Congress held a hackathon this past week, so of course we wrote about it. Lots of clever tools and new initiatives from the legislative branch.

I really hope the NYT photo editor chose this image to illustrate how anyone standing next to Robert Redford looks like a giant dork in comparison

This is the best explanation I’ve seen about what Palantir is. When I wrote Data Cartels, a book about data brokers, a lot of people asked why I didn’t focus on Palantir. The answer is that Palantir isn’t a data broker. Palantir creates ‘extravagant plumbing’ that depends on data brokers’ data.

Save the date: I’m teaching Burner Phone 101 at the Brooklyn Central Library on Saturday, August 16, 2025, from 1:00 to 2:30 pm. Come through to learn about the full spectrum of “burner phone” options.

Personal news! Since I just got my ID and everything, guess it's finally ok to announce that I am the new Guest Curator for Art and Technology at @bambrooklyn.bsky.social. Over the top happy about this.

sending DMCA notices about uncopyrightable work might be willful blindness, or not

I’m going to publish a new openml.fyi. When I started the 📧 (‘22?!?!?) the question was “can ML be open(ish)”. That’s still important—but now we also must ask: how will ML change open? That’s a rich, and important, vein of writing and thinking to tap. Subscribe now—going out tonight.

If AI bands/songs start becoming popular, and the songs are not protected by copyright (b/c they are AI generated), does that mean that anyone can just grab a hit song and start monetizing streams? michaelweinberg.org/blog/2025/09...

I spent the summer looking into the politics of inclusive classroom signage for @edsurge.com and how it's affecting teachers. www.edsurge.com/news/2025-09...

This is interesting but not surprising. Real heads will recall the similar “government copyright licensing offices lose money” and “museum copyright licensing offices lose money”. Original post: hachyderm.io/@jedbrown/11...

Q. Who aligns the aligners? A. alignmentalignment.ai Today I’m humbled to announce an epoch-defining event: the launch of the 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀.

Our Healthware Ecosystem survey is still hungry for submissions! It will only be satiated by your thoughts and feedback. Pretty lucky for us. forms.gle/dsrRtna8xF17...

WE HAVE A WINNER FOR THE 2025 TINY AWARDS! Congratulations to 'Fifty Thousand Names', which wins a small cash prize and a hand-made trophy, and thanks to all of you who shared the link, submitted sites or voted: www.itsnicethat.com/articles/tin... / tinyawards.net/2025/

The slides of my Icepops talk are now online at my website: douglasmccarthy.com/presentations/ Thanks to my fellow speakers and everyone who attended yesterday, it was a brilliant day (and night 🎤). Until next time, @jsecker.bsky.social!

I could play with this royalty calculator for songs used on German TV all day www.gema.de/en/music-cre...

not surprisingly, @mmasnick.bsky.social raises all of the right concerns about pushes to block all AI from accessing websites: www.techdirt.com/2025/09/08/w...

New essay now online: "EATING THE FUTURE: The Metabolic Logic of AI Slop." AI consumes planetary resources and excretes slop, polluting environmental & information ecologies. It's a new metabolic rift - disrupting the cycles that sustain both humans and AI alike. www.e-flux.com/architecture...

The NFL broadcast in Germany clearly doesn't get the official highlight packages, so they just have a guy in the studio bringing up clips from tiktok and displaying them on a computer with a big "activate Windows" banner in the corner

President Trump says he wants to make D.C.'s parks beautiful again. But actually doing so will take more than new grass or streetlights – the federal government may have to accept that it kinda sucks at running parks in D.C., and maybe the city would do a better job. 51st.news/trump-wants-...

oh _thank you so much_ for the third reminder that I haven't had the time yet to complete your Guest Satisfaction Survey following my stay

This new report on rethinking the value of restitution inventories from Open Restitution Africa can also be read as a(nother) critique that technocratic efforts to solve problems are rarely as effective as actual community organizing openrestitution.africa/resources/re...

Kinda puts it into perspective why SpaceX gets so butthurt every time a state awards rural broadband-buildout subsidies to a fiber or cable provider.

Now out on Hackster.io and Make: the August 2025 certification round up featuring @concretedog.bsky.social's Magnet PCB clamps, Mark Salazar's DIY Suture Board and William Kennedy's Contactless Bicycle Dynamo and Light! Read it here: makezine.com/article/tech...

Our fourth Open Healthware Session took place in Boulder, Colorado and gathered folks from across the community to discuss business practices, community building, funding, risk and source. Read all about the takeaways right here: oshwa.org/announcement...

For important work reasons, I was looking at the @metmuseum.org's public domain collections and found the "Champions of Games and Sports" trading cards issued by W.S. Kimball & Company in 1887. Most of them are for sports that still seem normal. Others, less so.....

"In some cases, copyright is weaponized to silence criticism and legitimate speech. In other instances, the objective is to erase facts and make information disappear." [email protected]

I really like this idea and might steal it for the @nyuengelberg.org welcome back happy hour (swapping out posters for our traditional glowing orb lightning talks)

New from me and @derekslater.bsky.social on @lawfaremedia.org: What History Can Teach Us About Copyright, AI, and ‘Market Floods’

Wow. Lots of steps to go, here—ask the Google Books folks. But obviously there was huge pressure once the authors had a class certified.

not to toot my own horn but I predicted the entire trajectory of this back in 2019

What a fucking farce www.theverge.com/report/76603...

Is presenting yourself as a psychic and then steering wealthy heiresses towards tokens you are pumping an act of heroism? www.wsj.com/articles/tay...

The Open Source Hardware Association is launching a new Open Hardware Creators in Academia program for undergraduate and graduate students: The Student Open Hardware Fellowship. Want to nominate or self-nominate to participate in the Student Open Hardware Fellowship? forms.gle/aq9YCZS8gzUL...

The IETF AI preferences working group listserv continues to be a place where reasonable instincts and technical realities are forced to engage with each other (in totally civil and productive ways) mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/...

<steps away from writing a python script to turn licenses used in certified open source hardware into markdown-formatted league tables> <returns to read this tweet> <slowly nods affirmatively>

Details, of course, on the RepRap site: reprap.org/wiki/RepRapM... all3dp.com/4/reprap-pio...

I kept needing it, so I wrote a very quick guide to picking an open source hardware license (you know, if you don't feel like actually reading the licenses, which is totally cool): michaelweinberg.org/blog/2025/08...

If you’re wondering why the federal courts continue to operate an insecure case management system, it’s because they claim building a new one will cost $2 billion, which is absurd nonsense. If they’d followed our advice in 2020, they’d have a secure system today.

🚨 REMINDER: We're #hiring a new Executive Director! 📍 Remote ⏰ Full-time 💰 USD 100–115k Help grow the OSHF, lead programs+fundraising, and support #openscience & #openhardware: opensciencehardware.org/2025/07/were... #job #opensource #sciencejob

"HarperCollins library eBook prices have increased at an annualized rate of 12.9% per year. Macmillan library eAudio prices have increased at an annualized rate of 12.5% per year."

I'm looking for book / blog / video recommendations about running a large, successful, organizational YouTube account. I would search Google but that shit is clogged with SEO and AI course scammers.

paginated APIs are the worst and only exist to make my life more complicated

🐠🐡I wrote about my experiences exploring the reef as a visually impaired person and making a descriptive diving bell at Dinacon! Check it out! medium.com/@leeborg_/a-...

I'm glad that a public figure is speaking out about Lyme Disease! 2 years ago, Lyme forever changed my life. I'm thankfully on the other side of the worst of it, but it continues to impact me. He's right: Lyme is relentless, debilitating, and too common. www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-n...

While I am celebrating the first @oshwassociation.bsky.social certified open hardware from Serbia (certification.oshwa.org/rs000001.html), I will admit that my favorite thing this month is the slime mold powered smart watch certification.oshwa.org/us002764.html

make full-text newsletters available via RSS in addition to email and you’ll have a subscriber for life

This new lawsuit alleges that Meta was intentionally seeding porn videos on bittorrent in order to accelerate its own download speeds for the books it was downloading to build an AI training corpus (¶¶ 111-121), partially to balace their non-seeing of the books arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...