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Australia’s government has decided to double the fines it can levy companies that don’t take appropriate steps to enforce the country’s ban on children under 16 accessing social media – and said Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube are under investigation for possible non-compliance. The decision to increase fines came after publication of a study that found around 80 percent of kids in Australia continue to use social media despite the ban, mostly because age verification tech hasn’t blocked their accounts. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday announced the increased fines, saying that while social media companies have deactivated or restricted access to five million accounts since the ban came into force last December. The PM thinks that’s a decent start but feels Australia’s cyber-regulator, eSafety, “needs more tools in their belt to take on these billion-dollar social media companies and hold them to account.” Those tools include the ability to demand information about a platform’s attempts to enforce the ban, including third-party information from age assurance or app-store providers. “Social media companies have a social responsibility, and they must uphold their legal responsibility in Australia to keep under 16s off social media,” Albanese said. The new fines can reach AU$99 million ($68.25 million) for systemic failures – back of the sofa money for the social media giants. Qualcomm builds throttled-for-China datacenter chips Qualcomm last week launched a new range of datacenter chips, and CEO Cristiano Amon later told Japanese outlet Nikkei the company has already created versions of them compliant with US export rules. “There are very clear guidelines about how you can ship products to China, and we have versions of all of our products that comply with those guidelines, " he said. "We are engaged in conversations and are positively optimistic about the reaction we're getting." Rumors suggest Chinese social media giant ByteDance might be one source of those positive reactions. Chinese chip champ delivers another modest machine Chinese chip designer Loongson has delivered another server CPU that won’t scare AMD or Intel. The 16-core Loongson 3C3000 hums along at 1.5 to 1.8GHz while consuming 40 watts. It uses Loongson’s proprietary instruction set architecture that draws on MIPS and RISC technology. Chinese media report that each core packs 64KB of private L1 instruction cache and 64KB of private L1 data cache, and that the chip shares 16MB of L2 cache among all cores. The memory controller is 2×72-bit DDR4-2400, supporting ECC verification. The company says it’s a low-cost CPU suited to everyday workloads such as file servers, database servers or web servers. Intel and AMD continue to make 16-core server CPUs, but with faster clock speeds and superior specs compared to the latest Loongson offering. The one thing those American CPUs lack is Beijing’s blessing: China’s government encourages local organizations to buy Chinese hardware whenever possible. Japan extends Air Force’s mission into space Japan’s government last week ordered a name change and re-org for its Air Self-Defense Force, which as of next year will be renamed the "Aerospace Self-Defense Force." Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said the changes are needed because reliance on space-based services like GPS navigation mean Japan needs to defend its orbital interests. The re-org means Japan’s government will upgrade its Space Operations Squadron into a full Space Operations Command, staffed by 880 personnel. Japan is one of just ten nations – plus the European Union – that has the capability to launch payloads into orbit. Iran’s internet ends in tiers Internet Governance Researcher Imad Payande has published updated research on the state of Iran’s internet, which he says now offers tiers of access to different users. “In the first one to two weeks of the conflict, relatively unrestricted connectivity appeared limited to specific groups – primarily journalists and individuals with institutional affiliations. For the broader population, access to the global Internet was largely unavailable,” he wrote. In the second week of the war he saw “configurations” go on sale – “custom connection profiles enabling access to the open Internet.” Payande said those connections “relied on alternative protocols and tools rather than standard VPNs, suggesting a different underlying infrastructure and possibly a limited number of controlled gateways.” “Alongside these informal markets, more institutionalized models of access emerged. Telecom operators introduced restricted SIM cards under frameworks often described as ‘Pro Internet.’ These were made available to selected users – such as companies and researchers – through screening processes. However, access remained limited to a narrow set of services, prioritizing stability over openness.” He thinks Iran’s government now regulates internet access at the infrastructure level, with access allowed for some and not for others. And those who can get online pay for the privilege. Another week, another WiseTech mess Already beset by allegations of CEO sleaze, odd share trades, and human trafficking, Australian SaaSy logistics outfit WiseTech now has major software flaws to address. Infosec outfit Searchlight Cyber last week published research after finding hard-coded master keys in the company’s products that made it possible for an attacker to log in without a password and impersonate real customers and partners – and then enjoy access to data such as financial documents and contact details for users’ staff. Searchlight Cyber says its researchers informed WiseTech of the vulnerabilities prior to publication, and that the Australian company made a round of fixes but is “still working on further mitigations.” ®

Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics or culture. In his second term, Donald Trump scored one of the biggest gimmes in presidential history: His term included America’s 250th birthday. How easy it should have been to unite the nation—at least a little…

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A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Musk would rather sue than hear about how many kids he’s killed…

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ph @l_e_ba
Vaison-la-Romaine
#365cafeesoupresque

Streaming ads might be getting a lot quieter.

By Kerry Sheridan, WUSF, for KFF Every state, along with Washington, D.C., requires children to obtain certain vaccinations before they can attend school or childcare. These mandates date back decades, and many public health experts consider them a foundational defense against infectious disease. Since the summer of 2025, Florida leaders have aimed to make the state the first to…

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Donald Trump’s network of family businesses—and network of US government deals with those businesses—is mind-bogglingly wide. A New York Times investigation reveals his sons’ latest venture: tungsten mining in Kazakhstan. 

The US government recently cut a massive mining deal for the critical mineral with the government of Kazakhstan, whose leader recently said Donald Trump was “sent by Heaven.” Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons Brandon and Kyle, are all tied directly or indirectly to the American company, Kaz Resources, that plans to break ground on the tungsten mine. Kaz Resources is also slated to recieve at least $1.6 billion in government funding. 

Tungsten, a mineral widely used in missile warheads, fighter jets, and computer chips, has become increasingly difficult for the US to access since China put export restrictions on it in 2025. Since then, the Pentagon has selected contractors to build small tungsten refineries on US military bases, while also looking to expand overseas mining—because no onshore mines are currently operational, and likely won’t be for a long time. And those offshore mining deals may mean big money for Trump and Lutnick-affiliated companies: at least 14 different companies affiliated with one or both families are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals. 

The Kazakh deal was signed on November 6th, without disclosing the Trump or Lutnick families’ involvement. Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Brandon Lutnick and Kyle Lutnick were “doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history,” Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton of the Times wrote. 

“I can see how the optics might be disturbing to some people,” Pini Althaus, the CEO of Kaz Resources, said. “But that’s unfortunate because this company and this project goes way beyond any one president, let alone any family.”

"Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence ... that would produce a high-quality product.”

Last week, Elon Musk threatened Rep. Ro Khanna for saying that an estimated 4.5 million children will die as a result of Musk feeding USAID “into the woodchipper.”

But the statement hurts because it’s true. By January, over 700,000 people had already died preventable deaths due to the USAID cuts, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota:

One year after the Trump administration began its dismantling of USAID, a model that tracks the impact of USAID funding cuts on global disease prevention programs estimates that more than 762,000 people have died as a result of those cuts, including more than 500,000 children. 

These deaths are the inevitable outcome of slashing life-saving aid programs. With the wave of a chainsaw, the richest man in the world condemned the poorest people in the world to death. Then he became a “trillionaire.”

This is like a 21st-century version of a Greek myth. Either Elon Musk is doomed—or humanity is. Musk’s legacy won’t be electric cars, spaceships or satellites. Musk’s legacy is dead children.

Last week, I joined Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski to discuss the USAID cuts, which I call a “Silicon Valley Genocide” in my book. We talk about Silicon Valley’s fantasy of replacing human beings with AI, a nightmare scenario that would render the majority of us economically useless and in need of aid. And judging by what the tech billionaires did to USAID, we won’t be getting any of their “abundance.”

This interview crossed 124,000 views in under two days. And yes—the thumbnail gives Musk devil horns. Watch it and tell me they aren’t earned.

Click to Watch: Why I Call the USAID Cuts a Silicon Valley Genocide.

Audio Version: Click here to listen to the episode on Substack.

Coming Soon: The Nerd Reich book

This is only a peek at what you’ll get in my forthcoming book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and The War On Democracy. It details how a cult of billionaires is chasing a self-fulfilling prophecy of societal collapse.

Early sales make a huge difference. If you can, please pre-order it today!

Click this link to support independent bookstores and this newsletter.

Publishers Weekly: “This transfixing debut from journalist Durán investigates the antidemocratic ideologies espoused by tech billionaires linked to the second Trump administration ... It’s an ominous look at an insular elite arrayed against American democracy.”

Here’s what some amazing writers are saying about The Nerd Reich:

“Gil Durán is an essential voice on this technofascist moment—where it comes from and where we are going.” —Carole Cadwalladr, investigative journalist, The Nerve

“A clear and compelling account of the threats posed by technofascism to democracies everywhere.” —Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

“Reader take note: Gil Durán is a deep, thoughtful, and expansive observer of events that shape the current and future of our American democracy.” —George Lakoff, author of The All New Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate

“The Nerd Reich is a clarion warning about the rise of techno-fascist sociopaths who seek to profit off of our collective misery. In clear, compelling and meticulously-researched detail, Gil Durán sounds the alarm about this incestuous cabal of broligarchs. He brings the receipts and the righteous rage.” —Wajahat Ali, The Left Hook

President Donald Trump has spent more than $16 million to restore the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, only for the dark blue coating to peel off and the refilled water to become overtaken by algae just days after the project was completed. Trump then ordered the arrests of people who allegedly dared to touch the peeling paint floating on the pool’s…

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On Saturday, President Trump nominated Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma State Trooper, to serve as the Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If confirmed, he would become the agency’s first permanent director since 2017. The pick signals a broader push to integrate local and federal law enforcement.

Schroyer has 29 years of state law enforcement experience, but his federal resume is thin. A former member of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s security detail, Schroyer only joined ICE in March as a senior advisor. But according to Mullin, Schroyer is still qualified for the job because, in his role as a State Trooper, he worked “alongside state and federal partners to remove illegal aliens from Oklahoma under the 287(g) program.” 

The 287(g) task force program, expanded by executive order at the start of Trump’s second term, essentially allows ICE to deputize local police and jails, transforming traffic stops and local arrests into a pipeline for federal deportation. Over 1,200 local partner agencies have reportedly signed up for ICE bounties. Schroyer’s selection is another step towards merging local law enforcement with ICE, integrating the controversial and violent agency further into America’s day-to-day policing apparatus. 

While Schroyer worked on Oklahoma’s 287(g) program, Oklahoma police departments held some of the largest ICE contracts of any state. Second only to Florida, Oklahoma law enforcement agencies held at least $47 million in ICE contracts as of March, according to a payout ledger obtained by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein. At least 30 Oklahoma agencies signed 287(g) agreements under Schroyer’s watch—mostly local police departments, but also further-afield groups like the state narcotics agency. In March, one rural K-12 school district police chief almost entered into a collaboration with ICE by accidentally signing a 287(g) agreement. 

A February ACLU report showed that the Oklahoma State Highway Patrol, as part of its ICE partnership, orchestrated “mass arrest events.”

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol used traffic stops and “Oklahoma’s ports of entry” to conduct two major operations in fall 2025 targeting drivers, interrogating more than 1,000 people and making 193 immigration arrests. “We set up a command post at the port, we provide troopers, our emergency response troopers, that come out to process them,” Oklahoma Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Tipton told a local outlet. “It’s really a mass arrest event once you do that, when you have hundreds of people that you’re detaining.

Immigrants’ rights advocates have stated that the 287(g) program takes resources away from local law enforcement—and that it makes immigrants less likely to report crimes such as domestic violence, out of fear that police will use any interaction as a pretext to hand them over to ICE. 

At the National Sheriff’s Association Conference earlier this month, Mullin encouraged local police departments to work with Schroyer, the Wall Street Journal reported. Mullin said that Schroyer, then a major in the Oklahoma state highway patrol, had joined DHS to advise agencies newly joining the 287(g) partnership program. 

“We have him on staff. You guys want to talk to him? You guys want to utilize him, see how he does it,” Mullin said. “He is fully committed and understands that the 287(g) program can be a tremendous asset to you and to the country.”

Current Acting ICE Director David Venturella, a former private-prison executive who took office earlier this month, will continue in his role until Schroyer is confirmed by the Senate, a DHS official told the Associate Press. 

A cartoon by Tim Campbell. Related | Trump threatens to sue over reporting on Reflecting Pool scandal…

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ALT

Anti-abortion advocates, including Republican lawmakers and state officials, want the EPA to review mifepristone as a water contaminant. By Jenae Barnes for The 19th Anti-abortion advocates, including Republican lawmakers and state officials, want the EPA to review mifepristone as a water contaminant. Scientists say there’s no evidence it harms the environment or people.

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Has Silicon Valley been building the wrong things?

From dead ducks to some mysterious organization of vandals, everyone seems to have it out for the Reflecting Pool ever since President Donald Trump completed his totally-not-shitty renovations. The algae-covered mess has become quite the eyesore for Washington, D.C., but the hideous puke-colored stain has turned out to be the perfect metaphor for the shit show that is Trump’s second term.

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Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part.

Every once a while I encounter a quote that brings me up short and helps reframe how I see the world. Such was the case when I came across this quote by Theodor Adorno as I researched the rise of Nazi Germany and the origins of the Holocaust: “A wrong life cannot be lived rightly.”

Adorno meant it as a critique of life under capitalism, but out of context, I interpreted it to mean that if a person is the wrong sort of life (Jewish, Sinti, disabled), nothing that person can do can grant them the grace of being “one of the good ones,” or being life worthy of life. No matter their character, achievements, or capability, a “wrong life” can have only a negative value to society. The only way to balance the equation is to eliminate that wrong life and bring the sum to zero on both sides.

This thought stopped me in my tracks, and I could hear the paradigm shift without a clutch, because it explained everything I was both feeling and seeing over the past year. It was the grand unification theorem of my inner world and explained what I was seeing that was external to me.

I am wrong life in the United States. And despite my efforts to live rightly, it simply does not matter. Nothing I can do will change the equation, other than my eradication. Internally, this realization is what fuels my anger. I genuinely tried to be a good person and contribute in ways that are lauded in others. I’m angry at the breaking of the American compact that supposedly we should be judged by the content of our character and not by government fiat that people like me are incapable of leading “honorable” or “disciplined” lives. I’m furious at the hypocrisy and having wasted my life trying to earn a place in a country that ultimately decided I must be destroyed.

I’m being kicked out of the National Guard. I can’t legally use a public bathroom on federal property or at most airports. As a veteran, I have a free pass onto national parks that I effectively can never use because I’m wrong life. I will never be able to work in my field again because I am wrong life. At the VA, the only treatments I can receive are essentially reeducation—namely, unwanted therapy and medical treatment aimed at detransition.

I spent decades of my life as a service member, and in my final years I chose to be a MEDEVAC pilot to save people rather than kill them. I volunteered as a superhero cosplayer to raise money for desperately ill children and their families. I spent my summer flying as a firefighter, saving ranches owned by Trump donors, properties owned by the Mormon Church, and Bible camps run by people who would never let people like me attend.

I went on to fly air ambulance helicopters in one of the reddest parts of the country while awaiting my Canadian permanent residency paperwork. When I was flying people around who needed urgent medical care quickly, I could take a pretty good guess that they were likely the sort of people who voted for Trump and would happily support “putting all those transgenders in mental institutions where they belong.” But they couldn’t because they were intubated, and I was busy flying them to a better hospital, regardless of what they might think of me.

But none of it matters. My government, and the people who voted it into office, have declared me wrong life, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. Indeed, the president explicitly ran on the idea that I am wrong life; it was a feature and not a bug. His campaign spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting the idea that anyone who doesn’t want wrong life eliminated is against the Herrenvolk. It was messaging straight out of the Nazi playbook, just targeting a different group.

At the same time, this sentence helps me understand why this level of bigotry reminds me more of the Holocaust than other civil rights atrocities in American history. At the end of the day in that history, for most other marginalized groups, it was still possible to be one of “the good ones.” For Black people, there was room for acceptance of those who “knew their place.” Whites needed them for their labor. Indeed, the South fought the Civil War because they needed slavery for their economy. Japanese Americans were interned but allowed to fight in the European Theater of Operations. Hispanics and Latinos were long used for their labor or valued as reliable Republican voters in Florida. Their lives had less value than other Americans’, but it wasn’t a negative number.

Mine is.

And that’s the fundamental difference between the oppression and demonization of transgender people today and the civil rights issues of the past. It’s also why the policies being enacted look far more like Nazi efforts to push Jews and LGBT people out of Germany as noncitizens of the Reich than previous government efforts to keep certain classes of people “in their place” as second-class citizens.

The Adorno quote snapped into place why I have felt far more comfortable framing current events within the scope of German history than within that of the United States. It’s also the most useful framework for understanding why Republicans around the country are targeting transgender people with literally over 1,000 bills per year designed to make life impossible enough that they either emigrate, detransition, or live in a country (this one) where they aren’t allowed to leave their houses for fear of arrest because a minor might see them in public.

They see us as wrong life. And even those who do not see us as such are willing to go along with it because it is the dark side of politics: It looks like the quick and easy path to power to take this position in public. Any Republican who does not behave as if transgender people are all wrong life is likely to be forced out of the party, and away from the levers of power. Democrats and hospital administrators in blue states aren’t generally willing to enforce their own civil rights laws for fear of the federal government and the belief that transgender people aren’t worth the effort of protecting.

I have expressed some of these frustrations before, and people have expressed sentiments along the lines of, “Well, I don’t think of you that way.” While I am appreciative of such support, people saying this simply doesn’t matter since they have no institutional power. My own sense of self-worth is completely irrelevant to this equation, and changes nothing in practice. Neither do the sentiments of people with no authority.

Not to put too fine a point on it, my sense of self-esteem, and what some powerless people think about me, is meaningless if I’m spending my last moments holding my breath and trying to claw my way through concrete with my fingernails while taking a “shower” with 100 strangers.  All it provides is a further sense that the situation is unjust. It does nothing to keep me alive in the face of a movement that controls the government and has officially declared us to be “wrong life.”

If this seems like exaggeration: It’s not. One of the cruelest ironies is that my friends and I constantly receive messages that are some variation of “Kill yourself, tranny faggot,” sent by the same sorts of people who five years ago smugly informed us that “all lives matter.” The world’s first trillionaire routinely brags about “killing the woke mind virus” on his own social media platform.

Only the government’s opinion matters. And no matter what I do, I cannot be anything other than wrong life in their eyes. That incumbent party has made it clear it intends to remain in power in perpetuity at any cost, no matter how people vote. I would always be wrong life if I remained in the United States. The only way to change the equation to zero without expiring is to remove myself from the equation the same way Jews did from Germany: by emigrating to a place where their lives can have some value greater than zero.

I want my life to have a positive value again as seen by the people who matter. I cannot express how much of a relief it was when I did not have to spend every waking moment aware of being wrong life. If you wondered what being trans in America is like today, it’s being in a constant state of sadness, betrayal, and futility at the possibility of leading a life that matters. 

Researchers affiliated with ETH Zurich have devised a multifunction picture element, or pixel, that can both emit and measure light. Traditional pixels generally do one or the other – illuminating a display screen or capturing light in a camera sensor. A team led by David Norris, professor at ETH Zurich's Optical Materials Engineering Laboratory, has found a way to combine the two functions. The research raises the possibility of two-way screens that take and present pictures, holographic displays, optical communication systems, and quantum information processing. As described in the Nature article "Fourier pixels for bidirectional light control," the ETH Zurich boffins developed a technique that involves measuring light wave interference patterns over a metallic surface. By doing so, they're able to generate "Fourier pixels" that can create and detect the amplitude, phase and polarization of optical fields. The Fourier transform is a mathematical technique that takes a function like a sound wave and returns a function representing the specific frequencies present in that sound. A Fourier pixel represents the spatial frequency of light rather than the specific brightness at a given point in an image. "Thanks to the fact that the relevant surface profiles of the pixels can be determined using Fourier analysis, we can combine the control and analysis of amplitude, phase and polarisation on a single pixel," said post-doc Sander Vonk in an ETH Zurich press release. In the near term, Norris expects to put Fourier pixels into a matrix that can be used to construct more sophisticated camera displays. The other authors included Yannik M. Glauser, David B. Seda, Hannah Niese, Boris de Jong, Matthieu F. Bidaut, Daniel Petter, Erwan Bossavit, Gabriel Nagamine, and Nolan Lassaline. ®

BP sponsored an elite Princeton research center to address the climate problem without getting off fossil fuels. Its key work, a paper known as “Wedges,” guided climate discourse for a generation. By Maddie Stone, Drilled; additional reporting by Amy Westervelt, Drilled, and Katie Worth, ProPublica It is rare that a single scientific paper shapes how people think about a challenge…

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