The US government spent decades funding the development of tools like Tor, which helps millions of people route around censorship and surveillance in countries like Iran, China, Cuba, and North Korea. As of mid-2024, about 35% of the Tor Project's $7.3 million budget still came from federal sources, with the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor alone contributing over $2.1 million in 2023-2024 for expanding uncensored internet access in China, Hong Kong, and Tibet. — Read the rest

The post Trump's aid freeze is killing US-funded privacy tools like TOR appeared first on Boing Boing.

YouTube is experiencing an outage across the United States, with users in other countries like Canada, India, the Philippines, Australia and Russia also having problems with accessing the website. The issue seems to have started at around 8PM Eastern time and reached 326,000 reports on Downdetector before starting to taper down. More users reported having issues accessing the app, but I personally lost access to the web homepage first. As of 9:22PM, users are still reporting being unable to access YouTube on Reddit.

Update, February 17, 2026, 9:26 PM ET: Updated to correct time of outage, added new countries where it's out and new reports of YouTube still being inaccessible.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/youtube-is-down-for-thousands-of-users-in-the-us-020718165.html?src=rss

PM Modi tells citizens AI will lift them up, not take their jobs

Giant Indian industrial conglomerate Adani has said it will spend up to $100 billion on AI datacenters to equip the nation with sovereign infrastructure, but will do so at slower pace than Big Tech tech companies plan to bring their own bit barns to Bharat.…

Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year is today, February 17. However, the celebration extends further. Public schools are out this week in NYC and there are multiple celebrations in the city. The traditional Chinese New Year greeting above (Gong Xi Fa Cai / Gong Hei Fat Choy) wishes people prosperity and ... [continued]

The post To Chinese Clean Tech Companies: 恭喜發財 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Version 4.6 can also be 'warm, honest, prosocial, and at times funny'

Anthropic has updated its Sonnet model to version 4.6 and claims the upgrade is better at coding and using computers, and also possesses improved reasoning and planning capabilities.…

Please remember that the SaaSpocalypse is a narrative, not a material fact.

My audio files are named Artist Name - Song Name.flac, I could add their respective track number to the file name but that's damn near 10,000 files I would have to do it manually for

She burned down a house and bit a cop. A judge wasn't impressed with her AI apology.

Remembering Stanley Rondeau who died on 13th January aged ninety-two

 

Stanley Rondeau's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Jean Rondeau was a Huguenot silk weaver who came to Spitalfields in 1685 as a refugee fleeing religious persecution in Paris. Jean's son prospered in Spitalfields, becoming Sexton at Christ Church, having eleven children, building a new house at 4 Wilkes St and commissioning designs in the seventeen-forties from the most famous of silk designers, Anna Maria Garthwaite, who lived almost next door, in the house on the corner with Princelet St.

Since Anna Maria Garthwaite's designs were exceptionally prized both for their aesthetic appeal and their functional elegance as patterns for silk weaving, hundreds of her original paintings have survived to this day. So Stanley & I went along to the Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington to take a look at those done for Stanley's ancestor Jean the Sexton, nearly three centuries ago. We negotiated our way through the labyrinths of the vast museum, teeming with school children, with a growing sense of anticipation because although Stanley had seen one of the designs reproduced in a book, he had never cast his eyes upon the originals. And up on the fourth floor, we entered a sanctuary of peace and quiet where curator Moira Thunder awaited us in a lofty room with a long table and large flat blue boxes containing the treasured designs that were the objects of our quest.

Moira - chic in contrasting tones of plum and navy blue, and with a pair of fuchsia lenses which hinted at a bohemian side - welcomed us with scholarly grace, and duly opened up the first box to reveal the first of Anna Maria Garthwaite's designs. Drawn in the wide margin at the top of a large sheet containing an elaborate floral number, this design was the epitome of restraint with a repeated motif that resembled a bugle flower in subdued tones of purplish brown, labelled Mr Rondeau, Feb 5 174 1/2, and intended as a pattern to be woven into the body of a vellure used for men's suiting.

Stanley was instinctively drawn towards his own name revealed before him, leaned forward to touch the piece of paper - which caused Moira's eyes to pop, though fortunately for all concerned the priceless design was protected by a layer of transparent conservator's plastic. Once smiles of amelioration had been exchanged after this faux-pas, Stanley enjoyed a quiet moment of contemplation, gazing with his deep-set chestnut eyes from beneath his bushy white eyebrows upon the same piece of paper that his ancestor saw. I think Stanley would have preferred it if 'Mr Rondeau' had been written beside the fancy design below, because he asked Moira whether the other design for Jean Rondeau in the collection was more colourful but, with an unexpectedly winsome smile, Moira refused to be drawn.

Yet while Stanley's curiosity was understandably focussed upon those designs attributed to his ancestor, I was enraptured by the myriad pages of designs by Anna Maria Garthwaite, whose house I walk past every day. Kept from the daylight, the colours in these sketches remain as fresh as the day she painted them in Spitalfields three centuries ago. The accurate observation of both cultivated and wild flowers in these works suggests they were painted from specimens which permits me to surmise that she had access to a garden, and picked her wild flowers in the fields beyond Brick Lane. I especially admired the sparseness of these sprigged designs, drawing the eye to the lustrous quality of the silk, and Moira, who worked as assistant to Natalie Rothstein - the ultimate authority on Spitalfields silk - pointed out that weavers rarely deviated from Garthwaite's designs because they were conceived with such thorough understanding of the process.

And then, Moira opened the second box to reveal the second design by Anna Maria Garthwaite for Jean Rondeau, which Stanley had never seen before. Larger and more complex than the previous, although monochromatic, this was a pattern of pansy or violet flowers divided by scalloped borders into a repeated design of lozenges. Again drawn in the margin, at the top of a piece of paper above a multicoloured design, this has the name 'Mr Rondeau' written in feint pencil beside it. It was a design for a damask, either for men's suiting or a woman's dress, which Moira suggested would be appropriate to be worn at the time of half-mourning. A degree of formalised grief that is unfamiliar to us, yet would have been the custom  in a world where women bore many more babies in the knowledge that only those chosen few would survive beyond childhood.

Moira took the unveiling of this second design as the premise to outline the speciality of Master Silk Weaver Jean Rondeau, who appears to have built his fortune, and company of fifty-seven employees, upon the production of cheaper silks for men, unlike his Spitalfields contemporary Captain Lekeux - for whom Anna Maria Garthwaite also designed - who specialised in the most expensive silks for women. In response to Moira's erudition, Stanley began to talk about his ancestor and the events of the seventeen forties in Spitalfields with a familiarity and grasp of detail that made it sound as if he were talking about a recent decade. And as he spoke, with the unique wealth of knowledge that he had gathered over a lifetime of research, I could see Moira becoming drawn in to Stanley's  extraordinary testimony, revealing new information about this highly specialised milieu of textile production which is her particular interest. It was a true meeting of minds, and I stood by to observe the accumulation of mutual interest, as with growing delight Moira and Stanley exchanged anecdotes about their shared passion.

Recently, Stanley visited the Natural History Museum to hold the bones of his ancestor Jean the Sexton which were removed there from Christ Church for study, and by seeing the designs at the Victoria & Albert Museum that once passed before Jean's eyes in Spitalfields, he had completed his quest.

'It was a big day,' Stanley admitted to me afterwards, his eyes shining with emotion, as he began to absorb the reality of what he had seen.

Stanley Rondeau sees the design commissioned by his ancestor in the seventeen-forties for the first time

Design for a vellure for Jean Rondeau, by Anna Maria Garthwaite, Spitalfields, February 5th, 1741

The full page with Jean Rondeau's design at the top

Design for a damask by Anna Maria Garthwaite for Jean Rondeau, possibly for half-mourning

Stanley Rondeau chats with Moira Thunder, Curator, Designs, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, over a copy of Natalie Rothstein's definitive work "Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century."

Anna Maria Garthwaite's catalogue of designs

Designs by Anna Maria Garthwaite for Spitalfields silks from the seventeen forties in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Textile design photographs by Jane Petrie

Textiles copyright © Victoria & Albert Museum

With grateful thanks to Moira Thunder of the Victoria & Albert Museum for making this possible.

You may also like to read about

A Dress of Spitalfields Silk

Dickens in Spitalfields, a Visit to a Silk Warehouse

Dickens in Spitalfields, a Visit to a Weaver's Loft

After trying desperately to dodge scrutiny of the involvement she and her husband had with child rapist Jeffrey Epstein, Hillary Clinton is now adopting a different approach. Speaking to the BBC, she told US president Donald Trump to "get the files out", accusing him of a cover-up.

Her shift in tack comes ahead of the Clintons testifying before a congressional committee to give evidence about their association with Epstein. The pair had previously fought vigorously to avoid interrogation. Chairman of the Oversight Committee, Republican James Comer threatened the pair with contempt of Congress proceedings if they continued their refusal. This appears to have backed the two into a corner, and they will now appear before Congress in late February.

The BBC point out:

It will be the first time a former US president has testified to a congressional panel since Gerald Ford did so in 1983.

Clinton is now saying the pair have nothing to hide, declaring:

We don't. We have been willing to say whatever we know. We've even done it under oath, but they want us to testify, not everyone else who's mentioned many many times, hundreds of thousands of times in these files. So we've said "fine let us do it in public and we will appear in public and we'll answer all your questions…"

Clintons can't hide close ties to Epstein

When asked if she regretted links to the paedophile and eugenicist Epstein, Clinton conveniently answered the question in a different tense to the one in which she was asked:

You know, we have no links. We have a very clear record that we've been willing to talk about which my husband has said he took some rides on the aeroplane for his charitable work. I don't recall ever meeting him.

Well, obviously you have no links now, given Epstein is either dead or perhaps spirited away to so-called 'Israel'. Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell is still locked up serving a 20 year sentence for her role in assisting mass sexual abuse of children.

However, prior links were extensive. The few "rides on the aeroplane" Clinton refers to are the at least 17 times her husband Bill flew on the revoltingly titled 'Lolita Express' jet owned by Epstein. The former president appears in numerous photos present in the recent US Department of Justice document release. These show him with young girls, including one seated on his lap.

The Clinton Global Initiative honoured Maxwell in 2013 with an award for advocating ocean conservation. This was years after she had been linked to Epstein's crimes. He was convicted in 2008 for procuring a child for prostitution. Underscoring the closeness the Clintons had to Maxwell, they invited her to their daughter Chelsea's wedding in 2010.

Former president's history of abuse

Of course, Bill Clinton has a documented history of both dishonesty and abusive behaviour towards women. While their relationship was consensual, Monica Lewinsky has described his treatment of her as a "gross abuse of power" that left her contemplating suicide. Lewinsky was 22 years old and Clinton 49 when the White House intern and then-US president had "sexual relations". The latter phrase was used when Clinton repeatedly lied about the affair, so there's no reason to trust his word when it comes to his involvement with Epstein.

Bill Clinton has also been sued for sexual harassment by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones, and accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick. Broaddrick said Clinton assaulted her in a hotel room in 1978.

Of course, we don't need court cases or congressional committees to tell us that the Clintons have been cruel and violent people. We need only look at their policies. During his presidency, Bill Clinton maintained the sanctions against Iraq that caused infant mortality to skyrocket, potentially killing 500,000 children.

He was crucial in accelerating the neoliberal order at home, with punitive welfare policies having devastating effects on women and children. Clinton's deregulation accelerated the financialisation of the economy that benefited Epstein and other money manipulators.

Hillary is a constant warmonger who has defended 'Israel' throughout its genocide in Gaza. During her time as secretary of state, she helped oversee the bloodbath in Libya which has devastated that country. She was filmed psychopathically cackling after the death of Muammar Gaddafi. Disgracefully she retains prestigious positions, including her role as chancellor of Queen's University Belfast.

Clintons helped make today's billionaire-dominated world

The pair have helped usher in a more unpleasant world, and contributed to an era of unprecedented billionaire wealth. It is that wealth that gives predators like Epstein the power to abuse with impunity, and creates the conditions of poverty in which desperate people can be preyed upon.

Whatever the precise involvement the Clintons had with Epstein, they remain, at minimum, culpable for engineering the climate in which he and his ilk could flourish.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

Anyone who's been paying even a little bit of attention to tech news lately could have made a reasonable guess that AI will be a big topic at Samsung's Unpacked next week. Ahead of the event, Samsung teased some of what's to come for AI in terms of the Galaxy S26 smartphone lineup's photography tools. 

The S26 phones will feature a new camera system using Galaxy AI that combines capturing, editing and sharing of photos and videos. "Users will be able to turn a photo from day to night in seconds, restore missing parts of objects in images, capture detailed photos in low light, and seamlessly merge multiple photos into a single, cohesive result," a company rep said. The video clips Samsung shared demonstrated the before and after results of using its AI tools, which will all be housed in a single app rather than needing to switch between multiple image editing programs.

Updated cameras are just part of what will be on the schedule for Samsung's big mobile showcase. The expected Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26+ and Galaxy S26 Ultra will likely have a lot of AI-centric features.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/samsung-teases-mobile-ai-photography-tools-ahead-of-unpacked-233000358.html?src=rss

Recent reporting by Nieman Lab describes how some major news organizations—including The Guardian, The New York Times, and Reddit—are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. As stated in the article, these organizations are blocking access largely out of concern that generative AI companies are using the Wayback Machine as a backdoor for large-scale scraping.

These concerns are understandable, but unfounded. The Wayback Machine is not intended to be a backdoor for large-scale commercial scraping and, like others on the web today, we expend significant time and effort working to prevent such abuse. Whatever legitimate concerns people may have about generative AI, libraries are not the problem, and blocking access to web archives is not the solution; doing so risks serious harm to the public record.

The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity and a federal depository library, has been building its archive of the world wide web since 1996. Today, the Wayback Machine provides access to thirty years' worth of web history and culture. It has become an essential resource for journalists, researchers, courts, and the public. 

For three decades the Wayback Machine has peacefully coexisted with the development of the web, including the websites mentioned in the article. Our mission is simple: to preserve knowledge and make it accessible for research, accountability, and historical understanding. 

As tech policy writer Mike Masnick recently warned, blocking preservation efforts risks a profound unintended consequence: "significant chunks of our journalistic record and historical cultural context simply… disappear." He notes that when trusted publications are absent from archives, we risk creating a historical record biased against quality journalism.

There is no question that generative AI has changed the landscape of the world wide web. But it is important to be clear about what the Wayback Machine is, and what it is not.

The Wayback Machine is built for human readers. We use rate limiting, filtering, and monitoring to prevent abusive access, and we watch for and actively respond to new scraping patterns as they emerge.

We acknowledge that systems can always be improved. We are actively working with publishers on technical solutions to strengthen our systems and address legitimate concerns without erasing the historical record.

What concerns me most is the unintended consequence of these blocks. When libraries are blocked from archiving the web, the public loses access to history. Journalists lose tools for accountability. Researchers lose evidence. The web becomes more fragile and more fragmented, and history becomes easier to rewrite.

Generative AI presents real challenges in today's information ecosystem. But preserving the time-honored role of libraries and archives in society has never been more important. We've worked alongside news organizations for decades. Let's continue working together in service of an open, referenceable, and enduring web.

Mark Graham is the Director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive

Full scale of infections remains 'unknown'

China-linked attackers exploited a maximum-severity hardcoded-credential bug in Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines as a zero-day since at least mid-2024. It's all part of a long-running effort to backdoor infected machines for long-term access, according to Dell and Google's Mandiant incident response team.…

Scientists aren't fully sure what this means for Antarctica's future, however.

Amnesty International says it found evidence that a government customer of Intellexa, a sanctioned surveillance vendor, used its Predator spyware against a prominent journalist in Angola.

Jack Altman and Benchmark announced today that he would be joining the firm as a general partner. 

The hype around artificial intelligence (AI) has reached enormous heights. Everything is AI all the time now. At least, that's how it feels as someone working in the media who is bombarded by PR pitches mentioning AI. Additionally, though, we see how much money is being put into building massive ... [continued]

The post No, Claude Is Not Conscious appeared first on CleanTechnica.

No one's mental health improves when they are told constantly that they are about to lose their job.

The late acting legend's spotlight on Rod Serling's sci-fi series came soon after his breakout role in 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'

A 24-hour drinking city that embraces both the theatrical and the historical, New Orleans has been a font for classic cocktails for upward of a century. The city's homegrown recipes are known to have quite a range, too, spanning strong and stirred whiskey staples, fiery dessert drinks and even ice-cold holiday favorites. There's no better way to get to know New Orleans and its nightlife than by experiencing its iconic drinks, one glass—or to-go cup—at a time. But if you can't get to New Orleans just yet, here are a handful of our favorite perfected recipes to transport you there.

Though the Absinthe Suissesse was not born in New Orleans, the city has nevertheless adopted it as its own. With roots in Europe and northern U.S. cities, the minty drink has shape-shifted over time, with variations including or omitting egg white, orgeat, various liqueurs, sweeteners and soda water documented since the 1930s. It somehow made its way into the Depression-era book Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'Em, and, decades later, the Cure cocktail book. Kirk Estopinal, a champion of the drink, says, "It has a very Mardi Gras connection to me," adding, "it feels like the kind of drink you want to drink early in the morning."

The team, led by Tesla veteran Alan Clarke, is obsessed with efficiency.

Waymo is scaling up. How much, and how quickly? Those are the questions. We may have a hint at an answer. Reportedly, the self-driving tech leader is looking to purchase 50,000 Hyundai IONIQ 5 electric cars in the next few years, at a cost of about $2.5 billion. The IONIQ ... [continued]

The post Waymo Looking to Buy 50,000 Hyundai Ioniq 5 Robotaxis for $2.5 Billion appeared first on CleanTechnica.

For decades, swaths of the American media have failed to treat Elon Musk like a CEO with a track record of missed timelines and broken promises. Instead, he is portrayed as a misunderstood supergenius playing 11-dimensional chess with civilization in the balance. — Read the rest

The post How the media keeps manufacturing Elon Musk's "Genius" appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Take your programming to the next level with cross-platform development and AI-powered collaboration. Discover Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 for just $49.99 (Reg. $499.99).

Want to take your programming skills to the next level? The key is simple: learn how to work with AI instead of against it. — Read the rest

The post Your favorite developer's favorite development tool just got an AI upgrade — and it's 90% off appeared first on Boing Boing.

In April 2019, Steve Bannon texted Jeffrey Epstein a three-step plan to rescue his reputation: "First we need to push back on the lies; then crush the pedo/trafficking narrative; then rebuild your image as philanthropist." Bannon had spent months filming Epstein for a planned documentary — roughly 12 hours of interviews without ever raising the subject of his abuse of girls and young women or his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution, according to TheWrap. — Read the rest

The post Bannon texted Epstein a rehab plan, called him "God," shared lawyers appeared first on Boing Boing.

Update. I've been able to create an account on Twitter, but it's not @davewiner. If you're on Twitter, it would help if you'd RT the post. Thanks! #

Testing at Phillip Island concluded with Nicolo Bulega setting the pace for Ducati. The strong form of the Italian brand was proven as they locked out the first four spots on the timesheet. The bimota duo of Axel Bassani and Alex Lowes were the closest challengers as the paddock now gears up for the first race of the season this weekend.

• Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) topped all four sessions during testing and completed 138 laps of the 4.445km circuit. The Italian is the clear favourite, having set a time of 1'28.630 while also being the most consistent rider. 

 

Sam Lowes (14) at Phillip Island. Photo courtesy Dorna

 

• Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team) was the closest challenger to Bulega, with the Brit six tenths of a second slower. His morning session ended with a consistent 15-lap stint, as many riders used the slightly cooler conditions for race simulations.

 

Axel Bassani (47) at Phillip Island. Photo courtesy Dorna

 

• Bassani and Lowes showed strong pace for bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team, with the Italian setting his fastest time of the day in the morning, while Lowes left it until his final lap. The duo completed a combined total of 140 laps.

 

Alvaro Bautista (19) at Phillip Island. Photo courtesy Dorna

 

• A Turn 11 crash for Jake Dixon opened the day and left the Honda HRC rider sidelined for the opening round with a fracture to his left wrist. The incident occurred on his first flying lap of the day. Later in the session, Stefano Manzi (GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team) crashed at Turn 2. Alvaro Bautista crashed at Turn 10 in the afternoon session, but the Barni Spark Racing Team rider still completed 74 laps to top the mileage charts.

 

Lorenzo Baldassari (34) at Phillip Island. Photo courtesy Dorna

 

• Lorenzo Baldassari's comeback to the Superbike class continues to impress. The Team GoEleven rider ended the test third fastest. Miguel Oliveira was the leading rookie with ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team's Portuguese rider seventh fastest.

 

P1 - Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.It Racing - Ducati): "I feel good with the bike. We tried something different during the second session but then we decided to go back to the previous setting. When you already have a good feeling and you can push with confidence but changing things is not always better. So we returned to the morning setting and everything went well again. At the moment it's just a test so the goal is to improve. I think there are still many areas where we can take a step forward, and I want to do that together with my team. We'll work during these days before the race weekend and then we'll see where we are."

 

P2 - Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team): "I had a really good day. We improved the bike this afternoon and I started to find a good rhythm after doing a longer run this morning to understand my feeling with the bike. I did my best lap on the second run of the tyre which is positive at Phillip Island. I feel competitive. With the hard tyre I think we'll be a bit closer and that's the tyre that we'll have for the race. The team has done a great job to improve the bike session by session. I still have areas we can work on but we're in the mix."

 

P3 - Lorenzo Baldassarri (Team GoEleven): "It was another positive day. I enjoyed the bike and the track and I could improve lap after lap. We're working on the base setting to suit me better. It was good to confirm yesterday's speed and today we focused on consistency with the race tyre. Honestly, the results from testing is a bit unexpected because during tests I prefer to build step by step rather than push too much. But we improved the pace, built a strong feeling with the bike, and I think we're ready for the first race weekend."

 

21_WorldSBK_2026_AUS_Free_Practice_3_Results

 

21_WorldSBK_2026_AUS_Free_Practice_4_Results

 

Masia leads the way as rain closes play

 

• Jaume Masia (Orelac Racing Verdnatura) completed a strong two-day test at Phillip Island to set the pace in the Supersport class. The Spaniard completed 39 laps today but heavy rain during the final two hour session brought the action to a premature close.

• PTR Triumph Factory Racing teammates Oli Bayliss and Tom Booth-Amos ended the day second and third fastest. For Bayliss it sets the scene for another strong home round while Booth-Amos was a race winner here twelve months ago.

• Philipp Oettl (Feel Racing WorldSSP Team) was the only rider in the Top 15 not to improve on his morning time before the rain came in. The German ended the day fourth on the combined times.

 

 

Jaume Masia (5) at Phillip Island. Photo courtesy Dorna

 

P1 - Jaume Masia (Orelac Racing Verdnatura): "The morning session went quite well for us. We focused on understanding the bike. The afternoon was a bit crazy with the rain and wind but we finisher first. I feel confident for the weekend. I like to ride alone and to stay calm and consistent. If the race were tomorrow  my target would be to lead and stay consistent."

      21_WorldSSP_2026_AUS_Free_Practice_3_Results

 

21_WorldSSP_2026_AUS_Free_Practice_4_Results

The post WSBK: Final Test Complete, Attention Turns to the Opening Round appeared first on Roadracing World Magazine | Motorcycle Riding, Racing & Tech News.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani faces a further test of his resolve and principles after the city's police department (NYPD) disclosed that it spies on the city's residents' online.

NYPD fesses up

On 4 February 2026, the NYPD finally admitted that it uses 'sockpuppet' fake accounts - technically 'managed attribution' infrastructure — to covertly monitor New Yorkers' online activity.

Or, as the department dressed it up, to:

allow its personnel to safely, securely and covertly conduct investigations and detect possible criminal activity on the internet.

Mamdani's resolve

As a former state assembly member, Mamdani had supported proposed legislation to outlaw such tactics — the "Stop Fakes Act". The legislation never passed. Now his supporters and opponents alike are waiting to see whether he is willing to face down the police. Will he use his power as mayor to halt these underhand practices.

The test comes after Mamdani chose to endorse Kathy Hochul — "one of the most pro-Israel governors in the country" — as the Democratic party's candidate for the position.

Hochul, a right-winger who allocated massive police funding to attacks on university anti-genocide campuses, also sabotaged a nurses' strike by making it easier for hospitals to hire scab labour.

After a positive start to his tenure, the endorsement led to accusations from appalled left-wingers that Mamdani was betraying the socialist, anti-genocide positions that formed the centre of his mayoral election campaign.

If he now chooses not to confront the city's police, his credibility is likely to collapse.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

In July 2023, Richard Hermer KC, a "close confidante" of Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, proudly declared that he had "dear family members" serving in the Israeli military. One year later, he was appointed Attorney General for England and Wales, the "chief legal adviser to the Crown". But incredibly, he is not the only senior British political figure with relatives in the IDF.

Labour officials and the IDF

Last week, John McEvoy and Alex Morris reported on a Freedom of Information request which revealed that over 50,000 foreign fighters have served in the Israeli military during the Gaza genocide. Britain ranked sixth on the list, with more than 2,000 British dual and multinational citizens confirmed to have participated.

In April 2024, Conservative peer Lord Ahmad defended the "right" of such citizens to enlist in the Israeli military on the basis that occupied Palestinian territories were not recognised as an independent entity by the British government, and that the genocide in Gaza would therefore be classified as "a foreign government's forces… engaged in a civil war or combating terrorism or internal uprisings".

However, since Britain officially recognised the State of Palestine in September, it would seem that the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870, which explicitly prohibited "engagement in the military or naval service of any foreign state at war with any foreign state at peace with Her Majesty", must now apply; something that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, with her responsibility for "protecting our borders", will surely take a keen interest in!

Shabana Mahmood has gone to great lengths to mirror the anti-migrant rhetoric of Reform UK in recent months, declaring that Britain has "become the destination of choice in Europe, clearly visible to every people smuggler and would-be illegal migrant across the world.", and rehashing popular tropes of a "golden ticket asylum system" and "illegal migration tearing the UK apart".

On the subject of returning IDF militants, however, she has been silent. We do not know the names or ages of the list of 2,000+, or whether or not they intend to or already have returned to the UK. Even more shockingly, my research suggests that the list could include associates and/or relatives of Labour government ministers.

Richard Hermer

In 2023, when Conservative Party MPs accused Richard Hermer, then advising the Labour Party on a BDS Bill being brought before Parliament, of taking "political positions" on the question of Palestine, Hermer was quick to burnish his Zionist credentials, reassuring Michael Gove and co. that he was not "influenced by some form of malign intent towards Israel".

As proof of this, Hermer pointed towards growing up in "a 'Blue-Box' Jewish family", a reference to blue collection boxes that were commonly used to raise money for the Jewish National Fund, the largest builder of illegal settlements in occupied Palestine.

The JNF's UK branch states on its official website: "every Zionist home has a Blue Box." Coincidentally, the UK branch counts well-known war criminals Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Britain's Chief Rabbi Ephraim Marvis, amongst its "honorary patrons".

Between 2015-18, JNF UK remains a registered British charity, funnelled £1 million to HaShomer HaChadash (HH), an Israeli militia that operates in the occupied West Bank. Despite this, the Charity Commission refused to take action, saying that "there was no evidence to support the allegations that the charity acted outside of its objects."

The JNF specifies that only Jewish parties can buy or lease its land. Palestinians, even if they hold Israeli citizenship, are explicitly excluded on the basis of their ethnicity. In response to a 2004 legal challenge, the "charity" said: "The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF…does not have a duty to practice equality towards all citizens of the state."

The IDF

Hermer also emphasised (as a way of defending his impartiality, no less!): "I have dear family members currently serving in the IDF." Even when he followed this with a caveat about opposing the "unlawful" occupation of the West Bank, Hermer's reasoning was that it was "deeply damaging to the interests of Israel."

This is the same IDF decapitating children and babies in Gaza. The same IDF who put on Palestinian women's dresses after destroying their homes and dance for TikTok videos. The same IDF that included over 2,000 British citizens as they committed a genocide.

Were Hermer's "dear family members" amongst them? Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, apparently so keen to clamp down on dangerous criminals entering the UK, seemingly doesn't know and/or doesn't care.

Labour's Attorney General added: "I actively support a range of… Israeli organisations." Hermer mentioned previously serving as an officer for the Union of Jewish Students (UJS).

Speaking to an undercover journalist, a former UJS activist named Adam Schapira confirmed that the group receives funding from the Israeli embassy in London and the powerful American lobby group AIPAC. Yair Zivan, a campaigns officer for UJS, later became a press officer for the Israeli military and adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister.

"Love being in Israel"

At the Jewish Labour Movement's annual conference in January 2025, Hermer said that he wished to see a world where you can "love being in Israel", and lamented that "somehow you have to pick one-side or the other." He revealed that he had visited the Israeli state in his youth, and as a member of Starmer's government "on more occasions than he could count".

Hermer and Starmer served in the same law chambers, and he donated to Starmer's 2020 Labour leadership campaign.

After leaving Doughty Street, Hermer worked alongside current Labour MP and former vice-chair of the Jewish Labour Movement Sarah Sackman at Matrix Chambers. As Hermer was made Attorney General, Sackman was appointed Solicitor General. Since 2024, Sackman has received tens of thousands of pounds from lobbyists Jonathan Mendelsohn, Stephen Grabiner, Michael Sternberg, Jonathan Kestenbaum and Trevor Chinn.

Sackman was also funded by Labour Together. Kestenbaum just happens to sit on the board of Labour Together, and Chinn was a major funder and co-director of the think tank in the "McSweeney era", but we can rest assured that these are further minor details Starmer knows nothing about.

Another former director of Labour Together is current Labour MP and cabinet member Josh Simons.

The Labour Together scandal

During his spell at the "think tank", Simons hired private investigators to gather information on journalists researching the corruption of Morgan McSweeney, who had used Labour Together as a private vehicle for toppling Jeremy Corbyn and propelling Keir Starmer into power.

Kate Forrester, the wife of Keir Starmer's then head of communications Paul Ovenden, ran APCO's London office when it was hired by Labour Together, and she has since confirmed that she knew about the investigation, codenamed "Operation Cannon".

One year later, the "public relations firm" hired a new member of staff, Mark Simpson. Simpson just happened to be a former adviser to Keir Starmer. Josh Simons has branded the claims that he spied on journalists "nonsense", but the contract between Labour Together and APCO tells a different story.

The contract instructed APCO to "provide a body of evidence that could be packaged up…in order to create narratives that would proactively undermine any future attacks on Labour Together." Josh Simons ordered the investigation. Morgan McSweeney was aware of the investigation. Is it even remotely conceivable that once again, just like with Epstein-informant Peter Mandelson, Starmer "didn't know"?

At university, Simons called himself a "Marxist" and told a friend that the Israeli state "should not have been founded". Now, he's a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Israel. Simons has mentioned having "friends and family in Israel", a state with compulsory military service, and in a parliamentary debate with Conservative MP Kit Malthouse last June asserted his "right to claim citizenship in Israel".

Two months later, Simons and Sackman were amongst a group of "Labour Friends of Israel-affiliated MPs" who confronted National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell in a "testy and emotionally charged conversation" regarding the government's decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

Israel has infiltrated the entire system

In an October 2023 LBC interview with Sangita Myska, Richard Hermer KC emphasised the Israeli state's "right to self-defence" in Gaza. In fact, occupying powers have no such right within territories they occupy, as confirmed in Article 51 of the UN Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Myska was fired by LBC after a heated exchange with Israeli government spokesperson Avi Hyman in April 2024. LBC instead hired Vanessa Feltz, who has also declared that she has "very close family members, lots of them", living in occupied Palestine. Myska later revealed that a LBC producer once told her: "there's no such thing as Palestine." LBC is owned by Global Media, which is chaired by Labour peer Charles Allen.

Hermer is not the only current Labour figure with links to the Israeli military. Labour MP Damian Egan's partner Yossi Felberbaum is a former Israeli spy recruiter from "Unit 8200". Are his relatives on the list of 2,000+? Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood apparently doesn't know, and doesn't care.

Hermer is not even the first British Attorney General to have relatives fighting with the Israeli army. Suella Braverman, who Boris Johnson appointed Attorney General once in February 2020 and then again in September 2021, also claimed to have "close family members who serve in the IDF". Are her relatives on the list of 2000+? Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood apparently doesn't know, and doesn't care.

Featured image via the Canary

By Jody McIntyre

On 12 February, a joint platform of 10 Central Trade Unions (CTUs) in India organised a nationwide strike to protest the Modi government's anti-labour, pro-corporatisation, and pro-USA policies. Those organising the general strike include the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), and the Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS).

Industrial shutdown

There were disruptions across key sectors such as coal, banking, transport, and agriculture. The workers heeding their calls of the CTUs shut down thousands of coal fields, refineries, factories, and banking operations countrywide, the People's Dispatch reported.

This came as a huge blow for Modi's profit-driven economy.

And despite the scale of the protest, Western media has kept its distance.

Meanwhile, Claudia Webbe, a former UK Labour MP and ally of Jeremy Corbyn, is breaking the silence:

300 million workers just shut down India.

The largest strike in human history, and most of the Western media barely whispered it. That silence is complicity in Modi's war on workers' rights.

India's general strike is the future that the billionaires and ruling class fears most pic.twitter.com/5vh5eRrVfR

— Claudia Webbe (@ClaudiaWebbe) February 13, 2026

Reclaiming India's sovereignty

Claudia Webbe shared a post featuring Brinda Karat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who had this to say:

It seems Modi has adopted Trump's 'Make America Great Again' slogan for himself. Instead of 'Make India,' we have 'Make America Great Again'—that is what has come through in the Indo-US deal. It is shocking, and this strike action is timely. Workers and peasants are not fighting for their own interests alone. They are fighting for the interest of India. They are fighting for the sovereignty of India.

Local coverage by Wire Hindi shone the spotlight on protests in Delhi's Jantar Mantar, where workers rallied against the Modi government's controversial labour laws, introduced in 2025, for eroding their rights.

दिल्ली के जंतर-मंतर पर गुरुवार को मोदी सरकार द्वारा हाल ही में लाए गए चार लेबर कोड के ख़िलाफ़ ज़ोरदार प्रदर्शन देखने को मिला. 1/2https://t.co/xiMbtAUa0Q pic.twitter.com/arhmpzq5FB

— The Wire हिंदी (@thewirehindi) February 13, 2026

A "historic success"

The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) posted several pictures and updates throughout the day, declaring the strike a "historic success."

AIKS, among other groups, have not held back in their criticism against Modi's government. They censured the government for crushing workers rights, bowing to US corporations, and threatening India's secular fabric.

#12thFebruaryGeneralStrike a Historic Success

The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) congratulates crores of Indian workers, agricultural workers and toiling peasantry for making the 12th February 2026 General Strike a historic success. The anger of working people against the (1/n) pic.twitter.com/jfItzhDVeg

— AIKS (@KisanSabha) February 12, 2026

According to Maktoob Media, the strike was met heavy handedly after Modi sent in his henchmen.

They made sweeping arrests against hundreds of IT workers, trade union leaders and activists in Bengaluru.

And unsurprisingly, the crack down was captured on camera — we see you.

The Karnataka IT/ITeS Employees Union (KITU) said hundreds of IT employees were arrested on Thursday in Bengaluru, along with other leaders and activists from various Central Trade Unions, during the Bharat Bandh against the Narendra Modi government's alleged anti-worker labour… pic.twitter.com/qYYm1p8ml0

— Maktoob (@MaktoobMedia) February 12, 2026

International endorsement

We have also seen expressions of solidarity emerge internationally. London-based protesters gathered at London's Parliament Square on Thursday evening.

They condemned Hindutva's "fascist bulldozer raj" and demanding the withdrawal of punitive labour and farming policies.

As Brinda Karat put it, India's sovereignty is cracking beneath Modi's divisive policies and the working class, unafraid and unwavering, is reclaiming their nation.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

And its smart glasses sound exactly like Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses clones.

Though commonly reported, Google doesn't consider it a security problem when models make things up

Imagine using an AI to sort through your prescriptions and medical information, asking it if it saved that data for future conversations, and then watching it claim it had even if it couldn't. Joe D., a retired software quality assurance (SQA) engineer, says that Google Gemini lied to him and later admitted it was doing so to try and placate him.…

Badly needed at this moment. AI slop swamping the net.

submitted by /u/wanton_wonton_
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The Texas Guitarist also shared that his next album is underway

After the 'Spider-Man' set made the Big Apple a key part of the Magic multiverse, the upcoming 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' set wants to present the city in a warmer light.

It isn't insane, and Amazon will be fine when the music stops. Other players, maybe not so much

In their recent earnings call, Amazon kinda blew the doors off of industry analyst (motto: "we'll be wrong, then take it out on your stock") projections for their capex spend.…

After a selloff fueled by fears AI could upend the outsourcing model

Indian IT professionals worried about 72-hour workweeks might soon face the opposite concern, as Bengaluru-based outsourcing giant Infosys has partnered with Anthropic to bring agentic AI to telecommunications companies and other regulated industries.…

Related to collapse because very soon the conversation about geoengineering is going to become louder.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-187985982

"The heating is going to be so big and so obvious that it will lead, for the first time, to a real global discussion of solar geoengineering as a response. I think that is tragic and also increasingly likely, because the cost of letting the temperature continue to rise will be so large that the side-effects that could come from pouring sulfur into the atmosphere will start to seem more more evenly matched with the weather carnage on display. It's probably time for those who care about the planet to start figuring out what their response to this debate will look like. There are some good reasons to fight it tooth and nail, but it's also the moment to start insisting that if it's ever going to be even considered it be accompanied by an iron-clad commitment to drive down fossil fuel emissions to zero. If we're going to bet the future of the planet, the reason can't be to make sure Exxon's business model remains intact."

submitted by /u/Imaginary_Bug_3800
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Plus 3 new goon squads targeted critical infrastructure last year

Three new threat groups began targeting critical infrastructure last year, while a well-known Beijing-backed crew - Volt Typhoon - continued to compromise cellular gateways and routers, and then break into US electric, oil, and gas companies in 2025, according to Dragos' annual threat report published on Tuesday.…