As you may know, The Streisand Effect was originally coined right here on Techdirt in 2005, though it referred back to an event from 2003 when Barbra Streisand sued Ken Adelman, because his project to map how erosion impacted the California coastline incidentally included a photo of Streisand's Malibu mansion.

Streisand demanded $50 million in damages ($10 million for each of five counts). It quickly came out that prior to the lawsuit, the photo had been accessed a grand total of six times, and two of them were by Streisand's lawyers. But after the lawsuit was filed, more than 420,000 people went to view the photo in the following month alone. California's anti-SLAPP law protected Adelman, and Streisand was eventually forced to pay $177,107.54 in legal fees, including $155,567.04 to Adelman.

The story is remembered for the effect I coined, in part because of the futility of trying to hide information, but in part because it's a reminder of the importance of free speech.

It's possible that story would go very differently in Germany today. We already know that Germany is much more sensitive to concerns about privacy and data collection, and when Google launched its useful "Street View" feature in Google Maps, some people in Germany insisted it was a violation of their privacy. I have difficulty seeing how a single static photograph of buildings taken from public streets can be a privacy violation, but German regulators and plenty of residents insisted otherwise, so Google now lets residents blur out their own house in street view (and, tellingly, fewer than 3% of German households actually bothered to do so).

But now there's a new story, again in Germany, with a court ruling that Google Earth, which gives you satellite imagery of the world, somehow is the equivalent of spying on people in their homes, because the photos were taken without notice.

The German court ruled that Google acquired the aerial images by "spying" on ordinary people because it does not inform property owners beforehand that their homes will be filmed and photographed. As a result, Google does not get their consent to publish aerial photos and information about their property on its Maps and Earth sites.

The German court determined that Google had violated the privacy of the man and his family by sharing aerial images of their property on Google Earth. It found that a person's right to privacy extends across their entire property, not just inside their home.

"Nobody must accept the worldwide publication of aerial images of their property without their consent, at least when concerning areas of a property hidden from public view," the court says in the ruling, according to DW.

A German source (Google translated) suggests that the issue is the 3D models of buildings, including things hidden from Street View:

The case concerned whether a property owner can demand that their inhabited property disappear from Google Earth and Google Maps or be blurred. The plaintiff lives with his family in a house in Frankfurt. At his request, his house had already been pixelated in Street View and Apple Look Around. However, in Google Earth and the 3D view of Google Maps, it remained visible as a three-dimensional model - including the rear portions of the property that are not visible from the street.

That same source notes that there is conflicting caselaw in Germany already though:

The Frankfurt ruling stands in stark contrast to an earlier decision. The Itzehoe Regional Court dismissed a similar lawsuit on June 11, 2020 (Case No. 10 O 84/20 ). At that time, the court primarily based its decision on property rights: According to Section 905, Sentence 2 of the German Civil Code (BGB) , the owner cannot prohibit overflights at the altitude from which such images are taken. The court deemed the information discernible in the images too unspecific to infringe on the right to privacy. We reported on this previously: Itzehoe Regional Court: No right to pixelate a property in Google Earth .

The Frankfurt am Main Regional Court takes a different approach. It does not ask whether the overflight itself can be prohibited, but rather whether the worldwide publication of the images violates the general right of personality . For the injunction, it bases its claim on Section 823 Paragraph 1 of the German Civil Code (BGB) and Section 1004 Paragraph 1 of the BGB by analogy. Since 2020, the technology has changed: flat satellite images have become detailed 3D models that can be linked with other data. The Frankfurt ruling addresses this change.

Neither ruling is precedential until there are higher court rulings.

The court also brushed aside Google's argument that it was democratizing access to knowledge, admitting that was important, but saying that the privacy rights outweigh the access to information claims. Though the report notes Google may still appeal.

Maybe this is just cultural differences, but I find the whole thing bizarre. The court tries to limit this to parts of a property 'hidden from public view,' but that's what an overhead photo is: a periodically updated snapshot of what anyone in a plane could see. Ongoing or real-time surveillance might be a different story. A static image from the sky is not that.

But, I guess Barbra should have moved to Frankfurt if she wanted to keep aerial photos of her home off the internet.

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The Fifth Circuit has shown itself to be especially subservient to the Trump administration since his return to office. And it's certainly not going to rock Trump's mass deportation boat — not when it's sitting right on top of Texas, which contains almost two-thirds of the US-Mexico border, as well as some of ICE's largest detention facilities.

It's been several months of back-and-forth at the Fifth. While it has long been held that migrants living in the US are afforded the same rights as US citizens, the Fifth Circuit has done its best to ignore this. In February of this year, it simply decided — in opposition to hundreds of federal rulings across the nation — that detained migrants could be subjected to indefinite detainment without a bond hearing.

It chose to believe what the DOJ told it to believe: that there was no difference between someone detained illegally crossing a border and someone swept up by ICE's kidnapping squads after living peacefully and productively in the US for months, if not years or decades.

Then in July it pulled back a bit from that precipice. While it couldn't be convinced to fully support rights recognized everywhere else but in the Fifth Circuit, it did at least put a time limit on constitutional rights violations. While most courts have reasonably found that any rights violation begins the moment the right is violated, the Fifth Circuit declared the government could ignore migrants' due process rights immediately… but only for 90 days.

Apparently, that wasn't acceptable for the more far-right cheerleaders on the Fifth Circuit's bench. Less than a week later, the Fifth Circuit announced it would be rehearing this case in front of the whole roster of judges — the sort of thing a court only says when most of those judges disagree with respecting long-held rights.

Sure enough, that's exactly what happened. The en banc hearing has rolled back the already-wrong "rights, but only after 90 days" decision handed down during the first week of July. We're back to where we were in February: no due process rights for migrants, no matter how long they've been detained or how long they'd already resided in this country when they were arrested. (h/t Chris Geidner)

The new decision [PDF] simply says migrants don't have any rights, even though this puts the Fifth Circuit in opposition of hundreds of federal courts and tens of thousands of court rulings:

We now conclude that Petitioners were not entitled to individual hearings on their dangerousness or flight risk before they could be lawfully detained by immigration authorities pending their removal proceedings. Moreover, the duration of Petitioners' detention presented no constitutional issues warranting habeas relief.

And while thousands of decisions have made it clear the law this administration has chosen to abuse via an extremely novel interpretation of the phrase "applicants for admission" (something that has historically been applied exclusive to people confronted by immigration agents when attempting to cross the border) doesn't actually say what the government wants it to say (that any migrant in the country for whatever length of time is no different than someone apprehended during the act of crossing the border), the Fifth Circuit goes the other way.

Then it shrugs and says that if plaintiffs want this fixed, they should talk to Congress. But Congress has already made it extremely clear that due process rights apply to anyone residing in this county and that the exception only applies to people apprehended while crossing the border. This is the court giving Trump what he wants while pretending Congress is to blame for this sudden, one-circuit-only refusal to recognize migrants' due process rights.

Controlling illegal immigration is, no doubt, an important and controversial issue of public policy. But the Constitution entrusts broad authority to delineate immigration policy, and to design proceedings to effectuate those policy choices, to Congress—not courts.

Bullshit. This ruling is nothing more than cowardice from a majority of Fifth Circuit judges who don't want to cross Trump and are more than willing to blame their own lack of spine on the legislative branch. Also included are 70 pages of concurrences and dissenting opinions. The dissents point out the obvious: the Fifth Circuit is interpreting the law in a way Congress never intended, or even merely hinted at over the past few decades. The concurrences just want to see the rights removed. The worst of those is Judge James Ho, who claims the dissenters are more interested in protecting the rights of migrants than US citizens:

Alas, such passion for liberty has been lacking when U.S. citizens have been detained for expressing opinions disfavored by government officials. See, e.g., Villarreal v. City of Laredo, 134 F.4th 273 (5th Cir. 2025), reaff'g 94 F.4th 374 (5th Cir. 2024); Gonzalez v. Trevino, 60 F.4th 906 (5th Cir. 2023); see also Mayfield v. Butler Snow, L.L.P., 78 F.4th 796 (5th Cir. 2023).

My point is not to relitigate those cases, but to contrast the dissent's votes in those cases with its views today. It's to point out that liberty wasn't favored for citizens who seek to vindicate their constitutional rights—but it's cherished for illegal aliens who seek to violate our national sovereignty.

Only one of the dissenters in this case (Stewart) agreed with the ruling in Villareal — a case in which the majority blessed vindictive prosecution of a police critic. None of the dissenters in this due process case were part of the majority decision that said — again — that it's okay to engage in vindictive prosecution of a government critic (Gonzalez v. Trevino). And James Ho himself heard the final case he cites (Mayfield v. Butler Snow), delivering the blow to constitutional rights himself, which makes it extremely disingenuous for him to call out these judges (who weren't actually part of the hearing panels) for not expressing their dissent at that point in time.

The end result is the same as it was back in July. Texas will be the destination of choice for the Trump administration, which now knows for certain it won't be forced to respect due process rights. And the Fifth will get back to its day-to-day business of being the worst circuit in the nation — a place where constitutional rights (except the 2nd Amendment!) go to die.

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor's End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World is critical reading for anyone seeking to understand and push back against the far-right coalitions wielding considerable state and corporate power around the world.

Klein and Taylor posit that today's fascists believe that end times have arrived, and have made it their mission to profit from cascading global crises, while hunkering down and protecting themselves as the world burns around them.

The book details three factions of end times fascists, united by their shared apocalypticism. The religious fundamentalists believe end times are upon us, but they will be saved by their messiah. The Silicon Valley technologists are building technologies they say could be world-ending, that in the meantime are killing jobs, consuming vast resources, and polluting communities. The ethno-nationalists espouse conspiratorial ideas about cultural replacement and treat immigration as an existential threat.

DeSmog Canada editor/reporter Mary Stuart spoke with Astra Taylor about how climate change fits into end times fascism, the importance of AI data centre fights, and how we can understand Canadian Prime Minister Carney's neoliberal moves in response to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Taylor is a writer, documentarian, and activist. She co-founded the Debt Collective, a membership-based union for debtors, and is the author of several books, including The Age of Insecurity and Democracy May Not Exist But We'll Miss It When It is Gone.

This interview was conducted by phone and has been edited for length and clarity.

Mary Stuart: I want to start by asking how your book can help us understand some recent elections. Jair Bolsonaro's son Flávio won the first round of voting in Brazil's election and nearly became president. The far-right AfD recently won in Saxony-Anhalt. How do these wins fit into your analysis of end times fascism?

Astra Taylor: One phenomena we describe in End Times Fascism relevant here is the role of Pentecostal religious communities in turning out the vote. To paraphrase reporting from Brazil, a voter said "my heart's with Lula, but my pastor told me to vote for Flávio".

The incredibly difficult conditions that we're living under created fertile terrain for prophecy and religion, for kinds of pentecostalism, a faith that is focused on prosperity, individual advancement and banking on the idea that life is suffering here on earth, but you will be rewarded in the afterlife.

There's also interference from Tech oligarchs. We don't know the half of it at this moment, but the way the platform [Meta] refused to run ads for Lula's party and beyond is certainly a factor. And the Trump regime [is playing a role] as well.

AfD is a similar. Naomi and I wrote a piece in the Financial Times and we open with the images that went viral this summer of the Danube River drying, and Nazi warships emerging. Hundreds of Nazi warships sank during WWII, and as the river receded, this paraphernalia was coming out of the mud. We thought it was a powerful metaphor for today. What's really striking is the riverbed— the fact that it's drying because of climate change. Our point is that fascism always emerges from crises. And we cannot separate the ecological and economic crises people are facing.

People are really struggling with affordability. People are feeling that they don't have a future. And actually quite strikingly, rates of immigration are quite low, right? So [Saxony-Anhalt is] one of the places with the least immigration, but [the AfD] step in and say "the problem is the immigrants, it's not a larger economic system." This is a classic fascist move that we describe throughout the book.

MS: What role do climate change and climate denial play in end times fascism?

AT: Naomi and I are insistent that the planet is a player in our politics. Fascism always surges in moments of crisis.

We are in a world that is being roiled by disasters and shocks. We've reached a point where the consequences [of climate change] are undeniable. You cannot deny a heat dome when you're inside it. You cannot deny a hurricane when it's blowing the roof off your house. Of course, you can still deny why the storm is coming. You can embrace a Marjorie Taylor Greene perspective and say that it's due to space lasers or you can say "the climate has always chained, this is nothing new, we don't know if it's human causing it."

The far-right is adapting to circumstances … where ecological catastrophes are the norm, people can't pay their property insurance bills anymore because the rates have been jacked up or because the insurers have pulled out, or where people have to pay the cost of fixing their homes or moving because of disasters.

The far-right is having to acknowledge that there are fires, there are storms, that people are suffering. They're responding by deflecting, by saying, "don't blame the fossil fuel companies and the politicians who take their money, blame the globalists in the EU and their climate policies, or blame the immigrants".

We saw this really vividly after Hurricane Helene, a tropical storm that hit Appalachia. Trump and Elon Musk were going around saying "FEMA has no money for you because the Democrats spent it on immigrants." So they use the hurricane to advance the Great Replacement Conspiracy. It's an amazing pivot to go from a storm destroying tens of thousands of houses to say, "the problem is the globalists are importing immigrants to replace you". But it's working.

People have been warning for many years about ecofascism being the consequence of climate change. Ecofascism is the consequence of decades of denial, not just from the far-right, but by liberals who insisted that we could address this crisis through market policies that were doomed to fail.

It's absolutely criminally irresponsible to not talk about climate change right now because that will create a vacuum for this pivot from the real arsonists to the immigrant victims. And we need to insist on robust climate policies. Not just renewables. It's investments in care work and in all sorts of low carbon important initiatives. It needs to be at the centre of our politics.

There was a time when liberals could think people will stop denying climate change when they experience it firsthand. We're seeing that is not true. People in that state of vulnerability and shock are more susceptible to strongmen and scapegoating, and we need to be right there with a different plan and a different story.

MS: In the book you talk about a number of site fights and bright spots, one of them being the AI data centre backlash. What is the importance of AI data centre fights in defeating end times fascism? Can these fights be sites of expansion for movements to touch on other issues as well?

AT: The data centre fight is an amazing opportunity to weave together all of these issues that we know are interconnected. People aren't fighting data centres in their backyard for just one reason. They are fighting them because they care about their air and water, because they don't want a future where all the jobs are gone and every bit of economically valuable work, as OpenAI calls it, is performed by robots. It's also a democracy fight. These data centres are coming in under the cover of non-disclosure agreements, often with little input from even the city council and no input from the community.

But it's more than that. There's such intensive capital, like borrowing on capital markets right now. That's part of why interest rates are being jacked up around the world, which increases the cost of borrowing for ordinary people. Rates are going up, it's making homes more unaffordable. The fact that the population is buried by debt is a huge part of what drove Flávio Bolsonaro's surge in recent months.

All of these factors are compounding, and so it would be foolish for environmentalists not to intervene and try to connect those those dots. The data centre fight has to be connected to affordability.

MS: In Canada, our Prime Minister Mark Carney is a former investment banker who Naomi recently referred to as the 'paragon of liberalism'. He's privatizing key pieces of Canadian infrastructure, doubling down on fossil fuels, other extractive projects, and AI, while using the language of standing up to Trump. His approval ratings are incredibly high. How are we to understand this?

AT: Naomi might call him a paragon of liberalism. I call him Sir banks a lot. I don't trust bankers, especially those who are committed to the kind of neoliberalism and financialization that he's proposing.

It's dangerous to say "peer into the window, asset managers of the world. Canada has lots of resources that you can purchase and we have a healthcare system that can still be privatized and higher education system that still has some public funding that we could siphon off to the private sector."

These are the policies and conditions that created fertile terrain for the far-right. Carney does not seem to have learned that lesson. It was striking when he gave that speech at Davos, about there being a rupture. The world was so ready for Canada to lead, and to project onto that speech that he was actually standing up for true universalism and for international law.

Instead he's doing this nostalgic hyper-nationalist neoliberalism that isn't really nationalist, because it was reported by the the Toronto Star that the amount of money going to [the] American tech sector from the Department of National Defense has doubled in the last year. He's spending Canadian money to enrich the very companies that are behind Trump. You cannot fight oligarchy with oligarchy. You definitely can't fight fascism with oligarchy. You fight it with solidarity and with democratic socialism, with addressing the root crises.

People want to believe that this figure can protect them when the truth is protection is in building collective power and insisting on a deep economic and political transformation. What he's doing is incredibly dangerous. And the fact that he's rolling back already weak climate policies when Canada's main export is wildfire smoke, is just incredibly insulting and incredibly dangerous. The world needs Canada to stand firm against fascism.

MS: You talk about the power of stories, and detail the stories that the end times fascists are telling. What's a counter story that's been missing?

AT: In the book we talk about how we need to tell stories not of end times but of better times. We are entering a period where there are going to be roiling crises. We need to figure out how to live together well under these conditions.

I think we need stories that just remind us of how critical this fight is and that ground us in a love of this world. Naomi and I want stories that connect people to that, that remind people that we do live in a planetary paradise. It's worth defending.

Ultimately, the organizer in me says we need more than stories. I think it's incumbent on all of us to try to find a political home, to face the fact that fascism is not something that we can fight alone, we can only fight it together. If there's not something for you to join, where you live, then start something … It takes not just stories, but actions, however imperfect, however small, however inadequate, but when we all take them, it adds up.

End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World can be ordered in Canada, the U.S. And UK.

The post How the Far-Right Uses Climate Disasters to Build Political Power appeared first on DeSmog.

Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Elon Musk and His Doge Pals must finad and defeat the biggest threat to Western Civilization!

-> "Back in 2012 Bolling — noting that the comic was more widely read than ever yet generating less money than ever — started a subscription membership called The Inner Hive. — Read the rest

The post Tom the Dancing Bug: Elon Musk and His Doge Pals hunt down the threat to Western Civilization appeared first on Boing Boing.

It feels like AI is coming for everybody's jobs, but especially for phone scammers. Thanks to the availability of consumer AI, anyone in any call center anywhere can throw up a decently convincing-sounding AI agent to fleece people out of their money with no effort required. — Read the rest

The post Bankrupting scammers is surprisingly easy appeared first on Boing Boing.

Keep your Cyberpunks or your Fallout 76es: when it comes to launch disasters, No Man's Sky remains the undisputed champion, which I'm not sure is something to be proud of. Something Hello Games can be proud of, however, is its continued and intensive effort to raise the game above its buggy, barebones launch state with more than a decade of constant updates. — Read the rest

The post Somehow, No Man's Sky is still getting updates appeared first on Boing Boing.

Would you trust a detox facility that offers a minibar in every room? How about a climate course sponsored by ExxonMobil? If not, you might direct the same incredulity towards Canada's recently unveiled Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, endorsed by tech giants that are implicated in violating those same principles. 

Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon announced the voluntary and non-binding principles in September in response to mounting public opposition to massive data centre developments. It is hardly encouraging that the same companies leading the disruptive build out of massive data centres, such as Amazon, Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic, quickly signed on to this toothless commitment. 

"Data centres must protect ratepayers, respect water and energy resources, and create lasting benefits for the communities that host them," assured Solomon at the launch in September. "These principles set a clear national standard: If you build in Canada, you must build responsibly and transparently and you must build for Canadians."

Really?

Barely three weeks after these companies pledged to Canadians to be "transparent about local impacts," the U.S. House Judiciary Committee opened an investigation into Amazon, Google, and Meta for using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to gag state and local officials from telling their constituents about data centre impacts on local water supplies and electricity rates.

"Google's own confidentiality agreements have been shown to contain language that explicitly prevents local officials from disclosing 'the terms of any agreement,'" ranking member Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote in a letter to Google's parent company Alphabet.

For over a year, the company fought a local newspaper in Oregon in the courts to keep its Dalles data centre's water consumption hidden, arguing the figure was a "trade secret." When the courts finally forced the release of this essential information, it was revealed  that Google was using a quarter of the entire city's water. A company that litigates to hide its water use from the residents of one small town is now asking Canadians to trust its promise of transparency here.

A Meta subsidiary in Louisiana likewise convinced Republican Gov. Jeff Landry to sign an NDA tied to a $50 billion data centre campus. Over 100 Louisiana state public officials signed similar gag orders that apparently silence them even if they leave government. Eric Holl, an adviser to former Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, told the Gulf States Newsroom, "I don't see this being used as anything other than a tool of intimidation and control."

Citizens in Wisconsin were also forced to sue the local utility regulator to release documents detailing the projected energy demand of a proposed Meta data centre after this basic information was also deemed a trade secret.

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The impacts of enormous AI facilities on American communities are well known. The consequences being visited on Canadian towns and residents are concerning to say the least.

The principles say centres must reduce environmental impacts, and prioritize "low-emission energy sources." Yet a contentious data centre development in Saskatchewan proposed by Bell Canada - also a signatory to Minister Solomon's principles - would require as much generating capacity as the entire city of Regina. About 900 megawatts (MW) of its power will come from behind-the-fence gas generation. The Regina City Council recently debated the development for over seven hours and voted to demand more information on potential impacts on local water supplies and electricity costs. A total of 18,000 residents have signed a petition opposing the project.

Beacon Data Centers is another signatory, which stated it is "proud to stand with governments, municipalities, and industry in supporting them." Yet the company is embroiled in a bitter dispute with residents of Lorneville, New Brunswick, who are understandably opposed to the company's plans to fill in a local wetland to expand an industrial park with a data centre that will require more than 10 percent of provincial energy demand. The data centre would become one of New Brunswick's biggest emitters, generating 6.6 percent of provincial emissions.

According to reporting from the Narwhal, "documents obtained through provincial access to information legislation … show provincial officials were in discussions to bring a data centre to the [industrial] park long before residents were told about the tenant — and that details of that data centre conflicted with the more low-impact vision for the industrial park advertised to residents."

DeSmog has already documented the massive buildout of data centres in Alberta, almost entirely powered by burning natural gas. Almost 21 GW of potential new gas capacity is enthusiastically being embraced by provincial regulators, an amount described as "absurdly high" by Alex de Vries  at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Based on similar gas-fired installations around the world, de Vries estimated this amount of new data centres would require about 200 billion litres in cooling water each year. How is this not supposed to impact local electricity rates, heating costs, or water supplies?

This absurd increase in climate-killing gas consumption seems, in fact, to be the point. Internal Privy Council documents obtained by DeSmog from Greenpeace showed that increased gas demand was being touted by senior advisors to Prime Minister Mark Carney as one of the top "public policy benefits to Canada" of data centres.

Bringing "strategic value to Canada" is another vague goal of the newly announced data centre principles. If this is meant to allude to protecting Canadian data sovereignty, building facilities owned by Google, Meta, Amazon or other tech giants will accomplish very little. The U.S. government can compel an American company that controls data - regardless of location - to release it to American regulators under the CLOUD Act (2018). 

Regardless of the law, many of the enthusiastic corporate endorsers of Canada's new data centre principles have repeatedly demonstrated their obedient political fealty to the Trump administration. Tech leaders attended his inauguration, donated vast sums of money to the Trump campaign, and indulged the president's geographic fits of pique by rapidly renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America" on Google and Apple maps. 

With this cohort driving Canada's tech build-out, what could possibly go wrong?

Canadians are justifiably concerned data centres will impact local water supplies and electricity costs. We need bold policies that will improve digital safety and address increasing democratic threats from AI-driven disinformation. Rather than bringing in meaningful and enforceable regulations, the federal government has instead trotted out vague platitudes endorsed by the same companies contributing to the problem. Ottawa, we have a credibility problem.

The post Canada's 'Responsible' Data Centre Principles Have a Credibility Problem appeared first on DeSmog.

It's a few years behind schedule, but development has resumed on the desktop edition of Canonical's existing immutable IoT distro, Ubuntu Core.

Engineering veep Jon Seager announced that Canonical is Accelerating Ubuntu Core Desktop on the company's Discourse forum. Even before his announcement, there was some fresh activity on the project's GitHub.

The post gives some explanation of why the effort is running so late, envisions three potential use cases, and talks a little about the work that is already going on to enable it to finally happen. There's no solid timeline given, but Seager says that "over the coming release cycle" the team will be working out what needs to happen, which means that "over the coming weeks, we'll have the infrastructure ready for… daily image builds for Ubuntu Core Desktop."

"Accelerating" sounds good, but with the best will in the world, it could hardly slow it down. In mid-2023 it looked like Desktop Ubuntu Core would arrive in 2024, and at that year's Ubuntu Summit in Rīga, Latvia, it revealed more details. At the 2024 Summit, there was a talk about a KDE version - but no release. At the 2025 Summit, the Reg FOSS desk interviewed Seager and "Where's Core Desktop?" was our first question.

The three roles his post discusses are the "browser-centric machine", a "developer workstation," and a "gaming machine." For this vulture, these goals imply two separate things. In general, this seems to indicate that it's wary of making something too specialized early on, then finding that it's not versatile enough for more challenging roles.

Secondly, we think that the company is thinking of three specific niches that rival immutable distros have occupied successfully for years. Right now, the "browser-centric" one is filled by ChromeOS and ChromeOS Flex. We use Flex - it's pretty good, even if its days are now numbered due to the new Android-based GooglebookOS.

Secondly, Fedora's Atomic editions have been around for years now - The Register first mentioned Fedora Kinoite well over five years ago. As well as Fedoras's own versions, there are also community-led distros based on the same tech, called Universal Blue. We've tried several, and while for now they offer nothing much this vulture wants, they undeniably work and they have happy users. Fedora's marketing aims at developers, and an immutable distro with containerized environments on top is harder to accidentally break with crashy work-in-progress code.

Thirdly, the games-machine niche is owned by Valve's SteamOS. Although it is native to the Steam Deck - and if you're among the lucky few, the Steam Machine and Steam Frame - you are also free to run this on your own AMD-based kit.

All three of these product families have been well-established for between five to ten years now. Canonical is lagging behind, and this is a subtle acknowledgement that it knows who the leaders are. We didn't doubt that he knows his stuff - a year ago, Seager's blog post about The Immutable Linux Paradox went into the differences in depth.

The delay in delivering an immutable desktop is not for lack of immutable-distro technology: Canonical's had that for years. It announced Ubuntu Core 16 a decade ago, and when we tried Ubuntu Core, that was the fourth release.

Seager's post identifies some of the problems that have delayed its Core Desktop. One is that the 2023 preview required its own, specially modified version of the base core22 snap. Obviously, the company would prefer that it was based on the existing Core distro.

He also points to some essential underlying tech that is not obvious. He mentions that the Snap Store already has over 11,000 packages, but notes that many still use weak "classic" confinement - such as VS Code. This is a problem for Core, which requires strict confinement. He also notes some less-obvious things that need to work first, including smartphone-style permissions prompting, inter-snap dependencies, content snaps and snap components.

Some of the plans are ambitious, but in good ways. He discusses the need for modularity in the desktop snap packages, so that Core Desktop won't be restricted to only GNOME. This means isolating the display manager (that is, the login screen) from the desktop, and the desktop from the browser. Here, he gives a nod to external consultancy enioka Haute Couture for its work on KDE snaps.

It's still much too easy to break any ordinary desktop Linux distro. In this vulture's extensive personal experience, the Btrfs filesystem is especially vulnerable. In four years of daily-driving a Btrfs-based distro in the 20-teens, we saw more crashes due to corrupted Btrfs volumes than in the previous two decades. However, all the vendors of Btrfs-based OSes are resolute in their denial about its real problems, which means they never get fixed. SteamOS and KDE Linux both use dual read-only Btrfs partitions, which update one another ChromeOS-style. This may be the only way to battle-harden this problematic filesystem. Canonical, on the other hand, offers integrated OpenZFS. We've been using ZFS since before the COVID pandemic, and it has yet to lose a single byte of data for us.

There are still blockers before Canonical can deliver a versatile, modular, desktop version of its existing immutable OS, but it's having another go. It's about time, and there is some new hope that we may start to see previews in the Ubuntu 27.04 timeframe. ®

America's national laboratories are leading a consortium to move advanced battery storage technologies from the lab into domestic manufacturing.

Dubbed the Battery Manufacturing Accelerator, or BattMan (no, really), the initiative aims to bring together a bunch of national laboratories, universities, and companies to overcome barriers in scaling up new battery technologies.

Novel battery storage solutions are needed for applications in the electric grid, datacenters, and electric vehicles, as electrification gradually extends across industry.

Batteries have a far lower energy density than fuels such as petroleum, so the hunt for better materials never stops. Researchers also want to improve on the safety of flammable lithium-ion cells, cut production costs, speed up charging, and reduce reliance on scarce raw materials.

"The advances we make today in battery manufacturing technology will determine America's energy security and economic competitiveness for decades to come," said Audrey Robertson, assistant secretary of Energy at the Department of Energy (DoE), which is overseeing the program.

Researchers continue to develop new battery materials and chemistries, yet many promising technologies face obstacles on the way from the laboratory to commercial production. According to the DoE, BattMan will tackle that problem by combining super intelligence - known outside of the Trump administration as AI - with advanced manufacturing into a coordinated, data-driven innovation ecosystem.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory leads the consortium, along with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and National Laboratory of the Rockies. Academic partners include the University of Washington, Binghamton University, University of Alabama, Arizona State University, and University of Michigan-Dearborn.

The accelerator is also building ties with battery and materials manufacturers, and hopes to sidestep critical minerals supply problems by finding battery materials among more abundant, domestically sourced elements.

ORNL is contributing its Battery Manufacturing Facility (BMF) R&D center and plans a smart test bed with advanced sensing, real-time monitoring, and data analysis to trial both wet and dry electrode manufacturing.

BattMan will also introduce autonomous pilot lines that combine sensing, process monitoring and intelligent control systems to improve product quality and reduce variability in the manufacturing process. The goal is an AI-based manufacturing platform that spots production irregularities as they occur and adjusts parameters on its own to prevent defects.

"The BattMan Accelerator is exactly the kind of coordinated national effort that turns scientific breakthroughs into economic and energy security advantages," claimed distinguished R&D staff member Chins Chinnasamy, the consortium lead for ORNL.

Organizations interested in becoming part of BattMan can visit the program website to learn more. ®

A major US federal agency has repeatedly left sensitive information in its Google Drive accessible to employees and contractors who had no legitimate business need to see it, and auditors aren't happy.

The General Services Administration (GSA), which handles contracting, procurement, property management, and other elements of basic operations for federal agencies, has faced repeated findings of inadequate protection for controlled unclassified information (CUI) since at least 2014, according to a report from the agency's Office of Inspector General. Again.

Controlled unclassified information, in the US federal government's parlance, is information that isn't classified but requires protection or restrictions on its distribution under applicable laws, regulations, or government-wide policies. Access is generally limited to individuals with a legitimate government need to know. According to the OIG report, that can include things like physical security info for government buildings, personally identifiable information (PII) of government employees, and proprietary business information, all of which the GSA has left exposed.

According to the report published this week, employees and contractors have approximately 2.5 million documents stored in GSA's Google Drive.

"During a limited search of GSA's Google Drive, we found 116 files containing CUI that were improperly shared with all GSA users," the report notes. That's a limited search, mind you, and the OIG has plenty of reason to believe there's more than just that sitting open for anyone with access to the GSA's Google Drive instance to sneak a look at.

The OIG said that GSA is failing to properly manage the third-party tool it has in place to prevent data loss and detect CUI exposures, with annual reviews of search terms incomplete or undocumented, many relevant search terms not implemented, and a failure to enable an available optical character recognition feature that could help detect CUI in scanned documents. Additionally, the GSA was apparently "unaware of the tool's file size limitation of 15 megabytes," meaning that even if the GSA was properly using that tool, some large files would still be skipped.

"We also found that GSA lacks: (1) an approval process for properly sharing sensitive information and (2) a standard naming convention that could more effectively prevent exposures of CUI in GSA's Google Drive," the OIG added.

As for what was exposed … it's not great.

According to the audit, site plans for buildings in Washington, DC were part of the improperly access-controlled files, with data that includes entrances and screening techniques, as well as the location of sensitive areas, like gun lockers. A progressive collapse analysis that "describes the building's collapse vulnerabilities, defense vulnerabilities, and critical failure locations" was also exposed.

PII of government individuals was also exposed, including social security numbers, addresses, dates of birth, and contact information. Proprietary business information was also exposed, "including proprietary research and vendor proposals with technical and pricing information."

This might not have been publicly accessible, but it's still a shocking lapse of data control, especially given that contractors with access to the GSA's Google Drive could potentially view proprietary information belonging to competing vendors, giving them an unfair advantage if they used it.

To make matters worse, this isn't the first time the GSA has been dinged by its own inspector general for such lousy data protection practices. According to the report, it was 2014 when the OIG first spotted such bad habits.

"In August 2014, we first reported that GSA did not protect sensitive information on child care centers, courthouses, water sources, building automation systems, and security and fire alarm systems in its Google cloud computing environment," the OIG noted. "We issued additional reports citing concerns regarding GSA's ability to protect sensitive information in its Google environment between 2015 and 2017."

Auditors flagged another set of improperly shared Google Drive files in April 2025. While the GSA's chief information officer agreed with the auditors' seven recommendations to fix the problems, the report doesn't establish whether the corrective work has been completed. We reached out to the GSA and the OIG's office for an update, but didn't hear back from either. ®

Army Of Darkness Wins Overall WERA Endurance Four-Hour Race at Barber Motorsports Park, Clinching 25th National Championship

Army Of Darkness Riders Taylor Knapp, Gabriel Da Silva, and Chuck Ivey used Dunlop tires to good effect, winning the October WERA Endurance four-hour race at Barber Motorsports Park by over seven laps. Taylor seized the lead from the green flag and laid down a relentlessly fast pace. Backed up by the flawless pit stops of the AOD crew, Gabriel and Chuck continued to lap faster than any other team all the way to the checkered flag.

The victory was AOD's 10th win in a row, marking a winning streak that has now extended across three seasons and seeing them clinch both the 2026 Overall and Heavyweight Endurance championships.

Crew Chief Tim Gooding breathed a sigh of relief and observed: "I'm always worried that we missed something - some part that is about to wear out, a fastener that broke its safety wire yearning to be free - but fortunately we keep finding the issue that would cost us the race BEFORE we take the start rather than chasing after it under a green flag."

Taylor commented: "The bike looks unusual and it does take a little bit of getting used to but, at the end of the day, it's really good. The data said I was leaning it to 57 degrees and was spending 6.6 seconds a lap past 54 degrees. And that's on the hardest tires Dunlop has to offer!"

Gabriel Da Silva noted: "Captain Sam had said that endurance racing is about being able to go fast at the end of the stint. I didn't really appreciate what that meant until the pit board is telling you there are 30 minutes left in your stint and it's 100 degrees F! This crew puts in so much effort that it gives us the confidence to ride hard, and I had to redouble my physical training to be able to push for that last fifteen minutes of each stint."

Chuck Ivey reminisced: "I remember going to the racetrack as a novice and seeing the skull and cross pistons and the Army Of Darkness T-shirt and thinking, "Who are these guys?" Over the years we became friends and I was so happy to join them in their championship defense this year. They really aren't that dark. We go get ice cream if we win the race. 'Only winners get ice cream' is as dark as they get."

AOD is sponsored by Dunlop Tires, Hindle, Stick Boy Racing, Vortex, Thermosman, Champ School, Woodcraft, Industry 13, WERA, and Roadracing World.

The post Army Of Darkness Wins WERA Endurance 4-Hour At Barber appeared first on Roadracing World Magazine | Motorcycle Riding, Racing & Tech News.

The UK government has announced that standing charges will be removed from gas bills and that it intends to also remove them from electricity bills. Standing charges are a fixed fee paid by every household, regardless of how much they use. Under the proposed change, the costs they cover would instead be covered through unit rates, thereby ensuring that the costs are spread more fairly among those using more or less gas.

The budget also extends a temporary suspension of VAT on electricity and introduces a one-off payment of £100 to households in council tax bands A-D. Together, these measures might shave around £130 off the average annual energy bill for struggling households.

In principle, this announcement is welcome. But with energy bills expected to increase by £400 annually from January, these measures raise a bigger question: how should Britain pay for the energy system transformation away from fossil fuels? What if more of the costs were covered through taxation rather than bills?

Energy bills don't just reflect the cost of supplying electricity and gas. They also include "policy costs", which fund the greening of the energy system (around 60%) and support for vulnerable households (40%).

These costs add around £300 a year to the average household bill, accounting for around 16% of a typical electricity bill and 6% of a typical gas bill, according to research by Nesta.

Recovering these costs through electricity bills is a political choice that made more sense when electricity generation was mainly coal-fired and highly polluting. Now that the share of renewables is increasing steadily, we should reconsider how these policy costs are paid. Policy costs have roughly doubled in the past decade, making electricity relatively more expensive than gas, which slows the shift to electrified heating and transport.

The government has already taken steps towards shifting costs from bills to taxation.

In its 2025 autumn statement, the government moved 75% of the costs of the Renewables Obligation - an old policy support mechanism for renewable energy - into general taxation. It also disbanded a flagship but discredited home insulation scheme entirely. This was expected to lower bills by around £150 per year, before geopolitical turmoil pushed prices up again.

The latest budget provides a further example of this approach. Alongside the announcement to remove standing charges from bills, ministers have scrapped a planned levy on gas bills to fund hydrogen projects, deciding instead to pay for them through government funding.

The UK's official advisory Climate Change Committee has also recommended removing policy levies from electricity bills to make electricity cheaper and accelerate electrification.

Energy UK, the industry's main trade body, has gone further, arguing for shifting policy costs off electricity and onto a mix of taxation and gas bills. This would make gas relatively more expensive, encouraging electrification and renewable energy.

Other groups, including parts of the chemical industry, warn that raising gas prices could make the industry less competitive by significantly raising industrial costs.

In principle, shifting costs from bills to taxation moves money between largely the same people. However, the distributional effects are different.

Instead of a flat fee on everyone's bill, a tax-funded system would be "progressive". This means the more you earn, the more you contribute.

By contrast, the current system of levies - with a fixed charge added to everyone's energy bill - is "regressive". Because those charges are the same for everyone, they take a much larger chunk out of a low-income household's budget than a wealthy one's.

This means poorer households not only spend a greater share of their income on energy, but many of the green subsidies funded by the levies - such as support for electric vehicles or heat pumps - disproportionately benefit wealthier households.

But why stop there? Analysts at the New Economics Foundation, a thinktank, argue for funding a basic level of energy use through taxation. The taxpayer would keep your lights on and your fridge running, but you'd think twice before charging your electric vehicle in the more expensive peak hours.

Thinktank E3G's work suggests this could cut household bills by around £300 a year, at a cost of £10-11 billion per year to 2030. Some of this could potentially be covered by higher tax revenues from oil and gas companies during periods of high prices, the thinktank argues.

It would be an intervention on a similar scale to the £40 billion the UK government spent on subsiding bills during the 2022-23 energy crisis sparked by Russia's invasion of the Ukraine.

Another option is a rising block tariff, in which energy use is divided into tiers, or "blocks", and households pay progressively more as their usage increases. Its proponents suggest block tariffs can make energy more affordable while aligning with wider decarbonisation goals.

In practice, however, these tariffs are likely to be regressive, since people on lower incomes are more likely to live in poorly-insulated homes and rely on less efficient electric night storage heating.

The government can do little to influence the effect of geopolitical uncertainty on energy prices, and drilling in the North Sea will do nothing to lower household bills. What it can do is change how those prices are passed on to consumers.

Shifting policy costs to taxation is already under way. But maybe the time is right for a minimum or essential energy use supported through taxation. It is not a simple solution, and many trade-offs need to be considered, but an unprecedented shock to energy markets requires an unprecedented response.

Colin Nolden researches sustainable energy and climate governance at the intersection of markets, policy, places, and people. He is currently funded by the Energy Demand Research Centre (EDRC). Colin also works as a specialist advisor of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, as an expert peer-reviewer for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and as a non-executive director of Community Energy Pathways.

Ireland's Naas substation shows why flexible batteries and loads must match the location, timing and operating conditions of grid constraints.

The post Ireland's Grid Flexibility Assessment Shows Why Location Matters appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The historian and writer Thaddeus Russell has a new book out, Savior and Seducer: A Renegade History of the United States in the World, and as Robert Anton Wilson was interested in World War II revisionism, I thought the book might be of interest to sombunall of you. 

"The Case Against the 'Good War' Still Stands," the latest issue of Russell's Substack newsletter, written as a rebuttal to a bad review, outlines Russell's arguments about World War II.

"In the book's World War II chapters ... I argue that American policy under Franklin Roosevelt transformed two regional wars, one in eastern Europe and the other in eastern Asia, into a global conflict that killed more than sixty-five million people. I also argue that American intervention ensured the fulfillment of the Holocaust," Russell writes.

"...much of the book's discussion of World War II is devoted to Hitler's ideology, which always included commitment to conquering all of Poland and western Russia for Lebensraum ('living space'). He claimed these territories as part of a 'Greater Germany' once inhabited by Teutonic peoples whom he regarded as ancestors of modern Germans. This was racial imperialism, to be sure. But as I also show, it was an imperialism that ended in eastern Europe.

"Hitler had for decades written and spoken extensively about his lack of interest in colonies outside Greater Germany, hoped for an alliance with Britain and the United States, and, according to virtually every historian of the Third Reich, invaded the West in the spring of 1940 only as a defensive measure to secure Germany's western flank before advancing eastward."

Russell also contends, "American moves toward war through 1941 eliminated the Jews' usefulness to Hitler as hostages against intervention while immigration restrictions blocked their escape. Whether the extermination decision came in the spring or fall of that year, I interpret this reversal of the emigration policy as a response to America's de facto entry into the war. This is the basis for my argument that the six million would have lived had the United States stayed out of the war."

I don't know what to make of all this. I've put the book on hold at my local library. 

I left home with a carry-on suitcase full of clothing two months ago, which means heavy rotation for what I'm wearing. I've been especially happy with the Merino.Tech polo shirt I got as a birthday present earlier this year: it doesn't get stinky, or wrinkled, or itchy and it still looks new. I'm a fan of more expensive brands like Ibex and Icebreaker, but at $60 on Amazon, this one is punching above its price tag.

If you've been sitting on some hotel points that don't seem to get you much in the USA, Canada, or Europe, you might want to plan your next vacation to some destination where you can do better. Since point requirements roughly track room rates for most programs now, you can find great deals in bargain destinations. I recently scored two nights at a Small Luxury Hotel of the World in Malaysia for 50K points total via Hilton. (Their Surpass card from Amex is a great deal.) The 50K cap on the free nights credits from a Marriott Bonvoy card was no problem: a Westin on a tropical island, with a terrific view, was only 35K points per night. Same with IHG in Saigon for my annual free night through their card. I've found similar points bargains from Mexico down to Santiago in the Americas.

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If you're renting a car frequently in the USA, you might want to lean toward Enterprise and their associated brands. The latest JD Power & Associates survey scored Enterprise at the top, with sister brand National scoring second and its leisure brand Alamo coming in at #4. The others to score above the industry average were Advantage, Sixt, and Hertz.

International flight prices are all over the map, but distance does play a big part in it: you'll pay more to fly across an ocean usually than to go two hours away. For flights within a country though, it's more about competition. Some countries have lots of cheap flights criss-crossing their nation, while others have one choice only. I just posted this article on countries with the cheapest domestic flights and found that distances and wealth have very little correlation. You will find great flight deals in India, Thailand, and Mexico, but also in Japan, Norway, Australia, and the USA.

* Editor's note: We're going to release The Best of Nomadico, the First 4 Years e-book in November and paid subscribers will get it for free. We're also going to start restricting some content to subscribers only, so if you've just been lurking on the app, please join us for real as a free or paid subscriber if you like what you see here. We appreciate it!

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World's Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

This report belongs to a weekly series summarising the Covid situation across the UK's home nations and other countries.

Thanks for reading Seeing The Forest for the Trees! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This week's report highlights the latest trends in respiratory illness activity across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It also shares provides details on recent Covid activity for selected countries in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Charts for the USA will be updated on Friday, Oct 30 to reflect the latest published data.

This week, Covid trends in the UK show a mixed picture. In England, most indicators fell slightly, suggesting the risk stays low and isn't growing. In Scotland, all indicators increased slightly, with overall activity now at a medium level. Wales continues to see slow increases, with levels sitting at moderate. In Northern Ireland, the data is mixed, but activity remains low.

In England, most key indicators for Covid fell slightly this week indicating a lower risk of Covid. Positivity rates for all tests carried are falling at a national level as well as in most regions. After rising earlier than previous years, Flu test positivity in England has stabilised and is returning to a more normal seasonal pattern.

All key Covid indicators in Scotland increased slightly this week and overall are now at medium levels of activity. Flu levels are rising earlier than previous years,

This week, Covid admissions in Wales again increased and are now at moderate levels, while Flu and RSV hospitalisations remained stable and low.

In Northern Ireland, Covid indicators presented a mixed picture but activity remained low. All indicators for Flu increased but remained at low levels of activity.

Covid levels in wastewater continue to increase slowly this week across most European countries still reporting data, but overall they are still relatively low apart from France which has moderate levels.

For the week ending Oct 17, Covid activity in the USA is likely falling slowly with hospital indicators falling. While wastewater levels remaining unchanged at a moderate level, most states are still seeing low levels overall. Meanwhile, Flu activity continues to rise.

Covid levels remain low in Hong Kong and Singapore, but Flu levels are still high.

The UK's Autumn 2026 Covid Booster campaign started on Oct 1 and details of who is is eligible and how to arrange a vaccination can be found at the following links - England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

By week four of the campaign, vaccine coverage in England had climbed to 42% for people aged 75 and above, and 18% for those who are immunosuppressed. At present, coverage remains lower across the other home nations.

Free Flu vaccinations for those eligible are also available from Oct 1, 2026. Further details can be found at the following links - England, Scotland (invitation letter required), Wales, and Northern Ireland.

As always, it's important to remember that the risk of hospitalisation from Covid increases significantly with age and for the clinically vulnerable. Therefore, it is important to take appropriate measures such as self-isolating when experiencing Covid symptoms and enhancing ventilation or wearing masks whenever possible.

UKHSA have moved to publishing the Flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports fortnightly over the summer so data is only available from the Covid Dashboard this week.

This section starts with the latest data on test positivity rates for Covid in England. It's important to note that positivity is different from prevalence, which reflects the overall percentage of Covid cases in the general population. Appendix 1 offers a more detailed explanation of the distinction.

The following chart shows the test positivity rate for all Covid tests taken mapped against the UKHSA activity thresholds. The thresholds are based on the historical trend for Covid test positivity and, consequently, represent a relative risk. More details on this approach can be found in the Guide to Covid Surveillance Metrics.

The chart shows that the test positivity rate has started to fall, but is still at a low activity level. The rate remains highest at 11.1% for those aged 85 and above, then falls to just 1.9% for individuals aged 5 to 14 years.

The next chart shows that positivity rates for all tests carried out differ between regions. While most regions experienced a fall in test positivity rates, the North East continues to rise fast. Nevertheless, all regions stayed at a low level of activity apart from London which is now has the lowest rate, just within the baseline level of activity. Rates are holding steady in the North West, East Midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humberside.

The following chart highlights the key indicators of Covid in hospitals: weekly visits to Emergency Departments, test positivity rates among patients with respiratory issues, hospital admission and intensive care rates.

This week, hospital indicators for Covid activity again showed a mixed picture but remained relatively low. While test positivity and Emergency Department visits remained broadly unchanged, hospital and intensive care admissions continued to rise slowly.

The next chart in this section compares the positivity rate for hospital patients for the main respiratory viruses. Covid positivity rates fell slightly, while Flu rates stayed the same, with both still at low activity levels. The Rhinovirus rate fell slightly but stayed at the medium activity level. Meanwhile, RSV remains at out of season levels but is starting to increase.

However, the final chart in this section shows that although Flu rates for this year started rising earlier than in previous years they are now returning to a more normal seasonal pattern.

Public Health Scotland has now returned to publishing the Viral Respiratory Diseases in Scotland surveillance report weekly.

The latest edition, published on Oct 29, reported that indicators of respiratory infections are rising slowly, typical for this time in the season.

Flu activity has increased slightly this week, with laboratory confirmed cases activity level moving from baseline to low overall. This increase is reflected by a 40% increase in the number of influenza hospital admissions, which are higher than at the same period in previous seasons.

Covid activity has increased marginally across laboratory surveillance, moving from low to medium activity overall. Increased activity for Covid has also been observed at GPs for a second week. There has been a slight increase in the number of Covid hospital admissions.

The following panel chart presents the latest data for Covid levels in wastewater in blue, weekly Covid test positivity shown in red, Covid hospital admissions depicted in orange, and beds occupied by Covid patients in brown.

All key Covid indicators in Scotland increased slightly this week and overall are now at medium levels of activity. However it remains likely that this wave may be smaller than earlier ones.

The next chart in this section compares the test positivity rates for hospital patients with respiratory symptoms for Covid, Flu, and RSV. Covid positivity rates increased to 6.5% from 5.5% in the previous week, while RSV rates remained below baseline levels. Flu rates rose slightly and remain higher than for Covid.

The final chart in this section shows that hospital admissions for Flu are higher than at the same time in previous years, indicating an early start to the Flu season this year.

The following chart provides the latest trend for weekly hospital admissions for the main respiratory viruses in Wales up to week ending Oct 25, 2026.

Hospital admissions for Covid have increased over the past few weeks but remain at moderate levels.

The weekly Weekly Surveillance Report showed that test positivity increased to 11.6% in hospitals and GP practices for week ending Oct 25, 2026. Finally, the report confirmed that Flu circulation remains at low levels, while Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is holding steady at baseline intensity.

Public Health Northern Ireland's respiratory surveillance report covering Covid activity has now returned to being published weekly. The latest report covers data through to the week ending Oct 25, 2026 and the chart below highlights the test positivity rates for Covid, Flu, and RSV.

Test positivity was highest among the 5-14 age group for Flu (22.5%), the 0-4 age group for RSV (7.8%), and the 75+ age group for Covid (9.3%).

Overall, Flu activity has increased across all surveillance indicators but still remains low. Covid activity showed a more mixed trend across surveillance indicators and remains low. RSV activity also remained at baseline levels although some surveillance indicators have increased.

This section looks at the latest Covid trends in Europe and examines how wastewater patterns align with prevalence and hospital data in selected countries.

The following chart shows the latest levels of Covid up to week ending Oct 22, 2026 as measured by monitoring wastewater in a number of European countries that still publish this information.

This week, Covid levels in wastewater increased in most European countries still sharing this data but remained relatively low apart from in France which is at moderate levels.

Wastewater levels are not the only measures of Covid activity published by these countries and it is valuable to see how well the wastewater trends compare to the other key indicators.

Wastewater levels in Germany and France, when compared with hospital trends, show similar patterns. Interestingly, the Netherlands stands out as the only country in Europe that shares data on Covid prevalence in the population through a weekly survey, which also aligns closely with wastewater trends.

The two charts on the left show Germany's wastewater trends compared to their Covid hospital admissions, while the charts in the middle display France's wastewater levels against the percentage of Emergency Department visits due to Covid. The two charts on the right show waste water levels in the Netherland and the estimated prevalence of Covid in the population based on the weekly survey.

The latest data shows that Covid activity continues to rise slowly in Germany, France and the Netherlands across both sets of measures, confirming that Covid wastewater trends are a reliable indicator of Covid activity.

This section provides details of Covid activity in USA and Canada.

Charts for the USA will be updated on Friday, Oct 30 to reflect the latest information.

As of the week ending Oct 17, 2026, Covid indictors of activity in the USA present a mixed picture. While hospital indicators show falling levels of activity that are low, wastewater activity levels remained at moderate levels. While the risk remains low in most states, those in the Southeast and West are showing higher levels of activity.

The following chart shows the weekly trend for the national key Covid indicators covering wastewater activity levels, percent of emergency department visits due to Covid, test positivity, and the hospital admission rate in the USA.

The panel chart shows that the hospital indicators of Covid activity have continued to fall in the week ending Oct 17, 2026, and are at relatively low levels. However, although Covid levels in wastewater were stable they remained at moderate levels although this may be due to the addition of new testing sites.

While Covid levels are likely falling, Flu activity is increasing earlier than in past years, though it remains at low levels, as illustrated in the following chart.

The next chart shows the Covid trends by state as estimated by the CDC for Oct 20, 2026. Most States are showing a declining trend, depicted in green, or no change as highlighted in grey. This week, only 10 states are showing a likely growing or growing trend, marked in orange or red, just like last week. All states have low or very low levels of Emergency Department visits for Covid.

A reminder that the trend represents the direction of activity only and does not indicate the level of activity. Consequently, this map should be used in conjunction with other data like the percent of Emergency Department visits due to Covid.

States marked with vertical bars have low percent of visits to Emergency Departments (ED) for Covid and those marked with horizontal bars have very low percent of visits. More details information is available by hovering your cursor over any State.

The final map for the USA presents wastewater analysis for week ending Oct 17, 2026 presents a contrasting picture. While Wastewater activity levels for Covid are low in many States, several are showing high or very high activity levels. For example, wastewater activity levels in Florida remain very high, whereas Emergency Department visits for Florida are low and falling.

Each State is coloured based on activity levels, ranging from very high (dark red) to very low (light green), with grey indicating no data available. States with increasing activity levels are marked with cross-hatching. It is important to understand that the wastewater activity level is relative to the lowest levels seen in the past two years. Consequently, it is not a fixed absolute scale across all years. It is primarily a measure of how current wastewater viral levels compare with recent low levels in that State.

Activity levels are low in most States but are higher in some States in the West and Southeast regions.

In Canada, data for the week ending Oct 10, 2026, shows that Covid wastewater levels stayed at moderate levels, although levels in the western provinces are higher. Flu A activity is starting to rise and is now at a moderate level.

The weekly Canadian respiratory virus surveillance report provides further details on the activity of respiratory viruses. The latest report, covering data through the week ending Oct 17, 2026, indicates that Flu activity has continued to rise earlier than normally expected. Flu test positivity has reached 6.5%, surpassing the seasonal threshold of 5%, marking the official start of the Flu season. Meanwhile, test positivity for Covid and RSV remains stable and at low activity levels.

This section provides the latest information on Covid and Flu activity levels in Hong Kong and Singapore.

The following chart displays the key Covid indicators for Hong Kong up to the week ending Oct 24, 2026. Although Covid levels in wastewater samples increased in July, the latest hospital surveillance data shows that the overall local activity of Covid has fallen to very low levels and the recent wave is over.

However, Flu presents a very different picture and the following chart shows that the Flu levels in Hong Kong are presently very high.

The next chart presents the weekly Covid positivity rate for tests carried out on patients with respiratory symptoms in Singapore up to week ending Oct 10, 2026. It shows that Covid activity peaked in May, consistent with the previous two years, and has now fallen to low levels.

However, although Flu activity is falling in Singapore it remains moderately high, similar to Hong Kong.

The NHS Autumn Covid booster campaign started on October 1, 2026. People aged 75 years and older, residents in care homes for older people, and those aged 6 months and over with a weakened immune system will be offered a dose of the Covid vaccine this spring. These are same criteria used for the Spring 2026 and Autumn 2025 booster campaigns.

Full details of eligibility and the vaccines being used for the Spring campaign can be found in the UK Governments Green Book published here.

The following chart shows the number of Covid vaccinations given by week for each of the booster campaigns in England.

During the first four weeks of the Autumn 2026 campaign in England, 3,063,101 booster doses were given, providing 42% coverage for people aged 75 and older and 18% coverage for those who are immunosuppressed. This is slightly higher than the first four weeks of the Spring 2026 campaign but 497,908 fewer than the Autumn 2025 campaign, which had the same group of people eligible.

The final chart in this section shows the Autumn 2026 Covid booster coverage for each of the eligible cohorts by home nation. Coverage is generally highest in England, but coverage for the immunosuppressed group is lowest in all four home nations,

Although the amount of data currently being published is reduced, the information available for all home nations show that Covid activity is low in England. However, Scotland is seeing increases and is now at medium activity levels. Wales and Northern Ireland are seeing slow increases but remain relatively low.

Covid levels in wastewater are low but rising slowly across most European countries, particularly in France. In the USA, Covid activity is staring to fall and is at low levels, except in a few states.

Flu levels are starting to rise earlier than in previous years in some countries.

As always, if you have any comments on this Covid Situation Report or suggestions for topics to cover, please post a message below.

Thanks for reading Seeing The Forest for the Trees! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Positivity rates are derived from the results of hospital laboratory tests conducted on patients exhibiting symptoms of respiratory diseases. Test positivity is the percentage of patients who test positive for Covid of the total number of patients tested. Since the individuals tested for this measure are not a representative sample of the general population it differs from prevalence, which is derived from a representative sample of the population.

TL;DR: Prep for nine CompTIA exams with the 2026 CompTIA Certification Training Complete Exam Prep Bundle for $24.99 (reg. $269.91).

Preparing for CompTIA exams usually means buying a separate prep course for each certification. If you'd rather get them all at once (and for a whole lot cheaper), try the 2026 CompTIA Certification Training Complete Exam Prep Bundle. — Read the rest

The post Breaking into IT? Start with nine CompTIA exam prep courses for $24.99 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Netanyahu is seeking to build a new coalition with Jewish "opposition" parties to ensure the continued exclusion of Arabs from government in Israel. It will be a long and convoluted process but I expect he will eventually succeed. In the meantime he remains in power.

Next week Trump will lose control of both Houses in Washington and face challenges to his executive power. Both Trump and Netanyahu will need a new war emergency to strengthen their domestic position.

I shall therefore be surprised if there is not a major US/Israeli assault on Iran by mid November, to destroy Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons (as opposed to Israel's real ones).

This will have disastrous consequences for everybody involved. If Trumpenyahu seeks actually to topple the Iranian government it is going to require unprecedented levels of force, such as an invasion of many hundreds of thousands of ground troops or the deployment of a nuclear weapon. Merely resuming the murderous conventional bombing will have no more result that it did before. A spectacular event might be attempted such as the destruction of the oil facilities on Kharg Island, but the environmental consequences would be enormous and choke the Gulf States, while Iran's retaliation would be massive and the economic impacts unquantifiable.

Trump and his circle have already seen the potential for vast fortunes to be made by insider trading and futures speculation in the on/off attacks on Iran we saw previously, but a return to limited and sporadic violence is not going to meet the scale of Trump and Netanyahu's political necessity.

Personally, I have applied to go to Iran in early November to be able to report truthfully on the country and on what happens, as any attack will be accompanied by a major wave of anti-Iranian propaganda. I appreciate that this is dangerous, but I have a compulsive belief that those of us who see how dark the world is turning have a duty to stand up against invigorated western Imperialism, which currently threatens a multi-front war that could blossom into World War III.

It is extraordinary that zionists are claiming that, as Arab Israelis can vote, the Israeli elections disprove apartheid. The entire political discussion in Israel centres on how to form a coalition while keeping Arabs out of government.

In the entire history of Israel there have only been 2 Arab Muslim cabinet ministers. Both were very short term and both were token "Minister Without Portfolio" - meaning they had no power over anything and crucially had zero Jewish personnel under them.  The notion of any Arab Israeli ever instructing a Jewish Israeli is anathema to the racist mindset.

That is, if you are interested, 00.8% of all full ministers in the history of Israel have been Muslim Arabs, who comprise almost 20% of the population.

There have also been three Druze ministers over that 78 years.

Within the Knesset itself, Arab members have been repeatedly reviled, spat at, punched and entirely marginalised. The so called Israeli "opposition" explicitly campaigned both for continuing the policy in Gaza (they did not call it Genocide by name but that is what they meant), and for excluding any Arabs from the Israeli government.

Zionism is plainly racism. It is proven beyond reasonable discussion on the above facts about exclusion of Arabs from government. Yet we have the entire political and media class in the UK attacking the English Green Party in a sustained onslaught for saying this simple truth. We also have schools in England being forced to teach uncritical support for Israel as a compulsory subject, based on a nonsense report by a committed zionist, commissioned by a committed zionist minister in hock to the Israeli lobby.

The report's claim that 70% of Jewish schoolchildren had suffered anti-semitism at school, based on the self reporting of the personal experience of 29 sixth formers, has been widely ridiculed.

In general, even aside from the numerous self faked instances involved in anti-semitism reporting, it is essential the UK government stops accepting the self-reporting of Jewish victimhood without question or analysis. This is a privilege it accords to no other group.

I have reported over decades on the ludicrously inflated alarmist claims of the Community Security Trust of double digit increases almost in anti-semitic incidents every single year - often high double digit increases - which if true would now amount to millions of incidents annually.

They include, for example. saying "Free Palestine" as an anti-semitic incident if it is within the hearing of a Jewish person.

The Community Security Trust receive £21,000,000 million annually in UK government money to safeguard the Jewish Community.

By contrast the equivalent body for the Muslim community, the British Muslim Trust, receives £650,000. This is a "safe" Muslim organisation whose leadership group is replete with Orders of the British Empire. A more active Muslim body, Tell Mama, used to receive the grant but was closed down after a right wing and zionist campaign against it, on the grounds it was inflating anti-Muslim incidents.

For example, Andrew Gilligan published in an attack article in the Telegraph that only 7% of Tell Mama's documented incidents involved physical violence against Muslims. Yet this is a higher percentage than ever found in the equivalent statistics from the Community Security Trust, whose grant is not only not cancelled but ever-increasing. Indeed every single criticism levelled by Gilligan at Tell Mama - criticisms which led to the cancellation of that group's funding - is much more true of the Community Security Trust.

This part of the Bell report was particularly interesting.

I would have no problem at all sitting down to eat with a Jewish person, but I would have qualms about sitting down to eat with an open zionist of any race - which is not to say I would not do it, but I would worry about how confrontational the meal might turn.

According to Bell that makes me an anti-semite, and this is where his insistence that schools accept the IHRA definition, conflating anti-semitism with criticism of Israel, is key.

Soft zionists - those who wish the long term genocide of the Palestinian people and theft of Palestinian land to proceed without too much outcry - had hoped for a change of face to lead the project - though the notion that Eisenkot, the architect of the Dahiya Doctrine of destruction of entire communities, is any less genocidal than Netanyahu is a nonsense.

Now Netanyahu is still there, and my bet is that Naftali Bennet or another "opposition" leader will join him on the basis of excluding Arabs from government.

I also strongly suspect that the increase in Arab representation will lead to the end of Palestinian representation in the Knesset, through a change to the voting system, the banning of parties or simple disenfranchisement. There is precedent: Israel formally considers occupied East Jerusalem a part of Israel proper, but the 400,000 Palestinian residents there do not have the vote. Jewish settlers there do have a vote.

There is every sign that the Burnham regime is even worse than the Starmer regime on Israel and the Middle East. Burnham has sent UK fighter jets to Saudi Arabia to support attacks on Ansar Allah and the Yemeni people. Burnham has capitulated in the effective closure of the UK Consulate General in East Jerusalem, and expulsion of British diplomats, without retaliation. Burnham has brought in no new sanctions against Israel and stopped no arms supplies. Trumpeted sanctions against illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank were a lie - nothing has happened.

Above all, the persecution of supporters of Palestine Action continues unabated.

The government has no obligation to continue the case in the Supreme Court. To frame this as "letting the courts decide" or "obeying the rule of law" is sickening hypocrisy. The question is not whether the government has draconian powers in law, which will be accepted by the Supreme Court. The question is whether it was moral and correct to use them in this way.

It would, for example, be legal to abolish old age pensions and invalidity benefits. If parliament voted for it, the Supreme Court would uphold it. The question is not if the Supreme Court will allow it, it is whether it is the right thing to do. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood's equation of Palestine Action activists with skinhead gangs who attack immigrants was appalling.

I believe that happily we have reached a turning point. It was hubris for Healey to make a £10 billion donation to the Nazi friendly Ukrainian dictatorship in a budget which focused attention on the very real fall in living standards in the UK. Reaction across social media and in legacy media website comment threads has been overwhelmingly negative.

It has taken time for the wide gap between the public and the Establishment on the crimes of Israel to have a major effect, but I sense a change there too. Netanyahu has retained power, and the conviction of grannies and aged priests in the UK as terrorists is due to get fully underway in the New Year. Huge increases in already the World's highest grid energy bills are going to happen at the same time.

The attacks on Iran and the Ukrainian destruction of Nordstream have had a massive combined effect on world energy prices. The people are not stupid; they understand this. It is also increasingly plain that the war agenda encompasses both the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

The Devil's Coalition of USA, Ukraine and Israel led the resistance at the UN to the General Assembly vote condemning the illegal blockade of Cuba.

It feels as though events are moving at fast forward, hurtling us helter skelter either towards the widespread war which western "liberals" are advocating, or to the overthrow of neoliberalism. I do not currently see where we could land between those two alternatives.

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Oracle expects to earn more from existing application customers as it embeds AI in its enterprise software suite.

Speaking at Big Red's investor day on Wednesday, Chris Leone, executive veep of application development, said Oracle will layer usage-based revenue on top of its subscription model.

"The more work that gets done by AI in our system, the more revenue we will see because they're consuming AI units as that work is getting done. We don't have to add more seats in order for us to now generate more revenue," he said.

Earlier this month, Oracle revealed its Fusion Claw runtime, designed to help customers control AI agents that automate business processes. It targets ERP, finance, and supply chain management in cloud-based Fusion applications running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Customers will pay for more work done inside Oracle applications, and Leone said Fusion Claw will also automate work done outside of Fusion.

The promise of more revenue for Oracle, and higher bills for customers, came as the company sought to reassure investors about its spending, borrowing and revenue as it chases a share of the AI market.

Oracle is funding a datacenter spending spree with negative cashflow and borrowing. OCI is set to host large language model builders, notably OpenAI, alongside its own customers' workloads. Oracle spent $55.7 billion on datacenters and cloud infrastructure in fiscal year 2026, which ended in May, and plans to spend between $90 billion and $95 billion in fiscal 2027.

That will require more debt. In 2027, Oracle hopes to raise around $40 billion in debt and equity, on top of the $18 billion in debt it raised in September 2025.

In a notice to investors this week, Oracle said it expects fiscal 2030 revenue of $225 billion, a compound annual growth rate of 35 percent from 2026. It expects positive cash flow by the second half of fiscal 2028, with capital spending falling the following financial year. Investors reacted positively.

Oracle co-CEO Mike Sicilia also told shareholders the company will use AI to help implement its software, a plan he called as important as putting AI in the software itself. He argued AI will cut implementation time, bringing existing and new customers to OCI faster and boosting revenue.

"On-premises customers can now move far more easily to the cloud by leveraging the AI tool sets to automate migrations and decrease the cost and time to implement. They don't have to be Oracle customers; they can be competitive customers."

Sicilia said enterprise application software users' reluctance to change had been a major "headwind" for Oracle, one he hopes AI will ease.

"Our large remaining base of on-premises customers are going to start to adopt this technology quite quickly. When we move customers from on-premises to cloud, we see a multiple increase in revenue," he said. ®