Leftovers

• Daniel Lemire ☛ Why measuring productivity is hard

  I created a spying agent to monitor my activities and time spent. It would look at which window is opened, and so forth. I would also monitor which web sites were loaded, and so forth.

  I discovered that I spent over 40% of my day on email, which was shocking. However, this didn’t improve my productivity.

• [Old] LoperOS ☛ Seven Laws of Sane Personal Computing

  My apologies to all readers who were inconvenienced by the multi-page layout.

  All of the Laws, slightly re-worded [1], are here once more. To view the original pages, click on the numerals.

  A sanely designed personal computer system: [...]

• Science

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Global science equity*

    Now that the Trump government is relentlessly attacking higher education and abusing its power at the border to arbitrarily refuse entry to scholars, many academics wonder whether it’s still possible to travel to the US for conferences or other research purposes, especially if they have publicly criticized the Trump government or its allies. But where you can travel, under what conditions, for your academic work, has long been an issue for scholars who come from countries with “weak passports”: passports with which they require visas, often in long-winded, uncertain bureaucratic processes that they might not be able to finish before the conference in question has taken place, and for which they often have to pay with their private money.

  • 404 Media ☛ Trump’s NASA Cuts Would Hurt America for a Long, Long Time

    Scientists warn that “the cuts would prevent the US from training and preparing the next generation of the scientific and technical workforce.”

  • Futurism ☛ Trump Wants to Shut Down Several Perfectly Good Spacecraft Orbiting Mars for No Reason

    Despite their old age, all three missions are still collecting valuable data about the planet and relaying important communications from NASA's rovers currently roaming its rugged surface. Experts have warned that simply giving up on them would be an enormous waste.

  • Techdirt ☛ Oregon Appeals Court Says Bullet Cartridge Matching Is Just More Junk Science

    Maryland’s top court dismantled these delusions back in 2023 by actually bothering to dig into the supposed science behind bullet/cartridge matching. When it gazed behind the curtain, it found ATFE (Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners) and its methods more than a little questionable.

• Career/Education

  • Project MUSE ☛ Project MUSE - portal: Libraries and the Academy-Volume 25, Number 3, July 2025, Supplement

    Focusing on important research about the role of academic libraries and librarianship, portal also features commentary on issues in technology and publishing. Written for all those interested in the role of libraries within the academy, portal includes peer-reviewed articles addressing subjects such as library administration, information technology, and information policy. In its inaugural year, portal earned recognition as the runner-up for best new journal, awarded by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ). An article in portal, "Master's and Doctoral Thesis Citations: Analysis and Trends of a Longitudinal Study," won the Jesse H. Shera Award for Distinguished Published Research from the Library Research Round Table of the American Library Association.

  • Robert Birming ☛ A lifetime of lessons

• Hardware

  • Dan Langille ☛ x8dtu: adding in the smaller drive

    I was up at 5:30 AM today. I packed the car and headed out. I arrived within the datacenter at about 8:15 or so. By 8:50, I was on IRC and the photos of the FreeBSD racks were uploading. Since I was going there anyway, I did some inventory and disposal work (a decommissioned server, about 25 old HDD, and various bits and pieces).

    I must say though, I’m not liking this option. Right now, I have two copies of my data, one in each of the zpools you’ll see listed later. Soon, I’ll destroy one of them, partition the larger drive to match the smaller drive, and add that larger drive to the smaller zpool. Destroying data causes me to go all heebie-jeebie.

  • Financial Express ☛ Intel announces fresh plans to layoff 2,400 additional workers, 4000 to be fired by mid July

    Layoff: Intel’s sweeping layoffs intensified Friday evening with the disclosure that the company will cut nearly 2,400 jobs in Oregon almost five times more than it initially reported earlier this week. The job cuts, part of a company-wide restructuring under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, are among the largest in Oregon’s history and mark a turning point in the state’s flagship tech sector.

    Once the uncontested leader in the semiconductor industry, Intel has struggled in recent years amid falling sales and stiff competition. “Twenty, 30 years ago, we were really the leader,” Tan told employees earlier this week. “Now… we are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies.” Tan’s remarks underscore the urgency driving his push to streamline operations and cut spending.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ New Study Flips Everything We Know About Addiction Upside Down

    What they found was striking: though the brains of those who messed around with alcohol, tobacco, or weed did show major differences from those that didn't, they found a crucial question of causality.

    Specifically, teens younger than 15 who ended up using drugs later already had bigger brains than those who didn't, even though they hadn't yet used drugs when the study began. Their brain profiles were similar to those who had already experimented with substances before the tests started, with both tending to have a larger cortex with more creases.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Will Cost Millions Their Medicaid

    Scalise claims the work requirements in the GOP bill mean the “35-year-old who’s sitting in his mom’s basement playing video games is gonna have to go get a job again.” Wrong again. In fact, the evidence shows that work requirements do nothing to increase employment. That’s because nearly two-thirds of working-age adults on Medicaid are employed, and most of the remaining third aren’t working because they’re students, caregivers, ill, or disabled.

• Proprietary

  • Roy Tang ☛ It's 2025, Why Is HP's Printer and Scanner Software Still Terrible?

    I decided to try their more "modern" HP Smart software which I also had installed a few months ago for an older printer which I tried using. It also had scanning capability, so I wanted to see if the problem was with the old "print and scan" software. The HP Smart scanning solution worked, but it was TERRIBLE: [...]

  • The Gamer ☛ "People Are At Panic Stations": The Xbox Layoffs Are Reportedly Even Worse Than We Thought

    Xbox's latest wave of layoffs led to around 9,000 direct job losses, but this doesn't give us the full picture. Alongside job cuts, it's also come out that Xbox has pulled its funding from smaller studios that had publishing deals with the gaming giant, and the knock-on effect is leading to even further job losses.

    As a result of this, it's now being reported that the gaming industry across Europe is in panic, as studios that either had deals with Xbox or were part of outsourcing teams helping on larger Xbox projects are now having to suddenly adapt to losing a great deal of work and funding.

    This comes from Ireland-based journalist Lex Luddy, who explained what she had heard from sources across Europe on the Rewinder podcast.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ McDonald's Idiotic AI Hiring System Just Leaked Personal Data About Millions of Job Applicants

      As large language models (LLMs) become ever more integrated into the platforms that define daily life, major flaws in the software's security capabilities are starting to show.

      McDonald's is among the growing list of companies that have quickly shoehorned LLM chatbots into their hiring systems, consequences be damned. Its Paradox.ai-built chatbot, which McDonald's calls a "virtual recruiting assistant," goes by the name Olivia.

    • India Times ☛ Grok 4 seems to channel Elon Musk when answering controversial questions

      Grok 4, the chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, has drawn criticism for frequently relying on Musk’s own X posts when tackling sensitive or controversial topics.

    • Simon Willison ☛ Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity

      METR recruited 16 experienced open source developers for their study, with varying levels of exposure to LLM tools. They then assigned them tasks from their own open source projects, randomly assigning whether AI was allowed or not allowed for each of those tasks.

    • Simon Willison ☛ Grok 4 Heavy won't reveal its system prompt

      Sometimes it will start to spit out parts of the prompt before some other mechanism kicks in to prevent it from continuing.

    • Ava ☛ LLM prompt superstitions | ava's blog

      I totally believe that tips like these make the rounds, but this conversation suddenly had the same air to it like in elementary school when the other children would tell you rumors about a secret button sequence in some video game that would make a special version of the hero appear, or made up stories about extra stars in Super Mario N64 and the like. Now we know it's all fake, but with the tips around LLM prompting, it's more difficult.

• Defence/Aggression

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ USS Midway Museum debuts ‘top secret’ exhibit on Navy intelligence

    Kraft and the museum enlisted the help of every intelligence officer he remembered serving with on the USS Midway, as well as intelligence officers and specialists from the Midway’s docents, to study and prepare for the exhibit — eventually totaling up to around 750 volunteers.

    Retired Commander Diana Guglielmo, an imagery analyst, helped lead the planning efforts.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ The global AI race and infrastructure weaponization

    The scramble for ever-more efficient Large Language Models (LLMs) is today’s new arms race. In the wake of Washington’s abandonment of global leadership and the rules-based international order, this race blurs the line between cold and hot confrontation in the new 21st-century world of three continental blocs. This race is a sign of the ongoing weaponization of all extant and new infrastructure, increasingly harnessed for warfare, be it hot, cold or hybrid. As a result, it is harder than ever to ascertain what peace means nowadays.

  • New Statesman ☛ The mutation of jihad

    Jihad is changing its face. In recent years, jihadist and Islamist groups that have embraced more pragmatic, local agendas have tended to flourish. Meanwhile, supporters of more extreme jihadist ideologies – groups like IS and al-Qaeda which once posed significant threats to the West – are foundering.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Weird Pathologies of the Right-Wing Mind

    We need to talk about the strange psychological territory that contemporary conservatism has become. Not the MAGA base—their motivations are clear enough, however destructive. I’m talking about the educated, sophisticated conservatives who have developed genuinely bizarre mental frameworks that make them incapable of basic threat assessment. People who see existential dangers in Superman movies while treating oligarchic capture as a policy disagreement. Who believe Kamala Harris is a secret Marxist while watching billionaires openly purchase Supreme Court justices.

    These aren’t stupid people. These aren’t cynical grifters. These are intelligent individuals who have somehow convinced themselves that diversity training represents a greater threat to Western civilization than the systematic elimination of constitutional constraints on power.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • El País ☛ Is winning a Nobel Prize reserved for the wealthy? Seven eye-opening charts, free of politics

    Here are seven charts that tell a curious story about how we entertain ourselves, how we age, and how wealth influences the chances of winning a Nobel Prize.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Trump urges MAGA supporters to forget about Epstein files

    During the 2024 election campaign, Trump promised to release files relating to Epstein, who committed suicide in 2019 while awaiting prosecution on child sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges.

    But since he returned to office in January, some of his supporters have grown frustrated with his administration's handling of the case.

    Those frustrations have grown into rising anger after the FBI and the Justice Department decided this week to withhold records from the Epstein case.

• Environment

  • CBC ☛ No, David Suzuki hasn't given up on the climate fight — but his battle plan is changing

    "We're in deep trouble," Suzuki told the outlet. "I've never said this before to the media, but it's too late."

    Though he made it clear that he hasn't entirely given up, Suzuki says that rather than getting caught up in trying to force change through legal, political and economic systems, we now need to focus on community action.

  • BBC ☛ 'I can't drink the water' - life next to a US data centre

    With AI now driving a surge in online activity, that number is growing fast. And with them, more complaints from nearby residents.

    The US boom is being challenged by a rise in local activism - with $64bn (£47bn) in projects delayed or blocked nationwide, according to a report from pressure group Data Center Watch.

    And the concerns aren't just about construction. It's also about water usage. Keeping those servers cool requires a lot of water.

  • Futurism ☛ Woman Says Zuckerberg's AI Data Center Filled Her Tap Water With Sediment

    Regardless how it ultimately shakes out, the incident highlights how a massive push to build out infrastructure to support incredibly power-hungry AI models is disrupting lives across the country. We're only beginning to understand the enormous environmental toll of AI tech, from staggering water usage to an enormous carbon footprint due to soaring emissions.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ ‘No Excuse’ for Canada to Step Back as Trump Fires Remaining U.S. Climate Negotiators

    The move already has Americans who see value in their country’s role in international climate diplomacy looking ahead to what’s next. “He will eventually leave. And at that point we have an opportunity to remake, to redo, to reset,” said Dan Reifsnyder, who led OGC as its founding director from 1989 to 2006. “How can we repair the damage, and how can we set a new agenda?”

    But even assuming a constructive U.S. presence in future climate talks, “the U.S. has sort of vacated the room” for the foreseeable future, veteran COP watcher Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the E3G think tank, told the Post.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Wired ☛ How to Use Clean Energy Tax Credits Before They Disappear

      “This bill is going to take away a lot of assistance from consumers,” said Lowell Ungar, director of federal policy for the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. He noted that 2 million people used the home improvement tax credit in its first year alone.

      The good news is that the law does not affect the billions of dollars that the IRA already sent to state efficiency and electrification rebate programs and that much of that money will remain available beyond the federal sunsets. But, Ungar added, the tax credits can still save people thousands of dollars before they vanish.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Elephants gesture with an intention to communicate their desires, study finds

      A recent study provided the first-ever evidence that, in the presence of a visually attentive audience, elephants are capable of using a wide range of gestures to convey their desires.

      The findings were published in Royal Society Open Science.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Garry Kasparov ☛ Actually, Forever Wars Are Bad

      Russia will remain at war in Ukraine in one form or another so long as Vladimir Putin remains in power. The scale may vary but the Russian economy is on a war footing. Maintaining that bellicose posture is Russia’s top economic priority, according to the country’s minister of finance. The propaganda machine is thoroughly militarized. War has become the raison d’etre for Putinist Russia, seeping into every pore of Russian society, from school children to babushki. Convicts-turned-Wagner mercenaries are trotted out as patriotic role models in front of impressionable students. Elderly Russian pensioners, nostalgic for the Soviet glory days, can be especially trusting of the Putinist party line. Indeed, in Russia, brainwashing is an intergenerational, whole-of-society affair.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Donald Trump’s Latest Citizenship Threat Targets Rosie O’Donnell

    And now, the president is openly telling a celebrity and political enemy that he is “serious” about taking away her American citizenship, merely because she has exercised her free speech rights.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ League of Social Democrats: A brief history of HK's left-wing party

    It was an extraordinary occasion for the 19-year-old left-wing political party – not only because it was announcing its disbandment but also because, over the years, the LSD had spent more time carrying out street actions than holding official events like this.

  • RFERL ☛ A Star Gone Missing: Afghan Singer Vanishes In Country Where Music Is Forbidden

    A popular Afghan singer has been missing for more than a month in Kabul, where she shot to fame with her performance on a popular television talent show nearly a decade ago.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • JURIST ☛ Reporters without Borders warns EU over rapid decline of press freedom in Serbia

    The statement comes after Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) released an assessment of the emergency of media freedom in Serbia in May. In their report, MFRR found that Serbian media workers are facing an increasing level of censorship, political persecution and even threats to their lives from state authorities and government officials. The hostile environment towards journalists has worsened after the reporting of the collapse of a railway station roof in Novi Sad, which killed more than a dozen people.

  • The Dissenter ☛ NJ Prosecutors Unconstitutionally Charge Reporters

    New Jersey state prosecutors unconstitutionally charged two reporters in Red Bank for disclosing an expungement order and refusing to remove details related to an expunged arrest.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • [Repeat] JURIST ☛ UK use of AI in digital welfare system sparks human rights concerns

    According to Amnesty International’s findings, the rollout and frequent revisions of AI-based systems have created a deeply inaccessible environment for those who need welfare the most. Many applicants lack digital literacy, internet access, or compatible devices, leaving them trapped in bureaucratic limbo and further impoverished by delays or denials in benefit delivery. Telephone alternatives are often plagued with long wait times and limited assistance.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Keep public lands in public hands

    The fact that Americans across the political aisle came together to safeguard public control over public resources, which support 331.9 million visits a year, a $1.2 trillion recreation industry and 5 million jobs, is a testament to our shared commitment to stewardship and individual freedom.

  • ANF News ☛ Young people: We are leading the construction of a democratic society

    The Youth Assembly of the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) in Diyarbakır (Amed) is organizing workshops across Kurdistan and Turkey under the theme “Pioneering Youth and Democratic Society.” The young participants are presenting their ideas and demands in order to play an active role in the peace process. Several of them shared their views on the process with ANF.

  • The Walrus ☛ We Should Really Just Steal Finland’s Baby Box Idea

    The case for treating parenting as a public investment, not a private burden

  • The North Lines IN ☛ Dalai Lama receives warm welcome on his month-long spiritual sojourn in Ladakh

    The timing of his visit also comes amid increased global interest in the succession of the Dalai Lama. His office issued a pointed reminder that “no one else has any authority to interfere in this matter” — a clear counter to China’s repeated claims of having a role in determining the next spiritual leader.

    Having recently turned 90 on June 6, the Dalai Lama remains steadfast in his message: cultivating a kind heart and compassion is the true path to peace of mind. His presence in Ladakh once again rekindles that message — echoing through mountain monasteries, quiet valleys, and the hearts of countless followers.

  • International Business Times ☛ Father Murders 16-Year-Old Daughter After She Refuses to Delete TikTok — Family Tried to Stage Suicide

    The teenager was allegedly killed on Tuesday night in the city of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. A police spokesperson told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the father demanded his daughter remove her TikTok presence. When she refused, he fatally shot her. He was later arrested.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ ICE’s ‘Secret Police’ Are Horrifying. Team Trump Is Laughing

    The administration may publicly dispute the idea that ICE agents are operating like “secret police,” but behind closed doors it’s preferred policy — and a fun meme.

    In recent weeks — according to two administration officials and two other Republicans close to the Trump White House — some of the most MAGA contingents of the government have come to embrace, mostly privately, the “secret police” branding as a way to sardonically troll the left’s denunciations of Team Trump and ICE operations.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Water firms to impose surge pricing during heatwaves

    Water companies will use smart meters to increase prices in the summer, meaning customers will pay more during heatwaves.

    Surge pricing trials are being introduced for customers with smart water meters at 15 companies across the country.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Reuters ☛ Apple, Masimo spar over Apple Watch import ban at US appeals court

      A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard arguments from the tech giant, medical monitoring technology company Masimo (MASI.O), opens new tab, and the U.S. International Trade Commission over the ITC's 2023 ruling that Apple Watches violated Masimo's patent rights in pulse oximetry technology.

• Copyrights

  • The Register UK ☛ Tech to protect images against AI scrapers can be beaten

    Computer scientists say they've devised a way to remove image-based protection mechanisms developed to protect artists from unwanted use of their work for AI training.

    Some visual artists, concerned about copyright violations and the possibility that AI-generated images will destroy the demand for their work, have taken to using software that adds "adversarial perturbations" – data patterns that will make AI model predictions misfire. Now, researchers have described a method to beat those perturbations in a paper [PDF] titled, "LightShed: Defeating Perturbation-based Image Copyright Protections."

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Google Says SCOTUS Decision in Cox vs. Sony Will Impact Publishers' Lawsuit

    A lawsuit, filed by several publishers in 2024, accused Google of not doing enough to prevent piracy while simultaneously profiting from it. A recent success for Google led to the dismissal of the publishers' vicarious liability claim, leaving a claim for contributory infringement to be decided. In a letter to the court on Thursday, counsel for Google requested a stay, pending the Supreme Court's decision in Cox vs. Sony, and a “potentially dispositive” impact on the case.

  • El País ☛ Is Google’s reign coming to an end? AI threatens the leading search engine

    If people get used to interacting with a tool capable of structuring information and answering questions, the days of traditional search engines may be numbered. Asking questions is simply more convenient than typing keywords and clicking through links to find the right one. That shift in user behavior is already underway. A recent study found that 92% of U.S. high school students are now using generative AI, up from 66% in 2024. Another report by consulting firm Lily AI reveals that 40% of shoppers already rely on AI assistants — not search engines — to research products before making a purchase.