from the american-horror-story-season-6 dept

The Trump administration is purposefully cruel. That much cannot be argued, not when it has deliberately sent deportees to foreign torture prisons, dumped them in war-torn countries with histories of human rights abuses, and stranded people its has been ordered to release far from home without their IDs, phones, or money.

This regime loves to inflict pain. Its desire to erase as many minorities from this country as possible has led it to do things no competent government would ever do, especially not one that serves a nation long known as a land of hope and opportunity. The people who first landed here were escaping religious persecution. (They then went on to eradicate the people who actually lived here, but stick with me for a moment.) People seeking the same refuge from persecution are now being ejected from this country as quickly as possible.

The good news is that a federal court has at least pumped the brakes on one such DHS effort. In Minnesota — where Trump has used benefits fraud allegations as justification for a “surge” that has resulted in two murders committed by federal officers (so far!) — a federal judge has just told the administration it can’t just suddenly declare an end to refugee status.

Here’s Law Dork with the summary of yet another anti-minority putsch by the Trump administration:

The longtime government policy has been that refugees — vetted and legally admitted individuals — who are yet to adjust to lawful permanent resident status cannot be detained on that basis alone.

With Operation PARRIS (Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening), the Trump administration wants to change that.

In a pair of memos issued in December 2025 and February 2026 — which Law Dork has covered extensively — the Department of Homeland Security has purported to change that policy by rescinding and re-rescinding the 2010 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy that most recently enunciated that policy for applying the relevant provision — 8 U.S.C. 1159 — of the Refugee Act of 1980.

What used to be a normal part of the “give me your tired, huddled masses” ideal that once represented this Land of Opportunity is no longer. The Trump administration is now claiming it can simply pretend existing law no longer matters. And while it is true that Congress could decide to rewrite or overturn the 1980 law, it cannot simply be ignored just because the DHS sent out a couple of memos telling federal officers they’re free to ignore existing law.

Fortunately, this Minnesota court isn’t going to sit by while the administration pretends the only interpretation of the law is the one it recently wrote for itself. From the opinion [PDF]:

When the clock strikes 12:00 a.m. on the 366th day after a refugee was lawfully admitted to the United States, according to the Government, 8 U.S.C. § 1159(a) gives Department of Homeland Security officials the power to arrest and detain that refugee with no limits on the length of detention. Because § 1159(a) provides no such power, the Court will issue a preliminary injunction enjoining Defendants from arresting or detaining refugees in Minnesota on the basis that have not yet been adjusted to lawful permanent resident status—which, by law, cannot occur until one year has passed. The Court will not allow federal authorities to use a new and erroneous statutory interpretation to terrorize refugees who immigrated to this country under the promise that they would be welcomed and allowed to live in peace, far from the persecution they fled.

You see the obvious evil here, right? A refugee — at earliest — cannot secure lawful permanent status until after one year has passed. Trump’s DHS says refugees applying for permanent residence can be arrested and detained indefinitely 24 hours after they’ve been here for a year. The court is right: this not only flips the law on its head, it completely destroys an American ideal that made this nation of a beacon of hope for oppressed people around the world.

Decades ago, as a nation, we made a solemn promise to refugees fleeing persecution: that after rigorous vetting, they would be welcomed to the United States and given the opportunity to rebuild their lives. We assured them that they could care for their families, earn a living, contribute to their communities, and live in peace here in the United States. We promised them the hope that one day they could achieve the American Dream.

The Government’s new policy breaks that promise—without congressional authorization—and raises serious constitutional concerns. The new policy turns the refugees’ American Dream into a dystopian nightmare.

A government that retains any notion of serving the public good would never have attempted to enact this policy. Only a government filled with unjustified hatred of “others” would dare to destroy the American Dream. And only a regime so laden with craven bigots would dare to drape themselves in the flag while shitting on what actually makes this country great.

And, it must be noted, this is only a temporary block. The court is going to allow the government to defend its actions. I don’t think the government will win, but it will certainly kick this up the ladder to the appellate level. That’s fine, so long as the restraining order stays in place while the government cooks up a defense for its blatant racism. With any luck, this will stick all the way to the Supreme Court… and then hopefully after that review as well. No one who truly loves America would back this effort. And no one who only claims to love America while strip-mining it of its greatness should be allowed to turn this great nation into a “dystopian nightmare.”

Filed Under: bigotry, border patrol, cbp, cruelty, dhs, ice, kristi noem, mass deportation, pam bondi, todd lyons, trump administration

Running a nuclear power plant isn’t an easy task, even with the level of automation available to a 1980s Soviet RBMK reactor. In their continuing efforts to build a full-sized, functional replica of an RBMK control room as at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant – retired in the early 2000s – the [Chornobyl Family] channel has now moved on to the SKALA system.

Previously we saw how they replicated the visually very striking control panel for the reactor core, with its many buttons and status lights. SKALA is essentially the industrial control system, with multiple V-3M processor racks (‘frames’), each with 20k 24-bit words of RAM. Although less powerful than a PDP-11, its task was to gather all the sensor information and process them in real-time, which was done in dedicated racks.

Output from SKALA’s DREG program were also the last messages from the doomed #4 reactor. Unfortunately an industrial control system can only do so much if its operators have opted to disable every single safety feature. By the time the accident unfolded, the hardware was unable to even keep up with the rapid changes, and not all sensor information could even be recorded on the high-speed drum printer or RTA-80 teletypes, leaving gaps in our knowledge of the accident.

Setting up a genuine RTA-80 teletype is still one of the goals, but these old systems are not easy to use. Same with the original software that ran on these V-3M computer frames, which was loaded from paper tape (the ‘library’), including the aforementioned DREG program. This process creates executable code that is put on magnetic tapes, with magnetic tape also used for storage.

The workings of the SKALA system and its individual programs including KRV, DREG and PRIZMA are explained in the video, each having its own focus on a part of the RBMK reactor’s status and overall health. Interacting with SKALA occurs via a special keyboard, on which the operator enters command codes to change e.g. set points, with parameters encoded in this code.

Using this method, RBMK operators can set and request values, with parameters and any error codes displayed on a dedicated display. There is also the Mnemonic Display for the SKALA system which provides feedback to the operator on the status of the SKALA system, including any faults.

Although to many people the control system of a power plant is just the control room, with its many confusing buttons, switches, lights and displays, there is actually a lot more to it, with systems SKALA and its associated hardware an often overlooked aspect. It’s great to see this kind of knowledge being preserved, and even poured into a physical model that simulates the experience of using the system.

The long-lived nature of nuclear power reactors means that even today 1960s and 1970s-era industrial automation system are still in active use, but once the final reactor goes offline – or is modernized during refurbishing – a lot of the institutional knowledge of these systems tends to vanish and with it a big part of history.

from the hypocrites-r-us dept

The State Department wants US diplomats to fight data localization around the world. The policy position is correct. It’s just that the messenger has spent the last few months systematically destroying every reason anyone might listen.

Reuters has an exclusive report on a State Department cable ordering US diplomats to lobby against data sovereignty and data localization initiatives around the world:

In the State Department cable, dated February 18 and signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agency said such laws would “disrupt global data flows, increase costs and cybersecurity risks, limit Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud services, and expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship.”

The cable said the Trump administration was pushing for “a more assertive international data policy” and that diplomats should “counter unnecessarily burdensome regulations, such as data localization mandates.”

Now, if you’ve been reading Techdirt for any length of time, you know we’ve long been critical of data localization mandates. They really are bad for the internet. They fracture the global internet into national fiefdoms. They raise costs. They can actually weaken cybersecurity by forcing data onto local infrastructure that may be less secure. And in authoritarian or semi-authoritarian countries, data localization is often a thinly veiled mechanism for government surveillance and control of information. Requiring that data stay within a country’s borders makes it a whole lot easier for that country’s government to demand access to it.

So on the merits, the policy position described in the cable is basically correct. Data sovereignty mandates do tend to hurt the open internet, and the US pushing back on them has, historically, been a genuinely good thing for global internet freedom. Indeed, the US State Department has a long history of pushing back on such efforts.

But the US already blew its credibility on this issue before this administration even took office. Remember the TikTok ban? That was a bipartisan effort—both Trump and Biden supported it—to do the exact same “data sovereignty” nonsense we’re now telling other countries not to do.

While the justification kept changing depending on the day and who you talked to, many of its supporters (including those in the Supreme Court who blessed that travesty) insisted that it was perfectly legitimate to force a “data localization” plan on TikTok because “ooh, scary foreigners shouldn’t have American data.” Literally this was the Supreme Court’s conclusion:

But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.

So both parties, both of the last two presidents, and the entirety of the Supreme Court announced to the world “it’s totally fine to force a foreign company to not just be required to hold data locally, but even to be forced to sell off local operations to a favored oligarch.”

That alone would make this diplomatic push awkward. But let’s talk about why it lands as completely absurd right now.

The reason data sovereignty initiatives have been “gathering pace,” as Reuters puts it, is in no small part because of the behavior of this very administration. Countries—and especially our allies in Europe—are rushing to build digital walls because the US government has spent the last few months torching every alliance, cozying up to dictators, kicking off arbitrary trade wars, and generally making it abundantly clear that it has zero respect for the norms, rules, or institutions that underpin international cooperation.

You cannot spend your days insulting and threatening your closest allies, engaging in wildly protectionist trade policies, and signaling to the world that no agreement or partnership is safe from your whims, and then turn around and demand that those same allies keep the data pipeline wide open for American tech companies.

This would be like setting your neighbor’s house on fire and then asking to borrow their garden hose. And everyone sees exactly what’s happening:

Bert Hubert, a Dutch cloud computing expert and former member of the board that regulates the Dutch intelligence services, said Europe’s increasing wariness of America’s tech companies may be spurring Washington to take a more aggressive tack.

“Where the previous administration attempted to woo European customers, the current one is demanding that Europeans disregard their own data privacy regulations that could hinder American business,” he said.

And then there’s what the cable actually reveals about its real motivations. The cable reportedly frames data sovereignty as a threat to “Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud services,” which is a pretty revealing tell. It strips away any pretense that this is about internet freedom or civil liberties. What it actually says is: “American AI companies need access to your citizens’ data to train their models, and we’d appreciate it if you’d stop putting up barriers to that.”

This is the diplomatic equivalent of saying the quiet part loud. The US isn’t making a principled argument about the open internet here. It’s making a commercial demand dressed up in freedom rhetoric. And that’s not exactly a compelling pitch to countries that are already worried about the dominance of US tech firms and the lack of meaningful privacy protections in the US.

The cable also takes a swipe at the GDPR specifically, calling it an example of “unnecessarily burdensome data processing restrictions.” Look, the GDPR has plenty of problems and we’ve written about many of them. But when the US government is publicly calling Europe’s flagship privacy law a burden it wants to fight, while simultaneously offering no credible privacy framework of its own, it’s hard to see how that’s going to win hearts and minds.

Meanwhile, Rubio has also been ordering diplomats to fight against the EU’s Digital Services Act, and the US reportedly wants to set up a portal to help Europeans “bypass” content moderation rules around hate speech and terrorist content.

So the diplomatic message from the US to Europe is currently: ignore your privacy laws, ignore your content moderation laws, give our companies access to your data for AI training, and also we might slap tariffs on you tomorrow. Good luck getting anyone to take the “open internet” pitch seriously after that.

The deeply frustrating thing about all of this is that there really is a strong case to be made against data localization. The open, global internet has been one of the most powerful engines of innovation, communication, and human rights in history, and fragmenting it into national data silos is genuinely dangerous. But making that case requires credibility. It requires being the kind of partner that other countries can trust with their citizens’ data. It requires demonstrating, through your own behavior, that you believe in the rule of law, in stable institutions, and in respecting the sovereignty of your allies even while you advocate for open data flows.

Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore’s 2013 Foreign Affairs piece on “The End of Hypocrisy” keeps proving prescient. A huge part of America’s moral power around the world resulted from the clear hypocrisy between America’s stated values and the ones we repeatedly failed to uphold. But it was a convenient myth that we could pretend to hold the moral high ground, and use that as a form of soft power to demand better of others. That falls apart entirely with administrations like Trump’s, where the idea of soft power, or even the moral high ground, is seen as woke nonsense. The Trump administration refuses to understand the power of that myth.

But now it’s gone. And that has a real cost: the policy position in Rubio’s cable is exactly right. The US should be pushing back on problematic data localization and “data sovereignty” laws. They’re bad for the open internet and good for local surveillance. This is an argument worth making—and we’ve surrendered the ability to make it credibly at precisely the moment it most needs to be made.

Foreign diplomats aren’t stupid. They can see that we demanded TikTok localize or divest while telling them localization is bad. They can see that we’re attacking their privacy laws while offering nothing in return. They can see that we’re framing this as “freedom” while the cable itself reveals it’s about feeding data to American AI companies. The policy is correct. The hypocrisy is total. And the result is that we’ve handed every country in the world a perfectly reasonable justification to ignore us.

Filed Under: ai, data localization, data sovereignty, diplomacy, marco rubio, open internet, state department

Companies: tiktok

This year’s annual election, which begins on 17 August, will include candidates for IEEE president-elect and other officer positions up for election.

To see who is running for 2027 IEEE president-elect and the petition candidates, visit the election website.

The ballot also includes nominees for delegate-elect/director-elect offices submitted by division and region nominating committees, as well as IEEE Technical Activities vice president-elect; IEEE-USA president-elect; and IEEE Standards Association board of governors members-at-large.

Those elected take office on 1 January 2027.

IEEE members who want to run for an office, except for IEEE president-elect, who have not been nominated, must submit their petition intention to the IEEE Board of Directors by 1 April. Petitions should be sent to the IEEE Corporate Governance staff at elections@ieee.org. The petition intention deadline for IEEE president-elect was 31 December.

Election Updates

Regional elections will also take place. Eligible voting members in IEEE Region 1 (Northeastern U.S.) and Region 2 (Eastern U.S.) will elect the future IEEE Region 2 delegate-elect/director-elect (Eastern and Northeastern U.S.) for the 2027—2028 term. Members in the future IEEE Region 10 (North Asia) will elect the IEEE Region 10 delegate-elect/director-elect for the same term. These changes reflect IEEE’s upcoming region realignment, as outlined in The Institute’s September 2024 article, “How Region Realignment Will Impact IEEE Elections.”

Beginning this year, only professional members will be eligible to vote in IEEE’s annual election or sign related petitions. Ballots will be created for eligible voting members on record as of 31 March. To ensure voting eligibility, all members should review and update their contact information and communication preferences by that date.

To support sustainability initiatives, the “Candidate Biographies and Statements” booklet will no longer be available in print. Members can access the candidate biographies and statements within their electronic ballot, view them on the annual election website, or download the digital booklet. Members are also encouraged to vote electronically.

For more information about the offices up for election, the process for getting on the annual ballot, and deadlines, visit the website or email elections@ieee.org.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? It will help if you’re a basketball fan, at least for the answer to 1-Down. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Any mentee of Yoda
Answer: JEDI

5A clue: Plow pullers
Answer: OXEN

6A clue: Animal in the family Mephitidae, which comes from the Latin for “stink”
Answer: SKUNK

7A clue: Scotsman’s wear
Answer: KILT

8A clue: Sections of a play
Answer: ACTS

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Nikola ___, three-time N.B.A. M.V.P. (2021, 2022 and 2024)
Answer: JOKIC

2D clue: Jump for joy
Answer: EXULT

3D clue: Auto body issues
Answer: DENTS

4D clue: Tattoos, informally
Answer: INK

6D clue: Music similar to reggae
Answer: SKA

The multinational Dutch paint company AkzoNobel has confirmed to BleepingComputer that hackers breached the network of one of its U.S. sites.

Following a data leak from the Anubis ransomware gang, a company spokesperson said that the intrusion has been contained and that the impact is limited.

“AkzoNobel has identified a security incident at one of our sites in the United States. The incident was limited to the respective site and was already contained,” the company told BleepingComputer.

“The impact is limited, and we are taking the appropriate steps to notify and support impacted parties, and will work closely with relevant authorities.”

AkzoNobel is a major paints and coatings company with 35,000 employees. It has an annual revenue exceeding $12 billion and active operations in over 150 countries. Brands under its corporate umbrella include Dulux, Sikkens, International, and Interpon.

Anubis ransomware claims to have stolen from AkzoNobel 170GB of data, almost 170,000 files, and leaked on its leak site samples that include screenshots of select documents and a list of the stolen files.

The published data contains confidential agreements with high-profile clients, email addresses and phone numbers, private email correspondence, passport scans, material testing documents, and internal technical specification sheets.

At the time of writing, the Anubis leak is only partial. AkzoNobel did not share with BleepingComputer any information on whether it engaged with the threat actor.

Anubis is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation that launched in December 2024, offering affiliates 80% of the paid ransoms.

In February 2025, the operators launched an affiliate program on the RAMP forum, boosting its activity and influence in the cybercrime space.

In June the same year, Anubis added to its arsenal a data wiper that destroys the victim’s files to make recovery impossible.

Malware is getting smarter. The Red Report 2026 reveals how new threats use math to detect sandboxes and hide in plain sight.

Download our analysis of 1.1 million malicious samples to uncover the top 10 techniques and see if your security stack is blinded.

Download The Report

from the get-abolished,-you-bastards dept

The administration has burnt the “presumption of regularity” to a crispness normally reserved for conquered bridges succumbing to heat death. It is now well known that the Trump administration will do whatever it wants to do, whether or not it’s supported by law. And when the courts push back, the administration responds with implicit “fuck you’s” or explicit verbal attacks on the judiciary.

The administration isn’t playing with a full deck, albeit not in the way that phrase is normally understood. Normally, it would mean the administration is batshit crazy. And it is! But its insanity isn’t of the pro-se-complainant-arguing-flag-fringe-merits variety. It’s the other thing: the refusal to respect court rulings it disagrees with. Ever.

The courts are sick of this refusal to respect a co-equal government branch. Hundreds of cases handled by dozens of judges have resulted in adverse rulings against the Trump administration. And yet, the administration refuses to stop doing the things hundreds of rulings have stated it can’t do.

It’s never been a regional thing (Fifth Circuit explicitly excluded). These are not the efforts of judges in “liberal” states who have been appointed by Democratic Party presidents. This is universal.

West Virginia, a state where Trump secured 70% of the votes in the last presidential election, is now poised to hand his masked ICE goons a significant loss. In one of thousands of similar habeas corpus cases filed around the nation following Trump’s racist anti-brown people surge, a federal judge has said he’s seen enough to move forward with contempt hearings and possible fines for government officials. (h/t Kyle Cheney)

The plaintiff is a Honduras native who was arrested by ICE and immediately sent to a detention facility one state over. This is something ICE does regularly, for the obvious reason of making it more difficult for detainees to challenge their detention. Since cases need to be filed wherever the person is detained, keeping arrestees in a state of perpetual motion makes this almost impossible.

But Miguel Izaguirre managed to get his case to court before he was moved again. That kept ICE from sending him to another detention center in another, possibly ICE-friendlier state (I’m glaring at you, Fifth Circuit).

Izaguirre’s allegations resemble those of most ICE detainees: he was denied his due process rights despite being arrested for a mere civil violation. The government has refused (probably because it doesn’t have it) to provide anything supporting it’s claim that Izaguirre must remain incarcerated while his civil case plays out in court.

From the opinion [PDF]:

[T[he Government stated that it had “carefully reviewed the pending petition and determined that the same or substantially similar issues arise in the case at bar.” [ECF No. 16- 1, at 2]. The Government further confirmed that it would not offer evidence beyond the documents attached to its response, nor would it offer any witnesses.

Since the government doesn’t actually have anything to offer in support of violating this detainee’s due process rights, the court gets right to the point:

For the reasons explained and analyzed in previous cases before this court and this district, I will once again FIND: First, the court has jurisdiction. Petitioner does not challenge an immigration proceeding or decision that would bar this court’s jurisdiction. Second, Petitioner is not “seeking admission” into the country, and the discretionary detention of 8 U.S.C. § 1226 applies to him. Third, Petitioner’s due process rights have been violated. Despite facing no criminal charge, Petitioner sits in the local jail with no hearing to determine his custody. There is no evidence in the record that Petitioner is a danger to the community or a flight risk, and there is sufficient evidence that he has community ties. Still, he has been afforded no hearing. This violates his due process rights.

Immediate release is the only appropriate remedy. Where detention has been found unlawful and no constitutionally adequate bond hearing has been provided, continued custody cannot stand.

Simply stated, but with some spite. The court makes it clear this is symptomatic of Trump’s anti-migrant efforts — something familiar enough that the court knows it needs to go further than just simply ordering the release of yet another migrant whose rights have been violated.

It’s something this court has seen multiple times in one week.

This case is one of 17 immigration habeas petitions assigned to the court this week. According to the Government, the detention of these Petitioners is “mandatory” under 8 U.S.C. §1225, and regardless of the constitutional defects, the federal district courts lack jurisdiction over these claims—an argument unanimously rejected in this district.

A flood of cases alleging similar violations of rights would be irritating enough. But the government absolutely refuses to abide by rulings issued in several similar cases. (Emphasis in the original.)

In 15 of the cases, Petitioners challenge their continued unlawful detention resulting from an arrest occurring on or after February 12, 2026.

The court then cites three previous rulings on similar cases, in which federal judges not only ruled they had jurisdiction to handle these cases, but that this mandatory detention violated detainees’ due process rights. All of those occurred prior to February 12. Judge Joseph Goodwin is sick of it.

But on February 12, 14, 17, 18, 21, and 22, 2026, the Government arrested noncitizens already in the interior of the United States. Today, the Government continues to wrongfully detain those petitioners without due process. Even now the Government incredulously asserts that the federal district courts do not have jurisdiction, that petitioners cannot raise due process violations, and that the Government has authority to mandatorily and indefinitely detain noncitizens in the local jail.

The Government is wrong. Judges in this district have said that over and over and over again. I have said it myself.

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And that’s where Judge Goodwin invites the government to fuck around and find out, including the subservient local boys who are far too anxious to help ICE violate people’s rights:

This Memorandum Opinion and Order serves as explicit notice to all officials—state and federal—involved in the detention of individuals whose cases come before this court.

Continued detention without individualized custody determinations, after this court’s repeated holdings that such detention violates the Fifth Amendment, will result in legal consequences. For state jail officials, those consequences include personal civil liability without qualified immunity protection. For federal officials, those consequences include exercise of this court’s full inherent authority to enforce constitutional compliance including contempt.

Officials who believe this court has erred in its constitutional analysis may seek stay of this court’s orders pending appeal or pursue appellate review. What they may not do is continue systematic constitutional violations while preserving appellate objections and expecting this court to grant relief in case after case without enforcing its rulings.

Judge Goodwin signs off with this statement, which should be self-evident:

This court will enforce the Constitution.

Let’s hope he does it. Let’s hope jail officials cut people loose rather than start coughing up part of their paychecks. Let’s hope some ICE officials get to spend a few days in the cooler for refusing to comply with court orders. And let’s hope that courts across the nation generate the sort of collective and concerted pressure that will force the Supreme Court to set precedent that vastly undermines this administration’s bigoted efforts to scrub this country of people who aren’t white enough to be considered human beings by the racist goons infesting the White House.

Filed Under: dhs, ice, mass deportation, rights violations, trump administration, west virginia