NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health.
'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:
It’s a great moment to remember that in the leadup to this popular uprising, the first major gut-punch was delivered by Budapest Pride. Poetic justice. 🇭🇺🏳️🌈
The ninth NGI Zero funding round is supporting 57 free and open source projects working on shared digital infrastructure.
Explore the full list of projects and see how they’re shaping the future: nlnet.nl/news/2026/20...
#OpenSource #InternetFreedom #NGIZero #FOSS
Nice new (peer-reviewed) analysis of the impact of satellite constellations on ground-based astronomical observations. By Olivier Hainault from @eso.org 🔭https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09427
"[OPM] could use [knowledge of employee’s private medical records] to discipline or target people who are not cooperating politically."
… 😬😞
Markwayne Mullin floats that his first major move as DHS Secretary might be to massively disrupt international air travel into and out of the United States by pulling customs officers out of cities like New York and Los Angeles, a move that would have international ramifications.
A must-read thread, analyzing the information environment that created circumstances disastrous to democracies.
Tapping the sign
"The open secret of child safety is that no one can say how well [CSAM detection models] work...When we cannot know what these systems work well for, who they are failing, and where there are gaps that may be augmented in other ways, we risk harming those who are most vulnerable online."
Every year, January to April, people accuse me of fearmongering in my reporting. Every year around this time, bills pass. And without fail, every year, the ratchet tightens.
And now Idaho just passed a bill that could put me in prison for years—for washing my hands in a bathroom.
If you're an open source lover and infrastructure person (aka were roaming the halls of #KubeCon or will find all the storage and data pipeline talks at #ATmosphereConf), @roost.tools is looking for you!
We've got fully remote, Infrastructure Engineering roles now open: roost.tools/infrastructu...
Everyone who works for the NYT — including my many friends — should be incredibly embarrassed by this statement.
The depths to which the NYT will go to back its agenda of challenging trans people's right to exist is horrifying, ongoing, and has caused very real and specific harms to trans people.
In Idaho, a trans person can be sentenced to up to five years in prison if convicted of felony using-the-restroom.
By comparison, simple assault is charged as a misdemeanor (up to six months in jail), and 2 DUI convictions gets you 10 days in jail in Idaho.
🚨Paper on AI & Copyright
Courts have credited AI companies' claims that alignment prevents reproducing copyrighted data.
What if finetuning on a simple writing task breaks it.
Worse: tuning on just one author (e.g., Murakami) unlocks verbatim recall of 30+ other authors' books (up to 90%)
(1/n)🧵
The anti-trans "Gender Dysphoria Institute" is recruiting transgender youth for a new study.
It's run by some of the worst anti-trans "scientists" out there.
Now, our writer S. Baum has uncovered a massive dark money network from the far-right funding it.
See our latest investigation.
Ad tech is surveillance software. Period.
New, from me: The federal government is required to track job satisfaction among its employees.
The Trump admin stopped collecting the data, so a nonprofit stepped in.
The results show that a collapse in morale and zero trust in Trump agency leaders. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/federal-em...
Imagine a newspaper publisher announcing it will no longer allow libraries to keep copies of its articles for reference.
This is what's happening online with the @archive.org
www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...
Ahoy, #KubeCon friends, if y'all want to catch up, let me know! I don't have a ticket so I plan to post up at cafés and bars nearby throughout the week...
It would be especially great to catch up with old friends from the other side of the Atlantic!
I analyzed over 10 years of anti-trans legislation. Over 330 bills have passed, with ~300 of them in just the last 5 years. There is no precedent in American history for so many bills to target one particular minority group like this in such a short timeframe.
www.thedissident.news/the-ratchet/
"The govt, in the middle of an energy 'emergency' Trump declared & an energy price spike he precipitated by invading Iran, is proposing to spend nearly $1b in public funds to ensure that *less energy gets produced* b/c the current occupant of the WH lost a lawsuit 20 years ago & never got over it."
Powell: "The thing a good number of people on the committee are concerned about is very very low level of job creation. If you adjust the trend job creation over the past 6 months for what we think is overstatement due to overcounting, effectively there is 0 net job creation in the private sector"
This looks sooo good!
Apparently you can pre-order? (Thank you @alilleybrinker.com for pointing this out!) Just be sure not to read it ha ha ha? yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
FBI director Kash Patel confirms the FBI is buying location data and histories that can be used for tracking people. It's the first time in recent years that the FBI has said it's actively buying this information, without needing a warrant.
www.politico.com/news/2026/03...
‘Trump is aiming for dictatorship’. That’s the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog | Martin Gelin
Heading to Berlin for #FOSSBack to tell a story about information propagation asymmetry, about finding resilience in times of turbulence, and about stewardship of the digital commons.
F/OSS has been the thread woven through my life since college.
F/OSS has changed the world.
The Administration really wants to be Putin. They're going all-in on totalitarianism and Congress just be sitting there like the 'it's fine' dog.
www.npr.org/2026/03/14/n...
Do cis people know that HRT is like... medically necessary care and not just a gee wiz for fun thing
