In Storms v. Carcieri, (D NJ, May 26, 2026), a New Jersey federal district court dismissed a suit which challenged a requirement by the Somerset County YMCA that in order to serve as a Board member, a board nominee must complete a 30-minute training course titled "Advancing Equity, Understanding Biases." Plaintiff Michael Storms refused to take the course because it violated his "deeply held religious belief that only Jesus Christ can forgive my sins." Storms, proceeding pro se, sued alleging that imposing the requirement on him violated his 1st and 14th Amendment rights, as well as Title VI and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the New Jersey Civil Rights Act. A number of his claims were dismissed because he had not plausibly alleged that the YMCA's conduct involved state action. The court dismissed plaintiff's Title VI claim because Title VI only bars discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin. It does not cover religious discrimination. He also failed to show that the federal funding received by the national YMCA organization was the source of any of operations of the local entity.

Interestingly, in his complaint, Plaintiff also listed "Jesus Christ" as a plaintiff. In a footnote the court said: "The Court finds that Jesus Christ is not a proper plaintiff and proceeds in its analysis with Storms as the sole plaintiff in this matter."

In Right to Life of Michigan v. Whitmer, (6th Cir., May 26, 2026), the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a Michigan district court's conclusion that plaintiffs in the case lack standing in their suit challenging a Michigan state constitutional provision that guarantees a fundamental right to reproductive freedom. In the case, 16 plaintiffs sued Michigan's governor, attorney general and secretary of state seeking to enjoin enforcement of the provision that was adopted by Michigan voters in 2022, alleging that it violates their federally protected parental rights. The court said in part:

Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries must be traceable to the actions of the Defendants....

The primary allegation against the Governor and the Attorney General is that each is generally responsible for executing Michigan’s laws.  This type of general allegation cannot support Plaintiffs’ standing because a state official’s general authority to enforce state law cannot satisfy traceability in the absence of “allegations about what the [official] has done, is doing, or might do to injure plaintiffs.”...

For the Governor and Attorney General, this leaves only the allegations claiming they have enforcement responsibilities relating to the [Elliot Larsen Civil Rights Act] and [Michigan Consumer Protection Act].  But these allegations do not bear on Plaintiffs’ parental rights theory because they allege only that the ELCRA and MCPA bear on enforcement as to medical professionals, rather than in a manner that would cause harm to parental rights....  

Notably, the medical professional plaintiffs chose not to appeal. ...

Plaintiffs argue that because § 28 has led to several abortion restrictions being held unlawful, their harms directly flow from the constitutional amendment.  But this does not mean the harms flow from Defendants....

The Michigan Attorney General's office issued a press release announcing the decision.

Dan Goodin, reporting for Ars Technica:

The technique, laid out in a research paper, exploits a side channel, a form of leak resulting from physical manifestations such as electromagnetic emanations, data caches, or the time required to complete a task. By measuring the manifestations, attackers can decrypt encrypted traffic and infer other confidential data. [...]

“Web browsers have evolved from simple document viewers into complex platforms capable of running sophisticated applications,” the paper authors wrote. “Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed full-fledged office suites, photo- and video editors, or even integrated development environments (IDEs) that run entirely within the browser.” The authors went on to note: “While these features enhance the capabilities of web applications and allow completely novel use cases, they also increase the browser’s attack surface, and some have already been shown to introduce new vulnerabilities.”

Unlike previous contention side-channel attacks on SSDs, FROST runs exclusively in the browser. It uses JavaScript that interacts with the OPFS (origin private file system), an allocated storage space that’s reserved for a specific site to run code needed to complete a given task. Websites can create one with no interaction required by the visitor.

JavaScript, as I have suggested many times, was a terrible mistake for the web. It’s absurd that a web page can access local storage space.

Link: arstechnica.com/security/2026/05/websites-have-a-new-way-to…

When using older computers there comes a point at which modern software drops support, as for example is happening with builds for Windows XP. Every now and then though, along comes something that bucks the trend. Enter [mplsllc] with Macsurf, a port of the Netsurf browser for classic MacOS 9 on PowerPC. Bring your nineties beige box back online!

The first generation of PowerPC Macs occupy an odd position, being faster and more capable than their predecessors while not sharing the ability to run MacOS X like their G3 descendants. Macsurf has the promise of bringing them into the 2020s, but if you’re expecting the equivalent of Google Chrome you might be disappointed.

Netsurf is a browser that started life on RiscOS, the original ARM OS from the Acorn Archimedes. It’s lightweight and portable, it’s an active project, it has a good rendering engine that does up to date HTML and CSS, it offers native TLS, and it has JavaScript built in. It’s ideal for a 1990s PowerPC, but with the caveat that sites expecting the very latest browsers might struggle. Sadly we don’t have a ’90s Mac to hand so we can’t try this port, but we’re used to it on other lower-power machines so we thing it’ll be a great asset to the platform.

We last looked at Netsurf when we had a look at RiscOS, if you are interested.

The Alliance for Open Media has published the first version of the AV2 specification.

AV2 is the next-generation video coding specification from the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). Building on the foundation of AV1, AV2 is engineered to provide superior compression efficiency, enabling high-quality video delivery at significantly lower bitrates. It is optimized for the evolving demands of streaming, broadcasting, and real-time video conferencing.

This specification serves as the definitive technical reference for AV2 implementations. It outlines the bitstream syntax, semantics, and decoding processes required to ensure full conformance.

AV2 provides enhanced support for AR/VR applications, split-screen delivery of multiple programs, improved handling of screen content, and an ability to operate over a wider visual quality range.

↫ AV2 website

Do you remember when the video codec wars – open vs. closed – were raging all across the web, for years? Even back then I argued that open would win, as it usually does, and over 15 years later the most widely-used video codecs on the planet being open is just a normal fact of life nobody writes or talks about anymore. VP8, VP9, AV1, and now this upcoming AV2 are all open and royalty-free, the by far largest video platform, YouTube, serves them by default, and the video codec problem is a solved problem, relegated to the spinning disk drive of history.

I was told I was an idealist and that this would never happen, and yet, here we are.