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Meta Begins Rolling Out End-to-End Encryption Across Messenger and Facebook (Maria)
The author writes, “Facebook’s parent company has begun rolling out end-to-end encryption across Messenger and Facebook, Meta announced on Thursday. The company’s vice-president for Messenger, Loredana Crisan, said the encryption was built on the Signal protocol and Meta’s own Labyrinth protocol. Crisan said the new features announced as part of the rollout took years to develop because the company’s engineers, designers, cryptographers and others rebuilt the app from the ground up.”
Billionaires Had a Surprisingly Bad Day in the Supreme Court (Sean)
The author writes, “The Supreme Court spent much of Tuesday morning beating up Andrew Grossman, a lawyer asking the justices to revive a long-defunct limit on Congress’s ability to levy taxes. The case Grossman was arguing, Moore v. United States, is widely viewed as a preemptive strike on wealth taxes — that is, taxes that target the stockpiled wealth of very rich people and that don’t simply tax the income rich people earn off of their wealth. … Most of the justices appeared extraordinarily skeptical of Grossman’s arguments, and of the idea that the Court should revive a long-discredited limit on the federal government’s taxing power which the Court briefly embraced during its Lochner Era — an age where the justices regularly signed onto dubious legal arguments that protected capital from taxes and from workplace regulation.”
Deadly but Tricky to Fly, Suicide Drones Have Ukraine Putting Thousands of Soldiers Through Pilot Training (Sean)
From Defense One: “As Ukraine leans on suicide drones to wear down Russia’s invading forces, private, civilian-run training schools are working to supply the Ukrainian army with thousands of pilots. That’s no mean feat. The drones are extremely hard to fly, requiring weeks of training before a pilot is ready to fight on the front line.”
Why BBC Is ‘the Neighbor From Hell’ for Leading Regional Newsbrand Editors (Russ)
The authors write, “In a rare joint public statement, senior editors at the UK’s five biggest commercial regional news publishers have banded together to call for the BBC to stop ‘suffocating’ their businesses. They want the BBC to ditch its local news strategy and do more to link to other publishers. Here they explain why.”
Taylor Swift’s Power Era: Why the Billionaire Pop Star Is One of the World’s Most Powerful Women (Reader Jim)
From Forbes, “Swiftie Nation understands that she is, and has always been, the true source of her own power — and 17 years into her remarkable career, Swift has never had more economic, cultural and political clout. All of which has caused her to soar up the ranks of Forbes’ World’s Most Powerful Women, from No. 79 in 2022 to No. 5 this year.”
WA History Is at Risk of Getting Washed Away (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “What do Sasquatch, Hulk Hogan and Susan B. Anthony have in common? History binds them together in the 1963 Washington State Archives building, constructed several stories underground in Olympia. Its vaults — dense warrens filled with bankers boxes and leather-bound books — contain thousands of government records that span Washington’s history. … But these vast and varied treasures are vulnerable to flooding, state officials say.”
The Unlikely Love Story of an Endangered Tree and the Little Bird Who Eats Its Seeds (Laura)
From The Narwal: “[Alana] Clason studies mountain ecosystems and leads an extensive, complex restoration project in northwest B.C. focused on protecting whitebark pine, an endangered tree species. Between climate change, deforestation, competition from other tree species and an invasive fungus called blister rust, whitebark has been in decline for over a century. … But scientists working to save the species from extinction are far from defeated. Studying the bird — a member of the corvid family called Clark’s nutcracker — is one part of figuring out how to keep the tree around for generations to come.”
