#OtD 4 Feb 1913 Rosa Parks was born. Often wrongly described as "quiet", she was actually a lifelong activist who supported Black power, Malcolm X and worked alongside the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. More about the LRBW in our pod: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/08/28/e12-the-league-of-revolutionary-black-workers-in-detroit/

Two new speech-to-text models (similar to Whisper) from Mistral today - one of them is API-only, the other is a 8.9GB Apache-2.0 licensed open weights model for "realtime" transcription. They're both very good! https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/4/voxtral-2/

A threat actor is compromising NGINX servers in a campaign that hijacks user traffic and reroutes it through the attacker's backend infrastructure.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-compromise-nginx-servers-to-redirect-user-traffic/

@cstross

Heartening to see that Florida Woman is really lifting her game in 2026.

@moonovermarine Is that from Sentinel? It's amazing.

@arstechnica how do you know it was Russian state hackers

@Lambo hab jetzt dann doch mein Kreuz gemacht. Da kann ja die Umfrage nix dafür, dass es so kompliziert ist. 🫣

Autonomies: **Rodrigo Karmy Bolton: The law of fire**

https://autonomies.org/2026/02/rodrigo-karmy-bolton-the-law-of-fire/

From Ficción de la razón (21/01/2026) 1. In a short text dedicated to his daughter Anima entitled Land and Sea, the German jurist Carl Schmitt proposed the term nomos of the land to refer to the “original appropriation of space” … Continue reading →

#Commentary #AndreasMalm #CarlSchmitt #Ecology #JamesCScott #RodrigoKarmyBolton #Stateandterror

"In my understanding of [Lawrence Lessig's 'code is law'], what you're saying is kind of what he was hinting about; forewarning about the ability for platforms ... to kind of govern people or kind of regulate people in their behaviour ..."

@theblockchainsocialist, 2025

https://theblockchainsocialist.com/is-the-state-dead-farewell-to-westphalia-with-jarrad-hope-and-peter-ludlow/

#podcasts #BlockChainSocialist #FarewellToWestphalia

Russian-state hackers exploit Office vulnerability to infect computers
The window to patch vulnerabilities is shrinking rapidly.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/02/russian-state-hackers-exploit-office-vulnerability-to-infect-computers/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

As Rocks May Think

https://evjang.com/2026/02/04/rocks.html

#HackerNews

At least 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed in Russia's war, with many more missing, Zelensky tells French media: https://benborges.xyz/2026/02/04/at-least-ukrainian-soldiers-killed.html

@sarahjamielewis I'd sure hope they consider it a vulnerability, especially in the present day as more and more people are using Signal group chats for organizing protests, etc.

@siracusa @scottearle

Oh, is this why I’m seeing Tahoe icons even though I’m not using Tahoe

A threat actor is compromising NGINX servers in a campaign that hijacks user traffic and reroutes it through the attacker's backend infrastructure.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-compromise-nginx-servers-to-redirect-user-traffic/

'As you watch the protesters in the streets of Minneapolis, remember that the UK government is funnelling hundreds of millions of pounds in contracts to the company that is instrumental in finding and deporting those alleged illegal immigrants and labelling protestors “domestic terrorists”. Without UK government contracts, Palantir would be a shadow of the company it currently is. British taxpayers’ support is crucial to its commercial bottom line.

The ignorance and denial about the UK’s relationship with Palantir must end. This is technofascism. And it’s coming here next."

Carole Cadwalladr.

What’s happening in America is technofascism. It could happen here
https://www.thenerve.news/p/technofascism-us-america-fascism-trump-palantir-peter-thiel-uk-nigel-farage-reform

@rbreich As #Schumpeter implied these journalists WILL go somewhere.

‘ #Starmer’s meeting with #Palantir did not appear in the prime minister’s register of visits and was acknowledged only in subsequent disclosures, Burghart said.

He said Palantir’s #MoD contract “was granted by direct award” – without competition – and asked that the cabinet secretary check there were “no other such contracts, no other such undisclosed meetings”.’

Starmer is a dead man walking

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/04/peter-mandelson-palantir-jeffrey-epstein-government

I suppose in a world where facts don't matter, a world factbook is an anathema to policy:

https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/spotlighting-the-world-factbook-as-we-bid-a-fond-farewell/

@Em0nM4stodon @Mojeek DuckDuckgo has become as useless and annoying as Google or Edge. Thanks for the tip on Mojeek.