Lindsey

Google has officially acknowledged the upcoming merger of Android and Chromebooks, and it may be coming in 2026.

The Trump Administration’s murder-in-international-waters program debuted far ahead of its legal rationale. Many people inside the administration were blindsided by this sudden escalation. Those expected to stay on top of these things — military oversight, congressional committees, etc. — found they were even further behind the curve than the late-arriving “justification” for extrajudicial killings of alleged “narco-terrorists” that used to be handled by interdiction efforts that left everyone alive and anything of value (drugs, boats, weapons) in the hands of the US government and its foreign partners.

This was something new and horrible from a regime already known for its awfulness. Even after the belated (and then hastily revised) justification was delivered by the Office of Legal Counsel, it was difficult to see how the US government could justify extrajudicial killings of alleged “terrorists” who were — at worst — simply moving narcotics from point A to point B.

The administration’s bizarre insistence that the mere existence of an international drug trade constituted a deliberate, violent attack on America was further undercut by a lot of inconvenient facts. First of all, most of those being killed had no connection to the top levels of drug cartels. They were merely mules tasked with transporting drugs. In other cases — including the one that involved a double-tap strike (which was actually four strikes) to ensure the survivors clinging to boat wreckage could no longer be referred to as “survivors” — the drugs allegedly being trafficked were headed to midpoints that suggested the narcotics were actually headed to Europe, rather than the United States.

To be clear, this administration doesn’t actually care whether or not it engages in murder or other acts of violence. What it does care about is allowing the killing to continue for as long as possible before the system of checks and balances finally gets around to dialing back the murders a bit.

A recent article from the New York Times gives the game away, even if the lede gets a bit buried. The headline mentions a White House “scramble” to “deal with” people who survived initial extrajudicial killing attempts. In one case, two survivors were rescued by the US military after failing to die during the initial strike. The White House said they should be sent to El Salvador’s torture prison. The State Department — currently headed by Marco Rubio — said this simply wasn’t possible. Both survivors ended up being sent back to their countries of origin.

Two weeks later, another murder attempt failed to murder everyone on the boat, leading to another hasty conference call between the White House, career diplomats, and Defense Department leadership. The ultimate goal was to get rid of these people as quickly as possible, which necessarily involved hasty arrangements made with government officials in their home countries.

The real reason for these hasty talks — and the secrecy surrounding them — is this: The administration definitely doesn’t seem confident that it’s fully justified in ordering military members to engage in actual war crimes; specifically, the murder of people military bylaws make clear they are supposed to be rescuing.

The two attacks discussed above happened nearly two months after the double-tap boat strike that definitely looks like a war crime. But the Trump administration definitely isn’t going to bring back survivors to face justice by charging them and giving them their day in court. If it does that, it might lose everything it likes about murdering people in international waters.

Legal cases in the United States involving survivors would force the administration to present more information to try to back up its rationale for the attacks.

[…]

“From the administration’s point of view, there are good reasons to be averse to bringing survivors to Guantánamo Bay or to the continental United States,” [former State Dept. lawyer Brian Finucane] said.

If the U.S. military brings the survivors to the Navy-run prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, lawyers defending them could file a habeas corpus lawsuit in U.S. federal court questioning whether there really is an armed conflict, for legal purposes, between the United States and cartels. Congress has not authorized the United States to engage in any such conflict.

To use the ever-popular poker parlance, that’s an obvious “tell” — something that indicates the administration has very little confidence in the legal rationale for these extrajudicial killings. If it thought it’s arguments had a very good chance of holding up in court, it wouldn’t be hastily returning “narco-terrorists” to their home countries as quickly and quietly as possible, where they’ll presumably immediately resume their “narco-terrorism.”

That’s also why the first double-tap strike occurred only days into Trump’s undeclared war on alleged drug boats. As far as we know, this hasn’t been repeated, despite everyone who hasn’t already resigned from the Defense Department (or been thrown under the bus by those whose positions are unassailable thanks to their deference to Trump) claiming either ignorance of the double-strike or saying lots of stuff about “saving” the country from being murdered by inanimate fentanyl (or whatever).

Any survivor is just another chance to prove the US government wrong. And if it isn’t immediately clear survivors have somewhere to be hastily dumped, you can probably assume the military will resort to Plan B: mob-style “hits” to make sure these witnesses can’t talk.

Google began offering “dark web reports” a while back, but the company has just announced the feature will be going away very soon. In an email to users of the service, Google says it will stop telling you about dark web data leaks in February. This probably won’t negatively impact your security or privacy because, as Google points out in its latest email, there’s really nothing you can do about the dark web.

The dark web reports launched in March 2023 as a perk for Google One subscribers. The reports were expanded to general access in 2024. Now, barely a year later, Google has decided it doesn’t see the value in this type of alert for users. Dark web reports provide a list of partially redacted user data retrieved from shadowy forums and sites where such information is bought and sold. However, that’s all it is—a list.

The dark web consists of so-called hidden services hosted inside the Tor network. You need a special browser or connection tools in order to access Tor hidden services, and its largely anonymous nature has made it a favorite hangout for online criminals. If a company with your personal data has been hacked, that data probably lives somewhere on the dark web.

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We’ve talked about the Australian social media ban that went into effect last week, how dumb it is, and why it’s already a mess.

But late last week, some additional news broke that makes the whole thing even more grotesque: turns out the campaign pushing hardest for the ban was run by an ad agency that makes gambling ads. The same gambling ads that were facing their own potential ban—until the Australian government decided that, hey, with all the kids kicked off social media, gambling ads can stay.

Really.

That’s the latest in this incredible scoop from the Australian publication Crikey.

The big marketing campaign pushing the under-16 social media ban was called “36 Months”—framed (misleadingly) that way because they claimed that raising the social media age from 13 to 16 was keeping kids offline for an additional 36 months.

But, as Crikey details, the entire 36 Months campaign was actually planned out and created by an ad company named FINCH, which just so happened to also be working on a huge gambling ad campaign for TAB, which is a huge online betting operation in Australia. And, it wasn’t their only such campaign:

FINCH has worked on at least five gambling advertisements since 2017, according to public announcements and trade magazine reporting. Its clients include TAB Australia (a 2023 campaign called “Australia’s national sport is…”), Ladbroke, Sportsbet and CrownBet (now BetEasy).

There was staff overlap, too. Attwells’ LinkedIn lists him as both 36 Months’ managing director and FINCH’s head of communications from May to December 2024. FINCH staff worked on the 36 Months campaign.

Now, add to that the missing piece of the puzzle, which is that Australia had been investigating bans on online gambling ads, but just last month (oh, such perfect timing) it decided not to do that citing the under-16 ban as a key reason why they could leave gambling ads online.

The Murphy inquiry suggested bookmakers were grooming children with ads online, but Labor’s new social media ban on under-16s is viewed as a solution because it would, in principle, limit their exposure to such advertising online.

How very, very convenient.

This is exactly the false sense of security many ban critics warned about. Politicians and parents now think kids are magically “safe,” even though kids are trivially bypassing the ban. Meanwhile, the adults who might have educated those kids about online gambling risks—a problem that heavily targets teenage boys—now assume the government has handled it. Gambling ads stay up, kids stay online, and everyone pretends the problem is solved.

Crikey goes out of its way to say that there’s no proof that FINCH did this on behalf of their many gambling clients, but it does note that FINCH has claimed that it funded the 36 Months campaign mainly by itself, which certainly raises some questions as to why an advertising firm would do that if it didn’t have some other reason to do so.

Incredibly, Crikey notes that part of the 36 Months campaign was to attack anyone who called the social media ban into question by calling them big tech shills, even without any proof:

Spokespeople for 36 Months had previously accused an academic and youth mental health group of being bought off by big tech because of their unpaid roles on boards advising social media platforms on youth safety.

When Crikey asked them what proof they had, citing denials from those they accused, Attwells said he “hadn’t looked into it” but that they’d heard of a trend where technology companies would indirectly fund people to support work that supports “their agenda”.

“The money doesn’t go straight to them,” he said.

Yes: an ad agency funded by gambling clients, running a campaign that benefits those gambling clients, accused critics of being secretly funded by tech companies—without evidence—while claiming indirect funding is how these things work. Such projection.

There’s a famous concept around regulations known as “bootleggers and Baptists,” as a shorthand way of denoting some of the more cynical “strange bedfellows” that team up to get certain regulations in place. The canonical example, of course, being the temperance movement that sought to ban alcohol. Bootleggers (illegal, underground alcohol producers) loved the idea of prohibition, because it would greatly increase demand for their product, for which they could cash in.

But, no one wants to publicly advocate for prohibition on behalf of the bootleggers. So, you find a group to be the public face to present the cooked up moral panic, moralizing argument for the ban: the Baptists. They run around and talk about how damaging alcohol is and how it must be banned for the good of society. It’s just behind the scenes that the bootleggers looking to profit are helping move along the legislation that will do exactly that.

Here we’ve got a textbook case. The gambling industry, facing its own potential ban, appears to have had a hand in funding the moral panic campaign, complete with think-of-the-children rhetoric, that convinced the government to ban kids from social media instead. Now the gambling ads flow freely to an audience the government has declared “protected,” while the actual kids slip past the ban with zero new safeguards in place.

Instead of Bootleggers and Baptists, this time it’s Punters and Parents, or maybe Casinos and Crusaders. Either way it’s a form of regulatory capture hidden behind a silly moral panic.

Roomba maker iRobot has filed for bankruptcy and will be taken over by its Chinese supplier after the company that popularized the robot vacuum cleaner fell under the weight of competition from cheaper rivals.

The US-listed group on Sunday said it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware as part of a restructuring agreement with Shenzhen-based Picea Robotics, its lender and primary supplier, which will acquire all of iRobot’s shares.

The deal comes nearly two years after a proposed $1.5 billion acquisition by Amazon fell through over competition concerns from EU regulators.

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The mainstream media just failed a basic civics test so badly that you’d think their brains have been pickled by the kinds of folks who spend all their time on X (oh, wait…). Headlines across major outlets are breathlessly reporting that Donald Trump “blocked states from passing AI laws” with an executive order. Except, that’s not how any of this works, and anyone who stayed awake during middle school social studies should know better.

Look at this:

That’s the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and the Guardian all confidently telling their readers that Trump can magically override state sovereignty with a memo. These aren’t fringe blogs—these are supposedly serious news organizations with actual editors who apparently skipped the day they taught how the federal government works. They have failed the most simple journalistic test of “don’t print lies in the newspaper.”

Executive orders aren’t laws. They’re memos. Fancy, official memos that tell federal employees how to do their jobs, but memos nonetheless. You want to change what states can and can’t do? You need this little thing called “Congress” to pass this other little thing called “legislation.” Trump can’t just declare state laws invalid any more than he can declare himself emperor of Mars.

Even the text of the actual executive order admits all this:

My Administration must act with the Congress to ensure that there is a minimally burdensome national standard — not 50 discordant State ones.  The resulting framework must forbid State laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order.  That framework should also ensure that children are protected, censorship is prevented, copyrights are respected, and communities are safeguarded.  A carefully crafted national framework can ensure that the United States wins the AI race, as we must.

Right there in black and white: “must act with the Congress.” Apparently, someone in the White House briefly remembered how government works, even if the president and the entire mainstream media have forgotten.

And look, I actually do mostly agree that we’d be much better off with a single federal solution here, rather than a bunch of piecemeal (and perhaps conflicting) rules from every state. But, that’s why you actually have to work with Congress, and if there’s anything this Congress has shown over the past 11 months, it’s that it is inherently unable to do anything particularly competently.

Only a few news orgs managed to call out the problems with this executive order. Barron’s rightly noted that there would be “court battles” over the law:

NPR, however, came out and pointed out that this overall executive order probably isn’t legal:

NPR’s right. The order contradicts itself so blatantly it’s almost impressive. First paragraph: “we need Congress.” Rest of the document: “never mind, we’ll just do whatever we want.”

Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General shall establish an AI Litigation Task Force (Task Force) whose sole responsibility shall be to challenge State AI laws inconsistent with the policy set forth in section 2 of this order, including on grounds that such laws unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing Federal regulations, or are otherwise unlawful in the Attorney General’s judgment, including, if appropriate, those laws identified pursuant to section 4 of this order. 

You can’t just say that because a law goes against the intent of this executive order that the DOJ can challenge it. That’s not how that works. At all.

But here’s where this gets kinda funny (in a stupid way): that “interstate commerce” language could backfire spectacularly. Almost all state laws trying to regulate the internet—from child safety laws to age verification to the various attempts at content moderation laws—might run afoul of the dormant commerce clause by attempting to regulate interstate commerce if what the admin here claims is true (it’s not really true, but if the Supreme Court buys it…). Courts had been hesitant to use this nuclear option because it would essentially wipe out the entire patchwork of state internet regulation that’s been building for years, and a few decades of work in other areas that hasn’t really been challenged. Also, because they’ve mostly been able to invalidate those laws using the simple and straightforward First Amendment.

If Trump’s DOJ starts aggressively pursuing dormant commerce clause challenges to keep his Silicon Valley donors happy, they might accidentally create precedent that invalidates every state’s attempts to regulate social media, require age verification, or mandate content filtering. Every red state law targeting “Big Tech censorship,” every blue state law pretending to protect kids online—all of it could get swept away by Trump’s own legal strategy.

Wouldn’t that be something? In some ways, it would be hilarious, since I think almost all of these state laws are awful and a mess and waste everyone’s time… but it would certainly put a dent in a ton of efforts by Republicans and Democrats alike. All to keep the AI bros happy.

There’s also some extortion in here:

Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Commerce, through the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, shall issue a Policy Notice specifying the conditions under which States may be eligible for remaining funding under the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program that was saved through my Administration’s “Benefit of the Bargain” reforms, consistent with 47 U.S.C. 1702(e)-(f).  That Policy Notice must provide that States with onerous AI laws identified pursuant to section 4 of this order are ineligible for non-deployment funds, to the maximum extent allowed by Federal law.  The Policy Notice must also describe how a fragmented State regulatory landscape for AI threatens to undermine BEAD-funded deployments, the growth of AI applications reliant on high-speed networks, and BEAD’s mission of delivering universal, high-speed connectivity.

We’ve talked about BEAD a lot here. That’s the Biden-era program that poured billions of dollars into broadband investment, which took way too long because Trump’s first FCC had fucked up the allocation process of earlier broadband grants. The Biden admin didn’t want a repeat of that, and thus tasked NTIA with figuring out a better allocation system, which took so long that Trump is back in office.

And rather than figure out the best way to allocate those funds, he’s holding them for ransom, and states that comply with his policy wishes might get it, and those that don’t won’t. It’s hellishly corrupt, but that’s what you get these days.

The other potentially interesting tidbit that is going to create a huge mess is Section 7:

Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission shall, in consultation with the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, issue a policy statement on the application of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on unfair and deceptive acts or practices under 15 U.S.C. 45 to AI models.  That policy statement must explain the circumstances under which State laws that require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models are preempted by the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on engaging in deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce.

This seems like an improper use of the FTC’s power to deal with unfair and deceptive practices, but the Trump administration abusing and twisting laws to get what it wants is kind of standard operating procedure these days.

The real story here isn’t that Trump signed some groundbreaking AI policy—it’s that the entire mainstream media apparatus completely failed to understand the most basic principles of American government. Executive orders aren’t magic spells that override federalism. They’re memos.

That said, the potential for this legal strategy to completely backfire is darkly amusing. If Trump’s DOJ successfully argues that state AI laws violate the dormant commerce clause, they’ll have handed every future administration—and every tech company—a nuclear weapon against state internet regulation. Every privacy law, every age verification requirement, every attempt by states to regulate online platforms could get vaporized by precedent that Trump’s own lawyers established.

It wouldn’t surprise me if one of the tech bro folks in and around the administration got that dropped into this executive order without much of the administration realizing it.

A destructive storm in 2020 prematurely shut down Iowa’s only nuclear plant. With Google’s plans to reopen it to power nearby data centers, will extreme weather threaten the reactor’s safety?

The order creates a Justice Department task force to challenge state AI laws and directs the Commerce Department to pull future broadband funding from states that pass “onerous” legislation.

The House voted 231-195 on Thursday to pass legislation that would nullify President Trump’s efforts to strip more than 1 million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights, sending the measure over to the Senate, where its prospects are less rosy.

Twenty Republican lawmakers broke ranks to support the Protect America’s Workforce Act (H.R. 2550) on the floor. Introduced by Reps. Jared Golden, D-Maine, and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., the measure effectively nullifies Trump’s March executive order barring unions at more than 40 federal agencies under the guise of national security and bars federal agencies from terminating any union contracts that were in place prior to the edict’s signature.

Despite its bipartisan support, the vote required a months-long discharge petition drive to amass a majority of House lawmakers’ support and force floor consideration of the measure. House GOP leaders opposed the bill, arguing that contradicting the president here would kneecap his efforts to make agencies “more efficient.”

“[Unions] create barriers to accountability beyond the basic employee protections that exist in law,” said Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, who cited a recent White House report on the use of official time. “[Indeed], many federal employees spend all their time on union business, to the tune of more than 3 million work hours in 2024 alone, for a cost of more than $200 million.”

Three million work hours amounts to 0.069% of the 4.4 billion work hours performed by federal civilian employees each year, while the cost associated with that official time usage totals 0.003% of 2024’s $6.8 trillion in federal discretionary spending.

But Fitzpatrick said the protections that unions provide federal workers are key to the government’s ability to serve the American people.

“This represents a core principle, that the government that serves the people must also respect the rights of those who serve within it,” he said. “Federal employees work tirelessly every day, often behind the scenes, to process Social Security benefits, safeguard our food and water, care for our veterans, and to respond whenever disaster strikes. By restoring their collective bargaining rights, we strengthen a system that keeps government effective, stable and responsive, all without compromising security or mission readiness.”

Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc., said that Trump’s anti-union executive orders remind him of then-Gov. Scott Walker’s push to excise public sector unions from Wisconsin. The results were disastrous, he said.

“Our Department of Education saw a two-thirds drop in the number of people applying to be teachers,” he said. “We lost a lot of long-time public employees, and that affected services.”

Labor leaders were quick to laud the House’s passage of the bill, though its prospects in the Senate are murkier. Lawmakers removed language similar to the Protect America’s Workforce Act, albeit focused on the Defense Department, from the latest draft of the National Defense Authorization Act due to a lack of Senate GOP support.

“This is an incredible testament to the strength of federal employees and the longstanding support for their fundamental right to organize and join a union,” said Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees in a statement. “The president cannot unilaterally strip working people of their constitutional freedom of association. In bipartisan fashion, Congress has asserted their authority to hold the president accountable for the biggest attack on workers that this country has ever seen.”

“President Trump betrayed workers when he tried to rip away our collective bargaining rights,” said Liz Schuler, president of the AFL-CIO. “In these increasingly polarized times, working people delivered a rare bipartisan majority to stop the administration’s unprecedented attacks on our freedoms. We commend the Republicans and Democrats who stood with workers and voted to reverse the single largest act of union-busting in American history.”

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Neal Agarwal published another gift to the internet with Size of Life. It shows the scale of living things, starting with DNA, to hemoglobin, and keeps going up.

The scientific illustrations are hand-drawn (without AI) by Julius Csotonyi. Sound & FX by Aleix Ramon and cello music by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga calm the mind and encourage a slow observation of things, but also grow in complexity and weight with the scale. It kind of feels like a meditation exercise.

See also: shrinking to an atom, the speed of light, and of course the classic Powers of Ten.

Tags: Julius Csotonyi, living, Neal Agarwal, scale

Eric Migicovsky, who basically invented the smartwatch category with the original Pebble, just announced something much simpler: a $99 ring with one button that records voice memos. That’s it. No internet connection required, no cloud storage, no subscription fees, no wake words. Press the button, talk, release. Your note is saved locally—either on the ring’s tiny bit of memory or synced to your phone directly.

What makes the Pebble Index 01 actually interesting isn’t the hardware minimalism (though that’s refreshing). It’s that the whole thing is open source and designed to be hacked. Want long-press to do something different? Go for it. Want your voice memos piped into your task manager? Do it. The platform is yours to modify.

If you don’t know Migicovsky’s background: he kickstarted the original Pebble Watch in what became one of the platform’s most successful campaigns (I backed it), proving smartwatches could be useful. Pebble eventually got passed by bigger players, sold to Fitbit, then absorbed into Google.

A few years back, Eric moved into a different space, creating Beeper, the incredibly cool and useful universal messaging app, that pulls together basically all your messaging tools into a single unified interface. As I discussed with him on the Techdirt podcast last year, it was a cool example of how protocols let people build things that were more powerful. Last year, Beeper was sold to Automattic.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, Google agreed to open source all the original Pebble software (which it wasn’t using), and Eric decided to get back to his original baby, creating Core Devices, which would create a new generation of Pebble watches which recently shipped. This time, built on open source, totally hackable software, and even the ability of others to build devices on the Pebble platform.

I spoke to Eric last week about the Index 01. The design philosophy is clear and refreshing: keep it simple enough that it works perfectly every time. As someone who constantly sends myself notes—thoughts while walking, reminders mid-conversation, ideas that’ll vanish if I don’t capture them immediately—this is a tool I’m really looking forward to. But the real story isn’t the ring itself. It’s what you can do with it.

The AI processing is local—a small on-device model that does speech-to-text without sending anything to the cloud. But because the whole platform is open source, you’re not stuck with that default behavior. You can reprogram the button. You can route the output wherever you want. I’m already thinking about piping voice memos directly into my vibe coded task management tool, turning quick verbal notes into actionable tasks without touching a screen.

This is the kind of experimentation that closed hardware makes impossible. When you buy a typical consumer device, you’re renting someone else’s vision of how you should use it (and often paying a subscription fee for the privilege). When the hardware and software are open, you’re buying raw capability that you can shape however you need.

The device also has battery life that should last quite a while. Eric says two years, but that really depends on how much you use it. As I understand it, the battery can effectively record between 12 and 15 hours before the battery dies. If you’re just doing short 5 second notes to yourself, that can be quite some time.

The somewhat controversial decision here, though is that the ring is not rechargeable. From what Eric told me, that allowed them to simplify things and also use a longer-lasting hearing aid battery in the ring. Putting in a rechargeable battery and then adding a charging port and cables and such would have made the product more expensive, and less practical.

It’s a design choice that I can understand, but also one that some may bristle at, given that the ring will only last about two years if used regularly (and less if used a lot) and then become e-junk. For what it’s worth, the plan is to allow you to send back your used up ring to Core Devices to recycle when it reaches end of life (the app will warn you with plenty of time ahead). In theory, you would send it back when you buy a new one (assuming you found it super handy over the two years you were using it).

For years, I’ve argued for protocols over platforms in software—the idea that decentralized, open systems give users more control than walled gardens, even when the walled gardens are more convenient.

Consumer hardware has often gone in the opposite direction. We’ve too frequently traded repairability and control for sleekness and integration. Your smartphone is a sealed black box. Your smart home devices stop working when the company shuts down its servers. Even something as simple as a fitness tracker often requires a proprietary app and cloud account just to see your own data.

The Index 01 won’t reverse that trend by itself—it’s a $99 ring, not a revolution. But it’s a reminder that another path is possible. Open hardware, like open protocols, creates options. The Raspberry Pi proved there’s demand for hackable hardware in hobbyist computing. Framework has shown that’s true for laptops. Migicovsky is betting there’s demand for it in everyday consumer devices too.

I put in a pre-order. Not just because I need a better way to capture fleeting thoughts, but because this represents the kind of product I want to see more of: something you control, something you can modify, something that doesn’t stop working when the company loses interest. For all the complaints about big tech dominance and ecosystem lock-in, the solution isn’t better monopolies. It’s tools that put control back in users’ hands—whether that’s through open protocols in software or open platforms in hardware.

This is one example of what that looks like.

With support from Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify, Running Tide billed itself as on the cutting edge of carbon removal. In the end, it resorted to dumping thousands of tons of wood chips in the sea.

New records about the infamous sex offender are released seemingly every week. Here’s a quick rundown of who’s releasing the Epstein documents, what they contain—and what they’re releasing next.

Heat-reddened clay, fire-cracked stone, and fragments of pyrite mark where Neanderthals gathered around a campfire 400,000 years ago in what’s now Suffolk, England.

Based on chemical analysis of the sediment at the site, along with the telltale presence of pyrite, a mineral not naturally found nearby but very handy for striking sparks with flint, British Museum archaeologist Rob Davis and his colleagues say the Neanderthals probably started the fire themselves. That makes the abandoned English clay pit at Barnham the oldest evidence in the world that people (Neanderthal people, in this case) had learned to not only use fire, but also create it and control it.

A cozy Neanderthal campfire

Today, the Barnham site is part of an abandoned clay pit where workers first discovered stone tools in the early 1900s. But 400,000 years ago, it would have been a picturesque little spot at the edge of a stream-fed pond, surrounded by a mix of forest and grassland. There are no hominin fossils here, but archaeologists unearthed a Neanderthal skull about 100 kilometers to the south, so the hominins at Barnham were probably also Neanderthals. The place would have offered a group of Neanderthals a relatively quiet, sheltered place to set up camp, according to Davis and his colleagues.

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The administration that is busy erasing history from any federal entity tasked with preserving it has an additional ally in the burying-the-bad-news business: Donald Trump, the former president.

Yes, it’s all stupid and weird and incredibly dangerous, but the guy who used to be president has been sued by multiple litigants over his tacit involvement (and deliberate encouragement) of the attack on the Capitol building that was intended to prevent the peaceful transition of power to the winner of the 2020 election, Joe Biden.

In perhaps the ultimate affront to the rule of law Trump claims to value, he not only persists in spreading conspiracy theories about the attack, but also pardoned pretty much every one of his supporters who had been charged and/or convicted of federal crimes for their participation in the invasion of the Capitol building immediately after re-taking the Oval Office.

Trump was out of office by the time he was sued, but he’s insisting documents and communications related to an undeniable act of insurrection are protected by his (now-recurring) executive privilege. Trump was sued five years ago by officers injured during the insurrection. The plaintiffs are asking for access to thousands of documents related to the Capitol raid on January 6, 2021. The slowly grinding wheels of the justice system have finally brought us to this point, reported last week by Kyle Cheney for Politico.

President Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege to prevent courtroom adversaries from accessing evidence in a long-running lawsuit that accuses him of stoking violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Justice Department disclosed Trump’s secrecy claim Wednesday in a hearing related to that five-year-old lawsuit, brought by police officers injured while attempting to repel the violent mob that day. The officers say Trump’s incendiary remarks to a crowd of supporters — and his direction that they march on the Capitol — fueled the riot that nearly derailed the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden and left 140 officers injured.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson claims there’s nothing to see here. It’s not a president trying to bury his legacy of violence. It’s just the normal response to a “overly broad request” by the injured cops who understandably would like to see a bit of justice done.

The records sought reside at the National Archives. The National Archives, in response to the request by the plaintiffs, has finally responded with more detail to the September 2024 subpoena, letting the public know that Trump aims to keep every requested document out of the public’s hands.

NARA’s two-page response [PDF] provides two lists of records. The first is the largest: the number of documents Trump says can’t be released at all due to alleged “executive privilege.”

NARA identified 7,397 records responsive to the request. In accordance with 36 C.F.R. § 1270.44(c), on February 3, 2025, the Archivist notified the President of his intent to disclose the records.

On December 1, 2025, the President notified the Acting Archivist that he had determined that 4,152 records are subject to a constitutionally based claim of executive privilege.

So, that’s more than half the records. And Trump insists all of those are covered by his executive privilege. This litigation — combined with Trump’s assertions — has put NARA in a position it’s generally not familiar with, as it points out in its court filing:

The December 1, 2025 notification contains a list of each file the President asserted is subject
to constitutionally based privilege. NARA generally does not otherwise log records that are
subject to a constitutionally based claim of executive privilege.

The log has also been submitted to the court. It means nothing to anyone since it includes nothing more than list items only identifiable by NARA archivists. The only thing anyone outside of NARA can discern from this 53-page filing is that some of the records Trump wishes to keep from being made public are text messages.

And while it’s insane to believe more than half of these documents are covered by executive privilege (a privilege that certainly shouldn’t seem to apply to documents dealing with an insurrection attempt by disgruntled Trump voters), Trump’s not simply satisfied to keep these 4,000+ documents from being handed over to the people suing him.

Trump is also insisting whatever does get handed over can’t be made public, either.

The remaining 3,245 records can be released to the litigants, subject to a protective order prohibiting their use or disclosure outside this litigation.

This means anything reluctantly and begrudgingly turned over to the plaintiffs will be immediately sealed, further separating the public from the facts surrounding Trump’s actions during this insurrection attempt committed by people who are now free to do whatever they want in support of Trump because they know Trump (and the MAGA-cooked GOP) will give them official forgiveness for any crimes they commit out of loyalty to America’s autocrat.

If Trump manages to make all of this happen, he can go right back to his daily gaslighting and conspiracy theorizing. For the moment, however, he needs the courts to agree it’s okay to bury anything that might make him look worse than he already does. And with the Supreme Court majority going all in all of the time for Trump, there’s a good chance he’ll be able to wish his support of insurrection into the legal cornfield and replace the facts with whatever narrative seems to be the most flattering.

The heads of the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management unveiled plans Wednesday to build a single information technology platform to manage all human capital data across the federal government. 

In a joint memo, OMB Director Russ Vought and OPM Director Scott Kupor described a two-year plan to transition the federal government’s collection of disparate human resources networks onto a single system dubbed Federal HR 2.0.

“For too long, the Federal Government has lacked what is taken for granted at any other organization — a single system of record for personnel management. Instead, the Federal Government spends an inordinate amount each year on numerous costly, duplicative, and outdated core human capital management (“Core HCM”) systems,” the memo said. 

As part of the plan, the memo said OMB and OPM officials will lead efforts “to procure a modern, best-in-class commercial Core HCM system” for governmentwide adoption by fiscal 2028. 

Vought and Kupor said the new system would manage HR data such as “personnel action processing, employee system of record, position management, employee and manager self-service, analytics and dashboards, time and attendance, and learning,” but will also integrate other functions like payroll, benefits, talent acquisition, performance management and retirement.

A footnote in the document noted that OPM will outline how it will consolidate HR services in a subsequent memo.

While OPM is heading procurement efforts to identify a technology vendor that can develop the system, agencies' transition will start this fiscal year and include the Agriculture, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Interior, Veterans Affairs and Transportation departments, alongside OPM and the Environmental Protection Agency and potentially some Interior customers — or roughly 900,000 full-time employees. 

The remainder of the transition will occur in fiscal 2027, covering roughly 1.1 million employees, and offering a sample eight-month transition timeline starting with interagency agreements and then moving to platform capabilities testing, data migration, training and legacy system wind-downs.

As such, the memo directs agencies to pause their human capital management procurements and modernization efforts, but offers exceptions to be approved by the OMB and OPM directors for “a critical, time-sensitive update or need to modernize or procure a new Core HCM system” ahead of the central system adoption. 

While OMB and OPM plan to stand up a Federal HR 2.0 Advisory Board to assist with the transition, the memo directs CFO Act agencies to name points of contact for integrated project team leaders and various working groups before developing data integration and migration strategies.

A performance work statement posted on SAM.gov on Oct. 29 calls for a 10-year single award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract.

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Maryland becomes first state to adopt Open Law Library for its legal code | StateScoop

Maryland becomes first state to adopt Open Law Library for its legal code | StateScoop https://share.google/Onfy5e4ArsbVGaxsY

Maryland becomes first state to adopt Open Law Library for its legal code | StateScoop

We’ve covered how there’s a real push afoot to implement statewide “right to repair” laws that try to make it cheaper, easier, and environmentally friendlier for you to repair the technology you own. Unfortunately, while all fifty states have at least flirted with the idea, only Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws.

And among those states, not one has actually enforced them despite a wide array of ongoing corporate offenses (though to be fair to states there is kind of a lot going on).

This reform movement, which sees broad bipartisan support, had even started to reach toward the military, which is probably the poster child for over-billing, dysfunctional repair monopoly, “parts pairing,” and other predatory efforts to jack up the cost of maintenance and ownership.

Back in June we mentioned how Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll had committed to including right-to-repair requirements in all existing and future Army contracts with manufacturers. Some very light language to this effect was to be included in the latest National Defense Authorization Act by Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republican Tim Sheehy of Montana.

Earlier this year, Driscoll offered up a useful example of why reform is important:

“Driscoll recently pointed to a Black Hawk helicopter part to show how contractor restrictions drive up costs. The original equipment manufacturer refuses to repair or replace a small screen-control knob that grounds the aircraft when it breaks — forcing the Army to purchase an entire new screen assembly for $47,000. Driscoll said the Army could make the knob for just $15.”

Picture that problem, at scale, across the entirety of U.S. military hardware, planet wide.

But despite the bipartisan popularity of right to repair reforms, companies weren’t keen on losing money via a government crackdown on their grift. So the various policy and lobbying fronts for America’s defense contractors spent much of this fall trying to frame the modest reforms as an affront on innovation to scuttle the reforms as the House and Senate debate over bill versions.

And guess what, they succeeded:

“The House’s Data-as-a-Service Solutions for Weapon System Contracts provision, which would have required DoD to negotiate access to technical data and necessary software before signing a contract, was removed from the final text of the annual legislation released over the weekend. The Senate’s provision requiring contractors to provide the military with detailed repair and maintenance instructions was dropped from the bill as well.

Instead, the legislation requires the Defense Department to develop a digital system that would track and manage all technical data and verify whether contractors and subcontractors comply with contract requirements related to technical data. The compromise version of the bill also requires DoD to review all existing contracts to determine what contractors were required to deliver and what data DoD can access.”

That’s basically worthless bureaucracy as it applies to any sort of meaningful right to repair reforms.

Again, these reforms were about as basic as they get. Still, they would have likely opened the door to taxpayers saving billions of dollars annually when it comes to paying too much for the repair and maintenance of U.S. military equipment. It was a no brainer reform, but because the United States is genuinely too corrupt to function, even that was ultimately a bridge too far.

To add insult to injury, we’ve got fake Trump populists and Silicon Valley execs like Elon Musk running around pretending they care about efficiency. But in instances like this, where there’s real potential to improve government efficiency, you’ll notice they’re nowhere to be found because the reforms would interfere with their ability to rip off the public.

Trains single-tracking Thursday between Twinbrook and Shady Grove stations

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Despite all the worries about the economy, laptop prices have never been lower. But in 2026, all of that could change.

The United States has officially traded its democracy credentials for the banana republic starter pack, and there do not appear to be any safeguards left to get us back on the rails. Dean Blundell shares a disturbing report and itemized list of where the United States has gone, and is going, wrong. — Read the rest

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A Virginia startup calling itself “Operation Bluebird” announced this week that it has filed a formal petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, asking the federal agency to cancel X Corporation’s trademarks of the words “Twitter” and “tweet” since X has allegedly abandoned them.

“The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X Corp.’s products, services, and marketing, effectively abandoning the storied brand, with no intention to resume use of the mark,” the petition states. “The TWITTER bird was grounded.”

If successful, two leaders of the group tell Ars, Operation Bluebird would launch a social network under the name Twitter.new, possibly as early as late next year. (Twitter.new has created a working prototype and is already inviting users to reserve handles.)

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Parkinson’s disease has environmental toxic factors, not just genetic.

The final language of the annual bill that funds the US military is in. It removes provisions that would have helped ensure service members’ ability to fix their own equipment.

A group of Senate Democrats is demanding the Trump administration cease its efforts to dramatically grow the Interior Department’s police force, calling the hiring surge a “dangerous” centralization of power. 

The U.S. Park Police operates primarily in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco to protect federal lands and property is looking to significantly grow its ranks under President Trump. It had around 400 employees when Trump took office in January and is aiming to potentially double that total. 

The growth is leading to concern on Capitol Hill, however, where Democrats are concerned the Trump administration is looking to expand Park Police’s narrow mission to include general policing duties in Washington. A larger force would enable the president and his administration, which have federalized policing efforts in several cities across the country, to have a cadre of officers at their disposal to “impose their will on the streets of D.C.,” the lawmakers said. 

“There is no evidence of an uptick in crime on [National] Park Service land or increased threats to national monuments,” Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who serves at the top Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s panel that oversees Interior, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said in their letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “This haste in both a hiring spree and waiving of critical testing and standards are clear signs that the administration is hijacking this federal police force for its own authoritarian purposes.”

The Trump administration is offering $70,000 signing bonuses to Park Police applicants, as well as a “streamlined” hiring process that focuses on virtual interviews rather than physical testing. 

The senators cited previous reporting by The Washington Post that revealed an internal memorandum in which Interior envisioned USPP as “the premier law enforcement agency in DC, regardless of inaction” by local police and officials. Trump previously tapped Park Police, and several other federal law enforcement officials, to patrol Washington as part of the president’s crime reduction effort in the nation's capital. 

“Amassing what is effectively a new federal police force is yet another Trump administration effort to consolidate and centralize his power as he continues to intimidate protestors, threaten free speech, and desensitize Americans to military presence on the streets,” the senators said.  “Reshaping the U.S. Park Police into a police force with a mission to carry out the president’s policy priorities hands President Trump a cadre of his own armed officers with widespread jurisdiction at his fingertips.”

USPP has hired 77 new officers since January, Kenneth Spencer, government affairs chief of staff for the agency’s Fraternal Order of Police union told Congress in a hearing last week, with more expected to come on board soon. Human resources officials in Interior lamented to Government Executive over the summer that hiring remained frozen across the department in all areas except Park Police. Spencer, however, said the agency requires at least 650 employees, if not far more. 

“​​It is not an overstatement to suggest that, at current staffing levels, our agency would be unsustainable without the intervention of our current hiring surge under Secretary Burgum’s leadership,” Spencer said. 

The Democratic lawmakers called the hiring efforts “unprecedented” and called on the administration to suspend the initiative. It asked for more information about Park Police’s role in Washington, how it collaborates with local police, whether NPS conducted analysis to justify the hiring, how hiring standards have been changed and what the associated costs are with the effort, among other questions. 

“All solid questions,” one Interior HR official said of the senators’ requests. 

It does not appear the administration is going to heed the senators’ demands, as Aubrie Spady, an Interior spokesperson, called the request “disgraceful” and said the surge of law enforcement in Washington is yielding results. 

“The Trump administration cares about ensuring the safety of all Americans and will continue to hire more U.S. Park Police officers and crack down on crime to ensure D.C. is the safest capital in the world,” Spady said.

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The fucking maniacs did it.

We talked yesterday about how newborn vaccinations for hepatitis B were on the agenda for this latest meeting at ACIP, the CDC’s immunization advisory panel. You likely know all this already, but RFK Jr. fired all ACIP panel members earlier this year, replacing them with hand-picked anti-vaxxer quack-jobs who are aligned with Kennedy’s anti-medicine, anti-science stances on vaccines. No matter the nonsense you hear out of Kennedy’s grumbly mouth, these are deeply unserious people that have been given an enormous responsibility that they are in no way qualified to have. ACIP recommendations are really important, with its guidance driving everything from what private insurers will or are mandated to cover, guiding medical professionals on how to advise their patients, and guiding the public on the types of immunization decisions they ought to be making.

ACIP just told all of those groups that whether or not newborns catch hep B and/or ultimately reach an untimely and painful death is a personal choice they should discuss with their doctors. Doctors that may now advise against vaccination within 24 hours of birth.

On Friday morning, the ACIP voted 8-3 to remove its previous recommendation that all children in the U.S. be vaccinated against hepatitis B starting at birth. In its place, the panel is endorsing “individual-based decision-making” for determining when most children should get their first hepatitis B shot. Many outside groups and experts have sharply criticized the ACIP’s about-face, noting that scant credible data was presented to justify such a dramatic reversal.

“If that recommendation goes forward, it will be without evidence and will ignore over 30 years of existing evidence and gambles with the safety of children,” James Campbell, vice chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, told Gizmodo.

CDC staff and outside experts tried. They really did. They explained what this disease is, what is does, how infectious it is, and how the mass immunization program starting in the early 90s saved thousands of children from infection, from long term complications, and an ultimately early death for some. Here is one simple chart that CDC staff presented to ACIP earlier this year on the matter.

How in the actual hell do you look at that chart and decide vaccinations have to go? Like measles, this is another disease for which we were on the cusp of achieving elimination status. 90% of infections in children become chronic infections. Something like 25% of those infected as children will develop liver cancer or cirrhosis. The fatality rate for both is enormous, even as deaths during the acute phase of the disease are low. In other words, this is a disease that rips years of life away from those infected long after their initial symptoms disappear. Worse, most infections are asymptomatic during the acute infection stage, meaning many of the infected don’t even know it until they get cancer or cirrhosis.

And ACIP has decided we need more of this.

For children born to mothers who test negative for antibodies to hepatitis B, the ACIP is now pushing for an individualized approach, one where “parents should consult with health care providers and decide when or if their child will begin the HBV vaccine series.” And for families who choose not to start vaccination at birth, the ACIP recommended that vaccination not start any earlier than two months (the ACIP offered no clear rationale or evidence for this specific cut-off).

This is incredibly stupid. Even if the CDC adopts the recommendation, I am sure most doctors will still recommend vaccination at birth, since they can read the damned chart above as well or better than I can. But it won’t be all doctors. What insurance companies do as a result of this change is anyone’s guess. Some states are already stating that they’ll go against ACIP’s change and follow the old guidance.

But again, it won’t be all of them. I am confident that a non-zero number of children will get infected with hepatitis B and die an early death as a result of this. I’m confident that some newborns will suffer chronically from the disease as a result of this.

RFK Jr. is harming the health of American newborns. Full stop. Period, paragraph. Hey, Bill Cassidy: anytime you want to do something about this, feel free.

Privacy stalwart Nicholas Merrill spent a decade fighting an FBI surveillance order. Now he wants to sell you phone service—without knowing almost anything about you.

ACIP is meeting this week, which means we all get to clench our sphincters as we await whatever small, medium, or large sized horrors will come out of this panel of clowns.

It wasn’t always this way. ACIP, and the larger CDC, used to be the world standard when it came to government bodies dedicated to fighting infectious diseases. RFK Jr. did away with that earlier this year, when he disbanded every member of ACIP and installed a group mostly comprised of Dr. Nicks from the Simpsons in their place.

The focus of the agenda this week will be the vaccination schedule for hepatitis B, particularly the CDC’s long-held guidance for vaccinations to begin within 24 hours of birth. It’s really, really important to note that CDC guidance on this doesn’t take the form of a mandate. Parents have a choice on the timing of the vaccination. Instead, the CDC guidance does two primary things: it mandates coverage of the vaccine by insurance companies and it informs medical professionals on what to recommend to parents that understandably largely follow their doctors’ advice on the matter.

Because Kennedy has commented in the past that he believes this vaccine is responsible for autism disorder diagnoses, and because ACIP is staffed with his handpicked clowns, the medical community is holding its breath to see what decisions are made this week. Since CDC’s vaccination guidance in 1995, hep B infections among infants have dropped by a great deal and the resulting liver cancer in children has essentially gone away. Despite this, and despite just how brutal hep B is as a disease, Kennedy has been coming out against immunization, wielding misinformation as per usual.

On Tucker Carlson’s podcast in June, Kennedy falsely claimed that the hepatitis B birth dose is a “likely culprit” of autism.

He also said the hepatitis B virus is not “casually contagious.” But decades of research shows the virus can be transmitted through indirect contact, when traces of infected fluids like blood enter the body when people share personal items like razors or toothbrushes.

Hepatitis B causes incredible pain, cancer, and death. In children. And Kennedy is wildly wrong; it is incredibly contagious and particularly resilient on surfaces. And, again, this is a vaccine that is still voluntary by parents at birth. There is no government mandate for vaccination, only the recommended vaccination schedule.

Now, ACIP may be discussing the use of combo shots, as it has done in the recent past. That’s still fairly dumb, but it would be a far cry better than altering the recommendations for the first-24 hours immunization, which is a single vaccine, unpaired with any other. But ACIP is no longer trustworthy.

And that’s not me saying it. Take it from Republican Senator and do-nothing coward Bill Cassidy, who both had a heavy hand in getting Kennedy confirmed to DHS and who can’t be bothered to do more than say words about all the harm that confirmation is causing.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) on Thursday called a federal vaccine advisory committee “totally discredited” ahead of a vote on whether to change hepatitis B vaccine guidelines, an issue very close to the Louisiana physician. Writing Thursday on the social platform X, Cassidy specifically decried Aaron Siri, a prominent anti-vaccine lawyer who is presenting before the committee this week.

“Aaron Siri is a trial attorney who makes his living suing vaccine manufacturers. He is presenting as if an expert on childhood vaccines. The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children,” Cassidy wrote.

Neither are you, Senator. If you are interested in doing so, you can introduce articles of impeachment on RFK Jr. today. You’ll have plenty of support from the other side of the aisle, and likely a decent amount from your own.

I write this on Thursday and ACIP has already met. Because everything Kennedy touches is chaos, however, the panel moved its hep B vote to tomorrow, Friday, due to the panel not actually knowing what the fuck it was voting on.

At one point in Thursday’s session, committee member Dr. Joseph Hibbeln said that the group had seen three different versions of questions to vote on in the past 72 hours. A technical issue prevented the new voting language from being put up on slides. The presentation was later moved to the end of the agenda, to be displayed just before the vote. There were questions of how many questions members would be asked to vote on. There were no hard copies of the language available. 

“We’re trying to evaluate a moving target,” Hibbeln said. 

Panel members presented information on the prevalence of acute and chronic hepatitis B, and discussed transmission and safety data. Former board members and liaisons to medical organizations sharply criticized the presentations and said some data was mischaracterized. 

Dr. Jason Goldman, liaison to the ACIP for the American College of Physicians, called the meeting “completely inappropriate” and accused the panel of “wasting taxpayer dollars by not having scientific, rigorous discussion on issues that truly matter.” Goldman also highlighted that the hepatitis B birth dose is not mandated and that parents are encouraged to make decisions in consultation with their doctor. 

Chaos, confusion, misinformation, and so on. This is American health in RFK Jr.’s America. MAHA has become how it sounds phoenetically: a laugh track. A joke. And a deeply unfunny joke at that.

So now we wait for tomorrow to see just what horrors this gravel-voiced Cthulu of healthcare has in store for us. It seems the best we can hope for is probably advocacy for individual vaccines versus combo-shots. But I fear it’s going to be much, much worse than that. I’ve never seen a child writhing in pain as he or she dies from liver complications due to hepatitis B.

And I pray I never have to.

No serious injuries reported Friday morning, according to a MoCo Fire and Rescue Service official

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A Donald Trump-backed push has failed to wedge a federal measure that would block states from passing AI laws for a decade into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters Tuesday that a sect of Republicans is now “looking at other places” to potentially pass the measure. Other Republicans opposed including the AI preemption in the defense bill, The Hill reported, joining critics who see value in allowing states to quickly regulate AI risks as they arise.

For months, Trump has pressured the Republican-led Congress to block state AI laws that the president claims could bog down innovation as AI firms waste time and resources complying with a patchwork of state laws. But Republicans have continually failed to unite behind Trump’s command, first voting against including a similar measure in the “Big Beautiful” budget bill and then this week failing to negotiate a solution to pass the NDAA measure.

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