Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ Postal IRCs Are Almost A Thing Of The Past

  If that didn’t mean anything to you, you might be too young to remember, or maybe you just weren’t into shortwave listening or ham radio. Although there were other reasons to get IRCs, a radio hobby is the most likely reason a Hackday reader would have bought an IRC.

  For radio purposes, here’s the problem. You’ve worked on your station for months, and one winter night, you finally pull in that rare station from Luxembourg. They’ll send you a QSL card to verify that you heard them. You only have to send them a letter telling them what time you heard them, what frequency, and some details about the program you heard. But they probably don’t want to pay the postage required to send hundreds or thousands of cards overseas.

  While this is a radio-specific problem, you might find the same issue with pen pals or when trying to buy things from an overseas company.

• Mandy Brown ☛ Break what should be broken

  The second skill is the actual breaking of that law when you deem it right to do so, whether because it is of no consequence (as with jaywalking across an empty road) or because the consequence of compliance is too great. This is the key thing here: we practice breaking rules not for the sake of rule-breaking but because a great many rules do harm, and often our only defense against that harm is to refuse to comply.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Wolfram Research Inc ☛ Jacobian Conjecture

    The Jacobian conjecture asserts that a polynomial map F:C^n->C^n having a nonzero constant Jacobian determinant is an automorphism. In the plane, first stated by Keller (1939), it says that a ring map F of C[x,y] (the polynomial ring in two variables over the complex numbers) to itself that fixes C and sends x, y to f, g, respectively, is an automorphism iff the Jacobian f_xg_y-f_yg_x is a nonzero constant. The condition is easily shown to be necessary.

    There have been at least five published incorrect proofs and many incorrect attempts over the years. In November 2004, Hochster (2004) sent an email announcing a new proof by Carolyn Dean. However, this proof contained an error as well.

• Career/Education

  • Harvard University ☛ A century of the SAT

    The SAT turned 100 this summer. The dreaded rite for high school students has changed several times since its debut in 1926, but Harvard was there from the start, trying to shape it into a reliable tool to gauge college applicants’ academic readiness.

    The test is the best-known product of the College Board — a nonprofit organization formed in 1899 to standardize college admissions. Then-Harvard President Charles W. Eliot was a founding member.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] France's parliament passes assisted dying law

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Why America's hospitals keep looking to India for nurses

  • Science Alert ☛ BREAKING: US Measles Cases Just Hit a "Grim Milestone". Here's What You Need to Know

    Since then, measles case numbers have remained low.

    Until 2025, that is.

    Public health experts are deeply concerned. Last year, three people died from the disease. No deaths have yet been reported in 2026, but with each new case, the odds are getting worse.

  • Wired ☛ Abdul El-Sayed Is an Epidemiologist Running for Senate. His State Is a Public Health Disaster

    These in-your-face (and sometimes in-your-gut) problems, says senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed, help make a complex topic—the need to invest in public health infrastructure—extremely easy to talk about with voters. And he has unique qualifications to do so as a MD-PhD who’s served as the health officer for Detroit.

  • The Verge ☛ Garmin’s new screen-free fitness tracker doesn’t require a subscription

    The smart band can track more than 80 different activities such as running or yoga that are selectable through the accompanying Garmin Connect app or using its single side button as a shortcut to your favorite. Through the app, you can monitor your training progress including the effectiveness of a workout and whether your body is ready for your next training session or would benefit more from a rest day.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • Deseret Media ☛ New Jersey says software error put 6,600 noncitizens on voter rolls

    The announcement comes as President Donald Trump, a Republican, has undertaken an ‌aggressive push before November congressional elections to identify and mitigate voting by noncitizens, which experts have long determined was not a significant problem in American elections.

  • 404 Media ☛ Apple Fixes Hide My Email Vulnerability After 404 Media Coverage

    Murphy first reported the issue to Apple in June 2025. Over the subsequent months, Apple said it was looking into the issue and said it had fixed it; Murphy found it was still exploitable; and Apple again said it was looking into it. Murphy, thinking Apple may not fix the issue at all, then contacted 404 Media, around a year after Apple learned of the vulnerability.

  • Games ☛ UKIE: 22% of UK games industry workforce affected by job losses in last three years

    22% of UK games industry workers have experienced job loss in the last three years, including redundancies, studio closures, and the end of fixed-term contracts.

    This data comes from UKIE, which has released the third edition of its industry census, now called the UK Games Industry Workforce Demographics Survey.

  • Nearly a quarter of surveyed British developers have lost their jobs in the past three years

    UKIE came to this conclusion after surveying 1,610 developers from across the country.

    In total, 22% of respondents admitted to UKIE that between 2023 and 2025, they had been unemployed at least once, due to mass layoffs, studio closures, or the expiration of employment contracts. Screenwriters were most affected, with 44% of those surveyed in this profession losing their jobs over three years. The list also includes artists (31%), game designers and level designers (30%), and sound designers (25%).

  • Yoko Taro Despairs Over the Future of Games as PlayStation Kills Discs

    NieR: Automata director Yoko Taro has spoken out about PlayStation ending physical disc production, calling the shift saddening and admitting his predictions about the industry were wrong.

  • Union accuses Microsoft of unlawfully laying off staff in legal action

    The Communication Workers of America (CWA) union has filed an unfair labor practice (ULP) against Microsoft over the mishandling of the company’s latest layoffs.

    As reported by Game Developer, CWA has filed a ULP over Microsoft and its subsidiaries failing to provide information to the union and engaging in bad faith bargaining. CWA Canada has also taken legal action over the outsing of employees at Betheseda Game Studios Montreal.

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

    • Techdirt ☛ XAI, Which Is Being Sued Over Grok’s CSAM Problem, Sues a User Over Grok’s CSAM Problem

      In the interim, a number of people have been arrested for using Grok to produce CSAM, in some cases based on X’s reports to NCMEC. Of course, the company is also being sued by a bunch of people, claiming that it should be liable for the non-consensual imagery that it created. Some of the details of the lawsuit linked above are particularly horrifying: [...]

    • Semafor Inc ☛ NewsCorp accuses search engine Brave of AI copyright infringement

      On Tuesday, News Corp announced that it is suing Brave AI, a privacy-focused search engine with an AI sidebar tool that plugs into large language models.

      In its lawsuit, News Corp alleged that Brave masks its web crawlers such that publishers cannot detect or block them, and delivers “summaries” of news articles that are “verbatim or near verbatim copied content to enterprise customers, primarily AI companies.” The company also alleged that before March 2025, Brave scraped and sold copyrighted News Corp content to AI companies that were “in direct competition with the News Corp Companies’ own content licensing programs.”

    • SQ Magazine ☛ How Much Content on Social Media Is AI Generated 2026: Truths

      AI-generated content overtook the volume of human-made content on the public internet by November 2024 and reached 52% in May 2025, according to Europol’s Innovation Lab analysis. Social platforms sit at the centre of that shift, with LinkedIn long-form posts, YouTube Shorts feeds, and Reddit threads now carrying double-digit shares of synthetic content that platform-side detection systems still struggle to catch in real time.

      The data below maps the AI-generated share for every major social platform, the labelling and removal numbers that platforms have published, the deepfake slice within that AI total, and how accurate today’s detection tools actually are when tested outside vendor benchmarks. Every figure cites a named primary or peer-reviewed source.

    • Hackaday ☛ Neural Net Reads The Gas Meter

      The root issue here is twofold, first that [Cian]’s gas company hasn’t upgraded their own technology to modern, remote-readable meters, and second that the meter can’t be read by a gas employee because it’s hidden in the depths of [Cian]’s basement. This latter fact requires him to delve into Moria-like depths to get to the meter, so the solution here was to place a Raspberry Pi in this location instead. With a camera pointed at the meter, it’s not quite capable of discerning digits on its own so a neural network was trained in order to get accurate readings of the dial. And, finally, since the machine is networked already [Cian] set it up to automatically notify the gas company of its reading so he is now completely out of the loop.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Google Says It Still Sends ‘Billions of Clicks’ to Websites

      If only Google had some kind of dashboard or console with information about a website’s search performance.

    • Search Engine Roundtable ☛ Google Says It Sends Billions Of Clicks To Web Through AI Search

      Google is not saying it sends more clicks to websites than it did before; rather, Google is saying it still sends billions of clicks and that AI Search features send billions of clicks weekly. The reality is that you and I see less traffic from Google Search today than we did before Google launched AI features in Google Search.

    • Kyrylo Silin ☛ Programming experience is no longer a moat

      The implication was that if AI makes you question the value of your experience, the only possible explanation is that you never had any. That may be a comforting answer, but I don’t think it is the correct one.

    • David Rosenthal ☛ Distilling The Moat

      AI companies' intellectual [sic] property [sic] is their models. They spend vast sums funding the technical and human resources to "train" these models, the racks of GPUs in the data centers, and the hordes of workers labeling images, and having "genuine human conversations" with the nascent model. These expenditures are thought to create a "moat" around the value thus generated, because it would be equally expensive for a competitor to create an equivalent model. It is this moat that supports their extraordinary valuations, despite their lack of earnings.

    • Unsupervised Learning ☛ Unsupervised Learning NO. 537

      Starting to gear up for Blackhat/DEFCON this year. Eager to see what the vibe is this year given how much AI is impacting everything. I guess I expect the same: the product floor filled with AI this and AI that.

  • Social Control Media

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-13 [Older] EU experts urge social media restrictions for kids under 13

    • New York Times ☛ What Happened When Meta Used A.I. to Ban Accounts on Facebook and Instagram

      The notice said she could appeal, so she clicked the button to begin the process. A week later, she got another notification: Her appeal was denied.

      “All your information will be permanently deleted,” Meta’s response read. “You cannot request another review of this decision.”

    • Matt Birchler ☛ We are not ourselves on social media

      100% agreed. We genuinely are not ourselves on social media.

    • Jason Toney ☛ I Hate The Way We Talk Online

      What I expected in return were answers from acquaintances and strangers alike about their awareness of what’s actually popular, rather than the hyper-personal, algorithmically curated music being piped into their ears or the tunes that the hyper-niche online music fandom they may be a part of was promoting.

      What I got instead were weirdly defensive or hostile replies that seemed to take my innocuous question as an invitation to debate the merits of charts including conspiracy theories about their purpose. Others merely wanted to pat themselves on the back for having edgy tastes.

      I’m desperate for some sense of a shared cultural language or zeitgeist right now, but not like this.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Task And Purpose ☛ New Army program would let soldiers use meal cards for fast food

    Soldiers at Fort Stewart, Georgia, will soon be able to use their meal cards at Subway, Starbucks, Burger King and QDOBA on base, according to Army officials.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Erik Thorsell ☛ GitHub suddenly rejected my SSH key (the fix was a .pub file?!)

    Because the .pub file changes which authentication flow OpenSSH uses. With a .pub file present, the client first probes (offers the public key, waits for the server’s OK) and only then signs. With only a private key, OpenSSH skips the probe and sends a fully signed authentication request directly. Both flows are perfectly legal according to RFC 4252, and a stock sshd accepts both.

    GitHub, as of today, apparently does not.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Bitdefender ☛ Ukraine warns fake CAPTCHAs are being used to make you hack yourself

      The Kremlin-backed Sandworm hacking group is reportedly leveraging fake CAPTCHA checks on compromised websites that persuade users to execute a PowerShell command on their computers - tricking them into running malicious code.

      CERT-UA has attributed the attacks, which have surged this spring and summer against Ukrainian targets, to UAC-0145 - a branch of Sandworm, the hacking unit known for some of Russia's most destructive cyber attacks in the past 10+ years, including ones against Ukraine's power grid.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Techdirt ☛ Victory! Flock Ends Rollout Of Audio “Distress Detection” Of Human Voices

      In October 2025, EFF warned the public that Flock was rolling out a new feature called “Distress Detection” that would be deployed through their acoustic gunshot detection devices (formerly known as Flock Raven, now called Audio Detection). This feature purported to use high-powered microphones scattered throughout a city to search for sounds of human distress, with original advertisements from the product indicating it would search for “screaming.” (Since the publication of our original blog post, Flock quietly amended the ad on this webpage to say “distress” instead of “screaming.”)

      Now, Flock has published a blog post stating that “[a]fter careful consideration and community consultation, we decided to remove the feature.” Good riddance.

    • International Business Times ☛ France's National Assembly Backs Social Media Ban for Under-15s, Warns Platforms: Verify Ages or Lose Users

      France's National Assembly overwhelmingly approved a major bill on Tuesday to enforce a strict social media ban for children under 15, making it the first European Union nation to legally bar young teenagers from platforms like TikTok.

      The legislation, backed heavily by President Emmanuel Macron, places the enforcement burden directly on technology companies, warning they must verify user ages by September or immediately close unverified underage accounts across the country.

    • Wired ☛ Apps Marketed to US Troops Are Shipping Chinese and Russian Code

      A first-of-its-kind analysis found more than one in eight apps built for US service members carried foreign code—some from firms in nations the Pentagon designates as adversaries.

    • SQ Magazine ☛ Connected Medical Alert Devices and the IoT Safety Market

      Connected safety hardware rarely makes tech headlines. Yet it is one of the quietest growth stories in the Internet of Things. Devices that once sat in a corner of the home now travel with their owners, streaming location and health signals over cellular networks. For a data-focused reader, the numbers are the interesting part.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ MIT to Become Hotbed of AI Video Surveillance

      It’s a lot: [...]

    • MIT ☛ Amid security concerns, MIT to spend over $3 million on over 500 new surveillance cameras across campus | The Tech

      Technical specifications for the cameras suggest that they will be capable of collecting real-time face and object classification data, including detection of motion, loitering, crowds, face masks, and camera tampering. Individuals can also be automatically classified on the basis of clothing color, gender, and age, up to a distance of 35 feet (11 meters) from the camera. According to a statement from MIT spokesperson Kimberly Allen, any collected data is “retained up to 30 days,” unless an exception is granted.

    • Michael Geist ☛ Rushing Lawful Access Backfires: Wyden Letter on Bill C-22 Highlights Political, Trade and Business Risks

      Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree and the government presumably hoped that pushing Bill C-22 through a House of Commons committee past midnight without debate or a recorded vote would put an end to the lawful access controversy. A new letter from U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee that holds jurisdiction over trade, suggests the opposite. The letter, released last week, calls on the U.S. administration to treat Canada’s lawful access plans as a counterintelligence threat, to use the CLOUD Act negotiations as leverage, and to take regulatory steps to insulate American officials from surveillance demands directed at U.S. companies. Coming just weeks after House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan and House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Brian Mast warned that the bill harms U.S. national security and economic interests, the letter confirms that Bill C-22 has become a bilateral irritant with the potential to emerge as a full-blown trade issue. Given the latest threats of new tariffs, lawful access could add yet another complication in the increasingly fraught trade relationship.

    • Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Disabling Siri • Cory Dransfeldt

      So, given Siri's extremely limited utility, I went about figuring out how to shut it off.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Dealing with dickovers (21 Jul 2026) dickovers

      These are bad everywhere, but they are especially terrible in the UK and EU, where websites practice a form of malicious compliance to the GDPR, Europe's landmark privacy law. Under the GDPR, websites are required to secure your affirmative consent to process your data. The obvious way that websites should respond to this is by not collecting your data unless there's a damned good reason for it, but the actual response is to repeatedly shove cookie-consent dialogs in your face before letting you use the site.

      These are absolutely unnecessary. Your browser can be configured to transmit a "global privacy control signal" by default that tells websites you don't consent to be spied on while you look at their pages: [...]

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ People are transcribing your conversations without asking. That puts you at risk.

      Apps like Granola make it easy to transcribe conversations without asking for consent. Those transcripts are a subpoena honeypot.

• Defence/Aggression

  • CBC ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] Canada joining international program to build next generation of fighter jets

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Iranian newspaper threatens Chancellor Merz with 'retaliation'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Germany's Merz receives death threat from Iranian newspaper

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Germany news: Military conscientious objections spike

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] No support for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany at Evian conference

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Germany may make it illegal to deny Israel's right to exist

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Germany massively expands federal police powers

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Why Gulf states are investing billions in Africa

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] As the world rearms, South Korea aims to cash in

  • New York Times ☛ Saudis Reach Deal With U.S. That Could Let Them Enrich Nuclear Fuel

    U.S. lawmakers and Israeli officials have expressed opposition to such a plan, to be announced Wednesday, fearing that the kingdom could use a civilian nuclear project to develop nuclear weapons.

  • USMC ☛ US Marine Corps turns to AI-powered Bullfrog as drone threats expand

    But instead of a service member resting a finger on the trigger well in preparation for the next shot, in video footage of the Bullfrog weapons system, a hulking, metal machine tilts the weapon just slightly, refocusing itself.

  • The Nation ☛ [Cryptocurrency], AI, and AIPAC Super PACs Are Spending in Lockstep Against Progressives

    The super PAC largesse goes into media buys, digital ads, direct mail, text messages and more supporting favored candidates and attacking rivals—but the policy wish list of their funders remains mostly opaque to voters. In both Democratic and Republican races, ads from [cryptocurrency], AI, and AIPAC-linked groups usually avoid mention of their donors’ core issues, whether decentralized finance, deregulating AI, or military aid to the government of Israel. To Democratic voters, the interest groups’ messages often blare that candidates will stand up to Trump; to Republicans, the AI super PACs tout President Trump’s endorsement. The three interests include top donors to Trump’s super PAC, such as OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, who gave MAGA Inc. $25 million and the same amount to the AI super PAC Leading the Future.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ France to become first EU nation to ban social media for children under 15

    French lawmakers today voted in favor of banning social media use for children under the age of 15, making it the first nation in the European Union to introduce an age limit in line with legislation that is slowly taking hold globally.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Trump's Two Killing Fields

    In response to public outrage following ICE’s recent murders in Houston and Maine, the Department of Homeland Security moved to pause vehicle stops. But the pause reportedly infuriated Trump, who ordered ICE to continue the stops. ICE’s arrests and aggression continue to escalate.

    Trump’s war with Iran is also escalating, with the U.S. striking critical infrastructure sites including power stations and bridges, and Iran attacking a U.S. base in Jordan, killing two American troops (one is still missing).

    I think the two killing fields are related, and the question I’ve been pondering is why Trump’s violence is growing both at home and abroad?

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Ukrainian parliament approves new prime minister

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Ukraine lawmakers approve Koretskyi as new PM amid protests

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] The EU and Ukraine will enter into a partnership within the defense industry

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] Ukraine reports Black Sea attacks by both sides

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] Ukraine: Kyiv and EU agree on new drone production deal

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] Why is Zelenskyy reshuffling Ukraine's government?

    • The Local DK ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] EU extends right to stay for Ukrainians but excludes military-age men

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] EU opens new area for Ukraine on road to EU membership

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] June deadliest month for Ukraine civilians in 4 years

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Ukraine and the Spirit of Red Cloud

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Bastille Day: France holds parade with Ukraine in focus

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Ukraine parliament accepts PM Svyrydenko's resignation

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2026-07-13 [Older] In the Baltics, Rearmament Clashes With Regressive Taxes

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2026-07-13 [Older] Who Is Ukraine’s Recovery Really For?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-12 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskyy swaps out prime minister in reshuffle

    • CBC ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Ukraine is putting pressure on Russia. So why is the country's defence minister being ousted now?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Could Russia be about to lose its grip on chess leadership?

    • HRW ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] Ukraine: Russian-Run Schools Violate Children’s Rights

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] Baltic presidents: Russia plans infrastructure attacks

    • CBC ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] Nine EU nations urge funding cut for IOC, World Aquatics over readmitting Russians

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Denmark: Stop EU aid to federations allowing Russians

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Russia places AkzoNobel paint factory under "temporary external administration"

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Ukraine targets another 11 Russian ships in Sea of Azov

    • 2026-07-13 [Older] EU and UK hit Russia with joint sanctions over cyberattacks

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-12 [Older] Gas queues grow as Ukraine targets Russia's fuel supply

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-13 [Older] Germany set to restrict its Freedom of Information Act

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Bill Gates foundation met with Jeffrey Epstein about 30 times, external review finds | Bill Gates | The Guardian

    Staff ‘raised on multiple occasions’ risks of tech mogul’s philanthropic body associating with disgraced financier

• Environment

  • CBC ☛ 2026-07-13 [Older] Agreement reached on multibillion-dollar Pathways carbon capture and storage project

  • CBC ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Toronto air quality among world's worst as wildfire smoke blankets city

  • CBC ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Sizzling temperatures and the threat of storms blanket much of the country in weather warnings

  • Memphis Flyer ☛ Webinar Invites Public To Weigh In on Pending EPA Changes

    Earlier this month, the agency proposed revisions to its public participation rules for “sources subject to Clean Air Act (CAA) New Source Review (NSR) programs approved into State Implementation Plans (SIPs).”

    “[NSR programs ] regulate individual authorizations to construct minor stationary sources and minor modifications to existing stationary sources,” the EPA said.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Aral Sea Has Been Drying Up For 60 Years. New Research Shows It's Also Releasing Massive Amounts of Carbon

    In many parts of the world, lakes are drying out at a scale so massive that scientists are warning they may be emitting enough greenhouse gases to rival our fossil fuel habit.

  • Western Water ☛ Critical Colorado River plan [published] next week

    A long-awaited Final Environmental Impact Statement for post-2026 river operations is expected to be released next week.

  • TruthOut ☛ Republicans Are Trying to Give Big Oil Immunity for Causing Climate Chaos

    A new report further links fossil fuel emissions to extreme weather events. States are trying to make polluters pay.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Sierra Club Condemns Congressional Effort to Attack California’s Waivers Protecting Clean Air

    Today, House Republican Representative Harriet Hageman introduced legislation under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to revoke California's Clean Air Act waiver allowing the state to enforce stronger than federal greenhouse gas standards for vehicles.

    This legislation targets policy that is already fully phased in, which means cars impacted by it are already on the road. The move is the latest attempt by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration to dismantle longstanding clean air protections and undermine states' ability to protect residents from dangerous vehicle pollution.

    In response to the bill introduction, Sierra Club Climate Policy Director Patrick Drupp released the following statement: [...]

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ As Colorado River and tributaries shrink, a public power system frays

    The unit’s three dams on the Gunnison River — including Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal — make up Colorado’s only piece of the Colorado River Storage Project, a Depression-era network of federal dams selling power to municipalities, cooperatives, tribes and irrigation districts across the West. Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest body of water entirely within Colorado, is expected to end the year at just 17% of its live storage capacity.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-13 [Older] EU approves new passenger rights for air travel

    • James Stanley ☛ James Stanley - Should you wash your solar panels?

      The short answer is that I think I got a 2%-5% increase in power output from my solar farm due to cleaning the panels, which will work out to about £60-£150/yr, decaying to 0 over the course of a few years. So, probably just about worthwhile.

    • Henrique Dias ☛ Tales of an Electricity Leakage

      The technician arrives. After a long stride of testing the cables around the light fixture in the kitchen, the technician finds where the issue lies, but lo and behold: it just works again. The mystery stays a mystery but I have electricity again.

    • Dan Q ☛ Contactless Transport in London vs Paris

      Contactless is clearly more-convenient for city visitors, but I think the difference between London and Paris’s attitude to it says something about the relationship both cities have with their tourists. In London, most travellers can use whatever bank card and mobile wallet they’ve already got… and they’ll get as good a deal as possible. But in Paris, doing the same will invariably cost more than a conventional ticket would. You pay a convenience-tax.

      Both cities get tens of millions of annual visitors and extract billions of euros worth of financial benefit from their tourist economies. Paris doing slightly better overall, but they’re closely-comparable enough that differences like this probably mean something.

    • Yle ☛ More people taking local cruises on Helsinki's ferries

      The ferries to the popular tourist destination are operated by Helsinki's public transport authority HSL and tickets cost the same as bus, tram and Metro services in the city.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2026-07-14 [Older] Amateur astronomer saw a pit in Quebec on Google Maps. It turned out to be a 390-million-year-old meteor crater

    • Science Alert ☛ Moss Is Generating Electrical Waves That Look Startlingly Like a Neural Network

      A new study, published in Royal Society Open Science, reveals that moss cushions produce surprisingly complex electrical activity, with patterns that undulate across the velvety patch in dynamic waves.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ More than mountains: the human story of Chilean Patagonia told through these award-winning photos

      Shellfishing has been a traditional way of life in Patagonia's southern reaches for thousands of years. The original specialists were the Yámana (or Yahgan) women, who would brave the sub-Antarctic waters of the Beagle Channel foraging for mussels, limpets, and sea urchins. These days, fishermen still dive to the depths of the icy waters, albeit with modern wetsuits and breathing apparatus.

      “The photograph speaks as much to the fishermen’s work as it does to a tradition of connection, trust, and exchange that still thrives in those southern channels,” said Adolfo. “They [the fishermen] represent a way of life that still exists in very isolated parts of Patagonia—a way of life we rarely have the opportunity to experience up close.”

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-16 [Older] East-West border death zone now Germany's biodiversity oasis

  • Overpopulation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Snake River water trust users won’t face water curtailment in Idaho this summer

      The issue relates to the 1984 Swan Falls Settlement Agreement, which resolved a dispute between Idaho Power and the state over how to balance agriculture water use with water use for hydropower, according to the Idaho Department of Water Resources.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-07-15 [Older] Why Indonesia's economy is under pressure

  • International Business Times ☛ Disney Cuts Hundreds of Jobs as Pixar, National Geographic Absorb Deepest Losses

    Pixar is celebrating one of its biggest box-office successes in years, yet the studio is simultaneously shrinking its workforce with layoffs affecting hundreds of employees. Despite 'Toy Story 5' approaching the £718 million ($958 million) mark at the global box office, Disney has eliminated hundreds of positions at the animation studio as part of another company-wide restructuring.

  • Aftermath Site LLC ☛ If A Company Does Three Layoffs In Seven Months, Maybe It’s Bad At Being A Company

    The Hollywood Reporter writes that Disney has cut “hundreds of jobs.” In addition to Pixar and National Geographic, ESPN has also been affected, with some on-air contributors losing their jobs alongside behind-the-scenes workers. You wouldn’t think it possible for Disney to do worse by Nat Geo, whose iconic magazine Disney gutted in 2023, but here we are. Pixar has lost less than 10% of its staff, according to the Los Angeles Times, and “the cuts are concentrated mostly in production and operations.” Cartoon Brew reports that the company will also shorten its production schedule on movies going forward.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Yahoo News ☛ The candidates standing in the Clacton by-election

    In a statement on his website, Pocock, who is a software engineer, is asking voters to read about his work on ethics in technology, safety of children online, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and cybersecurity.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ AI data center builder Fluidstack raises $830M at $7.5B valuation

    The company announced the Series A round on Monday. The lead investor was Situational Awareness, an AI-focused fund backed by Stripe Inc.’s founders. The investment values Fluidstack at $7.5 billion.

  • International Business Times ☛ Disney Cuts Hundreds of Jobs as Pixar, National Geographic Absorb Deepest Losses

    The latest redundancies represent Disney's third round of layoffs this year and extend a broader effort to streamline operations under the company's 'One Disney' strategy. While several divisions have been affected, executives have targeted Pixar and National Geographic in the latest cuts as they continue reshaping the entertainment giant amid changing audience habits and financial pressures.

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Age of consent: DebConf26 registered sex offender in Argentina?

    DebConf26 is taking place in Argentina this year.

    In 2025, there was a major scandal when people noticed that Jeremy Bicha, who is a registered sex offender, had been invited to speak on the national holiday in France. I published a full report about Bicha's history in open source communities. The report is essential reading for anybody who cares about the safety of children online.

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Freexian & Debian: antitrust, unfair competition against joint authors and volunteers

    The advocacy email included Sophie's Freexian email address. Some people know Raphael Hertzog has some connection with Freexian, which he founded and when they see Sophie's email address, they will realise there is some connection. Nonetheless, the inclusion of Sophie's email address at Freexian is not the same as a declaring they are a married couple running a business together.

    If Debian is going to be honest with our community and our values then we need to declare things like that.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Fandom and Social Connection

    I just learned about The Fandom and Social Connection Initiative and I’m intrigued. The idea is to study the possibility that sports fandom can be an antidote to the “connection recession,” as traditional “third places”—like churches, civic organizations, and bowling leagues—play a diminishing role in our lives. The researchers think their early findings suggest that sports fandom can motivate people to connect, including connecting across racial, economic, and political divides.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Barents Observer ☛ Political prisoner Andrei Trofimov disappears from contact

    The disappearance was reported by journalist and television presenter Vladimir Raevsky. According to Raevsky, Trofimov had previously maintained an extensive correspondence with friends and members of his support group. Describing him as one of the most sociable people he knows, Raevsky says he finds it difficult to believe the prison administration's claim that the inmate voluntarily cut off all contact.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • New Republic ☛ Trump Seeks Journalists’ Phone Records as Air Force One Tantrum Grows

    Donald Trump’s administration demanded the phone records of several New York Times journalists and their families in an effort to track down the sources who spilled on the president’s new Air Force One.

  • CPJ ☛ Cambodia jails journalist Luot Sophal for 2 years over report on soldiers’ water shortages

    Sophal, a reporter with the independent local news site Srotop Yuvakvey, was convicted on July 14 by the Oddar Meanchey Provincial Court on charges of demoralizing the armed forces and incitement to commit a felony, according to multiple news reports.

    The charges stemmed from his reporting on an alleged water shortage faced by frontline soldiers during border hostilities with Thailand.

  • Jim Grey ☛ It's a shame what's happened to radio

    Second, thanks to government deregulation radio is now big business. Owners have always been in it to make money, even when ownership was local or regional. But now very large corporations own so many stations and cost management seems to be more important than the quality of the on-air product. Live and local talent is all but gone, replaced by satellite-delivered formats and a form of prerecording called voicetracking. The evening jock on your favorite station probably recorded tonight’s shift this morning in a studio in Tampa or Minneapolis. Try calling the station you listen to in the evening or on the weekend. Nobody will answer, because nobody’s there. It’s cheaper that way.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ "Say Less:" Everyone Knew Trump's Flying Bribery Palace Was Unsafe

    Trump’s latest blabbing happened too late to appear in either NYT’s motion to quash the subpoenas targeting Pager’s colleagues (originally sent on July 15 but dated July 20 on unsealing) or a follow-up letter (sent on July 17) asking to quash subpoenas to phone companies and subpoenas obtained for Page and Adam Goldman.

    They’ll probably make the reply memo, though. A key part of NYT’s argument (these passages are from the opening paragraphs of the motion) is that the information in the two stories at issue “was already widely known and had been observed, inferred, and described elsewhere” — the argument I made here.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Memphis Flyer ☛ Family Demands Answers After Memphis Task Force Agent Kills Man at Burger King

    The Task Force — now Tennessee’s largest law enforcement entity — has been involved in four fatal shootings in two months.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Michigan bars big investors from buying more homes. Will it work?

    “When homes are purchased by large out-of-state investment firms, it becomes harder for local families, teachers, nurses, first responders, and tradespeople to buy homes in the communities they serve,” said sponsoring state Rep. Karl Bohnak, R-Deerton, arguing the law will help “keep more Michigan homes available for Michigan residents.”

  • EFF ☛ An Explosion of Surveillance Towers is Coming to U.S. Borders, Costing Over $1 Billion

    A new report from the Government Accounting Office reveals that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to nearly triple the number of surveillance towers along U.S. borders, from the current 830 to 2,300 by 2034.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Patents

    • Software Patents

      • Court House News ☛ Judge considers tossing Databricks patent suit under California anti-SLAPP law

        Databricks attorney Matthew Warren argued the company’s lawsuit would benefit all users of software licensed under the Apache License, a perpetual, nonexclusive and royalty-free license created by the Apache Software Foundation, despite the company also seeking damages.

      • NDTV Profit ☛ University Of Tennessee Sues Anthropic Over Use Of 'Patented' Neural Networks In AI Models

        The University of Tennessee Research Foundation (UTRF) has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, alleging that the startup used its patented neural network technology without authorisation in developing its AI systems.

        The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Delaware on Monday and became public on Tuesday. According to Reuters, the university is seeking monetary damages and a court order to prevent Anthropic from further using the disputed technology.

  • Copyrights

    • Digital Music News ☛ My Songwriter Friends Weren’t Getting Paid for Their Music. So I Created 3 Hats.

      Because while I was chasing creative roles, I discovered something else entirely: I truly fell in love with the administration side of the music business. I became fascinated by the systems behind the scenes – registrations, metadata, royalty flows, spreadsheets, ownership conflicts, auditing, organization, and the operational work most people consider “boring.”

      To me, that is the engine of the music business. I didn’t care to look cool or brag about knowing the biggest hit songwriters.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Cher to Pay $1 Million Legal Tab Over Royalties War With Sonny's Widow

      While Cher was the overall victor in their battle over royalties following a federal judge’s decision in December 2025, the singer was denied her bid to force Mary to repay her $1,023,605 legal bill, as Billboard reports. According to the publication, Judge John A. Kronstadt stated that because Cher and Mary’s feud centered mainly on contracts versus federal copyright law, the rules that would have ordered repayment did not apply in this case.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Cher Stuck with $1M Legal Bill After Sonny Bono’s Widow Battle

      The matter centered on Mary Bono’s attempts to stop Cher’s 50% share of royalty payments from her 1978 divorce settlement with Sonny. Mary Bono argued that copyright “termination rights” allowed her to void the divorce agreement. But the judge disagreed with that interpretation, ruling that the divorce agreement took precedence over any copyright termination clauses.

    • Techdirt ☛ You Don’t Need $200 Million To Make A Blockbuster Film Any More

      Walled Culture the book (digital versions available free) is about the incompatibility of the traditional copyright system with the digital world, and its failure to reward creators fairly. That raises the question of what might replace it, and the book’s last chapter offers one solution in the form of true fans. These are people who love an artist’s work and are happy to support it directly. This allows those works to be made available for no cost, since they have already been funded by fans. That, in turn, means creations can be shared – no need for punitive copyright infringement laws here – thus spreading the word about the artist, and bringing in new true fans and additional financial support.

      This system is already working well for books, music and graphical art. But a common criticism of the approach is that it could never work for films, which therefore require copyright protection for them to be made. In support of that claim, people often point to the extremely large budgets of many films, often running to hundreds of millions of dollars. Clearly, the argument goes, such sums could never be amassed through the donations of true fans.

      One issue with that argument is the widespread practice of “Hollywood accounting”, which Wikipedia explains as: [...]

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Hollywood Wants Vietnam to Slay the Piracy Hydra

      Shutting down major piracy operations such as Fmovies and HiAnime means little if successors pop up within weeks. In their submissions to the USTR's Section 301 investigation into Vietnam, both the MPA and IIPA stress that taking down copycats and successor sites should be a key enforcement priority, in addition to prison sentences that actually deter.