@blanka.bsky.social
Technology writer for The Associated Press. bortutay@ap.org https://apnews.com/author/barbara-ortutay
RIP :( apnews.com/article/cia-...
05.02.2026 00:40 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0The shooting deaths of two American citizens during the Trump administration’s deportation operations in Minneapolis have upended the politics of immigration in Congress, plunging the country toward another government shutdown.
27.01.2026 00:00 — 👍 199 🔁 55 💬 23 📌 9complaining about paywalls when so many journalists are being laid off and there are fewer market incentives to do great reporting and in-depth investigations, data analysis and features is also wild when everyone understands you need to pay for electronics, streaming services, and utilities
08.12.2025 16:31 — 👍 341 🔁 57 💬 32 📌 15While the website was processing my payment for plane tickets (like the circle going around and around) I got a notification that the price increased by $70. This is insanity. Has this happened to anyone else?
25.11.2025 00:03 — 👍 3 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0We asked Roblox's CEO about child safety on the platform. It got tense www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/p...
21.11.2025 15:47 — 👍 175 🔁 30 💬 17 📌 47Read this investigation by @byrontau.bsky.social now:
apnews.com/article/immi...
"Believing that the only constant in the world was change, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus posited that no man can ever step into the same river twice. In the online world of social media, the current runs fast, too." -- Judge James Boasberg, ruling in favor of Meta.
18.11.2025 19:32 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1Ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee Bennie G. Thompson said in a statement “Mobile Fortify is a dangerous tool in the hands of ICE, and it puts American citizens at risk of detention and even deportation.” He also said “ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien. ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.”
New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people
www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...
Of course women don't like the Cybertruck.
Women only want one thing, and it's the Trabant 601.
Krasznahorkai has said of his work: ‘You will never go wrong anticipating doom in my books, any more than you’ll go wrong in anticipating doom in ordinary life.’
In 2012, we recorded a 94-minute conversation with Colm Tóibín for our Bookshop podcast:
www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/podcasts-vid...
Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.
08.10.2025 10:29 — 👍 27046 🔁 10278 💬 424 📌 184The only LLM I need.
01.10.2025 17:59 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0"Way back in 2012, the internet wasn’t yet the angry, shrieking wasteland it has become. A simple story about a no-nonsense lady in North Dakota could break through the noise." www.wsj.com/us-news/mari...
19.09.2025 18:53 — 👍 65 🔁 19 💬 1 📌 12The passing of Paul Newman (2008), Sean Connery (2020), Sidney Poitier (2022), and now Robert Redford (2025) signals the slow disappearance of a certain type of 20th century figure: men who embodied classic style in a way that reflected their taste, rather than a professional stylist.
16.09.2025 22:28 — 👍 7116 🔁 1048 💬 135 📌 52PSA: If you do not wish to mistakenly see the graphic video of Charlie Kirk getting shot and have an iPhone best to turn off video autoplay. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion, and then disable "Auto-Play Video Previews." This is the default setting. A per-app setting is also on the menu.
10.09.2025 19:56 — 👍 3 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0“Smells Like Teen Spirit”, released as a single 34 yrs ago today
“No one had any psychic foresight .. that the song would go on to do what it did,” said Grohl. “We just fuckin’ rocked it in a little rehearsal space that was like a barn. .. We just thought it was another cool song for the record.”
"Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known, an Associated Press investigation found."
09.09.2025 18:06 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0I'm seeing a social media trend where people are sneaking pics of men reading books in public and making fun of them as "performative males"
And while I love a good dunk, I don't think you guys want men to be reading even less than they are now. Just saying
I have honestly many times thought about purchasing one of those bulletproof backpacks or whatever, but then I think about the burden of carrying that to school every day, putting that burden on our children, that physical and mental burden of having to remember why you are carrying that backpack.
28.08.2025 21:33 — 👍 14 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0“If a tool can give suicide instructions to a child, its safety system is simply useless."
26.08.2025 18:41 — 👍 8 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0Here's a recent story (and photos) by Mariam Dagga, about children in Gaza:
25.08.2025 21:34 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0"At her funeral Monday, relatives and colleagues caressed her cheeks through tears. Her body lay shrouded in white, a single red flower placed gently beside her face."
25.08.2025 19:04 — 👍 14 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 1This is Tuffy. He is the only example of taking up the whole sidewalk that is not only justifiable, but encouraged. 14/10 (IG: mypittuffy)
21.08.2025 22:17 — 👍 19035 🔁 2433 💬 540 📌 297I am sorry I will never be able to read a story about Uranus and not laugh. It's just how it is.
19.08.2025 20:45 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0