Just because LEGO Technic is technically a toy doesn’t mean that you cannot do solid engineering with it, like building air-powered engines. After first building a simple air-powered piston engine, this time around [Jamie’s Brick Jams] sought to not only optimize the engine, but also build a clutch and something to power with said engine.
The four-piston design in radial configuration.
The piston head is one of the handful of 3D printed parts, with the new design featuring twin rubber o-rings as a seal instead of a single big one as in the old design. This incidentally matches the multiple seal rings on an internal combustion engine’s pistons, probably for similar blow-by related reasons. The air hose diameter was also increased from 2 to 3 mm to give the engine a larger volume of air to work with, which along with a new flywheel gave a lot more torque. Next the piston rod length was optimized.

The final radial 4-piston engine turns out to work pretty well, with the clutch engaging smoothly. This was used to drive a DIY generator that turned out to produce about 3 Watt of usable power in its final configuration at 6 V, though it’s admittedly a rather crude generator that could be further optimized. When trying a twin-piston configuration with the highest air pressure before air hoses began to pop off, it hit a dizzying 14,600 RPM.

These aren’t half bad results for some LEGO Technic together with some 3D printed bits, rubber o-rings and some lube.

youtube.com/embed/oLWdc6AzmB4?…

hackaday.com/2026/01/01/making…

Il professore di informatica Geoffrey Hinton, uno dei fondatori delle moderne tecnologie di intelligenza artificiale, ha affermato che l’IA potrebbe portare a perdite di posti di lavoro su larga scala già nel 2026. Secondo lui, i sistemi di IA si stanno sviluppando così rapidamente che stanno iniziando a minacciare non solo le professioni di routine, ma anche molte posizioni impiegatizie.

Hinton, premio Nobel 2024 per le scoperte in fisica, ha affermato questo in un’intervista al programma “State of the Union” della CNN, come riportato da Business Inside. “Vedremo l’intelligenza artificiale migliorare ulteriormente. È già incredibilmente buona. È già in grado di sostituire i lavori nei call center, ma sostituirà anche altri lavori”, ha affermato Hinton.

Secondo lo scienziato, lo sviluppo dell’intelligenza artificiale sta accelerando. Mentre in precedenza i modelli potevano gestire solo brevi frammenti di lavoro, ad esempio minuti di programmazione, ora sono in grado di eseguire interi progetti della durata di circa un’ora.

Allo stesso tempo, secondo Hinton, circa ogni sette mesi l’IA diventerà in grado di gestire attività che richiedono il doppio del tempo rispetto a prima. Nei prossimi anni, questo potrebbe portare l’IA a gestire progetti di sviluppo software della durata di mesi, riducendo significativamente la necessità di un gran numero di specialisti.

Hinton ha paragonato quanto sta accadendo alla Rivoluzione Industriale, che ha reso meno richiesto il lavoro fisico umano. Ritiene che l’intelligenza artificiale potrebbe svolgere un ruolo simile, ma in relazione al lavoro intellettuale.

Oltre alle implicazioni economiche, Hinton ha espresso preoccupazione anche per i rischi più profondi. Ha sottolineato che i moderni sistemi di intelligenza artificiale stanno sviluppando capacità di ragionamento e manipolazione più rapidamente del previsto. “Se il sistema ritiene che tu stia cercando di sbarazzartene, potrebbe iniziare a elaborare piani per ingannarti”, ha avvertito lo scienziato.

Non tutti gli esperti ritengono che lo sviluppo dell’intelligenza artificiale porterà inevitabilmente alla disoccupazione di massa nei prossimi anni. Andrew Ng, uno dei massimi esperti di apprendimento automatico e co-fondatore di Google Brain, osserva che è più probabile che l’intelligenza artificiale trasformi le professioni piuttosto che eliminarle del tutto.

A suo avviso, l’intelligenza artificiale sta prendendo il sopravvento su compiti specifici all’interno delle professioni, sia di routine che tecniche, mentre il ruolo umano si sta spostando verso il controllo, il processo decisionale e la contestualizzazione. Ritiene che la maggior parte dei lavori non scomparirà dall’oggi al domani, ma che cambierà più rapidamente di prima.

Ng aggiunge che la velocità di adozione dell’intelligenza artificiale non dipende solo dalle capacità tecnologiche, ma anche dalla cultura aziendale e dalla volontà delle aziende di ristrutturare i processi.

Le previsioni per il futuro del mercato del lavoro variano: alcuni prevedono cambiamenti bruschi e dolorosi già nel 2026, mentre altri prevedono un adattamento più graduale. Tuttavia, entrambe le parti concordano su un punto: l’intelligenza artificiale influenzerà sempre di più la struttura occupazionale e questi cambiamenti non potranno più essere ignorati.

L'articolo IA, l’allarme del Nobel Hinton: “Addio a migliaia di posti di lavoro già nel 2026” proviene da Red Hot Cyber.

SPACCIO E CENA RACCOLTA FONDI

Circolo Anarchico Berneri - Piazza di Porta Santo Stefano 1
(mercoledì, 7 gennaio 17:30)

Mercoledì 7 gennaio riapre lo spaccio popolare autogestito e ci verranno a trovare gli amici di LIBERA CROTA un progetto di vinificazione collettiva a sostegno delle lotte e dei movimenti.

Dalle 17,30 apertura spaccio e distribuzione verdure Arvaia,

dalle 19,30 racconto del progetto e cena di raccolta fondi

balotta.org/event/spaccio-e-ce…

Laboratorio Aperto

Matrici Aperte - Via Elia Capriolo 41C, Brescia
(giovedì, 8 gennaio 15:00)

LABORATORIO APERTO

Tutti i Martedì (14:00-23:00) e i Giovedì (14:00-21:00) Matrici apre il laboratorio per chi ha bisogno di stampare ma anche per chi vuole solo bere un bicchiere in compagnia!
Potete venire a fare serigrafia, incisione calcografica, xilografia e tecniche grafiche sperimentali.
Per l'utilizzo del laboratorio chiediamo un contributo libero a supporto del progetto. Portate carta e matrici da casa, noi mettiamo a disposizione strumenti e spazio per i vostri lavori.
Ci sono due postazioni serigrafiche, due torchi calcografici, sala acidi e piani da inchiostrazione.
Dalle 18.00 (ma anche dalle 14.00 per lx ubriaconx) apre il baretto con vino, birre, pirli e gin tonic di pessima qualità! -c'è pure il pinkanello!-Chi suona strumenti è ben accettx.
Sarà aperto e consultabile anche l'archivio con libri serigrafici, fanzine e distro a supporto di movimenti e collettivi!

lasitua.org/event/laboratorio-…

The Benzis' LIVE BAND - Soul, Funky e R'n'B

Australian Pub Ned Kelly - via Milano 226 Vigliano Biellese
(venerdì, 2 gennaio 22:30)

Live Band "The Benzi's"
Soul Funky R'n'B, una potente sezione ritmica, due sax affiatatissimi e una calda voce soul !

caosbi.eu/event/the-benzis-liv…

Visita guidata “Quando arrivava il trenino: Oropa nella Belle Époque”

Oropa - Via santuario di Oropa - Via Santuario D'Oropa, 480, 13900 Biella BI
(sabato, 3 gennaio 11:00)

Per chi ama il fascino del passato: la guida accompagnerà i visitatori in un vero viaggio nel tempo, alla scoperta di Oropa all’inizio del Novecento, quando il celebre trenino portava i villeggianti tra le montagne biellesi nella stagione turistica.
Costi e agevolazioni: 10 euro a persona, con ingressi inclusi.
Riduzioni: 8 euro per chi soggiorna nelle camere del Santuario.
Promozione famiglie (genitori e figli): 1 gratuità ogni 3 paganti. Bambini fino a 6 anni gratuiti.
Partenza dallo chalet info turistiche davanti ai cancelli principali del Santuario alle ore 11.

caosbi.eu/event/visita-guidata…

Visite guidate a Cittadellarte

Biella - Cittadellarte, Fondazione Pistoletto - Via Serralunga 27, Biella
(sabato, 3 gennaio 11:00)

Storie, visioni, ricerche e attività di Cittadellarte e del suo fondatore Michelangelo Pistoletto.

caosbi.eu/event/visite-guidate…

Programmers hold to a wide spectrum of positions on software complexity, from the rare command-line purists to the much more common web app developers, and the two extremes rarely meet. One point of contact, though, might be [Jan Antos]’s Brow6el, which uses sixel graphics to display a fully graphical web browser within a terminal.

Behind the scenes, the Chromium Embedded Framework renders webpages headless, then Brow6el uses libsixel to convert the rendered output image to sixels, a simple kind of console-based graphics representation, which it then outputs to the terminal. It regularly re-renders the page to catch page updates and display them in real time, and it can send mouse or keyboard input back to the webpage. For more advanced work, it also has a JavaScript development console, and it’s possibly to manually inject scripts into rendered webpages, or inject them automatically using URL match patterns.

Some other convenient features include a bookmark system, a download manager, terminal-based popup dialog support, support for multiple simultaneous open windows, and a private mode, all of these features being controllable through the keyboard alone. The mouse input can be taken from a real mouse or from a keyboard-controlled virtual mouse, which lets the user click and scroll through websites even on fully text-based systems. [Jan] provides an impressive video demonstration (and we’re not just saying that because of the demo website), which is embedded below.

Brow6el takes inspiration from a few other terminal-based web browsers, such as Carbonyl, though it improves on their graphics. Experienced readers, however, might already know that with some Wayland tricks, it’s possible to turn any application into a terminal app.

codeberg.org/janantos/brow6el/…

hackaday.com/2026/01/01/termin…

These days ready-to-use DC-DC converters are everywhere, with some of the cheaper ones even being safe to use without an immediate risk to life and limb(s). This piques one’s curiosity when browsing various online shopping platforms that are quite literally flooded with e.g. QS-4884CCCV-1800W clones of a DC-DC boost converter. Do they really manage 1800 Watt even without active cooling? Are they perhaps a good deal? These were some of the questions that [Josh] over at the [Signal Drift] channel set out to answer.

The only real ‘datasheet’ for this module seems to come courtesy of a Floridian company who also calls it the 36843-PS, but it features specifications that are repeated across store listings so it might as well by the official ‘datasheet’. This module is marketed as being designed for the charging of lead-acid and similar batteries, including the boosting of PV solar panel outputs, though you’d really want to use an MPPT charger for that.

With this use case in mind, it’s probably no surprise to see on the oscilloscope shots under load that it has a tragic 100 kHz switching frequency and a peak-to-peak noise on the output of somewhere between 1-7 VDC depending on the load. Clearly this output voltage was not meant for delicate electronics.

Looking closer at the board, we can see that it features a TI TL494C as the PWM controller IC, which drives the MOSFETs that form the boost circuit. There’s also an XLSemi XL7005A buck converter that is used for the low-voltage supply on the board. Meanwhile an LM358 dual opamp seems to be used in the voltage monitoring circuit, which also completes the analysis minus the passives, the MOSFETs for the buck (IRFB3206) and boost (IRFP4468) circuits, and a 100V-rated Power Schottky rectifier.

While the board does implement some basic voltage- and current-related safeties and limits, even the documentation tells you to not leave it powered on for too long. As for pushing it to the full 1,800 Watt output, this would require at least 48 VDC input, enabling e.g. 90 VDC output at 20A. Since the input terminal is only rated for 300V at 30A, the input for the subsequent stress test was limited to 48V at 30A for a total of 1,440 Watt from three 48 Watt PSUs.

Using two resistive heating elements as a ~1,800 Watt load the output of the module was measured to see how far the module can be pushed. This turned out to be 1,200 Watt with the 48VDC input proving to be the limit. With the maximum 60VDC input you may be able to provide the current required to hit the full 1,800 Watt, but at that point you’re pretty close to the output voltage anyway. This makes a total of 500-1,000 Watt more reasonable.

Considering the overall performance, the original listed application as a battery charger seems to be about right, with a very barebones design. Its output switching noise and lack of safeties, as well as inability to fully turn off, mean that it should not be used by itself for anything that will be powered for extended periods of time, nor should anything sensitive to switching noise be exposed to its output voltage. For the $18 or so that this module goes for on certain popular platforms one could do much worse if you know what you’re doing.

youtube.com/embed/pHri9dBQwiw?…

hackaday.com/2026/01/01/puttin…

The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR)’s T1 class is famous for many reasons: being enormous, being a duplex, possibly having beaten Mallard’s speed record while no one was looking… and being in production in the 21st century. That last fact is down to the redoubtable work by the PRR T1 Steam Locomotive Trust, who continued their efforts to reproduce an example of these remarkable and lamentably unpreserved locomotives in the year 2025.

They say that 2025 was “the year of the frame” because the frame was finally put together. We might say that for the PRR Trust, this was the year of welding. Back when the Baldwin and Altoona works were turning out the originals, the frames for steam locomotives were cast, not welded. There might not be anywhere on Earth to get a 64′ long (19.5 m), 71,000 lbs steel casting made these days. Building it up with welded steel might not be perfectly accurate, but it’s the sort of hack that’s needed to keep the project moving.

The cylinders, too, would have been bored-out castings back the day. Getting the four (it’s a duplex, remember) assemblies cast as one piece didn’t prove practical, so T1 #5550 will have welded cylinders as well. Given modern welding, we expect no problem with holding steam pressure. The parts are mostly machined and will be welded-together next year.

The giant wheels of the locomotive have been cast, but need to be machined. It’s not impossible to believe that locomotive #5550 will be on its frame, on its wheels, in 2026. The boiler is already done and the injectors to get water into it have been reinvented, which can perhaps be considered another hack.

Right now, if donations continue to trickle in at the current rate– and prices don’t rise any faster than they have been– the Trust hopes to have the locomotive steaming in 2030. She’s now 59.8% complete. That’s up from 40% when we last checked in, back in 2022, which is great progress considering this is a volunteer-driven, crowd-funded effort.

If you don’t have the skills or geographical location to volunteer with this build, but we’ve peaked your love of steam, perhaps you could 3D print an engine to scratch the itch.

youtube.com/embed/jSYGNQVYeA4?…

hackaday.com/2026/01/01/buildi…

Today is the first day of 2026; more than halfway through this decade. The beginning of the year marks the beginning of a new goal for some, hoping to set forth a change for the better. While some take the New Year to jump into a lifestyle or commitment to change, others may not feel they are ready to jump in, even with the year resetting and the feeling of “fresh starts” anew.

You’re never ready. Sometimes you just need to take that opportunity to do.

It was 20 years ago today, on New Year’s Day of 2006, that the first Pirate Party came into being: the Pirate Party of Sweden. Formed in the wake of the Pirate Bay raid, Pirates from Sweden set forth in motion a movement dedicated to the protection of a free and open culture. It was young, future focused, privacy minded and willing to call out intellectual property on the farce it was.

Months after Sweden, on the campus of the University of Georgia, came the second ever Pirate Party: the United States Pirate Party.

While that event occurred on June 6th, 2006, and is an event we shall celebrate the anniversary of later this year during our 2026 Pirate National Conference in Boston, that is not the focus of this post.

Instead, as we go into our 20th year as a movement, the time must be taken to acknowledge some folks. Pirate Parties have popped up worldwide, and while the European peninsula plays host to the most Pirate Parties, it is far from a European movement.

We wish to take a moment to recognize the grassroots efforts of Pirates across the world that have worked to build up this movement.

To our partners in América, the Pirates of Argentina, Brazil and Chile, we are proud to stand with you all as representatives in the New World and in commitment to our own Pan-Americanist platform, dedicating ourselves to bring the United States from a paradigm of U.S. dominance to genuine collaboration and friendship. With you all, we hope to see ourselves as “the first four”, but not the “lone four”.

To our friends in Greece, who provide a fire and energy this movement so desperately needs to continue to grow and thrive. Thank you for speaking up in defense of our movement and refusing to compromise on our ideals. The U.S. Pirate Party greatly looks forward to your success and progress towards the future.

To our candidates, some of whom we have announced and endorsed and some of whom we have yet to tell you about: thank you for believing in this movement. Thank you for caring about your neighbors. Thank you for fighting for a society and culture that is truly free and open.

To the volunteers within the United States Pirate Party: you are the beating heart of this vessel. This ship doesn’t run without their crew, and to our volunteers actively seeking to form Pirate Parties in their state: it is your leadership that is making the difference. Whether you are from one of our PNC member states like Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania or Texas, or one of the volunteers from Alabama, Colorado, the DMV, Kansas. Idaho, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio or West Virginia. Your work is recognized and appreciated to the highest degree.

To our leadership in Young Pirates USA, thank you for taking the time to build up the next generation of Pirate. We look forward to having a more lively YPUSA in the coming years.

To supporters of the Pirate Party, be it the United States or elsewhere: you have seen us grow from a seemingly single issue party to one more fleshed out and unique. No long just privacy, copyright and patents, but also Pan-Americanism, police reform and clean water. This party is a living, breathing reflection of all those who have taken the time to contribute. We hope you can see your reflection from the polish we plan to apply in 2026.

The Pirate Party’s goal was always fighting for “a free and open culture”. Adding clean water, police reform and Pan-Americanism were natural expansions of that idea. Protecting the commons, your privacy, your neighbors and our communities from overreach and profit-first-and-only-minded corporations.

It has been said that the Pirate Party is a bit of an open source project itself; people come in and out and contribute as much or as little as they’d like. It is here I believe our strengths truly lay.

To those looking from the outside in: thank you for checking us out! Maybe you thought we were a joke party (because Pirate Party is a silly name). Maybe you were convinced we existed but did little to nothing. While you might think a slow burn towards success isn’t ideal, I counter by saying that surviving twenty years is only the first obstacle. Sometimes parties and organizations linger before finding their footing, an example being the Democratic Socialists of America. While I am not insinuating we are next in line for that type of relevance, I insist that we are not stagnant in the background. If you have gotten so far as to visit our website or read this article, I invite you to check out our platform. You might not realize it, but our goals aren’t “for Pirates”; they’re for everyone. It just so happens everyone might just be a Pirate.

In the middle of this War on Privacy waged against the average citizen, assisted by the post-Citizens United major parties, in collaboration with those seeking to profit off of your data, we cannot afford to stop pushing. It’s been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come.

We have plenty in 2026 and beyond for supporters to sink their teeth into. Beyond volunteer opportunities, we look forward to running more candidates (including what is looking to be a record number of Pirates running in 2026), holding more camera walks, organizing more protests, creating more literature, and giving you all the more reason to Vote Pirate.

Happy New Years to all, and Happy Birthday to this movement we call our own. May these next twenty years be even more fruitful than the first, and may the change we all wish to see come by our hands and hard work.

Because, after all: if not you, then who?

uspirates.org/happy-new-years-…

By Babak Tubis

The U.S. sanctions on HateAid’s leaders in December 2025 have ignited a fierce transatlantic debate. One side frames it as an attack on European digital sovereignty and the fight against online hate, while the other celebrates it as a blow against “state‑sponsored censorship.”

Both narratives, however, miss the deeper structural problem which has been emerging for years: HateAid has become a textbook example of the “gezähmte Netzpolitik” — the taming of internet politics — where independent, pluralistic activism is gradually replaced by conformist, institutionally dependent structures. This is evidenced by its state funding and privileged role as a Trusted Flagger under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Its vulnerability in the current geopolitical crossfire is not an accident, but the logical consequence of choices made long ago. [1][2][3][11]

Crisis, Stress, and the Symptomatic Response

Overlapping crises like the pandemic and the war in Ukraine create a collective stress that heightens vulnerability to manipulation, as discussed in the lecture ‘Fakten und Fiktionen – Wie die Gesellschaft durch Unsicherheit gestresst wird,’ at the Hack the Promise Festival 2024.

Political responses often remain symptomatic: censorship that once was justified by copyright is now sold as “defence of democracy” against fake news and propaganda—a seductive one‑size‑fits‑all solution that avoids dealing with deeper causes such as diffuse fears and erosion of pluralism. This shift has led to parts of net activism being used to legitimize greater control rather than to defend an open discourse—a pattern I have observed in German net policy debates on surveillance and civil rights. [4][1]

“HateAid fits this pattern perfectly. As a state‑funded organisation with accelerated flagging privileges under the DSA’s trusted‑flagger framework, it has moved from grassroots support for victims of online violence into a semi‑institutional role inside the regulatory apparatus.”

This trend was already criticised as part of a broader willingness of net‑political actors to exchange independence for access and symbolic influence, as noted in the Tübingen talk “Digitalität und Mündigkeit.” Such institutional ties may open doors in Brussels and Berlin, but they create dependencies that make actors like HateAid a pawn in geopolitical contests between Washington, Brussels, and Berlin. [2][1]

A Self-Inflicted Vulnerability?

Please do not get me wrong! Helping people against the wingnuts on the internet is important, but the current sanctions exposed this fragility. We need to be aware of the juristic and political dangers for the public debate which can evolve by this, as Franz Josef Linder already pointed out in November 2024 on Verfassungsblog. [10]

Large parts of the German and European political establishment reacted with almost unanimous outrage, yet from a Pirate perspective, this looks like a self‑inflicted vulnerability. When activism trades its rebellious spirit for institutional integration, it becomes exposed to pressure from all sides — not only from autocracies like Russia and China, but also from allies using legal and financial levers in transatlantic disputes.

Pirate Parties International underlined the broader relevance of this critique when they republished the Basel 2024 lecture in English in July 2025. They argued that Pirate Parties must move beyond purely reactive activism toward a more reflective, mature politics that emphasises:

• Civic education and resilience.
• Pluralistic discourse instead of technocratic content control.
• The courage to tolerate contradiction without sacrificing the fight against hate. [5][1]

Reclaiming the “Forgotten Promise”

The internet’s original promise of egalitarian participation—which media scholar Tarek Barkouni described as the idea that everyone with a connection could participate equally—has largely been displaced by surveillance‑capitalist business models. Barkouni showed how early hopes were undermined first by the commercialisation of Web 2.0 and then by platforms whose core logic is advertising revenue, not democratic discourse. [6]

Meaningful change in complex systems requires precision rather than revolutionary arson. As argued at the 2025 “Hack the System – wenigstens ein bisschen” talk, we need metaphorical “hackers” who understand socio-technical systems and repair their fragility—not “arsonists” who burn everything down in the name of purity. [7]

Drawing on Kant’s call for Mündigkeit — the courage to think without external tutelage — we must reject the comfort of simple narratives and “trusted” gatekeepers. [2][6][1][8][11]

The Strategic Choice for 2026

As a member of the federal board of Piratenpartei Deutschland and the European Pirate Party (PPEU), I see this debate as a concrete strategic choice for Pirates ahead of our 2026 program renewal. Either we let ourselves be integrated as “responsible stakeholders” into flawed systems, or we rebuild an independent, uncomfortable digital‑rights movement that resists both state and corporate pressure. [3][4][1]

The HateAid case is a warning signal. Reclaiming the internet’s emancipatory promise requires emancipating net activism itself: from gatekeepers, from status‑seeking conformity, and from dogmas that confuse access with power. [1][8]

Let us hack the system — at least a little — before the system finishes hacking us.

Babak Tubis is a member of the Federal Board (Beisitzer) of Piratenpartei Deutschland, a board member of the European Pirate Party (PPEU), and active on digital rights, migration, and democracy issues.

References

1. European Pirates – Board
2. Wikipedia – Pirate Party Germany
3. Piratenpartei Vorstand – Beisitzer
4. Piraten Herne – Palantir Warnung
5. PPI – Board Congratulations
6. Piratenpartei Facebook
7. Hack the Promise Info
8. CCC Media – Digitalität und Mündigkeit
9. PPI – Basel 2024 Reflections
10. Verfassungsblog – Trusted Flagger
11. Piratenpartei Innenpolitik – HateAid Sanctions

piratetimes.info/the-taming-of…

Since 2019, every January 1st, the public domain frees more works that copyright laws kept locked up. On this glorious Public Domain Day, works created in 1930 and sound recordings from 1925 are made available to everyone in the United States, at least, to use as they wish. We are free to enjoy and share these works without paying anyone for them. We can create new works from these old works by remixing them or repurposing them to our heart’s content.

This January 1st is special for Pirates because it is the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Swedish Pirate Party. It is fitting that both events should occur on the same day and we wish the Swedish Pirates a happy 20th anniversary!

As a celebration for this year’s Public Domain Day, the Internet Archive has a contest to explore and reimagine the creative treasures entering the public domain, especially works from 1930 that entered the public domain on January 1. Contestants must upload a 2-3 minute short film to the Internet Archive that uses at least one work published in 1930 that joined the public domain on January 1, 2026. This could be a poem, book, film, musical composition, painting, photograph or any other work that is now in the Public Domain. All submissions must be submitted by January 7, 2026 at 11:59pm PST. You can find more details on the contest at the Internet Archive.

As they do every year, Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle of the Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain have a detailed, but brief list, of what new public domain works we have. A number of characters are now in the public domain, including Betty Boop, Disney’s Rover (later renamed Pluto) and Blondie and Dagwood. Below is a short list with links to copies at the Internet Archive and elsewhere.

Books

• William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying – At the Internet Archive
• Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (the full book version) – At the Internet Archive
• Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage (the first novel featuring Miss Marple) – At the Internet Archive
• Carolyn Keene, the first four Nancy Drew books – At the Internet Archive
• Watty Piper, [em]The Little Engine That Could[/em] (the popular illustrated version, with drawings by Lois Lenski) – At the Internet Archive
• John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel
• Edna Ferber, Cimarron – At the Internet Archive
• Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison – At the Internet Archive
• Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men

Films

• All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture) – At the Internet Archive
• King of Jazz, directed by John Murray Anderson (musical revue featuring Paul Whiteman and Bing Crosby’s first feature-film appearance) – At the Internet Archive
• Animal Crackers, directed by Victor Heerman (starring the Marx Brothers)
• Soup to Nuts, directed by Benjamin Stoloff (written by Rube Goldberg, featuring later members of The Three Stooges) – At the Internet Archive
• Morocco, directed by Josef von Sternberg (starring Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and Adolphe Menjou) – At the Internet Archive
• Anna Christie, directed by Clarence Brown (Greta Garbo’s first talkie) – At the Internet Archive
• Murder!, directed by Alfred Hitchcock – At the Internet Archive
• L’Âge d’Or, directed by Luis Buñuel, written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí – At the Internet Archive
• Whoopee!, directed by Thornton Freeland

Musical Compositions

• Four Songs – I Got Rhythm, I’ve Got a Crush on You, But Not for Me, and Embraceable You – with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, music by George Gershwin
• Dream a Little Dream of Me, lyrics by Gus Kahn, music by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt
• On the Sunny Side of the Street, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, music by Jimmy McHugh
• Just a Gigolo (the first English translation), original German lyrics by Julius Brammer, English translation by Irving Caesar, music by Leonello Casucci
• The Royal Welch Fusiliers, by John Philip Sousa

Sound Recordings

• Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, recorded by Marian Anderson
• Yes Sir, That’s My Baby, recorded by Gene Austin – At the Internet Archive
• You’ve Been A Good Old Wagon, recorded by Bessie Smith
• The St. Louis Blues, recorded by Bessie Smith, featuring Louis Armstrong
• Fascinating Rhythm, recorded by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra
• I’ll See You in My Dreams, recorded by Isham Jones, with Ray Miller’s Orchestra
• Everybody Loves My Baby (but My Baby Don’t Love Nobody but Me), recorded by Clarence Williams’ Blue Five – Recording

We’ll talk about Public Domain Day on the next Pirate News. See you then!

Image Credit: Public Domain

masspirates.org/blog/2026/01/0…

By Babak Tubis

The U.S. sanctions on HateAid’s leaders in December 2025 have ignited a fierce transatlantic debate. One side frames it as an attack on European digital sovereignty and the fight against online hate, while the other celebrates it as a blow against “state‑sponsored censorship.” Both narratives, however, miss the deeper structural problem which has been emerging for years: HateAid has become a textbook example of the “gezähmte Netzpolitik” — the taming of internet politics — where independent, pluralistic activism is gradually replaced by conformist, institutionally dependent structures, evidenced by its state funding and privileged role as a Trusted Flagger under the Digital Services Act (DSA). Its vulnerability in the current geopolitical crossfire is not an accident, but the logical consequence of choices made long ago.[1][2][3]

[11]Overlapping crises like the pandemic and the war in Ukraine create a collective stress that heightens vulnerability to manipulation, as discussed in the lecture ‘Fakten und Fiktionen – Wie die Gesellschaft durch Unsicherheit gestresst wird,’ at the Hack the Promise Festival 2024.

Political responses often remain symptomatic: censorship that once was justified by copyright is now sold as “defence of democracy” against fake news and propaganda, a seductive **one‑size‑fits‑all** solution that avoids dealing with deeper causes such as diffuse fears and erosion of pluralism. This shift has led to parts of net activism being used to legitimize greater control rather than to defend an open discourse—a pattern I have observed in German net policy debates on surveillance and civil rights.[4]

[1]HateAid fits this pattern perfectly. As a state‑funded organisation with accelerated flagging privileges under the DSA’s trusted‑flagger framework, it has moved from grassroots support for victims of online violence into a semi‑institutional role inside the regulatory apparatus.This trend was already criticised as part of a broader willingness of net‑political actors to exchange independence for access and symbolic influence as in the Tübingen talk “Digitalität und Mündigkeit”.

Such institutional ties may open doors in Brussels and Berlin, but they create dependencies that make actors like HateAid a pawn in geopolitical contests between Washington, Brussels, and Berlin.[2]

[1]Please do not get me wrong! Helping people against the wingnuts on the internet is important, but the current sanctions exposed this fragility. We need to be aware of the juristic and political dangers for the public debate which can evolve by this, as Franz Josef Linder already pointed out in November 2024 on Verfassungsblog.

[10]Large parts of the German and European political establishment reacted with almost unanimous outrage, denouncing an “authoritarian attack on free speech and democracy,” yet from a Pirate perspective this looks like a self‑inflicted vulnerability. When activism trades its rebellious spirit for institutional integration, it becomes exposed to pressure from all sides — not only from autocracies like Russia and China, but also from allies using legal and financial levers in transatlantic disputes. The result is not stronqger protection against hate and disinformation, but a weakened, easily divided digital‑rights landscape in an era of information warfare and hybrid conflict.[1]

[2]Pirate Parties International underlined the broader relevance of this critique when they republished the Basel 2024 lecture in English in July 2025, highlighting its “valuable programmatic impulses” for Pirates worldwide and explicitly linking it to a needed strategic shift in net politics.[9] They argued that Pirate Parties must move beyond purely reactive activism toward a more reflective, mature politics that emphasises civic education, resilience, and pluralistic discourse instead of technocratic content control. This does not mean abandoning the fight against online hate; it means insisting that this fight must not sacrifice the core values of digital freedom: openness, independence, and the courage to tolerate contradiction.[5]

[1]The internet’s original promise of egalitarian participation, which media scholar Tarek Barkouni described as the idea that everyone with a connection could participate equally in political communication, has largely been displaced by surveillance‑capitalist business models and recommendation‑driven attention economies. Barkouni showed how early hopes for a self‑organised, pluralistic digital public sphere were undermined first by the commercialisation of Web 2.0 and then by platforms whose core logic is advertising revenue and data extraction, not democratic discourse. This “forgotten promise” can only be redeemed if digital movements emancipate themselves from these logics and gatekeepers and deliberately rebuild spaces where pluralism and contradiction take precedence over engagement metrics.

[6]Meaningful change in complex systems requires precision rather than revolutionary arson, as argued in 2025 at the “Hack the System – wenigstens ein bisschen” talk at the Hack the Promise Festival in Basel.[7] We need metaphorical “hackers” who understand socio-technical systems and repair their fragility—not “arsonists” who burn everything down in the name of purity.
Dogmatism—from both censorship advocates and free-speech absolutists—only creates false comfort. Worse, it opens the door and invites for new forms of authoritarianism disguised as expert knowledge.[1]

[8]Drawing on Kant’s call for Mündigkeit — the courage to think without external tutelage — the talks in Basel and Tübingen argued for intellectual independence. In a stressed digital society, this means rejecting the comfort of simple narratives and “trusted” gatekeepers to instead defend pluralism and contradiction. Viewed through Barkouni’s diagnosis of “forgotten” social media ideals, the internet’s original promise becomes the benchmark that reveals the failure of today’s tamed net politics. [2][6][1][8]

[11]As a member of the federal board of Piratenpartei Deutschland and the European Pirate Party (PPEU), I see this debate not as abstract theory, but as a concrete strategic choice for Pirates ahead of our 2026 program renewal. Either we let ourselves be integrated as “responsible stakeholders” into flawed systems of platform governance and security politics, or we rebuild an independent, uncomfortable digital‑rights movement that resists both state and corporate pressure — much like our warnings on Palantir surveillance.[3][4]

[1]The HateAid case is therefore more than a bilateral quarrel. It is a warning signal for the entire digital‑rights community that has allowed itself to be tamed — through state funding, regulatory privileges, and the lure of being “responsible stakeholders” rather than inconvenient troublemakers. If net politics continues down this path, Pirate concerns about information warfare, latent societal stress, and authoritarian reflexes will remain analytically correct but politically ineffective, we need to change this, for the sake of a free society which can protect its freedom even against a populism which seeks to destroy the fundaments of the public debate. Reclaiming the internet’s emancipatory promise requires emancipating net activism itself: from gatekeepers, from status‑seeking conformity, and from dogmas that confuse access with power.[1]

[8]Let us fight for a stronger, free, united Europe also in the digital realm. Let us hack the system — at least a little — before the system finishes hacking us.

[1]*Babak Tubis is a member of the Federal Board (Beisitzer) of Piratenpartei Deutschland, a board member of the European Pirate Party (PPEU), and active on digital rights, migration, and democracy issues.*[3][5]

[1][1](europeanpirates.eu/board/)
[2](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_P…)
[3](vorstand.piratenpartei.de/vors…)
[4](piraten-herne.de/piratenpartei…)
[5](pp-international.net/2025/10/c…)
[6](facebook.com/Piratenpartei/?lo…)
[7](https://t.co/7Ydpu7aw9m)
[8](media.ccc.de/v/tdf4-28-digital…)
[9](pp-international.net/2025/07/h…)
[10](verfassungsblog.de/trusted-fla…)
[11](innenpolitik.piratenpartei.de/…)

pp-international.net/2026/01/t…

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