CIRCLE WITH A DOT

Update. Employees of #Google and #OpenAi just released an open letter supporting #Anthropic.
https://notdivided.org/

"We hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War's current demands for permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight."

The letter welcomes new signatures from past and present employees of Google and OpenAI.

At the time of this post, it had 684 signatures.

#AI #LLMs #ChatGPT #Claude #Gemini

Update. "#SamAltman says #OpenAI shares #Anthropic's red lines in #Pentagon fight."
https://archive.is/5sTBa

#AI #LLMs #Claude #ChatGPT

Update. #Anthropic just 𝗿𝗲𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 #Pentagon demands to remove safeguards on #Claude that limit its use in mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. Here's the statement from CEO #DarioAmodei.
https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

#AI #LLMs

Wow. "Virginia State terminates six professors without due process.
Campus security escorted the professors —five tenured and one tenure-track— to their cars and issued no-trespass warnings. They have received no written explanation for their dismissals."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/tenure/2026/02/25/vsu-terminates-6-professors-without-due-process

#Academia #Universities

Ugh. "Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge."
https://time.com/7380854/exclusive-anthropic-drops-flagship-safety-pledge/

It's not yet clear what this means for the high-stakes negotiation between Anthropic and the Pentagon. Two of the Anthropic sticking points have been that Claude not be used for "mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that can use AI to kill people without human input."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/24/anthropic-claude-military-ai

#AI #Anthropic #Claude #Hegseth #LLMs #Pentagon #USPol #USPolitics

"Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump."
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/24/nx-s1-5723968/epstein-files-trump-accusation-maxwell

The missing files are about accusations that Trump sexually assaulted a child and hit her in the head. The FBI interviewed the accuser four times and the DOJ has not released the interview notes.

All allegations of Trump wrongdoing are worth watching. But this one is especially worth watching because it has three properties:
1. It's serious.
2. It's well-documented. (Thanks to #NPR.)
3. It's one that many #MAGA voters and politicians take seriously.

Hundreds of Trump scandals have the first two properties. Almost none has the third.

This creates the prospect of actual accountability.

#DOJ #Epstein #Trump #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

Update. It's happening. "News Publishers Are Now Blocking The Internet Archive, And We May All Regret It."
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/13/news-publishers-are-now-blocking-the-internet-archive-and-we-may-all-regret-it/

@mmasnick is right: "In our rush to punish #AI companies, we’re destroying public goods that serve everyone…We’re sacrificing the historical record not because of proven harm, but because publishers are worried about what might happen. That’s a hell of a tradeoff."

#Copyright #InternetArchive #Journalism #Publishers
@internetarchive

Update. "Washington pushes back against EU’s bid for tech autonomy."
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-bid-for-tech-autonomy-washington-us-pushes-back/

PS: #Trump doesn't realize that he's the problem. Europe doesn't want to use software subject to US #surveillance, just as Trump himself (in his 2020 Executive Order 13942) didn't want Americans to use TikTok and other ByteDance software subject to Chinese surveillance. It doesn't help when Trump turns US tech CEOs into donors and toadies.

#FAFO #USPol #USPolitics

Update. It's happening. Tomorrow the #Trump #EPA will repeal the 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health. That "endangerment" finding allowed the EPA to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. Its repeal will pave the way for the repeal of those regulations.
https://www.euronews.com/green/2026/02/11/one-of-the-most-damaging-decisions-in-modern-history-trump-epa-to-repeal-key-climate-findi

#Climate #Environment #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

A review of the proceedings from four major computer-science conferences showed that none from 2021, and all from 2025, had fake citations.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05867v1

The authors prefer the term "mysterious citations" which they define this way: "No paper [with] a similar enough title exists. The cited location either does not exist or holds an unrelated paper with different authors."

#AI #LLMs #Hallucinations #Misconduct #ScholComm

"#News #publishers limit #InternetArchive access due to #AI scraping concerns."
https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/01/news-publishers-limit-internet-archive-access-due-to-ai-scraping-concerns/

PS: I'm one who thinks AI training on copyrighted content is #FairUse and (separate point) even desirable in the case of academic research.
https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/113443473594224752

But this kind of training will create huge collateral damage --indirectly through publisher action -- if it diminishes the @internetarchive.

#Copyright #Journalism

Update. The Danish government is moving away from #Microsoft products to #OpenSource alternatives.
https://itsfoss.com/news/denmark-road-traffic-authority-ditches-microsoft/

#Denmark

Update. The German state of Schleswig-Holstein is migrating from #MicrosoftOffice to #LibreOffice and expects to save €15 million in 2026 alone.
https://itsfoss.com/news/german-state-ditch-microsoft/

#Germany #Microsoft #OpenSource

Update. The #UN is dropping #GoogleDocs in favor of #OpenSource #CryptPad (@CryptPad).
https://itsfoss.com/news/un-ditches-google-form/

Update. "The International Criminal Court (#ICC) will switch its internal work environment away from #MicrosoftOffice to #OpenDesk, a European [German] #OpenSource alternative."
https://www.euractiv.com/news/international-criminal-court-to-ditch-microsoft-office-for-european-open-source-alternative/

Update. "#Austria's military has switched from #MicrosoftOffice to #LibreOffice. The move was all about digital sovereignty, not cost savings. Other governments are moving away from Microsoft to protect their citizens' privacy."
https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-european-military-just-ditched-microsoft-for-open-source-libreoffice-heres-why/

#OpenSource #Privacy #Surveillance #USPol #USPolitics

"#EPA drafts rule to strike down landmark climate finding."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/07/22/endangerment-finding-epa-climate/

"The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to rescind a landmark 2009 legal opinion that greenhouse gas emissions put human health at risk, which underpins many of the government’s actions to combat #climate change…A decision to completely rescind the endangerment finding is still a draft proposal and could be subject to change…The draft would also eliminate all resulting limits on motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions."

#DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

The French city of Lyon is dropping #Microsoft software in favor of #OpenSource alternatives. It doesn't want to depend on proprietary, closed-source software, and it doesn't want to depend on *American* software. It doesn't want "potential [US] governmental surveillance."
https://news.itsfoss.com/french-city-replaces-microsoft/

PS: It seems clear that #Trump is playing a role here. While he uses tariffs to boost American companies, he scares foreign buyers away from American companies, at least software companies that collect user data. He's creating a #TikTok problem for American software. Microsoft didn't help itself on this front by giving $1 million to the Trump inauguration.

BTW, many other US closed-source software companies gave $1m to the Trump inauguration, among them Adobe, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Perplexity.