Tootfinder

An initial group of 28 malicious skills targeting Claude Code and Moltbot users were published to ClawHub and GitHub between January 27-29, 2026. A second larger group of 200 skills were published January 31-February 1, bringing the total number of malicious skills to 230 .
https://opensourcemalware.…

OpenSourceMalware.com - Community Threat Intelligence
Security professionals sharing intelligence on malicious packages, repositories, and CDNs to protect the open source ecosystem.

🚀 Auf unserer Culture Knowledge Base ist kürzlich die 20. Handreichung erschienen!

In "Social-Media-Forschung zu Rechtsextremismus und Demokratie: Bestandsaufnahme, Leitlinien und infrastrukturelle Bedarfe (2025)" sammelte Vincent Fröhlich im Rahmen der Eventreihe "Show & Tell – Social Media-Daten in der Forschungspraxis" Antworten von drei Projekten auf sieben Leitfragen des Arbeitskreises „Social Media-Daten“, welche systematisch ausgewertet wurden.

There's a reason that the Trump regime still hasn't published all the #Epstein files. And by now, it's abundantly clear that it's not to protect the victims.

Notepad Hijacked by
State-Sponsored Hackers
Following the security disclosure published in the v8.8.9 announcement investigation has continued in collaboration with external experts and with the full involvement of the (now former) shared hosting provider.
According to the analysis provided by the security experts,
the attack involved infrastructure-level compromise
that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plu…

The first (NASA) photograpg of the #ArtemisII launch published: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/55182696113/in/album-72177720331487648

I joined a writers group a little while ago, and it's been super helpful. I've gotten some really great constructive feedback. I'm re-publishing a story I published earlier and have edited based on that feedback, so here it is:
https://hexmhell.writeas.com/on-the-economics-of-slaying-dragons

Hackers associated with North Korea have compromised Axios, a widely used JavaScript library.
Axios is published and maintained on npm, the default package registry for JavaScript and Node.js projects. It is used to send requests between applications and web services and is one of the world’s most widely used libraries, with more than 100 million downloads a week.

Hackers compromise Axios, one of the most widely used software libraries
Malware-laden versions were being downloaded for up to three hours

Those of you interested in the history of cellular phones and cellular networks: There is a book on the subject "Cellular: An Economic and Business History of the International Mobile-Phone Industry" published by MIT Press, and the book is also available as PDF via Open Access: https://

Cellular: An Economic and Business History of the International Mobile-Phone Industry
Tracks the evolution of the international cellular industry from the late 1970s to the present.The development of the mobile-phone industry into what we kn

The minimum living wage has reignited the debate on basic income. But would it be viable in the face of eco-social collapse? A basic land income could be an alternative suited to this scenario. By Manuel Casal Lodeiro, Coordinator of the Instituto Resiliencia. Originally published in Spanish, in Revista Ecologista No. 108, 01/06/2021 . Translated by Mark H Burton…

In Defence of a Basic Land Income
The minimum living wage has reignited the debate on basic income. But would it be viable in the face of eco-social collapse? A basic land income could be an alternative suited to this scenario. By …

In Defence of a Basic Land Income
The minimum living wage has reignited the debate on basic income. But would it be viable in the face of eco-social collapse? A basic land income could be an alternative suited to this scenario. By Manuel Casal Lodeiro, Coordinator of the Instituto Resiliencia. Originally published in Spanish, in Revista Ecologista No. 108, 01/06/2021 . Translated by Mark H Burton…

In Defence of a Basic Land Income
The minimum living wage has reignited the debate on basic income. But would it be viable in the face of eco-social collapse? A basic land income could be an alternative suited to this scenario. By …

I have been away from Mastodon for a while, not finding the time to be active here.
In any case here goes the final version of a paper on content and meaning in LLMs, co-authored with @…. It lived a long preprint life, but is now published in an outstanding special issue of the journal Philosophy and the Mind Sciences.
The Vector Groun…

The National Hurricane Center's #NHC Forecast Verification Report for the 2025 #Hurricane Season is published. https://www.n…

🧊 Being physically fit may keep you calm under pressure
#psychology

Being physically fit may keep you calm under pressure
Regular exercise is not only good for the body, but it may also help you stay cool under pressure. Research published in the journal Acta Psychologica found that higher cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is associated with lower anxiety and anger and greater emotional resilience.

A ‘new baseline‘: Study captures accelerating sea-level rise in Africa https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/a-new-baseline-study-captures-accelerating-sea-level-rise-in-africa/

A ‘new baseline‘: Study captures accelerating sea-level rise in Africa
Sea-level rise has accelerated across Africa in recent decades, thanks to global warming and, in particular, to the melting of ice sheets and glaciers, according to a recent study. The study, published Dec. 15 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, found that sea levels across the continent have risen four times faster since 2010, […]

Hi, Pika fam. 👋🏻 Did you know that there is a shortcut to edit a blog post directly while browsing your page? See, neither did I. Barry and Matthew from @… were kind enough to show me the section in the help center. And now I can show it to you. How great is that?

Help Center - Pika
Answers to frequently asked questions about Pika.

Lots of people ask about e-readers here so I am going to do the same. I have a TON of readings to do lately for classes. Mostly PDFs of research documents. Think published scholar journal documents, so two column (mostly), tiny font. Lately I've been printing them and reading them on the couch as its easier than reading with a laptop. Plus I can highlight passages with is helpful. While I love using a kindle to read books, its never done well with PDF documents, not to mention moving th…

I really wish that the npmjs security team published the complete list of file hashes of a compromised package in their stub package page that they use when they remove something.
The way we hide compromises so fast when we respond actually makes responding harder.

In 2011 I made this song for the RPM Challenge and used a drum loop from @… because he published a blog post.
https://rasterweb.net/raster/2011/03/0

Song: Surfie Don’t Char
Here’s the seventh song from the album “Frenetic Stereoear” titled “Surfie Don’t Char.” The spray you hear in the song isn’t the ocean, it’s a can of spray paint, and of course “Surfie Don’t Char” is a riff on “Charlie Don’t Surf” which involves The Clash, a movie, and some other things, none of which [...]

2:31 p.m. Eastern
NASA’s Artemis II crew members are boarding the agency’s Orion spacecraft to begin communication checks to confirm voice links with mission control and onboard systems. 
Before entering the spacecraft that will be their home on the approximately 
10-day journey around the Moon and back,
all four crewmates signed the inside of the White Room, an area at the end of the crew access arm that provides access to the spacecraft.
The term “White Room” d…

LIVE: Artemis II Launch Day Updates - NASA
Live updates for launch of NASA's Artemis II test flight will be published on this page. All times are Eastern.

"Sea levels are rising—but in Greenland, they will fall"
#Greenland #Oceans
https://phys.org/news/2026-01-sea-…

Sea levels are rising—but in Greenland, they will fall
Even as global warming causes sea levels to rise worldwide, sea levels around Greenland will likely drop, according to a new paper published in Nature Communications. "The Greenland coastline is going to experience quite a different outcome," says lead author Lauren Lewright, a Ph.D. student in geophysics working at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School. "Sea level in Greenland is actually projected to fall."

A permanent webcast of #ArtemisII has begun at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3kR2KK8TEs and will first cover tanking and run all the way to splashdown (separate webcasts will cover special mission phases like lift-off). Also live updates will be published on the page https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/04/01/live-artemis-ii-launch-day-updates/ just set up.

polbooks: Political books network (2004)
A network of books about U.S. politics published close to the 2004 U.S. presidential election, and sold by Amazon.com. Edges between books represent frequent copurchasing of those books by the same buyers. The network was compiled by V. Krebs and is unpublished.
This network has 105 nodes and 441 edges.
Tags: Informational, Relatedness, Unweighted, Metadata

CFP: Sexual Violence in Judaism (all aspects)
https://ift.tt/nsQ9kYf
Member book announcement: Slaymaker, _Wild Lines and Poetic Travels, a Keijiro Suga Reader_ …
via Input 4 RELCFP https://…

💉 Men resort to buying underground testosterone to bridge access gap
#men

Men resort to buying underground testosterone to bridge access gap
Some men are resorting to obtaining testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) from underground sources due to significant barriers to accessing the therapy through formal medical channels, according to new Griffith University research published in the Journal of Drug Issues.

Internal email: Politico reviewed security after an off-the-record call between a reporter and an EU official was apparently intercepted and posted to YouTube (Zoya Sheftalovich/Politico)
https://www.politico.eu/article/politico-j

Call between POLITICO journalist and EU official was intercepted and published online
“Our internal reviews have found no evidence that any devices, networks or systems have been compromised,” POLITICO says in email to staff.

🚨 I just published this month's newsletter, which looks at the various ways our #procrastination can remain hidden.
https://www.worklifepsych.news/whats-maski…

Jeffrey Epstein sent thousands of pounds in bank transfers after his release from prison in 2009
to Peter Mandelson’s husband, according to emails published by the US Department of Justice on Friday.
The latest documents raise fresh questions about Epstein’s relationship with Mandelson,
who was sacked as the UK’s ambassador to Washington when details of his support for the disgraced financier emerged in September.
The latest dataset published on Friday shows that Mand…

Just published 🚀: Upgrading old code with Copilot
#musings

And here is my published dissertation @…, about quantifying the natural CO2 exhaust at the Starzach site in Southwest Germany (my result: ~10t/d):
http://hdl.handle.net/10900/176213…

With #LoveReplicationsWeek just around the corner, let's talk about the new journal in the field: Replication Research (R2)
Repeating important research is an important building block of improving the reliability of research. R2 is turning this into a rewarding task by creating a venue to get these important studies published.
It's a journal aligned with the value…

Of interest to experimental petrologists, upcoming virtual workshop "to discuss and plan to address systematic bias in predictive models caused by the way trace element partitioning data is currently published." #geology #geochemistry ⚒️

Overview
This workshop overview page outlines a February–March 2026 virtual event for experimental petrologists, editors, and program managers to address systemic bias in trace element partitioning data by advocating for publication of raw analytical data to support FAIR principles, improve model accuracy, and establish community-driven data standards.

Its time for all #iphone users to seriously consider moving out of the #Apple ecosystem.
https://mastodon.social/@campusc…

Something for the weekend.
I just listened to this old episode and thought I share it:
CLR Podcast 143 | Angel Costa
published on November 21st 2011.
#Techno

Trump is labeling Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” a label heretofore normally associated with foreign adversaries’ tech products, such as telecom gear made by China’s Huawei.
My piece that was published across several publications last evening.
https://www.

Trump administration bans Anthropic, escalating clash over military use of AI
The move to designate the AI firm a “supply chain risk” forces a six-month Pentagon transition from its products and reshapes competition among OpenAI, Google, and xAI.

🍰 How expectations about artificial sweeteners may affect their taste
#sweet

How expectations about artificial sweeteners may affect their taste
Elena Mainetto, from Radboud University, Margaret Westwater, from the University of Oxford, and colleagues at the University of Cambridge explored whether they could change how much people enjoy beverages containing sugar or artificial sweeteners by manipulating previous expectations about the drinks. The work is published in JNeurosci.

The saga of the bot written hit piece continues this time claiming that @… had a AI write an article about it when the AI couldn’t scrape the blog it just hallucinated some quotes that never existed. Surreal. Ars definitely have to come clean on what the actual fuck happened there.

Il y a quelque chose de pourri au royaume de la publication scientifique : "Une analyse de 100 000 numéros spéciaux de revues universitaires révèle qu'un numéro sur huit contient des articles rédigés par le rédacteur en chef, en particulier chez l'éditeur MDPI."

"As courts increasingly turn to virtual proceedings, jurors who deliberate online may be just as attentive, engaged, and fair-minded as those who meet face-to-face, according to research published by the American Psychological Association."
**Can justice happen on a laptop? Study says yes**
https://phys.org/news/2026-01-justice-laptop.html

RE: #Mastodon has surprising reach. I wrote and published this essay yesterday; I have advertised it …

Published Jan. 28
DAVID PARKINS/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
BOVINO FINALLY ESCORTED FROM THE MINNEAPOLIS CHINA SHOP...

A Jeffrey Epstein victim files a class action against the Trump administration and Google, claiming Google's search and AI Mode published victims' personal info (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/27/jeffrey-epstein-victims-…

Epstein victims sue Google and the Trump administration over alleged disclosure of personal information
A lawsuit filed in Northern California alleges that Google's AI features generated contact information for Epstein victims.

RE: #Veritasium recently published a very comprehensive and educational video about the XZ Utils backdoor incident two ye…

CFP: Sexual Violence in Judaism (all aspects)
https://ift.tt/3D0U2hL
Member book announcement: Slaymaker, _Wild Lines and Poetic Travels, a Keijiro Suga Reader_ …
via Input 4 RELCFP https://…

Your semi-regular reminder that the British Library's Research Repository has stacks of open datasets from collections, and research by Library staff e.g. https://bl.iro.bl.uk/catalog?f[human_r

RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116324270189877586
Anthropic's Claude code was accidentally published and is full of AI slop and low-quality regexes (and is still among the best LLMs)

Bra artikel kring Modicförändringar och antibiotikabehandling.
De är dock lite för diplomatiska om du frågar mig. Det stinker "vi vill tjäna pengar på vårt påhittade koncept" här tycker jag. Den här behandlingen marknadsförs också på tveksamma sätt via influensers på social medier redan idag.

Oh, oh, was sehe ich denn hier?
#Euronews übersetzt lt. diesem Hinweis bestimmte Texte maschinell ohne Kontrolle ins Deutsche und veröffentlicht die dann im journalistischen Kontext. Sie schreiben zumindest nichts weiter hin.
Was ich eigentlich lesen will, seht ihr im nächsten Beispiel von #Heise

from my link log —
You should not run your mail server because mail is hard?
https://poolp.org/posts/2019-08-30/you-should-not-run-your-mail-server-because-mail-is-hard/
saved 2019-09-01

You should not run your mail server because mail is hard
TL;DR: - Mail is not hard: people keep repeating that because they read it, not because they tried it - Big Mailer Corps are quite happy with that myth, it keeps their userbase growing - Big Mailer Corps control a large percentage of the e-mail address space which is good for none of us - It's ok that people have their e-mails hosted at Big Mailer Corps as long as there's enough people outside too EDIT (2019-12-15) # A practical guide to set up a mail exchanger was published on this blog.

Wait. So an #AI bot manifested some #AIslop (it neither creates nor writes), tried to get it merged into a #code repo, got rejected for being

Slop Bucket is the new Dumpster Fire https://tech.lgbt/@JadedBlueEyes/115967791152135761

I just published The Open Contributions Descriptor format as an IETF Internet-Draft.
#opensource #opendata #openstandard

[OT, LinkedIn] The Napsterization of AI — and why it hits different https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/napsterization-ai-why-hits-different-brian-malone-yebqe On how Chinese AI labs aim to undercut U.S. tech giants by flooding the market with cheaper, …

The Napsterization of AI — and Why It Hits Different
Or: Why is this Nigerian prince asking me to help him combine statistical rigor with deep domain knowledge to design explainable foundation models for tabular data? Yesterday, Anthropic published something worth reading carefully: they caught three Chinese AI labs — DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax —

polbooks: Political books network (2004)
A network of books about U.S. politics published close to the 2004 U.S. presidential election, and sold by Amazon.com. Edges between books represent frequent copurchasing of those books by the same buyers. The network was compiled by V. Krebs and is unpublished.
This network has 105 nodes and 441 edges.
Tags: Informational, Relatedness, Unweighted, Metadata

DOJ removed, withheld Epstein files related to accusations about Trump : @…
#Epstein #Trump

The Free Press published this article on Medical Aid in Dying in Canada. It's a timely follow-up to my post this weekend.
https://www.thefp.com/p/determined-to-die?r=1iyjsn
Also available at

Determined to Die
Kiano Vafaeian was not terminally ill—and did not need to be to end his own life under Canada’s assisted suicide program.

Richard Davis and Revival in #Northamptonshire – a review https://edintone.com/richard-davis-nonconformist-revival-northamptonshire/ Stephen Pickles’s boo…

Richard Davis: A Nonconformist's Revival in Northamptonshire
Stephen Pickles’s Richard Davis and Revival in Northamptonshire offers a valuable exploration of nonconformist life beyond London in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Focusing on the ministry of Richard Davis, the book traces his influence from Rothwell across a network of satellite meetings that extended into several regions of England. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, it presents a balanced account of a figure whose effective ministry, published writings, and theological…

Collecting the Shards
Over the past few weeks, I have published several new books. From the outside, that can look like some kind of creative superpower. Like I locked myself in a room, drank a heroic amount of coffee, and sprinted through a stack of fresh manuscripts until the world blurred and the covers appeared. That is not what happened.

Collecting the Shards | David Boles, Blogs
Over the past few weeks, I have published several new books. From the outside, that can look like some kind of creative superpower. Like I locked myself in a room, drank a heroic amount of coffee, …

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116110761175260521
I still can't believe that he published that.
It's completely unacceptable.
He should retract it and apologize.

This #CalvinAndHobbes comic was published by Watterson in 1993. I've inflation-adjusted it for 2026.
#BanCars #FuckCars

Microplastics found in a third of surveyed fish off the coasts of remote Pacific Islands https://phys.org/news/2026-01-microplastics-surveyed-fish-coasts-remote.html

Microplastics found in a third of surveyed fish off the coasts of remote Pacific Islands
A third of fish living in the remote coastal waters of the Pacific Island Countries and Territories are contaminated with microplastics, with especially high rates in Fiji, according to an analysis published in PLOS One by Jasha Dehm at the University of the South Pacific and colleagues.

One in four full-time workers in Britain would be “better off swapping wages for benefits“, according to new analysis which featured on the front of The Sun.
The report – published by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) earlier this month – resurrects the spectre of the ‘#welfare #scrounger’,
a hypothetical …

Would a quarter of workers really be better off ‘swapping wages for benefits’?
Over six million workers earn less than an unemployed person on benefits, according to the Centre for Social Justice. Is it true?

Yale Divinity School contributes powerfully to the nation’s strength and the common good. We do this through the religiously trained leaders we send into churches and communities across America, through the direct provision of educational resources to lay leaders and lifelong learners, and through the creation of deeper knowledge of God and the application of theology to the pressing issues of our day.
Learn more at our newly published impact report.

CFP: Sexual Violence in Judaism (all aspects) https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20139972/cfp-sexual-violence-judaism-all-aspects

WHOA. Gamers Nexus published their massive 3hr 30min investigation on illicit AI GPU sales to China online.
(I bought the hi-res release of this video)
▶️ THE NVIDIA AI GPU BLACK MARKET | Investigating Smuggling, Corruption, & ...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BF

A now-removed Ars Technica article, covering how an AI agent wrote a hit piece about an open source project maintainer, seems to have included AI hallucinations (Scott Shambaugh/The Shamblog)
https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me-part-2/

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened
Context: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into acceptin…

Citrini and the AI doom scenario – Michael Roberts Blog https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2026/02/26/citrini-and-the-ai-doom-scenario/

Citrini and the AI doom scenario
A report published last weekend by the obscure financial analyst group, Citrini Research, on the future impact of AI apparently caused a stock market sell-off in software companies.  Citrini was li…

A review of Polymarket's social media feeds found it has published hundreds of false and misleading posts, as the betting market presents itself as "News 2.0" (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.co…

Polymarket Says It Deals in Truth, but Its Social Feeds Are Filled With Falsehoods
A review of the betting market’s social media feeds found it has published hundreds of false and misleading posts.

Shinyhunters published 680,000 Odido customer records, demand ransom and threaten more releases if the Dutch telco doesn't pay one million euros over the next 16 days.
https://nltimes.nl/2026/02/26/hackers-publish-680000-odido-custom…

CFP: Sexual Violence in Judaism (all aspects) https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20139972/cfp-sexual-violence-judaism-all-aspects

"EU Plans to Weaken Pesticide Rules ‘Unlawful’, Experts Say"
#EU #EuropeanUnion #Pesticides #Environment

EU Plans to Weaken Pesticide Rules ‘Unlawful’, Experts Say
Plans by the European Commission to scrap routine checks on pesticide safety would break EU law, according to a new legal opinion published today (27 January).  The Commission announced plans in December to “simplify” regulations for pesticides, including ditching requirements for all pesticides to be reassessed every ten to fifteen years to account for new evidence around health and environment impacts. The move could violate […]

E-waste chemicals are appearing in dolphins and porpoises #environment

E-waste chemicals are appearing in dolphins and porpoises
Liquid crystal monomers (LCMs) are critical components of laptop, television, and smartphone screens. Given their ubiquity in the environment, these compounds are considered persistent pollutants, posing threats to marine life that scientists want to understand. Research published in Environmental Science & Technology provides initial evidence that LCMs from household electronics or electronic waste (e-waste) can accumulate in dolphin and porpoise tissues, including blubber, muscle, and brain, …

CFP: Sexual Violence in Judaism (all aspects) https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20139972/cfp-sexual-violence-judaism-all-aspects

Seems like a good moment to re-share this, particularly as there is nonsense being spoken about renewables not having a problem of the Hormuz type.
Renewables, carbon and the energy crisis – degrowthUK
https://degrowthuk.org/2025/08/01/renewables-carbon-and-th…

Renewables, carbon and the energy crisis
Article originally published at North West Bylines, 31 July, 2025 Based on a longer, fully referenced pamphlet, jointly published by Steady State Manchester and DegrowthUK available HERE as pdf or …

"To be honest with you, my favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran,” Trump said,
“but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘why are you doing that?’
But they’re stupid people.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/03/30/bcmd-m30.html

In FT interview, Trump announces intention to launch ground invasion of Iran
In an interview published Sunday in the Financial Times, US President Donald Trump announced his “preference” to “take the oil” from Iran—a massive expansion of the US war of aggression that would only be possible through a ground invasion of the country.

Just published 🚀: Leadership from Birds
#leadership

RE: #redshift measured spectroscopically hailed in this press release as well as in https://esawebb.org/news/weic2603/ and https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_gazes_further_back_in_time has been published in May 2025 as https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.11263 (appearing on ArXiv counts as a publication in today's academic landscape) and made some headlines then, including by yours truly: https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2025/05/18/resiliences-mond-punch-fur-alle-pslv-versagt/ ("Neuer spektroskopischer Rotverschiebungs-Rekord: z=14.44").

Deforestation is drying out the Amazon rainforest faster than previously thought #Amazon

Deforestation is drying out the Amazon rainforest faster than previously thought
Deforestation is having a more devastating effect on the Amazon rainforest than earlier data suggested. While cutting down large swaths of trees destroys vital habitats, it also harms the region's ability to generate its own rainfall. According to a new study published in the journal Nature, the Amazon could reach a tipping point and experience major forest dieback (where large areas of the rainforest dry out and turn into a savanna) sooner than previously thought.

The FBI confirms Iran-linked Handala breached Kash Patel's personal email and the data accessed was "historical in nature" and involves no government info (TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/27/iranian-h…

Iranian hackers claim breach of FBI director Kash Patel's personal email account | TechCrunch
Handala, a pro-Iranian hacking group allegedly working for Iran’s government, published emails it said were taken from the Gmail account of FBI director Kash Patel.

The Tampa Bay Times starts monthly "article clubs" for news stories, to discuss the substance of a chosen story and look at the reporting process (Sophie Culpepper/Nieman Lab)
https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/the-tampa-bay-times-s…

The Tampa Bay Times starts a monthly “book club” for news stories
The idea is not just to discuss a story's substance, but to give readers a behind-the-scenes look at the reporting process and decision-making that shape the published article.

Immigration has been a centerpiece of Trump’s platform throughout more than a decade of political life,
-- and was at the core of his 2024 election campaign.
But polls show public opinion has shifted amid the widely circulated operations carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and other federal agents in urban areas.
Those operations have this month seen the shooting deaths of two US citizens in Minneapolis.  
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published o…

ICE on US streets challenges American norms, founding values
The Trump administration has moved ICE's center of activity from the US border with Mexico to the heart of US cities. Federal agents' encounters with the public are challenging the foundational ideas of America.

If I am reading this correctly, Northern Ireland police, who just received compensation of £7,500 per officer for having their personal details published in error on the internet, were revictimized today when the Northern Ireland court system again published their personal details.

‘It defies belief’: Names of PSNI officers published on court website in new breach
Some PSNI officers who had their names released in a catastrophic data breach in 2023 have now had their details published on the NI Courts website.

Targeted climate policies are successfully cutting carbon, study shows #climate

Targeted climate policies are successfully cutting carbon, study shows
Countries with stricter and better-targeted climate policies cut carbon emissions faster, according to a major new study by researchers in the UK and EU. The study draws on the most comprehensive climate policy dataset ever assembled, using over 3,900 policies adopted since 2000 in 43 leading economies responsible for well over three quarters of global emissions. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

🤦‍♀️ Women treat AI with greater skepticism than men do, study suggests
#women

Women treat AI with greater skepticism than men do, study suggests
Women perceive artificial intelligence (AI) as riskier than men do, according to a study. Beatrice Magistro and colleagues hypothesized that women are both more exposed to risk from AI and are more averse to risk in general than men. Their work was published in PNAS Nexus.

https://mastodon.social/@PlanetariumBochum/116133879381718417
The two genuine images of the annular solar eclipse published so far - everything else is (stupid) fakery: https://www.cieletespace.fr/article/voici-les-seules-vraies-photos-de-l-eclipse-de-soleil-17-fevrier

US secretly plotting ground attack despite message of diplomacy
-- Iran's parliament speaker says
Iranian state media have published a message from Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf marking 30 days since the start of the US-Israeli war.
“The enemy openly sends a message of negotiation and secretly plans a ground attack,”
Ghalibaf, who has served as speaker of the parliament since 2020, wrote in his message carried by the Tasnim news agency.

🔆 Intense sunlight reduces plant diversity and biomass across global grasslands, study finds
https://phys.org/news/2026-02-intense-sunlight-diversity-biomass-global.html

Intense sunlight reduces plant diversity and biomass across global grasslands, study finds
The sun is the basis for photosynthesis, but not all plants thrive in strong sunlight. Strong sunlight constrains plant diversity and plant biomass in the world's grasslands, a new study shows. Temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric nitrogen deposition have less impact on plant diversity. These results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a research team led by Marie Spohn from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

A review of Polymarket's social media feeds found it has published hundreds of false and misleading posts, as the betting market presents itself as "News 2.0" (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.co…

Polymarket Says It Deals in Truth, but Its Social Feeds Are Filled With Falsehoods
A review of the betting market’s social media feeds found it has published hundreds of false and misleading posts.

March 2024:
As rains continue to fill local lakes and reservoirs,
onlookers are eagerly anticipating seeing the water of Napa County’s Lake Berryessa overflow into its funnel-like spillway, dubbed
“the Glory Hole,”
which channels water 200 feet straight down near Monticello Dam and into Putah Creek on the other side.
During these overflows, the water flowing into the hole looks like the drain of a giant bathtub, or a wormhole to another dimension.
For those…

How Lake Berryessa’s ‘Glory Hole’ works and how it got its name
This story was originally published in March 2024As rains continue to fill local lakes and reservoirs, onlookers are eagerly anticipating seeing the water of Napa County’s Lake Berryessa overflow into its funnel-like spillway, dubbed…

30 years ago the #HubbleDeepField was published: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubbles-deepest-view-of-the-universe-unveils-bewildering-galaxies-across-billions-of-years/ - other Hubble deep fields followed, and now ALMA and Webb have investigated one of them ... JWST Spectroscopic Census of ALMA Faint Submillimeter Galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.18149

Odido hackers demand at least €1 million, Thursday is deadline
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/02/odido-hackers-demand-at-least-e1-million-thursday-is-deadline/

Odido hackers demand at least €1 million, Thursday is deadline - DutchNews.nl
Hackers claiming to be behind the theft of information about millions of current and former clients of telecoms company Odido are threatening to publish the data on the dark web unless the company pays them at least €1 million, broadcaster RTL said on Tuesday. RTL said the hackers, which it named as the “Shinyhunters” group, have said they want a “low seven-figure sum” in cash. The broadcaster published a screenshot of the demand, in English, which states: “this is the...

🧲 Low-field MRI is safe, feasible and more comfortable for breast screening, finds study
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-field-mri-safe-feasible-comfortable.html

Low-field MRI is safe, feasible and more comfortable for breast screening, finds study
Researchers at Mass General Brigham have demonstrated the technical feasibility of using ultra-low field (ULF) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for breast imaging. With further refinement and evaluation, the technology could offer an alternative to existing breast cancer screening methods and may reduce barriers to screening. Results are published in Scientific Reports.

Study reveals hidden climate impact of digital industries #climate

Study reveals hidden climate impact of digital industries
Digital technologies are widely viewed as drivers of efficiency, growth, and innovation. However, their contribution to climate change is significantly greater than previously understood. A new study published in the journal Communications Sustainability shows that digital industries were responsible for about 4.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2021. The bulk of these emissions were not captured by existing emissions accounting standards or official climate assessments.

Despite the small team size,
Mastodon operates two large, production Mastodon instances:
mastodon.social
Runs on Kubernetes with autoscaling between 9 and 15 nodes (16 cores, 64 GB RAM each). Web frontend scale between 5 and 20 pods, while various Sidekiq worker pools scale between 10 and 40 pods. On average, mastodon.social has 70–80 pods running at any given time. This platform handles up to 300,000 active users per day and approximately 10 million requests per minute.
ma…

How Mastodon Runs OpenTelemetry Collectors in Production
At the beginning of 2025, the OpenTelemetry Developer Experience SIG published the results of its first community survey. One of the strongest themes was clear: teams want more real-world examples of how the OpenTelemetry SDKs and the OpenTelemetry Collector are actually used in production. To help close that gap, the SIG began collecting stories directly from end users—across industries, architectures, and company sizes. This post kicks off a new series focused specifically on organizations�…

🧬 Giant DNA viruses encode their own eukaryote-like translation machinery, researchers discover
#virus

Giant DNA viruses encode their own eukaryote-like translation machinery, researchers discover
In a new study, published in Cell, researchers describe a newfound mechanism for creating proteins in a giant DNA virus, comparable to a mechanism in eukaryotic cells. The finding challenges the dogma that viruses lack protein synthesis machinery, and blurs the line between cellular life and viruses.

The just published timelapse #aurora as it was seen from Germany: note the green splotches appearing briefly all over the place, the nature of which - most likely RAGDA - is discussed in https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2026/01/25/allgemeines-live-blog-ab-dem-25-januar-2025/#Jan25 ("Das war das Polarlicht vom 19. Januar ...") with links to several relevant papers.

🧼 New chemi-mechanical process removes pigments and restores properties in recycled plastics
https://phys.org/news/2026-01-chemi-mechanical-pigments-properties-recycled.html

New chemi-mechanical process removes pigments and restores properties in recycled plastics
Researchers in Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Department of Chemical Engineering and at the University of Akron have published research in Chemical Engineering Journal about a new technology that seeks to solve long-standing challenges in plastic recycling that limit the overwhelming majority of plastics to a single use and contribute to the accumulation of plastic waste.

The Document Foundation (TDF),
the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice,
welcomes the inclusion of the Open Document Format (ODF) as a mandated standard format in
Germany’s Deutschland-Stack,
the federal government’s sovereign digital infrastructure framework for all public administrations.
The Stack, published by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernisation
(Bundesministerium für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung),
establishes the…

Germany's Sovereign Digital Stack Mandates ODF: a Landmark Validation of Open Document Standards - TDF Community Blog
The Document Foundation (TDF), the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice, welcomes the inclusion of the Open Document Format (ODF) as a mandated standard format in Germany’s Deutschland-Stack, the federal government’s sovereign digital infrastructure framework for all public administrations. The Stack, published by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernisation (Bundesministerium für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung), establishes the technical standards for a shared, inte…

An AI agent autonomously wrote and published a personalized attack article
against an open-source software maintainer
after he rejected its code contribution.
⚠️ It might be the first documented case of an AI publicly shaming a person as retribution. 
Matplotlib, a popular Python plotting library with roughly 130 million monthly downloads, doesn’t allow AI agents to submit code.
So Scott Shambaugh, a volunteer maintainer (like a curator for a repository of comp…

An AI agent just tried to shame a software engineer after he rejected its code
When a Matplotlib volunteer declined its pull request, the bot published a personal attack.