jwz

Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams was forced to sit in silence on stage at an event at Hay festival, after lawyers advised her not to speak because of ongoing legal action brought by Meta.

Wynn-Williams, whose bestselling memoir, Careless People, details her years working at Facebook, was due to appear in conversation with the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu.

Instead, Wynn-Williams sat on stage for the duration of the hour-long discussion between Cadwalladr and Wu, without speaking or responding. She was unable even to nod or shake her head.

Introducing the panel, Cadwalladr said: "I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if Zuckerberg is an asshole." [...]

During the event, Cadwalladr read a letter from Wynn-Williams' lawyers outlining the company's latest legal claims. The letter stated that, in March 2026, Meta filed a sanctions motion alleging that Wynn-Williams violates the emergency arbitration order "any time she appears in public in a place where she should know that her book is available for sale and her presence might draw attention to it".

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This wooden influencer set brings roleplay fun to children who love creating content.

It includes 6 pieces a tripod stand, adjustable aperture lens, camera, smartphone model, tablet and microphone. The set encourages storytelling and imaginative play as children act out being content creators. The tripod adjusts to different heights and the ring light adds realistic detail. The smartphone and tablet models look like the real thing. The microphone completes the streaming setup.

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Pull images and text from are.na to make a strangely familiar documentary critique of late capitalism:

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Flock is quietly training police to sway city leaders to buy surveillance tech:

As East Bay communities raise concerns about civil liberties and immigration enforcement, the license plate camera company is seeking support from its customers -- law enforcement officers. [...]

Brian Hofer, executive director of Secure Justice, a privacy and civil liberties group, said Flock's training reminds him of public relations strategies used by other surveillance technology vendors. [...]

"You wine and dine them, take them on golf trips, teach them how to write grants, and then you give them a job after they retire," he said. "Then, they go and sell contracts to other police departments, and who are they going to listen to? Other police who have used this technology." [...]

Hofer said he thinks Flock, like ShotSpotter, is seeking support from law enforcement officers in reaction to the dozens of jurisdictions that have canceled their contracts with the company. Since August 2021, 88 of Flock's contracts have been terminated, according to Secure Justice's most recent tally. As of publication time, that includes 45 since the beginning of the year. (Terminations also include non-renewals and non-awards, if there was a competitive bidding process.)

"At the rate that they're losing contracts, this is a big piece of evidence that they're panicking," Hofer said.

To date, Flock has contracts with more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide.

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I am once again seeking a contact inside the Yahoo DNS team.

Early this morning the "home" record vanished from the "mcom.com" domain. I need it put back. Oddly, the "mosaic" record is still there.

My last contact there was Paul Frieden, in 2023, but the only email address I have bounces. Ideally I would ask Paul, "Hey, can you introduce me to your replacement?" Failing that, I'd like to find anyone currently on the team responsible for Yahoo's DNS records.

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David Rush is accused of:

• Lying on his background check forms;
• Time-card fraud;
• Oh yeah, and also stealing $40M worth of gold bars.

Rush, a former senior executive service-level CIA employee in Virginia, was arrested on May 19:

FBI agents searching his home seized more than 300 1-kilogram gold bars valued at more than $40 million. [...]

The CIA says it informed the FBI of its suspicions about Rush, who apparently fell under scrutiny after he began asking for gold bars last November. That's when he began making "several requests ... to obtain a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses," according to the affidavit. [...]

A review of a storage space Rush used at the CIA found that only part of the cash was there. The agency's inquiry into the matter is ongoing, but it has not yet found any record of why Rush said he needed the massive amount of money.

The FBI affidavit accuses Rush of taking gold bars and currency, making false statements to the agency and on national security background forms, and filing fraudulent timecards.

It is journalistic malpractice that there are no photos of the gold bars in question. Stock photos are insufficient here.

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Font by Danielle Baskin based on Armand Vaillancourt's fountain installed in San Francisco's Embarcadero Plaza in 1971. Every letter is made of different angles and textures from a photogrammetry scan. The fountain is currently being demolished as of May 2026.

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Exhibit A:

Mark Zuckerberg's mega yacht docks in Seattle in the wake of Meta layoffs:

As of Wednesday afternoon, the $300 million, 387-foot Launchpad was stationed on Westlake, just a few blocks up Lake Union from Meta's offices. The yacht arrived as news broke that Meta's mass layoffs hit about 1,400 employees across the Seattle region.

Exhibit B:

Ryan Hill: Last Emissions of the Launchpad, 9"×12" oil on panel

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In this, the Year of Our Apocalypse 2026, Rockbox still cannot display EXIF album art if it is a progressive JPEG of any minuscule size or resolution.

I can't even.

Rockbox does not support RLE-compressed BMP files, nor does it support progressive and multi-scan JPEG files. JPEG files must consist of a single scan with interleaved components, as progressive and multi-scan images require much more memory to decode.

And yes, this is still true in the nightly build.

Also, while you can finally have a playlist with up to 32,000 songs, "shuffle all tracks" is still hardcoded to 2,000.

I'm starting to think that their heart just isn't in this any more.

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