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340 Local News Outlets Now Blocking the Internet Archive

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Earlier this year Nieman Lab broke the story that major news publishers, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today Co., had started blocking the Internet Archive for fear that AI companies might scrape the nonprofit's repositories for training data. As one of the last bastions of archival history, that is, in case you're not aware, not very good for the public interest. Four months later and Nieman Lab now notes that the number of news outlets blocking the archive has soared to around 340 organizations:

"Our new analysis shows that more than 340 local news sites across the United States are now limiting the Internet Archive's ability to access and preserve their stories. Many sites in our sample are owned by five of the seven largest local news publishers in the country: USA Today Co., McClatchy, Advance Local, MediaNews Group, and Tribune Publishing. The latter two are both subsidiaries of the "vulture hedge fund" Alden Global Capital."

[...] Regardless of motivation, hiding whatever local news remains behind paywalls, then blocking it from the Internet Archive, in turn makes it harder for everyone else to do real journalism that relies on the historical record, local journalists tell Nieman Lab: "I cover news within a larger news desert in New York's Rockland, Sullivan, and Rockland counties. This means I need to heavily rely on archival data of old news articles from now deceased, or zombie-fied, media outlets," wrote B.J. Mendelson, the editor of The Monroe Gazette newsletter, in one recent petition signed by over 200 journalists. "Without the Internet Archive, my [work] would be incredibly difficult to do." The Internet Archive says it is listening to the concerns raised by local news outlets, while also partnering with journalism groups to train hundreds of newsrooms on archival preservation: "In December, the Internet Archive partnered with the Poynter Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors to train a cohort of 33 local and national news outlets on how to develop and implement an archiving strategy. The initiative, funded through a Press Forward grant, aims to train 300 newsrooms in digital preservation and in using the Internet Archive's services by the end of 2027."

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GOV.UK Goes Dutch On Payments As It Dumps Stripe

The UK's Government Digital Service is replacing Stripe with Dutch payments provider Adyen for many GOV.UK Pay transactions, including local authorities, police forces, and armed forces units. The three-year deal covers about 1,000 services and is meant to make payments more flexible while keeping the user experience largely unchanged. The Register reports: According to the tender notice published in February 2025, the contract covers around 17 percent of payments made through GOV.UK Pay but more than 70 percent of its organizations and includes the only option allowing users to start taking payments within one working day. At that point the contract had an estimated maximum value of £49 million, although with no guarantees over volume.

In a blogpost about the contract award on 2 June, GDS said it will migrate around 1,000 services to the new supplier. "We will make migration as straightforward as possible while complying with Know Your Customer legislation that protects everyone from fraud," wrote Alan Maddrell, senior content designer for the service. "Most importantly, there will be no discernible difference for paying users and no loss in functionality."

He added that the change of supplier will help introduce new options including pay by bank, which transfers money directly between bank accounts using open banking services and avoids the need to type in card details. GDS will continue to use WorldPay to process payments for central government, linked organizations and NHS bodies.

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BSA Lashes Out At Mandatory Open-Source Licensing

Longtime Slashdot reader Elektroschock writes: The American Business Software Alliance (BSA) does not consider mandatory open-source licensing to be an appropriate indicator of sovereignty. This is among the "pointed messages" they sent to the French government consultation (closed) today. "What protects Europe is the ability to govern, audit, and mitigate risk, not where a company files its corporate papers," said Thomas Boue of BSA. "Criteria of this kind raise costs, reduce access to best-in-class security solutions, and risk conflicting with the EU's international trade commitments."

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Formula 1 News

Formula 1® - The Official F1® Website

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Two Piece Reclining Figure No. 5

MHKBB posted a photo:

Two Piece Reclining Figure No. 5

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Humlebæk, Denmark

In the background: Henry Moore’s "Two Piece Reclining Figure No. 5"

Camera: Hasselblad 503CW
Lens: Carl Zeiss Planar T* 2.8/80 C
Film: Bergger Pancro 400
Lab: Prolab, Stuttgart