Leftovers

• Internet Archive ☛ 100+ Years of Student Radio History in the DLARC College Radio Collections - Internet Archive Blogs

  Happy College Radio Day! In honor of the annual celebration of student radio (this year on October 2), we invite you to explore the college radio collections in the Internet Archive’s Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC). Some of the latest additions include materials that shed light on college radio’s earliest days.

• The Verge ☛ Breaking up (with Elon Musk) is hard to do

  Musk has a history of public flameouts with the women who bear his children. Besides his first wife, Justine Musk, who wrote “I Was a Starter Wife” before going absolutely silent on the subject of her ex, another mother of his children, Ashley St. Clair, has said that she rejected a $40 million NDA from Musk. (She is presently suing him over his chatbot, Grok, making deepfake nudes of her.) Another ex, Grimes, referred to pregnancy as “sacrificing your body and your freedom,” and later sued him to establish a parental relationship. Grimes also posted and deleted a tweet saying “Tell Shivon to unblock me and tell Elon to let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer” to Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson in 2023.

• Ruben Schade ☛ That time I was scammed on eBay

  Just thinking of the exchange now makes me laugh. Thesedays I’d reply saying I wasn’t convinced by their fake photos, and that I’d be escalating to eBay support if they continued their stunt. Experience has taught me that most scammers scamper like roaches as soon as someone pushes back, because they figure their time is better spent on easy marks. I did the same thing recently with a scammer selling an Apple IIɢꜱ.

• The DNS Museum ☛ The DNS Museum

  A reference for the odd, inventive, and always impractical things people have done with DNS.

• Dan Q ☛ Do not build the LLM torture factory

  Sean's keen that we don't psychologically abuse LLMs. I agree with his conclusion, but not most of his reasoning.

  This part quoted above is closest to the truth, for me: it is messed-up to simulate torture. Did you know that early animal rights activists observed, as a secondary argument for their principles, that people who are cruel to animals are ultimately more-likely to later become people who are cruel to other people?

• University of Toronto ☛ My eccentric setup is enabled in part by a lot of continuity

  I have an eccentric (computer) desktop, I use an eccentric shell, and I handle my email in an unusual way, which is enabled by our unusual mail system. In thinking recently about this and other eccentric things I do in my environment, I've realized that one significant thing enabling this is that I've had a lot of continuity in my computing life (due in part to a lot of continuity in jobs). It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that I've had fundamentally the same desktop for decades. Or to put it another way, I've never had to restart my work environment from scratch because I moved jobs, positions, or whatever.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • [Old] W T Gowers ☛ The Cost of Knowledge [PDF]

    This is an attempt to describe some of the background to the current boycott of Elsevier by many mathematicians (and other academics) at http://thecostofknowledge.com, and to present some of the issues that confront the boycott movement. Although the movement is anything but monolithic, we believe that the points we make here will resonate with many of the signatories to the boycott.

    The role of journals (1): dissemination of research. The role of journals in professional mathematics has been under discussion for some time now (see, for example, ...)

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-09-29 [Older] Why do some chimpanzee mothers carry their dead infants for months?

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-09-28 [Older] Brain stimulation could reshape how you learn new skills

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-09-25 [Older] Ancient virus hunters: how we discovered sheeppox DNA hidden in medieval gospels

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-09-25 [Older] There’s something you can do now to cool your home next summer – and it’s far cheaper than air conditioning

• Career/Education

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ West Point’s Honor Code Taught the Military to Lie

    General Douglas MacArthur was determined that West Point graduates would uphold the most romantic definitions of honor. Instead his credo fostered a culture of duplicity and institutional subterfuge, leading to real-world military fiascos.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Micro Center requires photo ID and signed no-export pledge to buy Nvidia RTX 5090 gaming GPU — buyer forced to sign declaration disclosing install location and promise GPU will remain in the US

    Even though GPUs that have the processing power of RTX 4090s or higher were first banned for export to China in November 2023, U.S. authorities only started seriously clamping down on smuggling operations recently. One major arrest, so far, is that of three Supermicro employees, including its co-founder, Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, who are suspected of illicitly shipping $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia hardware to China. There have also been anecdotal reports of people buying used RTX 5090s in the U.S. en masse, arriving with testing rigs built into their cars and paying sellers in cash.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Memory shortages drive Raspberry Pi prices up by up to 23% — escalating LPDDR4, LPDDR5 costs trigger the third price hike of the year

    Logically, the highest-memory-capacity models suffered the most across 2026. Models such as the Raspberry Pi 5 16GB, Raspberry Pi 5 8GB, and Raspberry Pi 4 8GB have posted staggering price hikes up to 83%, 63%, and 53%, respectively, compared to their original MSRPs. Raspberry Pi has frozen pricing for the 1GB models at MSRP, but it remains to be seen how much longer the company can sustain this.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ My Commodore VC-20 now has a PET-style keyboard

    This is my beloved PAL VC-20, the uncommon version of the Commodore VIC-20 released in Germany. It came to me in a sorry state from a seller in the UK, but I was able to get it working again with some TLC, light soldering, and a replacement keyboard from an “Aldi” Commodore 64. I originally thought the beige keys against the egg-white case of the VC-20 would look a bit weird, but it grew on me the more I used it. Keen-eyed Commodore fans may have noticed I put the original VIC-20 orange function keys on there as well.

  • Dedoimedo ☛ Slimbook Titan report 10 - Lots of progress, finally

    But I digress. The Slimbook Titan is me gaming machine, and I've written about it quite some. Most of the experience hasn't been that good, mind. The last report will tell you about my findings from a few months ago, and from there, you can drill back in time and savor the 4D rollercoaster of my serious-use Linux journey, a keen and genuine attempt to get rid of Windows forever. In a nutshell, I got a powerful beast of a laptop riddled with bugs, mediocre ergonomics, excellent gaming results, and solid-ish desktop usage. Now, today, things shall change.

  • University of Toronto ☛ More or less all modern electronic devices have a limited lifespan

    The problem with both of these is that they have a finite lifespan. Flash cells can only be erased so many times and LiIon batteries have limited charge cycles. Internal flash storage is almost never designed to be replaced, and while LiIon batteries may be designed to be replaced for a while, currently many batteries for devices are relatively custom things where you're probably not going to be able to buy an off the shelf replacement a decade or two or three later. When too much of the internal flash goes bad or the battery won't hold a charge well enough (or has another problem), that's it for that device. The circuits and the mechanical buttons and switches may still be fine, but that doesn't help much.

  • Alessandro Muraro ☛ New indie machine

    It’s a Squier Sonic Mustang in color “Torino Red” and I am thinking of improving on an already good instrumen (recently I took a luthier’s 1:1 course so I’m all hyped up); I could do things like: [...]

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Guardian UK ☛ My wife obsessively consumes US news. She’s so stressed but can’t turn off. What should I do?

    But a lot of thinkers say that in politically distressing times it’s also our job to cultivate hope. We have to husband our emotional resources carefully, to guard our capacity for real action. And you don’t do that by endlessly scrolling platforms that want you to stay transfixed in horror, because that’s how they get their ad dollars.

    I can think of two things that might help here. One is to repeat your request for less time on social media – but this time, instead of saying she needs a day off, could you make it about how it’s affecting you?

  • Futurism ☛ The AI Chatbots That Tech Companies Are Aggressively Pushing to Billions of Users Appear to Be Causing Serious Psychological Harms, New Research Finds

    According to the research, which was published in the journal JMIR Mental Health by a team of UK-based researchers at Northeastern University London and King’s College London, dark outcomes of engaging in emotional relationships with chatbots can include “addiction-like attachment, exacerbation of mental health symptoms, harmful advice,” and even “self-harm of suicidal acts.” The paper comes after extensive reporting about the public health issue known as “AI psychosis,” meaning the phenomenon in which AI users suffer delusional, paranoid, and even suicidal spirals after long-form interactions with chatbots. During these interactions, users tend to divulge extremely intimate information about their lives and mental health to their AIs, frequently turning to the products as confidantes or even therapists.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Why Americans Stopped Throwing Dinner Parties

    Then something changed. Americans stopped throwing parties. Even more fundamental, they stopped visiting one another. From 1975 to 1998, the share of Americans who gave or attended a monthly dinner party declined by half. The share of Americans saying they never entertained people at home tripled. Although cultural critics often bemoan the decline of organized religion, the dip in church attendance was downright modest compared with the collapse in hosting, according to data gathered by the DDB Needham Life Style Surveys.

• Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware

  • Kyle Reddoch ☛ Security Signal Weekly: September 26-October 2, 2026

    The practical distinction is between installing a fix and deciding whether the system is still trustworthy. For Citrix, Cisco, Zammad, Kiteworks, and the third-party appliances in the Bitget investigation, the maintenance ticket needs an incident-response branch whenever the exposed period, logs, or indicators justify it. The other stories reinforce the same point from different angles: credentials remain valid after code is cleaned up, personal data keeps its value long after collection, and faster discovery is compressing the time available to investigate.

  • Aftermath Site LLC ☛ The New York Times Is Taking The Absolute Piss With This Xbox Puff Piece

    It does not take a huge amount of insight to know that Xbox is in turmoil. From management changes to studio realignments to sliding sales to an identity crisis to mass and continuing layoffs, the division has spent the last few years lurching from one disaster to the next. This unavoidable fact should form the basis of any kind of coverage of Microsoft's gaming division, yet to read The New York Times today you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd woken up in an alternate dimension.

  • HowTo Geek ☛ These 5 Linux command-line tools let you work with Excel spreadsheets from the terminal [Ed: They should focus on ODF, not proprietary formats connected to Microsoft crimes and all sorts of corruption worldwide]

    There are many open-source alternatives to Microsoft Excel, but popular Linux options like LibreOffice Calc and Gnumeric are strictly GUI apps. So what’s out there for the command-line fan who needs to crunch numbers? Let’s find out!

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

    • BBC ☛ Singapore crocodile: Man charged over AI image

      The fake image caused public concern, authorities allege. The national water agency suspended its work at the reservoir for two days last month after receiving information that a crocodile had been spotted.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Is Such a Sad Sack That He Just Stole a Random Guy's Joke on Twitter

      “Lol almost as funny as the original post,” one user replied. “Claiming other people’s work as his own is Musk’s entire career,” another jabbed.

    • Futurism ☛ Trump Launched an America.org "Super Intelligence" Chatbot and It Immediately Disagrees With Him on Huge Topics, Including Whether He Won the 2020 Election

      What the official meant by that is unclear. But the America.gov AI now refuses to answer questions about the 2020 election, giving a boilerplate statement: “I help with US government services and official program information. I do not discuss political questions or election outcomes,” it told us in our testing.

    • The Nation ☛ Trump Is Trusting Tech Companies to Self-Police AI. What Could Go Wrong?

      The ad is wrong on so, so many levels. First and foremost, there’s the obvious impropriety of using taxpayer dollars for a blatantly partisan “public announcement” like this. Trump is practically daring Congress to try to rein him in, daring the courts to enforce a slew of existing laws against using taxpayer dollars for partisan ends.

      But beyond the shamelessness, there’s the actual content of the ad itself, which, in its end-time tone, is a bizarro combination: Joe McCarthy meets The X-Files meets Musk’s fascist Grok AI assistant.

    • New York Times ☛ Russia’s Latest Propaganda? A.I.-Generated War Songs.

      Hundreds of them — from maudlin ballads to grinding thrash metal — have sprouted on the world’s most popular music streaming platforms, created using a growing number of A.I. music generators, many based in the United States.

    • SQ Magazine ☛ GitLab AI Gateway RCE Flaw CVE-2026-90970 Patched

      AI Gateway is the service behind GitLab Duo’s AI-native features. GitLab runs a cloud instance that serves GitLab.com, GitLab Self-Managed, and GitLab Dedicated. Customers can also deploy their own gateway on Self-Managed through GitLab Duo Self-Hosted, and those installations are the ones that need the update.

    • Robert Reich ☛ AutoWar

      Imagine four of the most frighteningly irresponsible people in America deciding how AI will be put to use in the most frighteningly irresponsible way.

      Pete Hegseth is one of them. Trump is another. The other two are Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich.

      Hegseth says he’s tasking Musk and Gingrich with laying the groundwork for a new “Autonomous Warfare Command,” or AutoWarCom — a new Pentagon command operation for autonomous warfare. It would feature unmanned drones, autonomous sensors, unmanned boats, and other autonomous systems. Hegseth is proposing to triple spending on autonomous warfare to $74 billion.

  • Social Control Media

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-09-26 [Older] TikTok Agrees to at Least $100m Payout and Ban Teen Beauty Filter as Parents Gain New Protections

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ Iranian accused of hacking American universities extradited from Montenegro

      In August, the Justice Department named Barati in a 14-count indictment charging 17 people in relation to an expansive campaign prosecutors believe was run through an Iranian company known as the Mabna Institute on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

    • The Record ☛ Mississippi mayor says ransomware incident led city to shut down systems

      Mayor Willis Thompson published a statement in the local newspaper saying the city is investigating a ransomware attack that has not impacted emergency services but has affected payments for utilities. He said the system shutdown was “temporary.”

    • The Record ☛ 'Warlock' ransomware used in attacks on critical infrastructure in Portuguese, Spanish-speaking countries

      The campaign illustrated that hackers are still finding success in exploiting SharePoint deployments that have not been patched either for the 2025 vulnerabilities or the 2026 bugs.

    • Dark Reading ☛ Alleged KillSec Ransomware Mastermind a 16-Year-Old

      Bitdefender, which has tracked KillSec since 2024, provided technical assistance, infrastructure mapping, and continuous monitoring support for Operation KillSwitch for more than a year, Stoica says. The company has observed nearly 300 victims appearing on KillSec's leak site since the company began tracking the threat actor.

    • Bitdefender ☛ FBI tells ShinyHunters members to turn themselves in, after arrest of alleged leader

      Data stolen in the breach included Social Security numbers and personal details of approximately 5,000 FBI staff, including some who had worked on sensitive investigations involving China and Russia. Furthermore some of the hacked data included files that contained sensitive medical and psychiatric records.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • StokeonTrentLive ☛ 'Privatisation has failed' - Government responds to Royal Mail delivery concerns - The Sentinel

    However campaigners have said the move is not enough and said the solution was for the company to be taken back into public ownership. A petition to the government set out the concerns and suggested removing it from private ownership.

  • Futurism ☛ NASA Has Been So Thoroughly Screwed by Boeing's Disastrous Starliner That It's Now Throwing Its Entire Access to Space Into Question

    It’s been a humiliating saga, including a failed uncrewed launch attempt that went haywire thanks to a glitching computer, an aborted mission which stranded two NASA astronauts on board the station for nine months, and a litany of technical headaches along the way.

    But now that SpaceX is threatening to retire its Crew Dragon spacecraft, NASA could soon be forced to make the plagued spacecraft work whether it likes to or not — while also calling into question its entire access to space.

  • Stars And Stripes ☛ All Marines, most sailors now have free Wi-Fi in barracks

    Service became free for up to 80,000 Marines living in eligible permanent-party, Unit Deployment Program and training barracks in the U.S. and Japan. They will receive no-cost, filtered Wi-Fi service through Boingo Wireless, the service said.

    Marines may opt to pay for unfiltered access at varying speeds.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Trail of Bits ☛ SequenceHash: multihashing for the rest of us

      As part of our goal to “fix software, not bugs,” Trail of Bits is introducing SequenceHash and its sister function SequenceMAC, a pair of related hash constructions that bring secure multihashing to developers using hash functions other than Keccak. We hope SequenceHash and SequenceMAC will help cryptographers avoid attacks that take advantage of ambiguous input encodings. The specification is open source, and is now a part of the Community Cryptography Specification Project (C2SP).

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2026-09-29 [Older] Amazon Is Perfecting Total Surveillance of Its Workforce

    • TruthOut ☛ 2026-09-30 [Older] Amazon Is Deploying AI to Spy on Its Workers and Bust Unions Before They Form

    • The Record ☛ Bipartisan backlash to ALPRs grows as two high-profile bills are introduced

      On Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced the Stop Flock Abuse Act to bolster safeguards for AI-enabled cameras and protect people’s constitutional rights.

      Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR), with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), introduced a broader bill Friday, proposing to block the federal government from using ALPR cameras and prevent states deploying them from receiving federal funding. It also would let Americans sue the federal government if their rights are violated by deployment of ALPRs, according to a press release.

    • US House Of Representatives ☛ NEWS: Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, Merkley Unveil Ban Flock Act to Protect Americans’ Right to Privacy | Representative Ocasio-Cortez

      “Your right to privacy includes the freedom to move around your community without every move being monitored,” Merkley said. “Right now, Flock is selling its cameras nationwide, laying the groundwork for a surveillance state while enriching corporate executives. No one should have this unchecked surveillance power at their fingertips, which is why I’m teaming up with Senator Sanders to rein in this dangerous technology.”

    • 404 Media ☛ Federal Judge Rules a Flock Search Was ‘Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance’ and Unconstitutional

      The officer’s “use of the ALPR Systems was an Unconstitutional Warrantless Search,” and “was not supported by probable cause, and it was done without a warrant in violation of [the defendant’s] Fourth Amendment rights,” the judge, Sara Hill, wrote, implying that the law enforcement officer should have obtained a warrant before searching for the vehicle in Flock’s system. There are currently more than a hundred thousand warrantless searches of the Flock system every month, according to audit logs viewed by 404 Media. Hill's decision will not set a binding precedent and there are several other cases throughout the nation considering the legality of warrantless ALPR searches.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Unidentified Flock Cameras in Florida

      My guess is that in the StingRay case, the devices were operated by foreign actors. This Flock case is more likely some local government entity that didn’t bother getting approval. Were I a foreign actor, I would rather hack the existing Flock network—like Israel did with Tehran’s surveillance cameras—than risk installing my own.

    • Fast Company ☛ That price you’re seeing online may have been picked specifically for you

      The newly released exposé reveals a worrisome shifting dynamic in which surveillance-based price discrimination, AI shopping assistants, and algorithms lead to consumers paying higher prices on everything from airline tickets to groceries. It happens with the help of corporations digging deep into your data to understand your shopping habits all too well.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ Washington should pay attention to Ukraine's new robotic counteroffensive

    And all of it happens live, with both video and audio. The video comes from the robots and drones. The audio comes from intercepted Russian communications, as soldiers panic and try to understand who or what is attacking them.

  • Robert Reich ☛ The Rot at the Top

    These connections between the higher prices Americans are paying and the corruption of the Trump regime and its Republican enablers need to be widely understood. The richest Americans and biggest corporations have made out like bandits — and average working Americans are paying dearly for what the bandits have stolen.

  • RFERL ☛ Latvian Defense Minister Says Russia's Hybrid Attacks, Not Nuclear Rhetoric, Are The Main Concern

    In a diplomatic memo circulated to NATO member states, Moscow said it had information that the alliance was preparing an “air and naval blockade” of the territory.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-29 [Older] Global trade weathers Iran, Ukraine and Cheeto Mussolini's tariffs

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-28 [Older] Diesel prices are surging putting further pressure on Europe. Ukraine is only part of the story.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-28 [Older] Ukraine, South Korea relations sour over North Korean POWs

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-09-28 [Older] South Korea Demands Apology From Ukraine After Zelenskyy Reveals Secret North Korean POW Transfer

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-10-01 [Older] On October 3, Latvians will elect a new parliament ― with Russia looming large over the campaign

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-30 [Older] Polish airports briefly suspend flights during Russian attacks on Ukraine

    • CBC ☛ 2026-09-30 [Older] Russian airstrikes kill at least 7, damage infrastructure in Ukraine

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-29 [Older] Estonia accuses Russian intelligence of ordering arson attack on defense company

    • 2026-09-29 [Older] Russian pizza restaurant chain confirms cyberattack: Hackers claim 68 million users exposed

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-29 [Older] Estonia blames Russia for arson attack on defense company

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-29 [Older] North Korea has recently completed two road bridges easing transport to strategic allies Russia and China

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-09-29 [Older] Russian Bomb Hits Sumy School During Lessons, but Shelters Save Pupils as Two Die in Nearby Homes

    • CBC ☛ 2026-09-26 [Older] Why is it so difficult for Ukraine to take down Russia's jet-powered drones?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-26 [Older] Russia expected to intensify hybrid war on Europe

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-26 [Older] Russian students: Propaganda in school prepares them to die

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • New Republic ☛ Eric Schmitt’s a Joke. The Assaults on Jack Smith Are Anything But.

    But the second thing Schmitt’s own goal was, besides embarrassing, was ominous. Because it showed how deep down this absurd rabbit hole the Republicans have gone—and the depths to which they’ll descend to try to find something on Smith. This perfervid posturing was on display Tuesday not only from Schmitt, but from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, who you could tell thought he was about to lower the boom on Smith about something having to do with his clandestine relationship with former CIA chief John Brennan. When a confused Smith said he’d never met Brennan, Grassley went all Emily Litella (there’s an old reference for you!) and ended his questioning under the kind of abrupt and petulant silence one might associate with a six-year-old being bluntly informed that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Here’s How Easy It Was for Journalists to Start Two Private Schools

    Our reporting has shown how easily people — some with questionable backgrounds — have founded their own private schools in barns, strip malls and other places. That led us to an experiment: If the hurdles to open a school are so low, could we do it?

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ How American Political Campaigns Are Using AI—and What They're Spending on the Tools

    Itemized expenditure disclosure data from the US Federal Election Commission, dating back to 2020, reveals at least $17m in disclosed spending on AI technology vendors across 523 federal candidates and campaigns. Data from four states, California, Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington, provides a more localized picture going back to 2022.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Semafor’s U.S. Tourism Graph Crime

    Graphs are supposed to be illuminating, helping to illustrate concepts that are difficult to conceptualize with numbers or words alone. What Semafor produced is the opposite of that: it is horribly misleading, and should be retracted.

• Environment

  • Wood Central ☛ Google Finland Data Centre Forest Felling Faces Probe

    More than 300 hectares of forest have been cleared for a Google data centre in northern Finland without the environmental assessment the country’s regulator said it needed, with satellite images showing the felling ran on until August after the regulator’s letter in May. That is according to Sari Myllyoja, the unit head running the inquiry at Finland’s Licensing and Supervisory Authority, who said on Monday it looked as though Google’s project company had gone ahead regardless.

  • Futurism ☛ Google Accused of Illegally Killing a Massive Forest for Its New Data Center Project

    “Either this is gross incompetence from Google’s Finnish project company, Tuike Finland Oy, or gross disregard for Finnish legislation, or at worst both,” said the association’s chair, Hanna Halmeenpää, in a statement, as translated by Wood Central.

    Satellite images show that four separate sites were bulldozed to make way for two new data centers.

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Votes to Overhaul its NEPA Rules

    The FCC adopted permitting reforms that officials say will streamline the agency’s approach to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations. The changes eliminate FCC NEPA review requirements for the “vast majority,” more than 14,800 wireless deployments annually, according to the Commission.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • New York Times ☛ Sales of Hulking Pickups and S.U.V.s Sag as Fuel Prices Soar

      Sales of big pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles have dipped as more Americans buy hybrids and smaller cars.

• Finance

  • Futurism ☛ Data Centers Are a $6 Trillion Time Bomb, Analysts Warn

    Kupperman’s diagnosis was blunt: because data center components break down so quickly, the industry would need to see some $1 trillion in revenue across 2025 and 2026 just to cover the costs of their hyperscale facilities, let alone start turning a profit. With AI revenue today accounting for only a small fraction of that total, Kupperman’s argument is that the financial logic behind the data center buildout simply doesn’t hold up.

  • Law Society Gazette ☛ SRA eyeing role of solicitors amid Man City fallout

    The Solicitors Regulation Authority will examine this week’s damning Premier League report on Manchester City and investigate any potential solicitor misconduct as more information is made public.

    An independent commission found the football club guilty of all charges related to serious breaches of the league’s financial rules over a nine-season period, a decision that will have far-reaching consequences for sports governance. The commission found that City arranged ‘sham’ contracts with several commercial partners and sponsors which were part of a disguised funding scheme. The remainder was funded by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), which owned the club.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • University of Michigan ☛ Ypsilanti Township residents push back against planned data center

    Ypsilanti residents continued their fight against the University of Michigan’s planned data center in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory Thursday evening at a town hall hosted by the University at the Ann Arbor Marriott Ypsilanti at Eagle Crest.

    Those in attendance restated the sentiment: The township does not want the University to follow through with the development.

  • Salon ☛ Gen Z isn’t choosing a political party. They’re choosing issues

    Younger people have long been more likely to identify as independents, but Gen Z is doing so at a significantly higher rate than any previous generation at the same age.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Register UK ☛ Shut up and take our money: Amazon plows $1B into quashing datacenter dissent

    Faced with growing opposition to datacenters from residents who don't want the bit barns in their backyards, Amazon plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years to indoctrinate the public. The company announced the investment in a whataboutism-packed blog post aimed at convincing readers datacenters are not as bad as they've been led to believe, and that if the common folk don't get in line and support their development, the nation could be left in the dust.

  • Wired ☛ Amazon Says It’s No Longer Using NDAs for Data Centers

    Nondisclosure agreements have become a key point of contention amid the massive data center buildout. Typically, local officials who sign NDAs with data centers looking to develop projects in their area are unable to share information with the public, including the energy and water use of certain projects. Many NDAs bar officials from revealing even basic information—like the tech companies involved in building out the data center. In July, the New York Times reported how secret agreements at all levels of government were crucial in building out plans for Hyperion, its massive data center in Louisiana.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • EFF ☛ Ola Bini Ordered to Leave Ecuador Under Obscure Accusations

    Bini's defense filed a habeas corpus to safeguard his freedom and prevent his deportation. Yet, Ecuadorian authorities affirmed that the developer represents a threat or risk to public security and the state structure, and must leave the country. The ground for deportation is a secret report which allegedly asserts that Bini committed acts against the security of Ecuador. The defense could not access its contents.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • International Business Times ☛ Mamdani Says Socialism Means No One Should Be Priced Out of Housing, Childcare or Public Transit

    He compared childcare with services the city already provides for free. State schools are free. Libraries lend books at no cost. Early years care, he argued, belongs in the same bracket. The problem, he said, is that 'the market gets to determine everything, not just luxury, but dignity, too.'

  • Wired ☛ ICE Has Been Dumping Protester Photos Into a Palantir Database

    Plaintiffs allege in the filing, which is heavily based on documents produced by the government and depositions of DHS agents, that agents had a practice of intimidating protesters and observers. They did this, the filing says, by doing drive-bys of the observers’ homes and, in the case of at least one observer, requiring that she be referred to secondary inspection any time she tries to cross the border until at least January 2027.

  • arXiv ☛ HTML as an accessible format for papers - arXiv info

    Accessibility barriers in research are not new, but they are urgent. The message we have heard from our community is that arXiv can have the most impact in the shortest time by offering HTML papers alongside the existing PDF.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC to Release More Spectrum for Satellite Broadband

    During the 3-0 vote, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said the agency has taken multiple actions to free up spectrum for direct-to-device connectivity. He added more will come “in the next few months.”

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘If you can’t hold it, you don’t own it’: why media fans want to escape algorithms with CDs, DVDs and vinyl

    Recently, he has returned to buying and listening to physical media. He says he has amassed more than 5,000 records and CDs from 1990 to 2009.

    “Technology and streaming felt liberating for a person who has a deep and wide music collection and a bad back. I stopped buying and streamed,” he says, but adds: “I spent more time making playlists than listening to music; I lost the ability to listen to a whole album and missed the physical connection with music.

  • The Verge ☛ Netflix is pivoting away from prestige

    Going forward, it seems like Netflix’s main game plan is to put an increased focus on producing lower-budget series, live events, and sports programming. The company obviously isn’t giving up on movies — Gerwig will direct another Narnia feature and there’s a KPop Demon Hunters sequel on the way — but episodic content has been shown to be much more effective at keeping subscribers coming back.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Harvard University ☛ Digital life doesn’t have to be this way

    Doctorow has been a longtime comrade in the fight for an open, safe, and humanistic internet for which the center was founded 30 years ago.

    But he also belongs to another, older lineage: one of enraged populism and antitrust militancy.

    At the event, Doctorow issued a call to arms against the digital age’s new monopolies. And he cast doubt on the possibility that AI, the tech industry’s latest “disruption,” would improve human lives or justify its costs as — to date — “the money-losingest thing the human race has ever done.”

  • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Blocking of unverified apps on Android starts in Brazil and other three countries

    F-Droid and other free and/or Google-independent initiatives have been raising a ruckus over the changes. They are, indeed, an extra hurdle for apps distributed without Google’s blessing. Verifying an app means identifying yourself to Google, which — understandably — many developers don’t want to do.

  • Patents

    • IP Kat ☛ 2026-09-30 [Older] Lack of clarity by the backdoor: An ambiguity "may simply result in a broader interpretation" (T 0977/25)

    • IP Kat ☛ 2026-09-22 [Older] Keeping up with Belgian Patent Litigation – mid-2025 - mid-2026

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-09-22 [Older] Sony Filed Patents For AI That Could Remotely Diagnose a PlayStation and Write Code To Patch It

    • 2026-09-18 [Older] Ex parte Chowdhury (PTAB 2026)

  • Trademarks

    • Right of Publicity

      • New York Times ☛ Swedish Company Uses A.I. Likeness of Greta Garbo in Ad

        Even though Ms. Garbo’s likeness was used with permission, response to the ad was mixed. Some viewers called it a convincing replica of the actress. Others saw a ghoulish facsimile that failed to capture her charisma, and panned the ad’s script.

      • BoingBoing ☛ Japan court rules actors have right to their own voices

        Kenjiro Tsuda, an actor famed in Japan for his lustrous baritone, sued TikTok over an account that used an AI-generated replica of his voice in more than 180 videos. Tokyo District Court ruled this week that a persons' voice can be protected under Japan's publicity rights law. The Associated Press reports that this represents the country's first recognition of voice rights under law.

      • ABC ☛ Tokyo court grants legal protection to human voices in AI clone case

        The Tokyo District Court's decision Wednesday was the first acknowledgment of the right to one's voice in Japan. The ruling was good news for many anime voice actors at a time when they are increasingly concerned about the use of AI-generated versions of their voices on social media.

  • Copyrights

    • EFF ☛ Site-Blocking Will Not Defend IP [sic], No Matter the Bill’s Name

      We keep seeing attempts to pass site-blocking legislation–from SOPA/PIPA in 2012 to Block BEARD, FADPA, and ACPA this year. Every one of them has at its core the rotten idea that enforcing copyrights requires building a censorship machine for websites into the architecture of the internet. This is, of course, a disaster for a free and open web. There is no way to create a mechanism for blocking access to an entire website that does not invite both deliberate abuse and lots of collateral harm to free and lawful speech.

      DEFEND IP deputizes every service provider into a copyright cop, so long as a rightsholder has accused a website of copyright infringement. Let’s be clear: this isn’t about removing access to an infringing work–that already exists via the DMCA. This isn’t about getting damages from the website or the uploader. It is about making an entire website inaccessible for everyone trying to visit it.