The FCC plans to vote on repealing local TV ownership limits, including the 39% national audience cap that currently restricts how much of the U.S. market a single broadcast group can reach. Engadget reports: On August 6, commissioners will hold a ballot to repeal Section 303 of the Communications Act, and with it the 39 percent rule. In essence, the rule limits the reach of a local TV network to no more than 39 percent of the U.S.' total audience market. In its place, the FCC would move to a system whereby it would personally approve or reject TV ownership deals on a case-by-case basis.

It's not clear if the FCC even has the authority to reject Section 303 without the explicit consent of the legislature. As Lawrence J. Spiwak wrote in the Yale Journal on Regulation back in January, Section 10 of the Communications Act expressly forbids the FCC from bending the rules around Section 303. "Americans no longer trust the legacy national media to report the news fairly or accurately," wrote FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in an op-ed published on Breitbart. "In fact, only eight percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in mass media. That figure is even lower among Republicans -- sitting at a mere three percent."

"... Many local broadcast TV stations are getting hollowed out as a result and turning into little more than mouthpieces for programming produced in New York and Hollywood," he alleged. "That is not what Congress or the FCC intended."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Big changes are coming to Android apps, but they're not the changes Google wanted. The settlement between Google and Epic that aimed to put to rest the companies' long-running antitrust battle is being withdrawn, and that means third-party app stores are coming to the Play Store. Google has confirmed that it will begin distributing rival app stores next week, setting the stage for competing platforms to take a bite out of Google's Android revenue stream. [...] Google and Epic were set to return to court on July 16 to argue in favor of the settlement. However, the writing may have been on the wall. In a recent expert analysis provided to the court, MIT economics professor Nancy Rose noted that the settlement was "unlikely to enable Google Play's potential competitors to overcome their long-standing network-effect disadvantage in a timely manner."

With settlement approval looking increasingly unlikely, Epic and Google agreed this week to call the whole thing off. Here's how Google Trust and Reputation Communications Lead Dan Jackson explains the company's decision: "We've agreed with Epic to withdraw our motion to modify the US Court's injunction rather than prolonging this process which creates uncertainty for the ecosystem. This allows us to focus on executing our recently announced global business model evolution to deliver greater app store choice, lower prices, and more opportunities for developers and users. We remain committed to maintaining Android's industry-leading security and fostering a competitive ecosystem where every app store and developer has the freedom to compete. In parallel, we continue to comply with the US Court's injunction."

In a brief filing (PDF), Google's legal team informs the court that Google is prepared to begin distributing third-party app stores in Google Play on July 22. Under the terms of Judge Donato's original injunction, these stores will have access to the full catalog of Google Play apps by default. Developers will have the option to opt out of distribution in these stores, and Google has a support page explaining how to do so. Google also has documentation on how app stores can get access to the Google Play catalog. It won't be mirroring those apps in any shady storefront that asks. The court has allowed Google to charge reasonable fees to cover its security and compliance review of third-party stores, which will be $5,000 per year.

Google will also require approved stores to block malware, respect intellectual property, and include mechanisms to update and uninstall apps. App stores can be removed from the program if more than 1 percent of attempted app installs appear to be malware or unwanted software. It's unclear if there will be separate, possibly more stringent requirements for storefront distribution in the Play Store. However, Google is prohibited from unreasonably blocking third-party store clients uploaded to Google Play. The changes Google has announced under the Epic agreement will proceed for now. That means Registered App Stores will happen globally, but they will probably only appear in the Play Store for US users. Google hasn't specified if there will be any differences in the features available to the stores downloaded from Play versus registered stores.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FreeBSD 16 has removed the last GPL-licensed code from its base system, retiring the old GNU 'dialog' implementation after the installer moved to 'bsddialog' and the final dependency was disabled. Phoronix reports: This ticket to retire dialog was opened back in February while is now merged to the FreeBSD source tree for what will become FreeBSD 16.0. With dialog removed, the latest FreeBSD code now retires the GNU sub-tree of the FreeBSD base system now that no more GNU code remains. FreeBSD 16.0 is working its way toward release that is expected to happen in December 2027.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI's first hardware device is a limited-edition desktop keypad called the Codex Micro that lets users monitor and control AI coding agents. Axios reports: Codex Micro is a collaboration with Work Louder, a boutique hardware company known for customizable mechanical keyboards and shortcut controllers for developers and designers. The small, square macro pad -- with backlit keys, a rotary knob and a tiny joystick -- sits beside your regular keyboard as a physical shortcut box for common Codex actions and shows the status of your agents. The keys are customizable and include a push-to-talk option as well as a dial to adjust your reasoning setting. Codex Micro is a niche device for Codex power users and will only be available until it sells out. It's priced at $230.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have reportedly made a joint $60.50-per-share offer to buy PayPal, valuing the payments company at more than $53 billion. The bid is said to represent a 28% premium to PayPal's latest closing price and is backed by roughly $50 billion in committed bank financing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A week ago, I had launched this site using QuatroSlab for page titles and Google’s Slabo for body copy. For those that have been around awhile and are familiar with SMACSS, you might recognize QuatroSlab from that site. I like the font and started off with it to see how I’d feel about it on the this new design. Then I chose Slabo as a font that I felt paired well with it.

For the most part, I was fine with it but after finally getting a blog post written and posted under the new design, I was feeling less than thrilled with my choices.

Over yesterday and today, I decided to do some research on fonts and came across Pangram Pangram Foundry. They have some delectable fonts that make me want to do some interesting designs with them. This led me to Fragment. I looked through all the variants and Fragment Text felt just right for the body copy. It felt softer and rounder and more open and friendly than Slabo.

My only complaint is that I want some of the discretionary ligatures in the list of standard ligatures like the Th and ft. The rest of them are too much flourish for body copy. I enabled the ligatures for headings, at least, where some flourish is warranted.

For page headings, though, I wanted something bolder. This is where Pangram Pangram’s Pangaia comes in. I like the slightly retro-modern funky feel that this font brings to the table.

The CSS

From a technical perspective, this is the first time I’ve taken advantage of OpenType feature capabilities and I found it confusing as I couldn’t find a good explanation of what liga or dlig or ss03 mean or how to know whether a font even supports these.

I’ve learned that you can turn these on or off via CSS’s font-feature-settings property.

font-feature-settings: "ss02", "ss03", "ss04", "dlig", "zero", "onum";

Declaring the value turns them on. You can alternatively, specifically declare them on or off using the words on or off or the numbers 1 or 0. The following would enable features ss02, ss03, zero, and onum; it would disable ss04 and dlig.

font-feature-settings: "ss02" on, "ss03" 1, "ss04" off, "dlig" 0, "zero", "onum";

The question then became about how to figure out which of these features exist in a particular font. For this, I used FontDrop!. It will show you what features are available and what those features look like for that font. FontDrop! is all client-side, too, which is nice. I didn’t want to be uploading files that aren’t mine to someone’s server.

Up Next

I suspect I will end up tweaking which of these features are on or off as I add more content to the site and decide what works well for a given scenario.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Rijnmond: Renovatie museum Boijmans pakt fors duurder uit dan 360 miljoen, gemeente grijpt in

Everybody Hates Elon:

"Meta has spent years tracking us online," said a spokesperson for Everybody Hates Elon. "Now it wants to track us in the real world too." [...] "Meta and Ray-Ban's new AI glasses can be used to secretly record women and young people for sexual reasons," the EHE spokesperson continued in their statement. "Simply put, that's abuse."

EHE poses one simple question: "Billionaires could fund cures for cancer -- so why are they funding glasses for perverts instead?"

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Anke Chen plays Bach.

And Chopin. And Clementi. More here.

Toronto air was orange this morning. The smell of smoke is everywhere Toronto has been ranked worst in the world for air quality by IQAir It's high risk hazard 10+ Many outdoor events are cancelled today including the FIFA parties Possibly drifting to New York . So take care New Yorkers. --- Previously on the blue from June 7 2023 Stay inside and reduce your exposure. As Fizz states in that thread: Just a new normal, this shit is going to happen more and more

Its latest campaign won’t solve its debt woes, but inches in the right direction.

ZTE showcased at MWC Shanghai 2026 its groundbreaking AI New Calling solution, together with China Mobile Research Institute (CMCC). Based on the concept of "Calling as a Service", this innovation uses open interfaces to deeply integrate traditional voice calls with artificial intelligence (AI), establishing a dual-engine system powered by "Calling + AI Agents" and "Calling + AI Capabilities". Through an intelligent service portal, it expands the scope of communication applications and converts the conventional closed voice network into an intelligent, open, and flexible AI-integrated network. This enables operators to create a versatile, continuously evolving service ecosystem and unlock new business growth opportunities. Dual engines driving commercial value With real-time AI assistants capable of understanding multimodal intentions, the system automatically handles complex tasks like booking travel and scheduling meetings, providing users with a smooth experience of "automatic recognition, intelligent execution, and task completion" without the need to download additional apps. While enhancing user experience, the integration of calling and AI also generates commercial value. It establishes a powerful service gateway within the calling interface, expanding operators' business horizons to realize "Calling as a Service". Additionally, advanced features such as real-time translation and AI-based fraud prevention improve core call quality, offering unique services that increase customer loyalty and generate additional revenue. Two-layer technological upgrades strengthening the foundation The AI New Calling architecture delivers two key technological advancements: Enhanced Capability Infrastructure: The introduction of an IMS Data Channel (IMS DC) enables multimodal data transmission and lightweight H5 app deployment, overcoming limitations in audio/video interactions and creating a superior calling platform. A new ecosystem is established by launching a plug-and-play AI calling open platform that supports third-party plugin integration for flexible capability use and rapid innovation development. Together, these improvements facilitate the smooth transition from closed voice networks to an intelligent, open, and agile AI+ network, helping operators build a sustainable and evolving communication service ecosystem. Four core capabilities redefining the value of voice call Focusing on essential user needs, ZTE's AI New Calling removes traditional barriers in audiovisual communication by fully embedding AI capabilities throughout the communication process. It redefines the value of calling across four main areas: enhancing efficiency, expanding the ecosystem, improving experience, and embracing technological inclusivity. AI personal assistant: Users can activate a personal AI agent during calls to independently manage meetings, travel plans, and other routine tasks—achieving complete task closure and turning every call into a productive interaction ("calls that get things done"). Super service gateway: The native dialer is transformed into a comprehensive service gateway, providing direct access to frequently used services like business travel and government functions—without requiring app downloads. This allows instant service access at the moment of dialing ("dial and enjoy"). AI clear voice: By combining background noise reduction, voiceprint optimization, and weak-network compensation, AI Clear Voice delivers crystal-clear, high-definition two-way audio even in challenging network environments. Accessible calling services: Utilizing AI integrated within the network, the system offers inclusive features like real-time language translation and proactive fraud detection. These services operate independently of the capabilities of user devices, ensuring truly universal and fair communication for all. Open collaboration to co-build the intelligent calling ecosystem AI New Calling is a strategic path toward the digital and intelligent transformation of voice communication. Its widespread implementation requires collaboration throughout the industry. ZTE is dedicated to driving innovation in communication technologies and facilitating the smooth transition of traditional voice networks into intelligent, open, and flexible AI-powered networks. Moving forward, ZTE will continue to collaborate with partners across the ecosystem to push the boundaries of AI and telecommunications integration, speed up the adoption of AI calling solutions in various industries, and deliver smarter communication experiences to millions of households, collectively shaping the future of digital intelligence in telecom. Contributed by ZTE.

Daar zijn we dan, het laatste potje voor het allerbelangrijkste potje (ok vooruit, er is nog een troostfinale voor de losers) van de komende vier jaar. Aan de ene kant staan de Engelsen, aangevoerd door totaalkampioen Harry Kane in de spits en tovenaar Jude Bellingham als topscorer. Aan de andere zijde Argentinië, die hebben Messi. Sommigen zouden daar '...en de scheids' aan toevoegen, maar vergeleken met Qatar valt het aantal dubieuze beslissingen in Argentijns voordeel nog alleszins mee. Toch, je kunt dan wel de grootste voetballer sinds Maradonna in je selectie hebben, als je er bijna uit knikkert tegen Kaapverdië en je in 90 minuten niet langs Zwitserland komt, ben je niet bepaald de gedoodverfde favoriet. Bovendien is deze strijd al eens beslecht in het voordeel van de Engelsen, in 1982. Krijgen de boys van Thomas Tuchel het voor elkaar om hun innerlijke Maggie Thatcher te doen ontwaken en zo die sluwe Argentijnen te braden en te serveren met vette worst en witte bonen in tomatensaus? We geven toe, wij zijn de kwartfinale in 2022 niet vergeten en na een paar weken online hype en tamelijk leuk voetbal beginnen wij onderhand langzaam It's Coming Home te neuriën. Misschien zingt het hele StamCafé vanavond uit volle borst Wonderwall. Wtf is dat eigenlijk, een wondermuur? Ach boeien. We gaan ervoor zitten met chips, nootjes en de rest.

Update 3' - Hahaha nu al bijna knokken
Update 24' - ZUIPPAUZE
Update 35' - Ook in die andere oorlog is het onrustig. Amerika valt Iran aan.
Update 45+3' - Einde eerste helft. Geen doelpunten maar wat een matpartij is deze wedstrijd.

DE SFEER

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@supersonnyspurs01

let's have it 😤 Football belongs to England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿. We want it back 🏆.

♬ original sound - SuperSonnySpurs01

Of; HUP ARGENTINIË

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