AI isn't going to replace major SaaS apps with vibe-coded versions, Databricks Ali Ghodsi believes. But it could give rise to competitors.

The "Boo'd Up" singer tries to play her cards close to the chest on the opening track from her new album, Do You Still Love Me?

A regularly updated guide to the new albums, EPs, mixtapes, and projects getting released in the coming weeks and months

India's Anthropic Software has taken the U.S. AI giant to court over a name dispute.

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The Indian government's response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi being named in the Epstein files was that the allegations deserved to be treated with contempt.

We have seen reports of an email message from the so-called Epstein files that has a reference to the Prime Minister and his visit to Israel. Beyond the fact of the Prime Minister's official visit to Israel in July 2017, the rest of the allusions in the email are little more than trashy ruminations by a convicted criminal, which deserve to be dismissed with the utmost contempt.

Nevertheless, Pandora's box is now open. No matter how hard the global ruling class tries to contain it, the proverbial genie has escaped.

Recent documents disclosed by the US Department of Justice show Epstein communicating about Modi favourably.

On July 9, 2017, just three days after Modi's official visit to Israel, Epstein wrote an email claiming the Prime Minister had taken his advice. In the message, Epstein asserted that Modi had "danced and sang" in Israel for the benefit of U.S. President Trump, concluding that the plan had worked.

Just three days before, on July 6th, Modi had shared a "romantic walk" on Olga Beach in Haifa, Israel. It was the first time ever that an Indian Prime Minister had visited Israel, smashing any remnants of Indian post-colonial solidarity with Palestine.

Later, in 2019, Epstein encouraged Steve Bannon to meet with Modi to counter China. Epstein chats have shown US bigotry behind the escalating war against China.

He told Bannon that Modi was a strategic opportunity, asking him to "look at your underwear" to see if it was made in either China or India.

Epstein Files — Indian elite implicated

Hardeep Singh Puri, now a senior BJP (Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party) official, is featured on Epstein's list, with scheduled appointments at least five times between June 2014 and January 2017.

Puri is now busy sending "thugs" to his opposition. Indian opposition MP Mahua Moitra has claimed that Puri contacted her and asked her to delete her social media posts about his name appearing in the Epstein files.

Also do not appreciate @HardeepSPuri calling me to ask me to delete tweet & telling me if "people" come after me now he won't be able to help it. I'll take my chances, Sir. Your thug armies don't scare me.

— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) February 3, 2026

Puri then worked with the International Peace Institute (IPI) in New York, now says he was making the case for India in these exchanges.

Ironically, the people Puri was meeting with were being racist to him behind his back. Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen, who once served as President of the IPI, made a racist remark about Puri in a 2015 email to Jeffrey Epstein, writing, "when you meet an Indian and a snake, kill the Indian first!"

Anil Ambani is the Indian tycoon who once held billionaire status but later lost his fortune; he was also an ally of Jeffrey Epstein, seeking his help in March 2017 to connect with Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon with the Indian "leadership."

Tall Swedish Blond

Later that month, Epstein offered "a tall Swedish blonde woman" to Ambani to make it "fun to visit." Ambani  replied, "Arrange that."

Deepak Chopra, an Indian-origin wellness guru, described Ambani as "very rich, very much wanting to be noticed, very celebrity conscious," to Epstein, adding that he met him at a party in Bombay. Oprah and Indian socialist Parmeshwar Godrej also attended the party, Chopra adds.

Chopra is himself disgraced in the files. The Yoga guru emailed Epstein, saying that "God is a construct. Cute girls are real."

The documents also show a connection to Indian royalty. In 2018, a redacted sender says to  Epstein that they are organising an "amazing" birthday party near Rome at their "family castle" for the "Maharaja of Jaipur."

Padmanabh Singh is the 'king' of Jaipur in Rajasthan, India. Although he's not officially considered a king by the state in democratic India. His mother is the BJP's Deputy Chief Minister in Rajasthan — Diya Kumari. 

Dalai Lama Meeting Implied

The Dalai Lama, a Tibetan spiritual leader from China who is currently exiled in India, has denied meeting Epstein, as implied by the released files.

An email in 2012, from a redacted sender to Epstein claims they are going to an event where Dalai Lama will be present.

Japanese entrepreneur Joi Ito suggests a connection to set up a meeting with Dalai Lama to Epstein in an email in 2015. The next day, Epstein emailed Soon Yi Previn, Woody Allen's wife, writing: "I'm working on the Dalai Lama for dinner."

The Indian connection could imply Epstein harvesting all allies he could get to confront a rising China.

Epstein and Bannon — both millionaires — referred to the Chinese government as "peasants". And current US vice-president JD Vance has said the same thing. (Vance rose to prominence thanks to billionaire Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, who also appears in the Epstein files.)

Modi has been a good ally to the West — signing favourable trade deals with Israel, the EU and the US recently. Modi has also told Trump that he will not be buying Russian oil, Trump claims, abandoning BRICS solidarity in favour of alignment with the USA.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

TikTok has already fled the scene.

The lawsuit is the latest in an escalating feud between the Danish pharmaceutical and telehealth company.

Last summer, I wrote what I think is one of my most important posts about our species' nature and how it has led to our civilization's accelerating collapse. My thesis was that what differentiates us from all other species on the planet, including h. neanderthanesis, is our profound distrust, fear, discomfort, and intolerance of creatures (including other humans) who are significantly different from us in their behaviours or beliefs.

My argument was that the cause of this differentiating quality was the unique evolution of our brains, with the emergent capacity to conceive of ourselves as separate and apart from all other life on Earth (which I also argued was delusional, a catastrophic misunderstanding of the actual nature of reality). In other words, we have evolved to suffer a species-wide, severe, and highly-infectious mental illness. This is not merely a belief in our separateness; it is an embodied sense of separateness, one unique to our species and one that is inherently terrifying.

And likewise, I argued that the inevitable consequence of this terrified intolerance of those different from us was a violent propensity to dominate, subdue, and exterminate any life form whose differences caused us to fear that they posed a serious or existential threat to us.

If you've been reading my earlier work, you'll know that I have come to believe we have absolutely no free will, and that our behaviours and beliefs are entirely determined and conditioned by our biology, our culture, and the circumstances of the moment.

And hence I believe that our transformation, over millennia, from a biophilic species to a biophobic and thence biocidal species, has been inevitable, irreversible, and ultimately fatal for our own species and for all life on Earth. Just as we ruthlessly exterminated h. neanderthanesis because we couldn't tolerate how they were different from us, we are going to keep exterminating other life forms (we're doing a bang-up job of this as the sixth great extinction accelerates), and also other humans who we assess to be different and hence terrifyingly intolerable, until (with our unwitting help) nature removes us from the planet so we can do no further harm.

This is a brutally negative and pessimistic assessment of the state of our species and of our world, and one that I have fiercely resisted for most of my life. But I'm coming, reluctantly, to the belief that it is an assessment that is entirely consistent with the evidence all around us.

Of course, this assessment and the beliefs and rationalizations underpinning it are neither provable nor disprovable, and I'm not trying to convince anyone of their veracity (nor seeking anyone to disavow me of their veracity). We have no choice about what we believe, any more than we have choice about our (bodies') behaviours.

Obviously, this assessment does not suggest or offer any course of action to 'deal' with it, either internally by trying to 'rethink' our own beliefs or externally by trying to change the current trajectory of unfolding events. There is nothing that can be done, and hence no 'need' for anything to be done. Even trying to 'accept' this assessment and its implications is not something we can choose to do or not do.

Where does that leave us, then?

In my case it seemingly drives me to chronicle this collapse as competently as I can. I am afflicted with the human propensity to try to make sense of things, and that propensity will obviously colour my chronicle. But, slowly but surely, my conditioning seems to be leading me to be a little less judgemental about what is happening, a little less preoccupied with causes and effects. And more attentive to the details — the astonishing beauty, the exquisite pleasures, the delicious, absurd cosmic joke, the wonders of utter unknowing and delightful discovery, and the endless joyful play of just being.

That does not require denying or ignoring (or obsessing about) the ghastly, growing evidence of ugly violence and dizzying chaos and frightening collapse happening all around us. But instead, it entails just setting it aside, at least when the work of chronicling is done, 'working around' it so as not to be consumed by it (or consumed by what, we dream, could or should or might 'otherwise' be). Fortunately, my conditioning seems to be allowing that, slowly, to happen.

That's me. It's not a prescription that I would presume to recommend to others. It's not as if any of us has any choice in the matter.

---

self-portrait by AI; my own prompt

An Irish man with a valid U.S. work permit has been held in ICE detention since September 2025. He has no history of violent crime and no problems with his paperwork. DHS offers no clear explanation for why this man has been confined for months. — Read the rest

The post Valid papers, no crime, indefinite detention: ICE's American promise appeared first on Boing Boing.

ChatGPT ads will display for users on the the free and low-cost "Go" plans.

Ouster is paying $35 million along with 1.8 million shares.

Australia's government has laid out the red carpet for genocide-inciting Israeli president Isaac Herzog. And its police have met mass protests against the visit with violence. Herzog's ex-adviser Eylon Levy, meanwhile, prepared for the trip by dehumanising Palestinians.

Thousands oppose Herzog's visit, and Levy spreads hatred

Thousands of anti-genocide protesters in Australia hit the streets on Monday 9 February. But police got special permission to crack down on dissent. And they used pepper spray, made dozens of arrests, and even threw punches.

Numerous MPs had previously called on the government to cancel the divisive visit, promising to join the protests. The Jewish Council of Australia, meanwhile, had also asked in an open letter for the cancellation of the invitation. Over 1,000 academics and community leaders from Australia's Jewish community had signed.

Thanks to your support, our full-page ad is in today's Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Over 1,000 Jews and thousands of allies have signed our open letter to say that Israeli President Isaac Herzog is not welcome here.

Help us spread the word! pic.twitter.com/sq1k2he7rf

— Jewish Council of Australia (@jewishcouncilAU) February 9, 2026

As usual, though, Levy struggled to hide his disdain for the people suffering or opposing Israel's genocide in Gaza. Dehumanisation has played a key role in the extermination campaign. And Levy continued this tradition by sharing an animation picturing a toad wearing a Keffiyeh, saying it was a "poisonous invasive species":

Is Israel a poisonous invasive state? Hours ahead of Herzog's visit to Australia, his spokesman (2021-2023) has promoted the visit by posting an animation depicting Palestinians as cane toads, calling them a "poisonous invasive species". https://t.co/ubky81NXDJ

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 8, 2026

Levy has also tried to compare UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese with Hamas due to her opposition to genocide:

What's the difference between Hamas and UN official @FranceskAlbs at this point?

'Game of Thrones' has prepared us for trials by combat before, but 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' is showing us a version rooted in ancient Westerosi history.

Measurable, documented, and ongoing harm is being caused by the UK's anti-trans panic. Years of
hostile policy, medical rollbacks, and political scapegoating are producing a sharp increase in suicides.

As Erin Reed documents, the UK has systematically dismantled gender-affirming care, framed trans youth as a social threat, and replaced evidence-based medicine with political panic. — Read the rest

The post The human cost of the UK's anti-trans turn appeared first on Boing Boing.

When BMW Motorrad pulled the silk off the R nineT in 2013, it was a pivotal moment for the custom scene. Designed as a "blank canvas," it arrived just as the "New Wave" cafe racer movement was reaching a fever pitch. We first looked at our favorite R nineT customs nearly ten years ago, but in the wo...

Users on ChatGPT's free and Go plans in the US may now start to see ads as OpenAI has started testing them in the chatbot. The company announced plans to bring ads to ChatGPT. At the time, the company said it would display sponsored products and services that are relevant to the current conversations of logged-in users, though they can disable personalization and "clear the data used for ads" whenever they wish.

"Our goal is for ads to support broader access to more powerful ChatGPT features while maintaining the trust people place in ChatGPT for important and personal tasks," OpenAI wrote in a blog post. "We're starting with a test to learn, listen and make sure we get the experience right."

These ads will appear below at the bottom of chats. They're labeled and separated from ChatGPT's answers. Ads won't have an impact on ChatGPT's responses.

Ads won't appear when users are conversing with ChatGPT about regulated or sensitive topics such as health, mental wellbeing or politics. Users aged under 18 won't see ads in ChatGPT during the tests either. Moreover, OpenAI says it won't share or sell users' conversations or data to advertisers. 

A source close to the company told CNBC that OpenAI expects ads to account for less than half of its revenue in the long run. Currently the company also takes a cut of items bought through its chatbot via the shopping integration feature. Also according to CNBC, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told staff on Friday that the company will deploy "an updated Chat model" this week.

The tests come on the heels of Anthropic running Super Bowl ads that poked fun at OpenAI for introducing advertising. Anthropic's spot asserted that while "ads are coming to AI," they won't appear in its own chatbot, Claude.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-starts-testing-ads-in-chatgpt-191756493.html?src=rss

Advertising search and web meters recorded site crashing traffic for ai.com

Anthropic's sensitive cubs and roaring cougars commercial trampled OpenAI's offerings in searches and site hit metrics during the Super Bowl, according to ad tracking firm EDO. However, the unknown player ai.com, which pitched the fantastical idea that "AGI is coming," won the day.…

Florida's top culture warriors, Ron DeSantis, his wife Casey, and the anti-vax Surgeon General
Joseph Ladapo held a press conference to announce that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, the household herbicidal equivalent of Agent Orange, is found in many supermarket-sold breads. — Read the rest

The post Florida says it found Roundup's active ingredient in widely sold breads appeared first on Boing Boing.

Cannabis users' brains look younger than their age would predict, according to a brain imaging study of more than 25,000 UK Biobank participants aged 44 to 81. The connectivity patterns associated with cannabis use were the near-opposite of those associated with normal aging — and cannabis users outperformed non-users on six out of nine cognitive tests, including memory, reasoning, and executive function, according to a preprint by researchers at Georgia Tech, Emory, and the University of Colorado. — Read the rest

The post Cannabis users' brains look younger, big study finds appeared first on Boing Boing.

I'm working on a piece of fiction and trying to think through the scenario of a collapse in realistic way.

In the story, it's revealed that the global system (governments, corporations, education, finance, etc.) is secretly run by a deeply corrupt and pedophilic ruling class. The population eventually realizes something very uncomfortable, that they are the cogs in the wheel that keeps this whole evil system operating.

Once the illusion breaks, it is clear that the people in charge don't actually run anything, they sit at coordination points controlling the people below them who do the actual work. Truck drivers, nurses, retail workers, teachers, line cooks, IT workers, warehouse staff, office managers, farmers, doctors….

Suddenly everyone notices that the people at the top don't grow food, fix infrastructure, heal bodies, or keep water running. They coordinate extraction and that's it. It becomes apparent that every "institution" is just layers wrapped around human labor they get to extort. The moment people stop donating their time, energy, belief, and compliance, would the machine explode or simply stall out?

Would it be realistic to think that in a dramatic scenario people could come together and actually make a change for the better? That neighbors could pool resources, food and tools, workers could continue essential roles without corporate ownership, and care can be given without profit layers, where skills becoming currency instead of money, and trust forms locally because it has to.

I'm not pitching a fantasy where everything's easy and they all skip off into the future. I'm more interested in the eerie realization that the system's biggest threat was never rebellion, but it was masses of people uniting, not by revolt- by-force, but by population themselves pulling the plug. I don't know just an idea.

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BBC Studios production chief Zai Bennett offers only vague updates on the future of the sci-fi series.

Pairing scientists with an artist-in-residence can cut through "ecofatigue" (feelings of overwhelm or exhaustion about environment issues that lead to apathy and inaction), spark emotion and change the way people deal with plastics.

My team and I recently published a study that demonstrated this is a low-cost and feasible way to tackle plastic waste in towns.

In a quiet gallery space in London, visitors paused before 13 luminous coastal scenes. Throwaway bottles bobbed in the surf; snack wrappers frayed into microplastic constellations. Many people left this exhibition determined to change their own habits.

These paintings were part of my team's project called Trace-P (Transitioning to a circular economy for plastics with an artist-in-residence) which involves turning environmental evidence into compelling art, then measuring what the public do as a result.

Decades of leaflets, posters and worthy campaigns about plastic pollution haven't shifted behaviour fast enough. Research (including our own previous work) shows that emotion, storytelling and "intergenerational influence" - ideas flowing from children to adults - can outperform dry facts alone. Throughout that previous project, 99% of audiences reported higher awareness, 70% intended to change how they dispose of electronic or e-waste and 65% planned to repair or reuse their belongings more. That success inspired us to test an art-led model for plastics.

The global context is stark. More than 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year. Only around 9% of that is mechanically recycled worldwide. A global plan to end plastic pollution by 2040 will require deep shifts in policy and markets to eliminate problematic items, scale reuse and design products that are suitable for recycling.

Art cannot deliver those reforms, but it can mobilise public demand for them.

Our plastics researchers collaborated with a professional artist, Susannah Pal. After interviews and laboratory visits, she produced a series of tragicomic (humorously sad) seascapes. In addition to running public exhibitions in London and Southampton, Pal held an online and in-person drawing workshop for the public.

Visitors learnt about the science of marine litter pathways, microplastics and consumption patterns through powerful imagery that intended to trigger emotion rather than through facts and data. We collected feedback from participants and gallery visitors via on-site in-person surveys, Post-it note "reaction walls" where people could scribble their comments and impressions of the artwork and social media posts by visitors.

Our paper, recently published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, calls this approach "com-art". This combination of creative skills with scientific evidence can improve communication with the general public and lead to more positive action.

Viewers told us that the artworks educated them about sources and negative effects of plastic pollution. They also said that the art provoked emotions - from sadness to resolve - that helped the messages stick and encouraged them to cut personal plastic use or question throwaway lifestyles.

The feedstock problem

Europe's plastics system is inching towards circularity via new policies and technologies such as deposit return schemes, but not nearly fast enough. In 2022, circular plastics accounted for 13.5% of new products. EU plastic recycling has essentially stalled, with plastic packaging recycling rates hovering around 40-42%.

Huge amounts of plastic waste are sent for incineration and valuable feedstock (the fossil fuel-based raw materials used to make plastic) is burned instead of being recycled or redirected back into manufacturing.

Public support for reuse, deposit return schemes and better sorting of contaminated waste is the missing multiplier.

Globally, governments are negotiating a treaty to end plastic pollution. To reach its proposed goals, citizens will need to accept refills, returnables and redesigned packaging. Art projects like ours can engage citizens with changes to everyday routines around plastic consumption and disposal.

---

Read more: How Captain Planet cartoons shaped my awareness of the nature crisis

---

From inspiration to influence

Cities, schools and museums can start by making art part of their waste strategy. A local artist-in-residence, hosted by a council gallery, museum or library, costs little (a few thousand pounds) compared with large-scale infrastructure projects (that cost millions).

Art projects can help unlock more enthusiasm from citizens for deposit return schemes (refundable deposits for returning containers), reuse pilots or new recycling sorting rules. Artists can jointly create exhibitions with local schools to harness intergenerational influence. You can use short before- and after-project surveys to see what works.

Art interventions often deliver powerful but shortlived boosts in awareness and intent. By reinforcing moments - new shows, classroom projects, hands-on repair events - we can extend this awareness. It is also worth repeating art activities to reinforce messages.

Emotion opens the door to action, and convenient systems keep people walking through it. Exhibitions can be ideal opportunities to recruit residents to refill trials, deposit return collections or school "plastic-free lunch" weeks. These events can showcase possible next steps for people to take through QR codes and sign-ups to activities or maps of refill points, for example.

Plastics touch everything: health, climate, local jobs. Moving to a circular economy will take regulation, redesign and investment and public imagination. Our study shows that artists make the science more legible, memorable and motivating - and this can spark change in communities.

---

Don't have time to read about climate change as much as you'd like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation's environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who've subscribed so far.

---

Ian Williams received funding from UK Research Councils to support this work. TRACE-P was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's Impact Acceleration Account (EPSRC IAA 2017-2020). IAAs are strategic awards provided to institutions to support knowledge exchange and impact from their EPSRC-funded research. Ian also acknowledges support from the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (EP/L01582X/1).

Release into Helman Tor reserve marks historical first for keystone species hunted to extinction in UK 400 years ago

Shivering and rain-drenched at the side of a pond in Cornwall, a huddle of people watched in hushed silence as a beaver took its first tentative steps into its new habitat. As it dived into the water with a determined "plop" and began swimming laps, the suspense broke and everyone looked around, grinning.

The soggy but momentous occasion marks the first time in English history that beavers have been legally released into a river system, almost one year after the government finally agreed to grant licences for releases.

Continue reading...

The disruption and distress caused by record downpours must focus minds on the need for climate preparedness

With flood warnings still in place across south-west England and Wales on Monday, followed by another fortnight of wet weather forecasts, the sodden ground across swathes of the UK is not likely to dry up any time soon. Reports that Aberdonians have not seen so much as a sliver of sun since 21 January prompted an outburst of stoicism on BBC radio, with one resident commenting: "You have to get on with it, brighter days are coming".

Before then, however, north-east Scotland is braced for more heavy rain. For farmers and businesses in the affected areas, the impact goes far beyond inconvenience. Marketing consultant Sam Kirby told the Guardian that she had to work from a car park in Cornwall following Storm Goretti, because her broadband wasn't working. And Goretti was the first of three January storms.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Continue reading...

Ring aired a Super Bowl ad touting its Search Party feature that didn't quite get the intended buzz. Instead, the commercial scared the pants off of anyone concerned about a mass surveillance state.

The feature is advertised as a way to reunite missing dogs with their owners, a noble cause indeed, but Search Party does this by turning individual Ring devices into a surveillance network. Each camera uses AI to identify pets running across its field of vision and all feeds are pooled together to potentially identify lost animals. I've never seen a slope quite so slippery, as the technology could easily be rejiggered to track people.

Government: how can we get Americans to accept constant surveillance?

Ring: Puppies

Americans: PUPPIES!!!!!!

— mark david (@M___D____M_____) February 9, 2026

It's also worth noting that this isn't a new feature. Search Party was first announced last year. In that time it has been used to find 99 lost dogs in 90 days of use, according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Approximately ten million pets go missing in America each year. Many people aren't keen on helping to create a surveillance state for a tool with what looks to be around a 0.005 percent success rate. That percentage is sure to rise with mass adoption, but you get the jist.

With that said, many Ring users are looking for a way to disable the feature, as it's enabled by default. Engadget has got you covered.

How to Disable Search Party

Thankfully, this is fairly easy to do. Just open the Ring app and tap the menu in the top-left corner. Next, select Control Center. Then, tap Search Party and toggle the settings to Disable for both Search for Lost Pets and Natural Hazards. Repeat this process for each camera.

PSA: If the Ring search party commercial weirded you out during the Super Bowl, it is very easy to turn off

1. In the menu, go to Control Center
2. Scroll down to Search Party
3. Go into whichever options are available in your area (not pictured)
4. Tap the blue icon to turn off pic.twitter.com/L3qaxu2pJQ

— Nick Veronica (@NickVeronica) February 9, 2026

There has also been some confusion as to what Ring will share with law enforcement agencies. If you want to go a step further, delete all of your saved videos by tapping the History icon and then "Delete All."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/heres-how-to-disable-rings-creepy-search-party-feature-185420455.html?src=rss

Here's what's strange about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that made the open internet possible: Both sides of the traditional political spectrum hate it. But for opposite reasons. That, alone, should highlight that something is wrong in their analysis.

Republicans hate it because they say it lets websites censor conservative speech. Democrats hate it because they say it lets websites host dangerous disinformation.

Read those two sentences again.

One side is furious that platforms can moderate. The other side is furious that platforms don't have to moderate. Both sides are attacking the same 26-word provision of a 30-year-old law—and if you understand why their complaints are contradictory, you understand what Section 230 actually does.

This weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which contained the mostly unconstitutional Communications Decency Act, which inexplicably contained Section 230. (If you want the full history, I hosted a podcast series about it last year.) And after three decades, there's now a concerted, bipartisan effort to kill it—by people who either don't understand what the law does, or understand perfectly well and see its destruction as a path to controlling the flow of information online.

Years back I wrote a piece debunking many of the myths about 230. The myths have only multiplied since.

Both critiques, stripped of their partisan framing, are about the same thing: who gets to control what speech appears where. And Section 230's answer to both sides is the same: pound sand.

That's what the law actually does. It doesn't mandate or prohibit "censorship." It doesn't require neutrality (that's a myth that won't die). It simply says: if you have a problem with content online, take it up with the person who created it, not the service hosting it. Platforms can moderate however they see fit—aggressively, lightly, inconsistently, politically—and they won't face ruinous liability for those choices. They also won't face liability for what they don't remove.

This is what makes an open internet possible. Without that protection, no service would risk hosting user content at all. Or if they did, every moderation decision would require a lawyer's sign-off, optimizing for liability reduction rather than healthy communities. The people who actually understand how to build good online spaces—trust and safety professionals, community managers—would be overruled by legal departments playing defense.

Almost all criticism of Section 230 is not actually about Section 230. It's about one of two things: (1) not liking something in society that manifests online, and incorrectly believing that changing the law will somehow fix it, or (2) wanting control over what content platforms host.

So what happens if critics get their way? There's a lobbying campaign right now claiming that reforming or repealing 230 will lead to "greater responsibility from tech companies."

This is exactly backwards.

Without 230's protections, smaller platforms—the ones that might actually compete with the giants—get destroyed first. They can't afford the vexatious lawsuits. They can't afford buildings full of lawyers. The big players survive, and their market position gets locked in even harder.

And those surviving giants won't become more responsible. They'll become less. Any competent legal team will tell them: the less you know, the less liability you have. Don't proactively look for harmful content. Don't research how your platform causes harm—those findings would be exhibit A in every lawsuit. Just stick your head in the sand and let the lawyers handle the subpoenas.

This is how liability regimes work, and America's exceptionally litigious legal culture makes these incentives even stronger. The critics either don't understand this or don't care, because their actual goal was never "responsibility." It was control. That they've duped some tech critics into thinking it's about "responsibility" or "safety" doesn't change that. Because it won't improve responsibility or safety. But it will give politicians tremendous power over online speech.

Thirty years ago, a 26-word provision buried in a mostly unconstitutional law kicked off the open internet. It let anyone build a platform, host a community, create something new—without needing permission from lawyers or regulators first. That era is now under direct attack by people who misrepresent what Section 230 does and misrepresent what killing it would mean.

The open web turned 30 this weekend. The bipartisan campaign to kill it was never about responsibility or safety, it was always about control. Whether the open web sees age 31 comes down to 26 words that tell both sides to pound sand.

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The Telecommunications Act of 1996 became law thirty years ago today, on February 8, 1996. Buried in a corner of that sprawling law was Section 230, a law that says websites aren't liable for third-party content.

Section 230 didn't receive much attention when it was passed, but it has since emerged as one of Congress' most important media laws ever. Section 230 helped trigger the Web 2.0 era-where people principally talk with each other online, rather than just having content broadcast at them one-way. By enabling that discourse and other new categories of human interaction, Section 230 has thus reshaped the Internet and, by extension, our economy, our government, and our society.

To commemorate Section 230's 30th anniversary, this post considers Section 230's past, present, and future.

* * *

Section 230's Past

"Big Tech" Didn't Lobby for Section 230. Google and Facebook didn't exist in 1996; they emerged in the wake of Section 230's passage. In 1996, the Internet industry was small, especially as compared to other media industries like cable or telephony. However, AOL played a key role in Section 230's passage, as evidenced by the fact Section 230 uses statutory terms like "interactive computer service" and "information content provider" (a really terrible phrase) that mirror AOL's idiosyncratic jargon.

The Internet Industry Didn't Initially Celebrate Section 230's Passage. I'm not aware of any fetes in 1996 that celebrated Section 230's passage. That's because Section 230 was overshadowed by another part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Communications Decency Act (CDA). The CDA imposed an unmanageable risk of criminal liability on Internet companies for user-generated content, so Internet executives were panicked that they might go to jail for the ordinary operation of their services. There was no time to get excited about Section 230's long-term implications in the face of the immediate threat of criminal prosecution.

A week after the act's passage, a district court enjoined the CDA, and the industry panic slightly abated. The industry relaxed a little more when the Supreme Court struck down the CDA as unconstitutional in 1997 (the Reno v. ACLU decision). However, that relief was short-lived because Congress quickly passed another law to criminalize user-generated content (the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, ultimately declared unconstitutional). So for years after Section 230's passage, the industry was preoccupied by Congress' UGC criminalization efforts.

Section 230's Impact Wasn't Immediately Clear. Section 230 includes some unusual and non-intuitive statutory language. As a result, the Internet industry wasn't initially sure exactly what it said. Section 230's potential scope only started to emerge after the district court ruling in Zeran v. AOL in March 1997. Then, after the Zeran v. AOL Fourth Circuit opinion in November 1997, it became clearer that Section 230 had reshaped the law of user-generated content. For more on the Zeran case, see this ebook.

Section 230 Left Open a Problematic "Copyright Hole." Section 230 expressly excludes intellectual property claims based on third-party content. As a result, even after Section 230 passed, Internet services still faced potential secondary copyright liability with no statutory protection from Congress.

In particular, vicarious copyright infringement turns on a service's "right and ability to control" the content on its servers, and plaintiffs can cite a service's content moderation efforts-including those otherwise immunized by Section 230-as inculpatory evidence. In other words, Section 230 didn't immediately legalize content moderation, because default copyright law still made those practices legally risky.

Two-plus years later, Congress partially plugged Section 230's copyright hole in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. In contrast to Section 230's unconditional immunity for UGC, the DMCA created a notice-and-takedown liability scheme for user-caused copyright infringement. However, it took years for court cases to confirm that standard content moderation efforts didn't increase services' copyright liability for user-generated content.

Due to its unusual drafting and the legal context surrounding it, Section 230 didn't definitively resolve the legitimacy of user-generated content and content moderation efforts when it passed in 1996. That implication took several more years to emerge.

For more on Section 230's past, see Prof. Jeff Kosseff's book, The 26 Words That Created the Internet. See also the 15-year retrospective event we held at SCU in 2011.

* * *

Section 230's Present

Section 230 Offers Critical Procedural Benefits. Critics, politicians, and the media often focus their fire on Section 230's substantive scope, such as how it compares to the First Amendment and whether it strikes the right policy balances. However, much of Section 230's "magic" is procedural, not substantive. Section 230 provides courts with a helpful way of quickly dismissing unmeritorious cases. This, in turn, reduces defendants' costs and increases their confidence of winning in court; and this further emboldens services to optimize their editorial policies for their audiences, engage in content moderation to effectuate those policies, and legally defend individual items of user-generated content. Even if the First Amendment dictated all of the same substantive outcomes as Section 230 (it doesn't), Section 230 provides greater procedural predictability to the parties and thus achieves superior outcomes.

Section 230 Affects a Lot of Court Cases. According to the Shepard's citation service, Section 230 has been cited in over 1,700 cases. As this figure indicates, citations keep going up:

Section 230 Discourages Many Lawsuits From Ever Being Filed. Section 230 has largely extinguished the genre of lawsuits against Internet services for their individual content moderation decisions. Without Section 230, every content moderation decision might prompt a lawsuit, manufacturing millions of potential lawsuits every day.

Section 230's Drafters Future-Proofed the Law. Section 230 critics often highlight its adoption during the Internet's infancy, as if that's proof the law is not appropriate for the modern mid-2020s Internet. In 2020, Sen. Wyden and former Rep. Christopher Cox, the authors of Section 230, responded:

[Critics] assert that Section 230 was conceived as a way to protect an infant industry, and that it was written with the antiquated internet of the 1990s in mind - not the robust, ubiquitous internet we know today. As authors of the statute, we particularly wish to put this urban legend to rest…our legislative aim was to recognize the sheer implausibility of requiring each website to monitor all of the user-created content that crossed its portal each day…

The march of technology and the profusion of e-commerce business models over the last two decades represent precisely the kind of progress that Congress in 1996 hoped would follow from Section 230's protections for speech on the internet and for the websites that host it. The increase in user-created content in the years since then is both a desired result of the certainty the law provides, and further reason that the law is needed more than ever in today's environment.

* * *

Section 230's Future

[TL;DR:

The National Park Service has launched a "Special Resource Study" that puts a long stretch of Los Angeles County coastline in the federal crosshairs. From Will Rogers State Beach down to Torrance, with additional areas mapped inland, the Feds want to run the show.  — Read the rest

The post The National Park Service sets its sights on California's busiest beaches appeared first on Boing Boing.

Is Musicboard shutting down? Company says no, but users are worried.

'Reduce, re-use, recycle' is a green slogan. It's often called the three R's of that worldview, echoing the traditional three R's of education (reading, [w]riting and [a]rithmetic). Much rhetorical power is ascribed to lists of three. The green imagination has difficulty limiting its R's to such a small number. Additional R's have come to abound: last time I looked, their number was confidently listed as ten. And one of those was 'repair'.

East Anglia Bylines has more than once written about repair cafés. Kate Moore last month praised Mark Stuckey's theatre event arising from TV's The Repair Shop. And Greg Walsh told us in the spring of 2023 how repair cafés were "a community response to a crisis."

An efficient system Repairer Ian with keyboard

Cambridgeshire is served by around forty repair cafés, all supported by Cambridge Carbon Footprint. The village of Burwell has one that started in the wake of lockdown. It runs around two or three half-day sessions a year, typically with 40 to 45 repair jobs, handled by eight or nine repairers. Users booking in at the repair café website are given a time slot. That allows the repairers to look at the task and decide whether any spare parts are needed or if they need a circuit diagram to work from.

The repairs themselves are done free of charge, but donations are always welcome. Clients are asked to supply spare parts, if these turn out to be needed.

And, as not everyone wants to book online or plan ahead, there's space for you if you want to turn up with a repair job that hasn't been planned.

Clare and I have used repair cafés for a few years now. We booked an electric piano in for repair at Burwell. It had lit up when switched on but delivered no sound. Repairer Ian's solution turned out to be embarrassingly simple - the batteries were running down faster than I'd expected. I set about turning the repair café experience to account for East Anglia Bylines.

Lee, Gerri and Pat welcome new arrivals. Picture by Clare Sansom; used with permission The success rate is high

Repairer Lee explained that each customer completes a questionnaire, and the responses are very favourable. "They appreciate the service, and even if they don't get their item repaired, they appreciate the effort that's been made to keep it out of landfill."

Drop-ins, if they're lucky, will be seen on the day. "Sometimes," Lee told me, "we're just overwhelmed with bookings or with repairs that overrun a little bit, and then they might be unlucky, but the consolation is that while they're waiting, they can come into the café and buy the excellent cakes and sausage rolls and a cup of tea or coffee to while away the time. The vast majority of drop-ins do get seen." Repairers are happy to stay late. Normally they close at five, but often, there will still have people there after 5:30, finishing up jobs.

What was the oddest thing they'd had?

"Two repair cafés ago," said Lee, "we had an inflatable dinghy, which was blown up in the hall here, took up a fair bit of room, and a suitable repair patch was applied and job done. Today's things being repaired weren't odd, but it's an interesting collection. There was a saucepan, an electronic keyboard, an iron, a vacuum cleaner, a toaster, a Hi-Fi system and another toaster. We get a lot of those."

The point of repair cafés is green. Their work keeps things out of landfill, and ensures that best use is made of the carbon emissions that went into making the things in the first place. I asked Lee what advice he had for people wanting to help in a repair café.

"Try your local one. They may be able to use your services. Or contact Cambridge Carbon Footprint. They'll make a note of your name and perhaps let other repair cafés know that you're available to assist. Repairers are the scarcest resource. The commonest category of broken items that come in that are electronics and electrical. But if your skills are more mechanical, be it glueing, sewing or just generally putting back together things that malfunction, then those skills are definitely required as well!"

Perhaps an East Anglia Bylines reader will be the next person to embarrass this contributor over a battery fail…

---

More from East Anglia Bylines Culture The Repair Shop - Behind the scenes, secrets and stories byKate Moore 29 January 2026 Activism Repair Cafés - a community response to a crisis byGreg Walsh 20 March 2023 Activism A perfect circle: a recycling revolution in West Suffolk byJanne Jarvis 22 April 2025 Activism Cleaning up Britain byJenny Rhodes 13 March 2024

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Altitude, the world leading carbon dioxide removal (CDR) financier, has significantly expanded its purchases by partnering with Alcom for +360.000t of CDRs. Altitude has crossed more than 720,000 t CDRs in total procurement. In one of the largest individual off-take agreements to date, Altitude is procuring over 360,000 tonnes of ... [continued]

The post Altitude Partners With Alcom For +360.000t Carbon Removals appeared first on CleanTechnica.

On Friday, legal observers on an encrypted group call in Minneapolis received a desperate plea. A fellow observer was following federal agents who'd just loaded her friend into an unmarked vehicle. Now, she herself was boxed in.

"Please help," the woman said, again and again, her voice rising to a scream.

Then, her pleas stopped.

By the time support arrived, the observer was gone. All that remained was an empty SUV, engine running, abandoned in the middle of the city's snow-lined streets.

Referred to locally as abductions, it was at least the fourth such disappearance of the day — the third in a span of less than 30 minutes.

The observers call themselves commuters. They are locals who have organized to resist "Operation Metro Surge," a massive U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol campaign targeting Minnesota's undocumented population, by monitoring federal operations in the Twin Cities. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both agencies, has called the incursion the largest immigration enforcement operation in history.

"She was so scared. The terror in her voice was really, really horrible."

Three days before the commuters were taken, the new head of Metro Surge, Trump administration border czar Tom Homan, announced a "drawdown" of 700 federal officers and agents. The president had tapped Homan to head the mission a week earlier, appointing the former ICE acting director to take over from Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, whose heavy-handed tactics culminated in three shootings in three weeks, including the killings of U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

Homan has vowed to take a more "targeted" line of attack in Minnesota. His announced drawdown has fueled speculation that the civil rights abuses and unlawful arrests documented in viral videos and court filings during Bovino's tenure may be coming to an end. On the ground, the feeling is quite different.

In a message circulated among commuters Friday, the community group Defrost MN, which uses crowdsourced data to track federal immigration operations, warned residents of an "uptick in abductions" — which refer to arrests of both immigrant community members and legal observers — following Homan's takeover and an increase in the number of government personnel and vehicles involved in those operations.

"National attention on Minnesota has waned with the departure of Bovino and rhetoric by Homan that things are de-escalating," the group noted, but recent data and reports from commuters in the field did not support those conclusions. Despite orders to the contrary, the group continued, "Agents continue to draw their weapons and deploy chemical agents against observers."

Meanwhile, the deportation pipeline out of Minnesota continues to flow, with 66 shackled passengers loaded onto a plane the night of Homan's address — the highest total in nearly two weeks — according to evidence collected at the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport.

Friday's mid-afternoon disappearance of multiple commuters in quick succession provided visceral evidence that, despite the change in leadership, the struggle between President Donald Trump's federal agents and residents continues.

Commuter Kaegan Recher was among those who hurried to the scene of the observer who disappeared while on call.

"She was so scared," Recher told The Intercept. "The terror in her voice was really, really horrible."

Response to a Siege

In Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as the surrounding suburbs, tens of thousands of immigrant families are relying on churches and mutual aid for food and financial support. People have not left their homes for weeks. Local schools have reverted to Covid-era online measures to support immigrant students too terrified to come to class. Those students who still attend in person are transported by U.S.-born neighbors and family friends. Campuses at all grade levels are patrolled by volunteers in fluorescent vests, an effort aimed at deterring federal agents' practice of targeting parent pick-up and drop-off sites.

Read our complete coverage

Chilling Dissent

Conservative estimates from local healthcare providers suggest emergency room and clinic visits in the Minneapolis area are down by 25 percent. City leaders report local businesses are losing upwards of $20 million a week. Immigrant-owned businesses have been devasted, with revenue losses hovering between 80 to 100 percent and many closing their doors for good.

These are the conditions commuters respond to. Their focus is two-fold: to document and alert. Some participate on foot, others by bicycle, many by car. They patrol neighborhoods, reporting suspicious vehicles, the license plates of which are run through a crow-sourced database of known or suspected Department of Homeland Security vehicles. When confirmations are made, commuters follow, honking their horns while observers on foot blow whistles at the passing vehicles. The Intercept has observed several such interactions in recent weeks.

Typically, federal agents try to lose the tail. If they are traveling in a caravan, one vehicle may drive slowly ahead of a commuter, allowing others to speed away. If commuters outnumber the agents, the maneuver can be difficult. Unable to shake their noisy entourage, agents will often head for the highway and, if the pursuit continues, retreat to federal headquarters.

Most commuters are careful to keep a distance between their vehicles and those of the agents. Sometimes, the authorities will pull over and stop. The commuters will stop behind them. Both vehicles will sit idling, waiting for the other to move, then carry on.

Related Federal Agents Keep Invoking Killing of Renee Good to Threaten Protesters in Minnesota

Occasionally, agents, heavily armed and frequently masked, will exit their vehicles and warn commuters to cease their pursuit. Some commuters do; others don't. Sometimes, commuters come upon agents at a home, a business, or an apartment complex. Given the heated state of affairs — two Americans dead, immigrants living in terror, children unable to attend school, and sweeping social and economic impacts — the encounters are often raw with emotion. Nearly everything is recorded, by agents and commuters alike.

As these interactions have become a familiar, legal experts have noted that following and filming law enforcement is protected under the Constitution. With the federal government asserting sweeping and highly contested immigration authorities, they say those efforts are more important than ever.

The Trump administration has taken a different view. Officials argue Minnesota is infested with "agitators" impeding law enforcement. Mounting evidence suggests they are mobilizing resources to put their resistance down.

Homan's Takeover

Much of the recent media attention surrounding Metro Surge has focused on Homan's reduction in forces, a move the border czar has linked to Minnesota expanding ICE's access to jails, thus reducing the number of federal personnel needed to meet the administration's immigration arrest quotas.

With some 2,000 officers and agents still on the ground, the current federal contingent is still 13 times larger than the agencies' normal footprint, outnumbering the Minneapolis Police Department three to one.

Related While Minnesotans Rejoice Over Greg Bovino's Ouster, His Replacement Is a Deportation Hard-Liner

While reducing the number of federal agents dominated headlines, it isn't the only talking point Homan has driven home since taking over.

Homan spent much of a press conference last week describing how ICE's full withdrawal hinges on the public acquiescing to the agency's mission, which, he stressed, is to achieve the president's promise of "mass deportations." The immediate goal in Minnesota is a complete federal drawdown, Homan explained, "but that is largely contingent on the end of the illegal and threatening activities against ICE and its federal partners that we're seeing in the community."  

In the past month, Homan told reporters, 158 people have been arrested for interfering with federal law enforcement, a crime for which penalties range from one to 20 years in prison. Of those cases, he claimed, 85 have been accepted for prosecution. The rest are still pending.

In most cases, people arrested for interfering with ICE are taken to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, a seven-story edifice that is part of Fort Snelling, the historic site of government-run concentration camp during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

Typically, commuters and other legal observers are held for around eight hours before being released. During that time, U.S. officials collect a range of identifying information. With ample evidence that the Department of Homeland Security is amassing a growing catalogue of the president's critics, and with Homan himself advertising his desire to include people who follow ICE's activities in a government "database," community concern is running high over what, exactly, the Trump administration is doing with its information on U.S. citizens.

In his address last week, Homan described an evolving effort by federal officials, including creation of a "multi-agency surge task force" and a new "unified joint operations center" that will allow the agency to "leverage joint intelligence capabilities to effectively target threats." He emphasized that there would be no reduction in security elements — often militarized tactical teams — assigned to guard deportation operations against "hostile incidents, until we see a change in what's happening with the lawlessness in impeding and interfering and assaulting of ICE and Border Patrol officers."

Homan reminded the press that he's long warned that the "hateful extreme rhetoric" of the president's opponents would lead to bloodshed. Now, he said, "there has been." Without acknowledging whose blood had been spilled, or by whom, Homan implored local leaders to urge calmness and "end the resistance."

"One Warning"

Recher, the commuter who responded to Friday's observer disappearances, has been in the streets monitoring ICE's operations since early January. His busiest week was after Homan took over. He's since noticed that agents have been less prone to immediately jump out of their cars with guns drawn — a welcome change — but that a similarly unsettling directive appears to have gone out regarding ICE's engagement with the public.

A video he shot Friday appeared to confirm as much, with a deportation officer telling Recher that he and his colleagues have been ordered to give commuters a single warning before taking them into custody.

"You just got one warning, that's it," the officer said. "What we're told, that's all you need."

"I hear more and more about abductions of observers."

Recher heeded the officer's warning. He received the panicked and disturbing call for help from the vanished commuter soon after.

"I hear less and less about successful abductions, which I'm glad," he said. "But I hear more and more about abductions of observers."

For Recher, like so many others following ICE's operations in Minnesota, the point of commuting is the thousands of immigrant families living in hiding across the Twin Cities. It is an effort to push back against the pervasive fear at the heart of the Trump administration's occupation.

"How do you justify terrorizing an entire community?" he asked. "It is the most un-American thing I've ever experienced in my entire life."

The post "Uptick In Abductions": ICE Ramps Up Targeting of Minneapolis Legal Observers appeared first on The Intercept.

Someone decided to have fun spinning their truck out on an icy lake and recording it for the social medias. Naturally, the truck fell through the ice, but the driver didn't bother to notify local 'authorities,' and instead just left it there. — Read the rest

The post Gentleman puts search and rescue workers at risk for no reason appeared first on Boing Boing.

After announcing $190 million in ARR in December, Harvey may be raising again a big leap in valuation.

Bhusri said in a statement that the company's next chapter would be focused on AI.

Rival Uber started allowing teens to use the app two years ago.

According to TechCrunch's ongoing tally, including the most recent data spill involving uMobix, there have been at least 27 stalkerware companies since 2017 that are known to have been hacked, or leaked customer and victims' data online. 

The "undervaluing" of nature by businesses is fuelling its decline and putting the global economy at risk, according to a major new report.

An assessment from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) outlines more than 100 actions for measuring and reducing impacts on nature across business, government, financial institutions and civil society. 

A co-chair of the assessment says that nature loss is one of the most "serious threats" to businesses, but the "twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it". 

The "business and biodiversity" report says that global "finance flows" of more than $7tn (£5.1tn) had "direct negative impacts on nature" in 2023. 

The new findings were put together by 79 experts from around the world over the course of three years, in what IPBES described as a "fast-track" assessment. 

IPBES is an independent body that gives scientific advice to policymakers about biodiversity and ecosystems. 

This is the "first report of its kind" to provide guidance on how businesses can contribute to 2030 nature goals, says IPBES executive secretary Dr Luthando Dziba in a statement. 

Below, Carbon Brief explains four key findings from the "summary for policymakers" (SPM), which outlines the main messages of the report.

The full report is due to be released in the coming months after final edits are made. 

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1. Businesses both depend on, and harm, nature
2. Current practices 'do not support' efforts to halt and reverse biodiversity loss
3. Businesses can act now to address their impacts on nature
4. Government policies can drive a 'just and sustainable future' for nature and people

1. Businesses both depend on, and harm, nature

Businesses of all sizes rely on nature in one way or another, says the report. 

The SPM outlines that biodiversity provides many of the goods and services businesses need, such as raw materials from the environment or controlled water flows to reduce flooding during wet seasons and provide water in dry seasons. 

Biodiversity also "underpins genetic diversity" that informs the development of products in many industries, including pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

Individual businesses often do not address their impacts and dependencies on nature, "in part due to their lack of awareness", the SPM says. 

They also often do not have the data or knowledge to "quantify their impacts on dependencies on biodiversity and much of the relevant scientific literature is not written for a business audience", the report claims. It adds: 

"Lack of transparency across value chains, including of the risks and opportunities related to the sustainability of resource extraction, use, reuse and waste management, is a further barrier to action." 

The report says it is well established that businesses depend on biodiversity, but also that the actions of businesses "continue to drive declines in biodiversity and nature's contributions to people". 

(IPBES says it uses terms such as well established to express "how assured experts are about the findings". Well established findings, the highest level of confidence, have significant evidence and high agreement behind them. The three other terms used in IPBES reports are: unresolved (a lot of evidence but low agreement), established but incomplete (limited evidence but good agreement) and inconclusive (limited or no evidence and little agreement).)

The report notes that the size of a business "does not always reflect the magnitude of its impacts", with companies in sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fishing, electricity, energy and mining having "relatively high" direct impacts on nature.

A "failure" to account for nature as the economy has expanded over the past two centuries has "led to its degradation and unprecedented rates of biodiversity loss", the SPM says. It adds:  

"The decline in biodiversity and nature's contributions to people has become a critical systemic risk threatening the economy, financial stability and human wellbeing with implications for human rights."

It is well established that nature loss as a result of "unsustainable use" threatens the "ability of businesses, local economies and whole sectors to function", the report details. 

These risks and others - such as extreme weather events and critical changes to Earth systems - are "among the highest-ranked global risks over the next 10 years", it adds. 

The SPM notes further that it is well established that risks around climate change and biodiversity loss "may interact to amplify social and economic impacts". 

These risks have "disproportionate impacts on developing countries whose economies are more reliant on biodiversity and have more limited technical and financial capacity to absorb shocks", the report adds. 

2. Current practices 'do not support' efforts to halt and reverse biodiversity loss

The SPM says that it is well established that current political and economic practices "perpetuate business as usual and do not support the transformative change required to halt and reverse biodiversity loss".

These practices have "commonly ignored or undervalued biodiversity, creating tension between business actions and the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity", the report continues.

For example, the report says there is established but incomplete evidence that "time pressures on decision-making and timescales for investment returns and reporting by businesses - with an emphasis on quarterly earnings or annual reporting - are shorter than many ecological cycles".

This prevents businesses from "adequately" considering nature loss in decision-making, says the SPM.

There is well established evidence that businesses fail to assign adequate value to "biodiversity and many of nature's contributions to people, such as filtration of pollutants, climate regulation and pollination", it continues.

As a result, "businesses bear little or no financial cost for negative impacts and may not generate revenue from positive impacts on biodiversity", leading to "insufficient incentives for businesses to act to conserve, restore or sustainably use biodiversity".

Prof Stephen Polasky, co-chair of the assessment and a professor of ecological and environmental economics at the University of Minnesota, said in a statement:

"The loss of biodiversity is among the most serious threats to business. Yet the twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it. Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points."

It is well established that policies from governments can "further accelerate biodiversity decline", the SPM says.

It notes that, in 2023, global public and private financial spending with direct negative impacts on nature was estimated at $7.3tn.

This figure includes public subsidies that are harmful to nature (around $2.4tn) and private investment in high-impact sectors ($4.9tn), says the report.

Industries harmful to nature include fossil-fuel extraction, mining, deforestation and large-scale meat farming and fishing.

In contrast, just $220bn in public and private finance was directed to activities that contribute to protecting and sustainably using nature in 2023, adds the report.

(In recognition of the need to address public spending on activities that are destructive to nature, countries agreed to reduce biodiversity-harming subsidies by at least $500bn by 2030 as part of a global pact made in 2022.)

There are additional "barriers to action" facing businesses, ranging from challenging social norms to a lack of capacity, data or technology. These are summarised in the table below. 

Barriers preventing businesses from taking action on biodiversity loss. Credit: SPM.4, IPBES (2026)

"These barriers do not affect all actors equally and may disproportionately affect small and medium-sized businesses and financial institutions in developing countries," adds the report.

3. Businesses can act now to address their impacts on nature  

The SPM says it is well established that the "transformative change" required to halt and reverse biodiversity loss requires action from "all businesses". 

However, the report continues that it is also well established that the current level of business action is "insufficient" to deliver this "transformative change". This is, in part, because the "enabling environment is missing", it says.

IPBES says all businesses have a responsibility to act, even if this responsibility is not shared "evenly".

"Priority actions" that businesses should take differ depending on the size of the firm, the sector in which it operates in, as well as the company structure and its "relationship with biodiversity", the report notes. 

The exact actions businesses should pursue also depends on companies' "degree of control and influence over stakeholders", it says.

According to the report, firms can act across four "decision-making levels" - corporate, operations, value chain and portfolio - to measure and address impacts on biodiversity. 

("Corporate" refers to decisions focused on overarching strategy, governance and direction of the business; "operations" to day-to-day activities; "value chain" to the system and resources required to move a product or service from supplier to customer; and "portfolio" to investments and business assets).

The SPM sets out a series of examples for how businesses can act across all four levels. These are summarised in the table below.

Actions that businesses can take now to address their impacts and dependencies. Credit: SPM.2, IPBES (2026).

At a corporate level, the report notes that firms can establish ambitious governance and frameworks that can then have a ripple effect across the other levels, according to the report. This includes the integration of biodiversity commitments and targets into corporate strategy.

The SPM says that corporate biodiversity targets are "most effective" when they are aligned with "national and global biodiversity objectives" and "take into consideration a business's impacts and dependencies on biodiversity and nature's contributions to people". 

At an operations level, businesses should focus on ensuring that their operations are located and managed in a way that benefits biodiversity, IPBES says. Environmental and social impact assessments and management plans that are supported by "credible monitoring of both actions and biodiversity outcomes" can underpin this effort, the SPM notes. 

It says it is well established that using the "mitigation hierarchy" framework can help businesses deliver "lasting outcomes on the ground". (The framework guides users towards limiting as far as possible the negative impacts on biodiversity from development projects by first avoiding, then minimising, restoring and offsetting impacts.)

Next, the report notes there are actions businesses can take to drive change within its broader spheres of influence, including suppliers, retailers, consumers and peers within industry. This is important, the SPM notes, as significant impacts and dependencies on biodiversity and nature "accrue" across the lifecycle of products or services, especially those that rely on raw materials. 

The report notes there is established but incomplete evidence that efforts to "map" company value chains and improve traceability by linking products and materials to suppliers, locations and impacts can help "identify risks and prioritise actions". 

While noting that "mapping" beyond direct suppliers "often remains challenging" for businesses, the report adds:

"Examples at the corporate and value chain levels exist, such as companies in the chocolate industry that have made advances in recording biodiversity dependencies to improve business decisions through full traceability of materials and improved supplier control mechanisms."

Elsewhere, the SPM notes that there is also established but incomplete evidence that consumer-focused measures - such as product labelling, education and incentives - can "shape behaviour and improve transparency". However, it cautions that the effectiveness of these strategies is "constrained by consumer scepticism, certification costs and business models reliant on unsustainable consumption".

The SPM also highlights that, at a "portfolio" level, financial institutions can shift finance away from harmful activities - for instance, companies whose products drive deforestation - and towards business activities with positive impacts for biodiversity and nature.

Speaking to Carbon Brief, Matt Jones, co-chair of the report, explains the rationale behind including options for how businesses can address biodiversity impacts in the document:

"Businesses and governments in different countries are coming at this from a very different perspective. So we can't present a set of really prescriptive 'how tos'…but we can present a huge number of options for action that businesses, governments, financial institutions and civil society and other actors can all take."

Elsewhere, the report says it is well established that "robust, transparent and credible reporting of actions and outcomes" is required to "inspire others".

4. Government policies can drive a 'just and sustainable future' for nature and people

Both governments and financial institutions can set policies and create incentives to protect biodiversity and stem its decline, says the SPM.

According to the report, the types of policies that governments can put in place that have an influence over business include:

• Fiscal policies, such as subsidies and taxes.
• Land use or marine spatial planning and zoning, such as designating new national parks or areas protected for nature.
• Permitting for business activities that affect nature - for example, by requiring environmental impact assessments.
• Public procurement policy (rules for how governments purchase goods and services).
• Controls on advertising and the creation of standards to prevent "greenwashing".

Governments can also promote action through paying for ecosystem services, creating environmental markets and through "multilateral benefit-sharing mechanisms", which set out rules for ensuring profits from nature are shared equally, says the SPM.

It says this includes the Cali Fund, a fund that businesses can voluntarily pay into after reaping benefits from genetic resources found in biodiverse countries.

(The fund was agreed in 2024 with expectations that it could generate up to billions of dollars for conservation, but it has so far only attracted $1,000.)

Governments could also promote action by phasing out or reforming subsidies that are harmful for nature, as well as fostering positive incentives, according to the report.

Overall, governments can work with other actors to create an "enabling environment" to "incentivise actions that are beneficial for businesses, biodiversity and society for a just and sustainable future", says the SPM. It adds:

"Creation of an enabling environment that provides incentives for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and nature's contributions to people could align what is profitable with what is good for biodiversity and society.

"Creating this enabling environment would result in businesses and financial institutions being positive agents of change in transforming to a just and sustainable economic system, by addressing their impacts on biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution, which are all interconnected."

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The criminalisation of peaceful protest against the use of animals in scientific testing and research is "draconian, unnecessary and almost certainly unlawful". That's the verdict of animal protection NGO Cruelty Free International, after the House of Lords voted to pass legislation.

Peers approved an amendment to the Public Order Act 2023. This now means that peaceful protest against animal testing facilities could lead to 12 months' imprisonment and unlimited fines. The measure passed with no further debate after the defeat of Natalie Bennett's fatal motion.

Parliament's approval of these changes to protest laws wasn't surprising, as the government used a 'statutory instrument'.  But the debate by MPs in the lead up to the vote demonstrated a clear concern and opposition in parliament. This mirrors the vocal opposition that's come from civil society and the public.

Bennett's motion came after MPs passed the proposals to criminalise peaceful protest outside animal testing facilities by 301 to 110. The fatal motion went down by 295 votes to 62. But prior to that vote a number of peers had raised strong concerns about the appropriateness of the changes.

They sought clarity on the scope of activities intended to be criminalised and pressed the Minister for evidence that existing laws were not adequate. There were also several constitutional concerns that the measure was an overreach and an abuse of the statutory instrument procedure.

The amendments, which reclassify "life sciences infrastructure" (including animal testing and breeding facilities) as "key national infrastructure", will now become law on Wednesday 11 February.

Animal testing protest law is an overreach

Cruelty Free International, along with other animal protection organisations, believes that this definition is a significant overreach. It says it's not reasonable to regard such facilities as critical infrastructure.

The current list of key national infrastructure facilities includes those which support road, rail and air transport. Also harbours and the exploration, production and transportation of oil and gas. As well as onshore electricity generation and newspaper printing.

Set against this list, adding life sciences infrastructure is clearly inconsistent. The measures, therefore, will unreasonably restrict fundamental rights to protest which are protected under UK law and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The government had given two reasons for this change: pandemic preparedness and the need to protect life sciences companies. However, there does not appear to be any basis to the notion protesters would have interfered in any way with the development of coronavirus vaccines. And it's notable that pharma companies which have threatened to relocate away from the UK have said their concerns stem from regulatory or economic pressures, not protests.

Existing police powers already address protest-related concerns. And there's no evidence that these are inadequate. In developing these proposals, the government has failed to consult with animal protection or civil liberties organisations. That's despite this being an area where polling data demonstrates strong public interest.

Cruelty Free International's head of public affairs, Dylan Underhill, said:

We believe these regulations to be illiberal, draconian, unnecessary, and almost certainly unlawful. Criminalising peaceful protest against experiments on animals undermines fundamental freedoms and public accountability, and is an unjustified attack on democratic rights.

Whilst we appreciate the efforts of peers to stop these amendments becoming law and to scrutinise the detail of the measures, we remain deeply disappointed and angry that the government has pursued these highly consequential changes through a process which does not allow for substantive parliamentary debate or public scrutiny.

These amendments contravene fundamental rights to protest that are protected under UK law and the European Convention on Human Rights, and risk setting a dangerous precedent towards an ever-growing restriction of peaceful protest.

We now encourage parliamentarians to seek clarity on the scope of the activities which are being criminalised, and to question ministers on the lack of evidence, the discriminatory nature of the proposal, and its compatibility with the rights of the British people to carry out non-violent protest in relation to a topic on which opinion surveys have repeatedly demonstrated strong public concern.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has stuck the knife into his former backer. Sarwar has called for Starmer to step down over his closeness to paedo-pal Peter Mandelson. And, Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said:

Of course Keir Starmer has to go. He's lost all moral authority and self awareness to do the right thing. It's now a question of when Labour Members will push the button.

Heat grows on Starmer

Whilst the heat is certainly growing on the beleaguered prime minister, Sarwar's remarks have been met with scorn.

Sarwar, levered into his position by Starmer - called for Starmer to quit because, he said, the people of Scotland are "crying out for a competent government" and that Downing Street leadership is becoming a "huge distraction" from Labour's positive work across the country. No clues were provided as to where the 'positive work' might be located.

Sarwar went on:

The situation in Downing Street is not good enough. There have been too many mistakes. They promised they were going to be different, but too much has happened.

Sarwar claimed he had spoken to Starmer before his statement and said it was "safe to say he and I disagreed". He was immediately and rightly called out for his own closeness to "old friend" Mandelson:

He responded that "Mandelson is not someone or something I want to be associated with". Quite. I'm sure Starmer would wish not to be associated with in the public mind either.

But he certainly is. And, now that the Plaid Cymru leader has joined the growing calls for Starmer to go, the heat is very much on.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

Forces from Israel have kidnapped a Lebanese official close to the border and killed a father and child in an airstrike. Atwi Atwi of Islamic Group in Lebanon was captured in the village of al-Habbariyeh.

The New Arab reported:

Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya (the Islamic Group) said Israeli forces crossed into the village of al-Habbariyeh in the Hasbaya district after midnight and seized Atwi Atwi, who heads the group's Hasbaya and Marjaayoun areas.

The group said Atwi's family were assaulted during the raid and that they:

held the Israeli military responsible for "any harm that may befall Atwi", describing the abduction as part of "a series of daily violations and barbaric attacks on Lebanese sovereignty carried out by Israel".

They called on the Lebanese government to apply pressure to release Atwi and other detainees. The Lebanese state has not commented.

The Palestine Chronicle said:

The incident comes despite the ceasefire agreement between Hezbollah and Israel that entered into force in late November 2024.

Adding:

Lebanese and international sources say Israel has committed thousands of violations since then, killing and injuring hundreds and causing widespread material destruction.

The Israel military confirmed the raid in its own terms:

In a nighttime operation, forces from the 210th Division arrested a senior terrorist operative from the Islamic Group.

The New Arab described Atwi's group as:

a Sunni Islamist political party founded in 1964 as the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It holds one seat in Lebanon's parliament and was recently designated a "terrorist organisation" by the United States, along with two other Muslim Brotherhood groups in Egypt and Jordan.

Members were reportedly killed:

after joining Hezbollah in cross-border clashes with Israel in October 2023 in support of Gaza.

Israel kill father and child in airstrike

Israel also killed three people, including a father and child, in an airstrike in Yanouh - around four hours north of al-Habbariyeh. Lebanon's LBC International reported:

Three people were killed in a Monday strike in the town of Yanouh, local sources reported.

Adding:

Among the dead were a child and his father, who was a member of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces and happened to be passing nearby at the time of the attack.

But this was just the latest attack.

Chemical warfare

Israel was recently spraying the so-called Blue Line with potentially cancerous chemicals. The Blue Line is a 120km strip which marks the line of Israel withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000. The UN and Lebanese army tested the chemicals. They found high concentrations of glyphosate, which can cause cancer.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said the "deeply alarming" attack may constitute a war crime:

The deliberate targeting of civilian farmland violates international humanitarian law, particularly the prohibition on attacking or destroying objects indispensable to civilian survival.

They added:

Large-scale destruction of private property without specific military necessity amounts to a war crime and undermines food security and basic livelihoods in the affected areas.

Israel is routinely aggressive towards Lebanon. And between kidnap operations, dropping cancer chemicals and killing a child in an airstrike, it is certainly business as usually for the global pariah ethnostate.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

After sending a number of freedom of information (FOI) requests to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Canary has uncovered a shocking range of figures. Across the course of a year, privatised water suppliers across England and Wales robbed welfare claimants of £22.4m in Universal Credit (UC) payment deductions. This comes as the industry itself paid out more than £48.6m to its fat cat water bosses.

Specifically, the staggering sum suppliers deducted from vital social security payments would cover nearly half the executive and key management pay of the 13 largest companies for the 2024/25 financial year.

The damning figures come at a time when soaring water bills are forcing more than a third of households to ration water, and leaving two-fifths cutting back on other essentials.

DWP Universal Credit deductions: water companies raking it in

Analysis by the Canary of the chief executive pay of 13 major suppliers showed that for the 24/25 financial year, water bosses raked in more than £13m in salaries, pensions, bonuses, and other benefits. The data takes into account the bonus bans that industry regulator Ofwat announced in November 2025.

In total, including CEO pay, the 13 companies handed out over £48.6m to key management staff. This typically means a company's directors (including non-executive) and other senior personnel operating at the top of its payscale.

It was during a similar 12 month period that water companies deducted tens of millions from Universal Credit claimants.

Through an FOI request to the DWP, the Canary was able to obtain data for the period spanning the bulk of the financial year from April 2024 to the end of March 2025. The data showed that during this timeframe, water and sewerage suppliers in England and Wales had taken £22.4m from claimants' UC payments.

This was across the course of more than 1.1 million deductions.

In total, the Canary secured 18 months worth of water company deductions data from the DWP. This data spans two of the most up-to-date quarterly statistical releases for UC deductions. This showed that between March 2024 and August 2025, the UK's water and sewerage industry siphoned £32.4m in customers' Universal Credit.

Water companies robbing welfare from its poorest customers

Based on the data provided, we were unable to ascertain how many households water companies robbed of UC. However, the data does reveal what they deducted from claimants each month on average. Overall, water suppliers took around £20 a month from people's Universal Credit payments.

For a single claimant over the age of 25, this was equivalent to approximately 5% of their standard allowance. The amount was below the average for third party deductions, and well below DWP advance payments and government deductions. Nevertheless, it would still be a major hit to claimants surviving on already inadequate payments.

Amid the soaring cost of living, as paltry as UC is, it's still a lifeline for many of the poorest households. Yet water companies are depriving some of the most vulnerable claimants of the vital social security they're entitled to.

Driving people into destitution: a feature, not a flaw

Naturally, it's all completely on brand for the UK water racket. Regional water monopolies preside over the UK public's access to one of the most basic essentials for life. And they are holding customers to ransom with ever-spiralling and unaffordable bills.

In 2024, private water companies pumped 4.7m hours of sewage into UK waterways. Across 2024 and 2025, they left more than a hundred thousand people without potable water due to infrastructure faults. In one instance, a water firm made residents sick from parasite-infested drinking water.

However, a handful of wealthy water company bosses still raked in millions in lavish payouts.

Now, we know that as they did all that, they were also levying punitive welfare deductions. In the process, they pocketed millions of pounds from some of the poorest, most vulnerable people.

Ultimately, big water companies driving people into destitution is a fundamental feature of their sweeping project of wealth extraction.

Galling double standards

And of course, there's another galling irony to all this where Thames Water is concerned in particular. The company has nearly 1,000 times the debt that the industry leached from low income households through UC deductions.

When a water company is swimming in debt due to years of profit-driven mismanagement, the government does nothing. By contrast, when poor customers struggling with extortionate bills are in debt to their water firm, the state actively facilitates the private utility giants parasitising their welfare payments.

Nationalising water holds some of the solutions. It will obviously go some way to fixing this rotten-by-design capitalist apparatus and make water an accessible, affordable, guaranteed right for all. However, alongside it, we also need to do away with the DWP's aggressive debt recovery programme. And more broadly, we need to dismantle the brutal DWP itself. Any welfare system that facilitates wealth-hoarders of private companies in order to plunge struggling households into deeper poverty to line fat cat pockets, is one utterly broken beyond repair.

£22.4m in DWP welfare payments is a drop in the ocean for big water firms. But for the hundreds of thousands among the UK's poorest losing out on it - it'll be a very different story.

Featured image via the Canary

By Hannah Sharland

Your Party's leadership elections have opened on the afternoon of 9 February. The vote closes at 5pm on 23 February.

Your Party - a tale of two 'slates'

In the 'endorsements' phase, during which Your Party members could endorse candidates they wished to see on the ballot, Jeremy Corbyn's 'The Many' was leading in 12 seats, while Zarah Sultana's 'Grassroots Left' led in another 10, alongside two Independent candidates.

The Canary previously spoke to a number of the candidates.

There are 24 seats up for grabs on Your Party's Central Executive Committee. This will serve as the Party's collective leadership following a narrow vote at the start-up party's founding conference. Candidates from 'The Many' slate have announced they will elect Corbyn as the party's parliamentary leader if they win. Sultana has also expressed interest in taking this role [in an interview with Laura Kuenssberg - transcript here].

In the 'Public Office Holder' section, Corbyn topped the poll with 6,740 endorsements, and Sultana placed second with 5,124. Fellow MPs Shockat Adam and Ayoub Khan are standing with Corbyn as part of 'The Many'.

The 'Grassroots Left' slate has focused on the need for "maximum member democracy", as well as opposition to NATO and the monarchy. 'The Many' has emphasised the need for Your Party to face outwards and "campaign on the big issues" such as the cost-of-living and public ownership.

Over 350 candidates

Candidates in the English regions and Scotland and Wales had to gather 75 endorsements from fellow members in their area to pass to the ballot. Those in the public office holders' section such as MPs required 150.

In line with the Party's constitution, there are two seats for each of the nine English regions, alongside one each for Scotland and Wales (in addition to their own national structures). Members in the relevant region or nation may vote for candidates in that region / nation.

There are also four places for public office holders (Councillors, MPs etc), open to voting by all members. There are a total of 24 seats up for election.

11,414 members took part. Over 350 members put themselves forward as candidates. More than 80 progressed to the next stage, the majority of which are Independents.

The endorsements won't, however, be a straightforward guide to voting patterns. Members were able to cast endorsements in a different process to votes in the election.

Hustings for most membership positions took place on the weekend of the 7-8 February. You can see them on the party's YouTube channel. Details of the public office holder hustings, including the Party's four MPs, will appear here.

The elections come after a founding conference for Scotland Your Party, in which members voted to support Independence and stand candidates in the 2026 Holyrood elections.

A Your Party spokesperson said:

Labour have failed the country. To get Britain back on its feet and prevent the threat of a far-right government requires more than just a new face - it requires a new politics. That's what Your Party's leadership elections are all about.

Members from all walks of life have put themselves forward, a testament to the depth and diversity of our mass movement. From today, our members will vote on who leads Your Party into its next phase.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary