal action from unions over the way it carried out Xbox layoffs. CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth says the company unlawfully fired employees without giving notice to or discussing the move with the union, turning a routine restructuring issue into a labor dispute with potential legal and contractual consequences.

  • So-Called 'Artificial Intelligence' ('AI') / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Atlantic ☛ Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster

      The memory is being put into data centers, which tech firms are expanding at incredible speed. They are planning to multiply total U.S.-data-center capacity by a factor of eight over the next few years. The demand for electricity at these sites is already so great that some companies are repurposing jet engines to power them.

      The problem is not simply that AI is being deployed so widely or quickly. Other computer technologies have seen similarly massive growth without triggering such a large spike in electricity or a shortage of computer components: Video and music are now streamed around the globe, accounting for many terabytes of internet traffic daily; the smartphone boom required the manufacturing of billions of devices that are now transferring huge amounts of data; billions of household devices are also now part of the Internet of Things; and whole industries have moved their operations to cloud software, which is hosted not in the sky but in, yes, data centers.

    • US Navy Times ☛ Navy develops strategy to weaponize data, AI

      The problem, the release notes, is how to convert large swaths of data and optimize it within the Navy’s technology ecosystem and turn it into “mission-relevant actionable information.”

    • Stanford University ☛ Letter from the Editors: On prohibiting AI-generated content at The Daily

      Education is not the only reason to limit AI use in writing and editing. Many of us believe the technology subtly encourages dishonesty among staffers.

    • New York Times ☛ Someone Used A.I. to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me. I Don’t Recommend Reading It.

      Someone used A.I. to write my biography. Thousands more of those books are polluting Amazon. Who is behind all this drivel?

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Gathering all my thoughts about “AI”

      I recommend David Gerard’s Pivot to AI if you’re still interested in the topic. He still sometimes gets contributes from Amy Castor as well. It’s also available as a podcast, and YouTube channel.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Today’s stupid prompt injection: just write like the AI

      You can prompt-inject the chatbot by writing your attack like it’s one of the reasoning steps. So the chatbot just follows whatever you say as if it came up with the text itself.

    • I Cringely ☛ The Auditor’s Opinion

      I don’t trust arguments this tidy, and neither should you. History rhyming is not history repeating, and “a trusted third party always wins” is the kind of thing that sounds like wisdom and behaves like a horoscope. So here are the three ways I can see this time genuinely being different. I take them seriously. You should too.

    • Eno Such ☛ README, not

      Personally, slop isn’t annoying per se: it’s okay for personal software, for example, to be slop. What makes slop annoying is the feeling of being bait-and-switched: much like the written word, I want to be informed before I spend my human attention on machine outputs.

      I’m a big believer in giving people a way to express honest intentions. For example, I do sometimes want to drop some slop on the Internet (to save for myself later, or for others to reuse without reading), but I don’t want to mislead people about the intent or effort behind it.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Our sensitive teen daughter’s self-worth is tested by social media and peers. What should we do?

      But how do we wisely accompany a teenager whose self-worth is repeatedly tested by imperfect peers (in her mind at least) and the distortions of online recognition? What practices, language and boundaries help a highly sensitive adolescent convert disappointment into dignity and build friendships rooted in mutual regard rather than constant self-surveillance?

    • The Day WhatsApp Goes Dark

      Tomorrow morning, WhatsApp goes dark, and it’s not just a short downtime, but it is a termination of the service. The servers turn off, the domains don’t resolve anymore and no mobile client is able to connect. Have you ever asked yourself what would happen in that case? What if WhatsApp actually went dark?

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Qantas Did Everything "Right" — And Got Breached Anyway

      The takeaway here isn’t that Qantas got a pass. It’s that a regulator has now drawn, in writing, the line between negligence and the limits of what training and access controls can realistically stop.

    • Fortra LLC ☛ Anubis Ransomware - What You Need to Know

      Well, Anubis is the ancient Egyptian god of the dead, typically portrayed as a man with the head of a jackal. But for the purposes of this article we're talking about the Anubis ransomware group. The Anubis ransomware-as-a-servie (RaaS) operation first appeared under a different Egyptian-themed name, Sphinx, before rebranding itself in late 2024. Whereas Sphinx appended a ".sphinx" extension to teh end of encrypted files, Anubis adds ".anubis"

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Papers Please ☛ Gov. Newsom signs law to upload California data to national ID database

      Ignoring objections from grassroots organizations from diverse communities throughout the state and a litany of lies to the legislature from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), Gov. Gavin Newson signed a bill into law this week which authorizes the DMV to upload information about about all California driver’s licenses and state-issued non-driver ID cards to the SPEXS national ID database. The bill, SB-169, is effective immediately.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ EU orders Google to share search data with rivals, broaden Android feature access

      Google tracks how consumers interact with its search engine and uses the data to refine results pages. For example, it might boost the ranking of a manufacturer’s website if users frequently click on it when performing product research. The data that Google collects about consumer search habits is the first focus of the EU’s regulatory action.

      Officials have ordered the Alphabet Inc. unit to share its search data with rivals. According to the EU, the goal is to make it easier for other companies to compete in the search engine market. Officials envision Google competitors using the data to enhance the quality of their query results.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Protecting Privacy in an AI Era

      Daniel Solove argues in the Wall Street Journal (alternate link) that giving people control of their personal data is not an effective way to regulate privacy in this era. Instead, we need to hold companies accountable for their actions, similar to what we do with food and drug companies. Measures such as rigorous data minimization, fiduciary duties, liability for negligent or reckless technological design, liability for algorithms that cause harm, and multi-stakeholder review of technologies will be far more effective.

    • Site36 ☛ New laws for German spies: Governments wants more powers for its secret services, bringing them closer to the police

      The German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt wants to grant secret services new “operative” powers. The radical draft law running to 700 pages would also expand surveillance, facial recognition and offensive cyber capabilities – and cost hundreds of millions of euros a year.

    • Michael Geist ☛ Why the Government’s Plan for a Social Media Ban in Bill C-34 Is Unconstitutional

      The debate over the government’s proposed social media ban for under 16s has raised several difficult questions, including doubts about whether it will work, which services it will cover, and what risks to privacy mandating age verification could create. But beyond the operational questions is a more fundamental one: is the ban constitutional? Bill C-34 contains some signals that the government knows there are serious constitutional vulnerabilities, given the obvious implications for freedom of expression that come from blocking an entire cohort of Canadians from accessing information and expressing themselves on social media. The bill contains several provisions that are seemingly designed to act as safeguards that could be used to argue that the ban is proportionate. These include guidance on age verification technologies to address privacy concerns, promises that the verification obligation does not require measures that “unreasonably or disproportionately” limit expression, a requirement that the new Digital Safety Commission consider freedom of expression, equality, and privacy when it establishes regulations and guidelines, and the ability for services to seek a ban exemption if they can demonstrate adequate safeguards for children.

    • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Meta glasses ad vandalized in London

      Everything about this story is wonderful, from the activist group’s name to the surgical vandalism to the not-so-subtle nod to the classic They live, John Carpenter’s 1988 film in which a pair of special glasses reveals subliminal messages hidden behind advertisements.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Today in Youtube's joke of a fair-use appeal process

      Since, as you know, arguing with robots is something of a hobby of mine, I uploaded my traditional driver's license. You can't just "upload" it, of course, they require you to scan a QR code with a phone and take a photo from within the browser, for maximal tracking. So I used one of my burner phones for that. They say their response takes 24 hours, so presumably some dollar-a-day call-center gig worker in India is going to put eyeballs on it, so we'll see how that goes.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Meta glasses celebrity backlash: the fans hate them

      Meta tried buying their AI-powered creep glasses a public image with celebrity sponsorships — but the celebrities’ fans hate them. So do the other celebrities.

      Engadget spoke to a pile of photographers who’d been trying out the glasses. They like the cameras and the convenience — but people might think they’re creeps. Danielle, a travel influencer, said: [...]

    • EFF ☛ California Steps Back From Dangerous Expansion of its Age-Gating Law

      The California legislature has stepped back from a plan that would have expanded its age-gating law, removing language that could have compounded serious threats to users’ speech, privacy and security just to browse the internet. A.B. 1856, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, will now move forward through the legislature without its most problematic pieces.

    • Why is everyone freaking out about smart glasses?

      Privacy concerns have fueled a public backlash against the AI [sic]-powered wearables.

• Defence/Aggression

  • LRT ☛ NATO air defence pledge for Baltics: promises and reality

    Despite positive announcements about a new air defence mission in the Baltic region, NATO has not fulfilled a three-year-old pledge made in Vilnius to maintain a rotational deployment of air defence systems in the Baltic states, officials and experts say.

  • The Strategist ☛ Religious motivation needs to stay in our terrorism laws

    Australia does not criminalise extremist beliefs. People are free to hold radical political opinions, controversial religious convictions and offensive ideological views so long as they do not harm others. That is a hallmark of a liberal democracy. The criminal law intervenes against conduct that prepares, facilitates, finances, supports or commits terrorism. Democracies punish violence and its preparation, not ideas.

    But that distinction explains why terrorism is treated differently from other serious crimes. Every murder is an act of violence. Not every murder is terrorism. Terrorism seeks something more. It uses or threatens to use violence to intimidate the public or coerce governments in pursuit of political, ideological or religious objectives. Motivation therefore performs an essential legal and operational function. It helps distinguish terrorism from other forms of serious criminal violence.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Abdul El-Sayed outraises Haley Stevens, but super PACs dominate Senate race

    But in both races, super PACs have spent far more money than the candidates, blotting out whatever advantages the progressive upstarts may have earned from their own donors.

  • TruthOut ☛ Miller Labels Leftists a “Cancer” That World Must “Root Out” in Fascistic Speech

    Representatives from 67 countries gathered in the U.S. on Thursday for a meeting called Rubio on the supposed “Resurgence of Political Terrorism.” In addition to Rubio and Miller, several U.S. officials spoke, including figures like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

    The remarks from top officials quickly made clear that the meeting’s purpose was to put forth a global offensive against people with left-wing beliefs.

  • [Repeat] Site36 ☛ Six German antifascists deny intent to kill Nazis in Budapest and speak out in court - with strong political statements

    The decision by the Düsseldorf Six to break their silence appears to have been coordinated and prepared with solidarity networks. A trial-monitoring group published extracts of their statements on Tuesday on its website. These are largely political in nature: “Antifascism is not terrorism but a consistent and necessary confrontation with the resurgence of fascist structures and the everyday threat posed by neo-Nazis,” it states, among other things.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Democracy in an Age of Powermaxxing

    Suddenly it’s OK to sound the alarm about the political power of billionaires. And I do mean suddenly. The chart above, from political scientist Andrew Hall, examines fundraising emails to track the extent to which politicians say negative things about the hyper-wealthy. Not surprisingly, almost all mentions are negative. Until 2025 there were remarkably few such mentions – that is, until the cavalcade of fawning tech bros at the Trump inauguration abruptly made criticism of billionaires and their influence mainstream.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Deranged billionaires and their syndromes (16 Jul 2026)

    How do you arrange society so that selfishness produces public benefit? With markets. Faced with relentless competition, the most effective way to accumulate and retain wealth is by striving to make your wares cheaper and better. In a competitive labor market, we can secure fair treatment for workers without labor law or unions – bosses who treat their workers badly will lose them to better bosses. Just "align the incentives" and let markets do the rest.

    This is an area where there's broad overlap between the left and the right. Chapter one of The Communist Manifesto is Marx and Engels' love letter to the incredible power of markets to improve everyone's material conditions by increasing production while lowering costs: [...]

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Marines condemn veteran’s ‘disturbing statements’ about Trump

    In the video, Upham accused Trump of being the “antichrist” and “the enemy of God.”

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Hindustan Times ☛ WhiteHouse.gov website crashes as Trump announces release of declassified election integrity documents

    The documents, which were released on the whitehouse.gov website, address everything from Chinese attempts to get and utilize American voter data to flaws in American voting machines.

• Environment

  • The Revelator ☛ Why The Ocean Cleanup Hasn’t Solved the Plastic Pollution Crisis

    It’s not surprising that any attempt to remove plastic from here would catch, and likely kill, many marine organisms, because the waters of this region aren’t a trash-filled biological desert. The area is full of neuston, marine life that lives right at the sea surface — species that may not be as charismatic as dolphins or sea turtles but are extremely ecologically important.

  • Hackaday ☛ White Rails Are The Infrastructure Hack We Didn’t Know We Needed

    So, how do you cool the million miles of metal that holds a country together? Paint. Simple white paint sprayed on the side of the rails can bring down temperatures 11 °C (20 °F), according to the Union Pacific Railroad, the first to try this in North America. It might not surprise you that this technique is also being rolled out on the other side of the pond during this summer’s European heat waves. Indeed, it was invented there; the Italians have been doing it for many years now.

  • European Commission ☛ Commission adds exemptions to portable battery removal rules

    Under the EU’s Batteries Regulation, portable batteries in products sold in the EU must generally be removable and replaceable by consumers. This helps extend products’ lifetime by allowing battery replacements and supports recycling by making it easier to collect used batteries.

    However, some products, such as medical devices and so-called “wet appliances” (for example, electric toothbrushes or water flossers), are already exempt from this requirement, mainly for safety reasons. In these cases, batteries only need to be removable and replaceable by independent professionals.

  • CSIRO Publishing ☛ Scenarios for ecosystems in the year 2100 | Australian Journal of Botany

    We discuss four case studies (Fig. 1): an alpine grassland, a subtropical rainforest, and two eucalypt woodlands. Each vegetation type has rather distinct dynamics. The authors collectively have hundreds of years of field experience with them. Here, in the main text, we summarise their features with reference to state-and-transition (ST) diagrams. Then themes emerging from the case studies are gathered together. States and transitions are numbered and described in more detail in Supplementary material.

  • Cowboy State Daily ☛ Why Microsoft Can Skip State Review For 3,500 More Data Center Acres In Cheyenne

    Why can a project as massive as Microsoft’s planned 3,500-acre expansion avoid Wyoming’s Industrial Siting Council while wind farms and other major industrial facilities usually cannot? It’s not a loophole or a data-center-specific workaround. It's state law.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ This Viking Longship Crossed the Atlantic Before Starring in Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey' as Odysseus' Greek Galley

      The wooden ship, commissioned by Norwegian entrepreneur Sigurd Aase, is about 115 feet long and 25 feet wide and equipped with square sails and 50 long oars. Most importantly, it can actually traverse the sea—a necessity for Nolan’s loyalty to practical effects.

      “There is something on board that cannot easily be faked: the weight of the oak, the sound of the rigging, the movement of the sail, the crew working together in real wind and water,” Emanuel Persson, Draken’s CEO and expedition director, tells Artnet’s Min Chen. “When you put a real ship in real conditions, it brings a different kind of truth to the image.”

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Wait, we just saw the R-766 steam past!?

      As I mentioned on that 3801 post, the R-761 is my favourite locomotive of all time. And the R-766 is the spitting image of her. And now apparently we could book passage, locally!? That’s wild!

    • NPR ☛ Bike lanes and speed cameras disappear from the DOT's list of proven safety measures

      The Federal Highway Administration has quietly stripped bike lanes, speed cameras and several other best practices from a list of "Proven Safety Countermeasures," as they're known, that have been shown to reduce crashes and save lives.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Salon ☛ Wild animals don't exist for your social media content

      “Generally, if an animal is alert to your presence, you’re already too close,” says Shervin Hess, conservation manager at Portland’s Oregon Zoo. And because humans have grown comfortable — perhaps too comfortable — around wild animals in the age of social media and smartphones, more often than not it’s the animals who wind up paying for our heedlessness. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you cross paths in the wild.

  • Overpopulation

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Smartphones Might Be Playing a Role in the United States' Declining Birth Rate, New Research Suggests

      Some economists suspect that the technology’s widespread adoption has reduced in-person interactions and increased access to pornography and information on birth control, leading to less unprotected sex

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • FreeBSD ☛ Understanding the Foundation Board’s Role in the FreeBSD Ecosystem

    During BSDCan, the FreeBSD Foundation holds its annual meeting and Board elections. Following this year’s meeting, we are pleased to welcome Dave Cottlehuber to the FreeBSD Foundation Board of Directors. Take a minute to read this interview with Dave to learn more about his involvement with FreeBSD and why he joined the Foundation Board of Directors.

    This transition also provides an opportunity to explain how the Foundation Board operates, how board members are elected, and how the Board’s role differs from Foundation staff and FreeBSD Project leadership. These distinctions are not always obvious from the outside, and we want to provide a clearer explanation of how the Foundation is governed.

  • Hollywood Reporter ☛ Marvel Comics to Leave New York and Move Staffers to L.A.

    The relocation was revealed to staff at a town hall Thursday at Marvel’s New York office in Midtown, where employees were informed that its publishing division will be pulling up stakes and transferring operations to Burbank, California, the current headquarters of Marvel Studios and corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company.

  • Marty Day ☛ Marvel Comics Names New Editor-in-Chief, Will Relocate To Hollywood

    Marvel is, intentionally or not, following in DC Comics’ footsteps, who relocated from NYC to Burbank back in 2015 (to also report more closely to their corporate overlords). I feel bad for the employees who now have to trade one expensive cost-of-living locale for another.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ The dispensable nation – updated

    As I observed last year, the statement that “The cemeteries are full of indispensable people.” is just as true of nations, and in particular the US. That was a little controversial at the time, but now it’s become sufficiently conventional wisdom to be restated in the New York Times. I’ve been working on an update. and that seems like a signal to get it out

  • The Asahi Shimbun Company ☛ China and Xi are seen more favorably than the U.S. and Trump in many nations, new survey says

    The world has largely viewed the U.S. more favorably than China for years, but those opinions have flipped in Beijing’s favor this year, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, a remarkable shift driven in part by tensions between the Trump administration and U.S. allies.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Armenia begins printing new biometric passports amid design and birthplace controversy

    One of the most criticised images depicts the Khor Virap monastery without its iconic backdrop of Mount Ararat. Instead, the illustration shows mountain ranges located within Armenia. The choice of angle prompted widespread criticism, as Khor Virap is closely associated with panoramic views of Mount Ararat, which despite being located in present-day Turkey, has remained one of the most enduring symbols of Armenian national identity.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ US copyright law has been weaponised to silence reporting around the world

    DMCA Copyright ‘strikes’ have become a rapidly growing tactic used by rogue organisations to manipulate Google Search, by corporations to stifle reporting and by repressive regimes to silence criticism.

    US-based tech platforms are complying with DMCA requests to suppress legitimate journalism globally.

  • Richard J Tofel ☛ Those Subpoenas to Reporters May Not Be Quite What You Think

    The subpoenas to reporters for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and New York Times in recent weeks seeking to identify the sources of important national security stories have received a lot of attention. But I think what’s going on here is not quite what you’ve been told, either by the Trump Administration or even by aggrieved journalists. This week I want to try to explain why.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ To Beeb Adverse or Not to Beeb, That Is the Question

    One place it could have a swift impact is on Trump’s attempt to sue the BBC for the way they edited a documentary about Trump’s coup attempt. At issue is Trump’s attempt to prevent BBC from getting US government documents to contest the suit.

    Trump has been defying discovery in the lawsuit he chose to file for some time. Back in May, the Beeb defended its extensive discovery demands with Alex Britto, the lawyer Judge Williams referred for bar investigation. Later that month, they asked Magistrate Judge Enjolique Lett to force Trump to provide the necessary discovery, and on June 10, she ordered Trump to start complying or she would issue a default judgement.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ Report Details How Often Immigration Agents Used Force During Traffic Stops

    Among the findings: Traffic stops led to immigration agents using their car to box in people 53 times, ramming other cars 14 times, pulling 76 drivers and passengers out of cars, smashing car windows 47 times and hitting people with cars six times, the report states.

  • Andy Bell ☛ Use cases for aria-expanded

    When I conduct accessibility audits, I usually can’t avoid having to check an element that has the aria-expanded attribute. One of the challenges I faced was determining what kind of pattern this was, whether aria-expanded was appropriate here, or if it could even be replaced by a native HTML element.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Union Density Is the Cause of and Solution to Our Problems

    Everybody should be talking about union density. Always. Union density—the percentage of the work force that is represented by unions—has been declining since the middle of the 20th century, almost without pause. In the 1950s, one in three American workers was a union member. Today, it’s only one in ten. This decline goes a long way to explaining our half century-long rise in economic inequality, the slow collapse of our civic society, the enormous fortunes in the hands of a small number of billionaires, the capture of our electoral politics by money, and more. Union density has been crushed so the power of working people has been crushed and unions have less economic and political power and as a result corporations and the rich have more power. And here we are.

  • NPR ☛ The use of force has become a 'default tool' for ICE officers, a new report finds

    The findings underscore the concerns many immigrant advocates have raised repeatedly as the Trump administration continues its aggressive deportation campaign: Forceful, and even violent, immigration encounters are not rare. In fact, nearly a third of the incidents included in the research involved the use of force or the threat of force.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • [Repeat] Digital Music News ☛ Anthropic Goes 'Mano-a-Mano' Against Music Industry Power Attorney Donald Passman - Digital Music News

    Anthropic is currently embroiled in multiple lawsuits against major music publishers, with billions of dollars at stake. But according to legal filings shared with Digital Music News, the Claude creator is also locking horns ‘mano-a-mano’ with Gang Tyre attorney Donald Passman, author of the music industry bible, All You Need to Know About the Music Business.

  • EFF ☛ Don’t Repeat NY’s 3D Printing Blunder

    It might be well-intentioned, but bills like these sell a fantasy that can only have an untold negative impact on the privacy, free expression, and consumer rights of anyone using these general purpose devices. Behind the banner of reducing gun violence, which is nearly always committed with commercial firearms, New York lawmakers have passed draconian legislation that will let manufacturers lock in users and collect their data.

    Now that the bill has passed and been signed by Governor Hochul, let’s look at two important ways the final legislation changed since we last wrote about it, and why states like California shouldn’t make the same mistake.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Paramount prevails in bid for new judge in federal antitrust case

    Paramount Skydance has prevailed in its first court move to defend its Warner Bros. Discovery merger — prompting the departure of a judge who initially had been assigned the high-profile antitrust case.

    Late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín took over the case brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other Democratic state attorneys general. The states’ coalition is attempting to derail Paramount’s proposed $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging it violates a century-old antitrust law.

  • Variety ☛ Paramount+ Subscribers Fail to Block Warner Bros. Merger

    The plaintiffs sued in April, alleging that they had faced price hikes and risked losing viewing options as a result of the transaction. At a hearing on Thursday, Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin denied their bid for a preliminary injunction.

  • PC World ☛ Microsoft is cutting OneDrive support on older Windows 10 PCs

    After the deadline, affected systems will lose OneDrive features, security patches, and bug fixes, creating potential security vulnerabilities.

  • Variety ☛ Ellisons Sued by Paramount Investor Over Alleged Trump Side Deal for WB Approval

    The shareholder lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Delaware Chancery Court, seeks to block Paramount’s $111 billion merger with WBD and also seeks unspecified monetary damages. According to the suit, the Ellisons allegedly promised “illegal private benefits to President Trump in order to remove federal regulatory barriers.”

  • Copyrights

    • Creative Commons ☛ Introducing the CC Open Heritage Companion

      The Creative Commons (CC) Open Heritage Companion is a practitioner’s guide developed to help cultural heritage institutions navigate the journey from closed to open collections.

      Grounded in the legal, policy, and ethical questions institutions face along the way, the Companion brings together 200+ curated resources, tools, and examples, organized into six chapters that guide practitioners from their first questions about openness to leading the field.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ The US Copyright Office could drastically increase fees for photographers this fall – but a subscription option isn’t yet off the table

      Registering a copyright for a group of photos could cost as much as $30 more this fall, as the US Copyright Office has issued plans for an increase in fees. The announcement, however, comes with insight that the Copyright Office is looking into the possibility of subscription-based registrations.

    • US Library of Congress ☛ Fashion and Copyright: What Designers Need to Know | Copyright

      Fashion is an ever-evolving expression of creativity which ties together innovation, culture, and commerce. The U.S. Copyright Office is often asked, “Are my fashion designs protected under the copyright law?” With a constitutional purpose to promote creativity and free expression, copyright is a fundamental aspect of fashion. For example, copyright protection can extend to the visual works of art common to the fashion industry like sketches and fabric patterns, as well as certain garment embellishments—as long as they are original and sufficiently creative.