Attorneys General from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, have initiated an antitrust investigation into… Read the rest of the article: 10 bipartisan Attorneys General launch antitrust investigation against Facebook

For decades, Happy Mutants met one another and got seriously warped by the astounding books and other media of RE/Search Press (previously), now, after a long drought, RE/Search is publishing… Read the rest of the article: To do in San Francisco on Sunday: RE/Search's V.Vale and Rudy Rucker at City Lights

The latest turn in the Gamergate sage: Zoe Quinn (previously) outed their former partner, game dev Alec Holowka as a sexual and emotional abuser, which prompted others to come forward… Read the rest of the article: Gaming's #MeToo moment: male fragility versus women's fundamental rights

If you know the name Robert Bork, it's probably in the context of his failure to secure Senate confirmation when Ronald Regan put him up for the Supreme Court (his… Read the rest of the article: Robert Bork is the architect of the inequality crisis

If Vladimir Putin didn't convince you that good pecs and hair do not qualify you to govern, I give you Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime ministerial princeling whose years in office… Read the rest of the article: Hasan Minhaj roasts Justin Trudeau on climate hypocrisy

"Differential privacy" (previously) is a promising, complicated statistical method for analyzing data while preventing reidentification attacks that de-anonymize people in aggregated data-sets.

Amazon's got a tried-and-true way to deal with the negative consequences of high-speed ecommerce logistics: use subcontractors who can absorb the blame for the human toll wrought by the machine-like… Read the rest of the article: Amazon's plan for traffic deaths from same-day delivery: deflect blame to anonymous subcontractors

Kick-ass political posters were a big deal generations before the moral panic over whether the #resistance was too concerned with instagrammable anti-trump signs; democratized access to layout, design and publishing… Read the rest of the article: Gallery of Hong Kong protest art: #BeWater

Shardcore (previously), "I made a video for Saddy Waddy by The Private Sector using a new deepfake lipsync method to get Boris Johnson to sing the words." [Ed: Warning, strobe… Read the rest of the article: Deepfake: Boris Johnson sings "Saddy Waddy"

I'm on record as being a big supporter of learning regular expressions (AKA "regexp") — handy ways to search through text with very complex criteria. It's notoriously opaque to beginners,… Read the rest of the article: Regular expression crossword puzzles!

Joey Hess designed the first Fridge0 a year ago: it uses a standard chest freezer with added thermal mass, a simple controller, and a photovoltaic panel that effectively stores sunshine… Read the rest of the article: Fridge0: an open source hardware solar fridge with no battery requirement

Australia has a pending, comprehensive "data sharing" law that regulates the dispersal of data collected by the Australian state; in a new government white-paper, the Australian state has proposed that… Read the rest of the article: Australia wants to kill consent requirement in proposed data-sharing legislation, calls it "nuance"

I once found myself staying in a small hotel with a "State Department" family whose members clearly all worked for some kind of three letter agency (the family patriarch had… Read the rest of the article: Information security and warfare metaphors: a toxic mix made in hell

Kaiser Kuo (previously) is one of the best-informed, most incisive commentators on China — he's a Chinese-American (literal) rock star, entrepreneur and writer whose presentations on China I've been privileged… Read the rest of the article: Why don't more Chinese people oppose the Chinese government?

The wonderful folks at Paleotronic (previously) have rounded up scans of articles from 1980s-era computer magazines that advised new computer users on navigating the burgeoning world of dial-up BBSes.

Sidewalk Labs is Google's sister company that sells "smart city" technology; its showcase partner is Toronto, my hometown, where it has made a creepy shitshow out of its freshman outing,… Read the rest of the article: Critical essays (including mine) discuss Toronto's plan to let Google build a surveillance-based "smart city" along its waterfront

Kim Kelly is Teen Vogue's labor columnist and has written a series of excellent pieces on labor politics for the #resistance glossy.

I've always been fascinated with dumpster diving: my first feature sale to Wired (21 years ago!) told the tale of Darren Atkinson, the most successful high-tech diver I know.

China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office hosted a press conference on the ongoing Hong Kong pro-democracy uprising, with spokesman Yang Guang directing every branch and agency of Hong Kong's… Read the rest of the article: Beijing promises "no mercy" for the "backstage masterminds" of the Hong Kong uprising

Every year at the Hugo Awards, a lucky writer is given the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, named for the noted sf editor and fascist John W Campbell, whose… Read the rest of the article: Dell Magazines have changed the Campbell Award to the Astounding Award, removing the name of fascist John W Campbell