Leftovers

• APNIC ☛ Congestion control at IETF 123

  Early models of packet networking used a hop-by-hop paradigm of control. Each intermediate device (a ‘router’) would use a control loop with its adjacent neighbor and retransmit any frame that was not explicitly acknowledged as received by the neighbor. Such models were used by the X.25 protocol, and by DECNet in its Digital Data Communications Message Protocol (DDCMP).

• The Independent UK ☛ Rocky Horror Picture Show forever: How a tiny US cinema helped turn a flop movie into a phenomenon

  Fifty years after its initial release, Rocky Horror has amassed global adoration, particularly on the midnight movie circuit. And no cinema in the world is more steeped in Rocky Horror’s rituals and traditions than the Clinton Street Theater in Portland, Oregon, which has shown the film every week without fail since 1978. “We’re certainly not a standard movie theatre,” co-owner Aaron Colter tells me.

• [Repeat] Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China's Gen Z women embrace centuries-old script

  The words are read in the local dialect, making it challenging for native Chinese speakers not from the region to learn it.

• [Old] Clew ☛ A Secret Web

  There is so much information in the world that “post-scarcity” is a severe understatement of the scale of our information age.

  To have any hope of meaningfully browsing the web, we need systems in place that artificially limit that scope—curation technologies. Today, the web curation process is almost entirely through search engines and social media algorithms, commercial automated systems to narrow our focus on the web to the specific things we know we want.

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Questions and answers about blogging

  I don’t remember a specific reason for why I started. Maybe I read other people’s blogs and wanted to get in to the fun. One thing’s for sure: I’ve always loved writing and there’s always been this fire inside me to get my thoughts written down and once I’ve written them down, why not share with others.

  In the wide wide world connected by the cyber highway, you never know who’s gonna read your writing and learn something new or get inspired by something you shared and that’s a wonderful thing to happen so I prefer to default to sharing openly.

• Career/Education

  • Vintage Everyday ☛ Amazing Covers of Science and Invention Magazine During the 1920s

    Science and Invention was an American popular science and technology magazine founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1920. Originally launched as Electrical Experimenter in May 1913, the magazine was renamed Science and Invention and became one of the earliest periodicals to blend scientific curiosity with futuristic imagination.

    The magazine featured articles on new inventions, do-it-yourself projects, and speculative ideas about technology’s role in the future. It was also known for its colorful, often visionary cover art that captured the excitement of progress and innovation.

  • Futurism ☛ Neighbors Uncover Something Incredibly Sketchy at Mark Zuckerberg's Compound

    Neighbors discovered the school after observing parents dropping off and picking up children at the house. They reported the sightings to city officials, who confirmed that Zuckerberg was operating a school without filing the proper legal paperwork, the NYT reports.

  • Seth Godin ☛ What sort of success?

    Too often, management simply conceals what they really seek, or lies about it. If “employees are our most important asset” then why not act that way?

    Let’s be clear about who it’s for and what it’s for. It makes decision making more productive and communication and measurement far more effective.

  • Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Is writing a hobby for me?

    Looking back at my blog posts from the past 12 years that are currently available in my current blog, I have acquired substantial skills and knowledge.

    So one could definitely say writing is a hobby for me.

• Hardware

  • DataGeeek ☛ Global Modeling with GluonTS DeepAR: Future of Semiconductors in the U.S.

    Bernstein has conducted an analysis of the U.S. supply and demand balance in analog and discrete semiconductors, particularly in light of the potential introduction of Section 232 tariffs. The analysis focuses on the implications for major companies, including Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Infineon Technologies and Renesas.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ ChatGPT is driving people mad

    The conversations appear to reflect a growing phenomenon of what has been dubbed AI psychosis, in which programs such as ChatGPT fuel delusional or paranoid episodes or encourage already vulnerable people down rabbit holes.

• Proprietary

  • GreyCoder ☛ VP.Net Is A VPN Service You Can Verify Yourself

    The client receives cryptographic fingerprints proving the server runs genuine, unmodified SGX code. Users can verify this independently by compiling the open-source enclave code and checking hashes match production servers.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Atlantic ☛ This Year Will Be the Turning Point for AI College

      But nobody thought it would happen this quickly. Three years later, the AI transformation is just about complete. By the spring of 2024, almost two-thirds of Harvard undergrads were drawing on the tool at least once a week. In a British survey of full-time undergraduates from December, 92 percent reported using AI in some fashion. Forty percent agreed that “content created by generative AI would get a good grade in my subject,” and nearly one in five admitted that they’ve tested that idea directly, by using AI to complete their assignments. Such numbers will only rise in the year ahead.

    • Shrivu Shankar ☛ AI Can't Read Your Docs

      But ask it to do something real, like refactor a core service that orchestrates three different libraries, and a frustrating glass ceiling appears. The agent gets lost, misses context, and fails to navigate the complex web of dependencies that make up a real-world system.

    • Robin Sloan ☛ AI is more than LLMs

      I feel like every­body knows this, but/and every­body (including me) is con­stantly for­get­ting it: AI is more than LLMs, and the really fun and weird stuff is tucked into that “more than”.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ AI doomsday and AI heaven: live forever in AI God

      I’m annoyed that this is important, because these guys are influential in Silicon Valley. They were funded by Peter Thiel for ten years, and a whole lot of the powerful tech guys buy into a lot of these ideas. Or a version of the ideas that feeds their egos.

    • Futurism ☛ New Research Finds That ChatGPT Secretly Has a Deep Anti-Human Bias

      The authors of the study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are calling this blatant favoritism "AI-AI bias" — and warn of an AI-dominated future where, if the models are in a position to make or recommend consequential decisions, they could inflict discrimination against humans as a social class.

    • Futurism ☛ The AI Industry Is Still Light-Years From Making a Profit, Experts Warn

      Look a bit deeper, however, and cracks start to show in that facade, betraying one massively inconvenient truth: that the AI industry has not yet figured out how to be profitable, and possibly never will.

    • Futurism ☛ Grok's "MechaHitler" Meltdown Reportedly Cost xAI a Massive Government Contract

      According to Wired, xAI was set to join a partnership that the General Services Administration, the agency that handles government technology, made with three other leading AI companies to give federal employees access to their AI tools for just $1. That partnership, which ended up including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, was announced last week.

    • Futurism ☛ Scientists Taught a Robot to Play the Drums and He Is Shockingly Horrible at It

      As one of Robot Drummer's videos shows, he seems to get the idea of Linkin Park's hit "In The End" down, but he's not exactly hitting those notes.

      Commentators on YouTube were even less kind, calling the robot's rendition an "abomination."

    • The Atlantic ☛ Don’t Believe What AI Told You I Said

      Bogus quotations on the [Internet] are not new, but AI chatbots and their hallucinations have multiplied the problem at scale, misleading many more people, and misrepresenting the beliefs not just of big names such as Albert Einstein but also of lesser known individuals. In fact, Scalzi’s experience caught my eye because a similar thing had happened to me. In June, a blog post appeared on the Times of Israel website, written by a self-described “tech bro” working in the online public-relations industry. Just about anyone can start a blog at the Times of Israel—the publication generally does not edit or commission the contents—which is probably why no one noticed that this post featured a fake quote, sourced to me and The Atlantic. “There’s nothing inherently nefarious about advocating for your people’s survival,” it read. “The problem isn’t that Israel makes its case. It’s that so many don’t want it made.”

    • Resist AI ☛ Resist AI!

      This website is a citizen's guide to opposing generative AI's harmful effects on our society.

    • Murtuzaali Surti ☛ Vibe Coding — The Fast Food of Coding

      The usage of AI, especially in the software industry, has increased a lot lately, but everything has a downside — and that, is, excess. Excess of anything is bad, and that includes the use of AI. With that in mind, in this post, I explore the downsides of vibe coding and how to balance it.

  • Social Control Media

    • GreyCoder ☛ A List Of Alternative Social Media Platforms - GreyCoder

    • Elliot C Smith ☛ Sunny Days Are Warm: Why LinkedIn Rewards Mediocrity

      I, like many people, find LinkedIn particularly annoying. I like the premise of it, don’t get me wrong, a resume you don’t need to update all that often seems cool. Unfortunately though, its turned into the worst possible version of itself. It’s a place where people post half baked nonsense all for the sake of building a personal brand that nobody really cares about.

      I log in and see constant posting that I can only describe as toxic mediocrity. A seemingly endless stream of posts that are over fluffed, over produced and ultimately say nothing.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Times ☛ EU push to protect digital rules holds up trade statement with US: Report

      The European Union is trying to prevent the United States from targeting the bloc's digital rules as both sides work through the final details of a delayed statement to formalise a trade deal reached last month, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

    • IT Wire ☛ Passkeys are winning, but security leaders must raise the bar says Yubico

      According to Yubico, passwords are on their way out. In their place is a new form of login called passkeys that promises stronger security and less frustration. All passkeys offer the rare combination of improved usability and stronger security, especially when compared to passwords alone. But unless we act now, millions could be left more vulnerable than ever.

    • Spaceraccoon ☛ Escaping the Matrix: Client-Side Deanonymization Attacks on Privacy Sandbox APIs

      I recently presented at the DEF CON 33 Mainstage and the 12th Crypto & Privacy Village on weaknesses in implementations of Google’s Privacy Sandbox that subverted privacy protections and enabled deanonymization attacks. This blogpost is an extended version of the presentation and whitepaper.

      While privacy attacks may not be as sexy as pure security vulnerabilities like popping a shell, a large proportion of the web (not to mention revenue) is built on advertising technology. It’s something companies would prefer to remain opaque about, which is why the Privacy Sandbox is so interesting.

    • Bert Hubert ☛ Chatcontrol 2025 edition in Brief

      In short, led by Denmark, many EU member states are arguing for forcing WhatsApp/Signal/etc to inspect all our photos and links, using AI. If the AI is in any “doubt” if this might be child pornography, your photo, location, phone number & other details get reported to Europol and a local police force.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ Editorial: That meeting was sickening. Putin loved it

    In the lead-up to the meeting in Alaska, U.S. President Donald Trump declared he wanted a “ceasefire today” and that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would face “severe consequences” if he didn't go for it.

    Yet after a 2.5-hour closed-door meeting, Trump and Putin emerged to share… nothing. “Progress” was made and some “understanding” reached, but the two didn’t come to an agreement on “the most significant point” — clearly, Ukraine.

    Trump didn’t get what he wanted. But Putin? He sure did.

  • Digital First Media ☛ Two Hamtramck City Council members charged with election fraud

    "Sadman forged an absentee ballot application with the intent to defraud and aided or counselled two unqualified electors to vote in the 2023 election," Monroe County Prosecutors said in a Monday press release. " It is further alleged that Council Member Mohammed Kamrul Hassan also forged an absentee ballot application with the intent to defraud in the 2023 election for City Council. Several law enforcement agencies conducted thorough investigations and submitted their findings to our office.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Hamtramck Council members charged with forgery in Michigan election fraud case - Bridge Michigan

    The charges against Muhtasin Sadman and Mohammed Hassan, first reported by The Detroit News, highlight a stubborn flaw in Michigan election law: As long as an absentee ballot envelope is signed by the correct voter, election officials have no way of knowing whether that voter actually filled out the ballot inside — and they’re required to count it.

  • Scripps Media Inc ☛ Investigation into Hamtramck City Council members wrapping up soon, MSP says

    The investigation comes as surveillance video obtained by 7 News Detroit appears to show Councilman Abu Musa in the passenger seat of a vehicle as another man deposits three stacks of ballots at a city drop box just days before the primary election.

    This latest development adds to the mounting legal troubles in Hamtramck, where two other councilmen were recently arraigned on fraud charges, including allegations of forging absentee ballot applications.

  • RFERL ☛ European Leaders To Join Zelenskyy In Talks With Trump

    As Ukraine pushes for Europe to take part in negotiations over a settlement of the conflict, European leaders will accompany Zelenskyy to Washington on August 18.

  • The Register UK ☛ Election workers fear 2026 threats without feds' support

    "Local elections officials have so much going on," Gates continued. "We ask them to be experts in election law, experts in procurement, and HR. So to expect them to be experts as well in both cyber and physical security? It's just too much. Knowing the CISA as well as the FBI had our back gave us a great feeling of support and confidence – we felt like the federal government was our partner. And I'm very concerned that that's not what we're going to be looking at in 2026."

    Gates has dire advice for all of these election workers and volunteers. "I hate to say this, but it is incumbent upon local election officials to assume we don't have that partnership and act accordingly. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst."

  • Click On Detroit ☛ 2 Hamtramck City Council members charged with election fraud

    The probe began after the city clerk noticed unusual patterns with absentee ballots — including identical handwriting on multiple envelopes and large bundles of ballots submitted at once.

  • YLE ☛ "Putin cannot be trusted," Finland and Nordic-Baltic Eight nations warn

    According to his office, the president and key cabinet ministers "discussed the efforts to put an end to Russia’s illegal war of aggression, the recent discussions between Ukraine, European countries and the United States and support for Ukraine ahead of the meeting between the Presidents of Russia and the United States in Alaska".

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Gannett ☛ Documents detailing Trump-Putin Alaska summit left at hotel printer

    The documents appear to have been produced by federal government staff and were left behind. Some of the information, including plans for a lunch and a news conference, was made public before the meeting took place.

• Environment

  • France24 ☛ How can cities adapt to climate change?

    Well the world has no shortage of challenges to confront when it comes to the effects of climate change - which of course is bringing about increasingly frequent episodes of extreme weather. Whether its from heatwaves and wildfires or torrential rainfalls and landslides, urban environments are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, putting cities at the heart of urgent adaptation efforts. For more on this, FRANCE 24 spoke to Elena Petsani, expert on resilience, sustainability and urban planning.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Waste giant battles plague of disposable vape fires

      Maxine Mayhew, Biffa’s chief operating officer, said it was being forced to spend millions of pounds fighting fires caused by people throwing away disposable vapes with batteries in them. Most contain lithium-ion batteries, which can explode if they are exposed to heat, damaged or crushed during processing.

    • Futurism ☛ The US May Have Already Lost the AI Race to China Due to a Key Weakness

      In the meantime, China may have gotten a massive lead — by actively investing in its power grid, while the United States' is quickly running out of capacity to power immensely power-hungry AI models.

    • Bryan Lunduke ☛ UK: WiFi Causes Climate Change, & Email Causes Drought

      The “Think Again” propaganda campaign also wants you to know that “Your screen time is damaging the climate” and “There are no monsters under the bed… they’re on the bedside table, charging.”

• Finance

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Edward Jones confirms plans to carry out layoffs in its ‘home office’ – here's why

    Edward Jones, the financial services firm headquartered in St. Louis County, has planned to carry out layoffs as part of a companywide restructuring effort. The company says on its website that it has “consistently” been ranked “among the best companies to work for by FORTUNE magazine, and our employees tend to stay with us for years.”

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • C.J. Adams-Collier: The Very Model of a Patriot Online

    It appears that the fragile masculinity tech evangelists have identified Debian as a community with boundaries which exclude them from abusing its members and they’re so angry about it! In response to posts such as this, and inspired by Dr. Conway’s piece, I’ve composed a poem which, hopefully, correctly addresses the feelings of that crowd.

  • India Times ☛ OpenAI staff looking to sell $6 billion in stock to SoftBank, others: Source

    Current and former employees of OpenAI are looking to sell nearly $6 billion worth of the ChatGPT maker's shares to investors, including SoftBank Group and Thrive Capital, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

  • New York Times ☛ Elon Musk’s SpaceX Most Likely Doesn’t Pay Taxes

    Elon Musk’s rocket company relies on federal contracts, but years of losses have most likely let it avoid paying federal income taxes, according to internal company documents.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Russia Is Pumping Out Fake News, Impersonating Legitimate U.S. Outlets

      The effort, known as Storm-1679, creates websites that mimic real news outlets and uses those sites to push fake news stories. They have published disinformation designed to look like stories from ABC News, the BBC, and Politico, among others. The group has also used artificial intelligence to proliferate fake videos, often hooked to major news events. To some degree, their efforts are working. People — including right-wing influencers — have fallen for them.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Semafor Inc ☛ YouTube’s Channel 5 vs. The New York Times

    Callaghan told me in an interview he finds the situation “just unbelievably preposterous” and that he’d never cave to the sort of Trump legal threats that have drawn a series of humiliating settlements from legacy media companies. He said he wasn’t sure if new media is braver or stupider in that regard: “It could be because you guys know more about [getting sued] than we do,” he said.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ The Corporations and Universities Caving to Donald Trump

    Leaders in education, media, technology, retail, sports, and local government have bowed to President Donald Trump and his authoritarian ambitions instead of defending their democratic rights — to freedom of speech, to academic independence, to free enterprise unburdened by corrupt demands for payoffs.

    The institutions in question are not feeble. They include giant corporations worth trillions as well as many of the nation’s most prestigious academic institutions. They comprise many of the richest and most sophisticated non-government actors in the world. They have access to the best lawyers — many of whom trained in their storied halls. These are the proverbial adults in the room. They had the power to create friction for fascism. They have instead created a glide-path.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Nick Heer ☛ Interview With MacSurfer’s New Owner, Ken Turner

    Turner sounds like a great steward to carry on the MacSurfer legacy. Even in an era of well-known aggregators like Techmeme and massive forums like Hacker News and Reddit, I think there is still a role for a smaller and more focused media tracking site.

  • Click On Detroit ☛ Video appears to show late-night ballot drop-off by Hamtramck council member under investigation

    Local 4 obtained more than 800 hours of city surveillance video through a Freedom of Information request.

    In two clips, videos showed what appears to be council member Abu Musa dropping off bundles of absentee ballots at Hamtramck City Hall’s drop box during the recent primary election period.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFERL ☛ Kabul's Quiet Resistance: Young Afghans Navigate Life Under The Taliban

    "Nowadays, the majority of the people of Afghanistan, including the middle class, survive on bread and tea," said Naseem Karimi, a 29-year-old former teacher who lives in the Karte Se neighborhood.

    Karimi worked at a private school in downtown Kabul and dreamt about writing a novel and traveling abroad. He described his life before the Taliban as "comfortable," with an "adequate salary" and "plenty of free time" to spend on his hobbies: reading and attending poetry nights.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ AmeriCorps is under siege. What happens in the communities it serves?

    Like so many longstanding federal programs and institutions severely reduced or dismantled as part of President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department [sic] of Government Efficiency project, AmeriCorps — and its nonprofit partners — are now assessing the damage and seeking a way forward.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Register UK ☛ Google admits anticompetitive conduct in Australia

  Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission on Monday announced a lawsuit against the web giant after it admitted requiring Telstra and Optus, Australia’s two biggest telcos, to only pre-install Google Search on Android phones they sold to consumers between December 2019 and March 2021.

  In return for granting exclusivity, the carriers received a share of the revenue Google generated from ads.

• Patents

  • CBC ☛ Who controls the food supply? Proposed changes to seed reuse reopens debate

    In a notice dated Aug. 9, the government announced proposed changes to Canada's Plant Breeders' Rights Regulations — a form of intellectual [sic] property [sic] protection for plants, similar to a patent. The regulations give plant breeders a monopoly over the distribution of their product for a set period, as a way to to encourage investment and innovations such as varieties with higher yields or more resistant to drought or pests.

  • Software Patents

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ 'Open hardware desktop 3D printing is dead' — rise of China's government subsidies, country's permissive patent system cited by Prusa CEO

      But that Open Source movement couldn’t begin until after patents on the core technology, filed by inventor Scott Crump, started to expire in 2009. Crump founded Stratasys in the 1980s, and its patents limited 3D printing to proprietary industrial machines. The aversion to patents by fans of Open Source is understandable when you realize that 3D printing was kept out of reach for decades by a few corporations.

      [...]

      Prusa Research also noticed a massive uptick in Chinese patents on 3D printer technologies. Patents are regional, not global, and Open Source is an honor system many choose to ignore. It only costs $125 US to file a patent in China, but roughly $12,000 to $75,000 to strike one down, according to Prusa’s figures.

      Chinese companies are raiding the Open Source cookie jar, so to speak, taking existing ideas and claiming them as their own. Because patents are contained within a country’s borders, this doesn’t mean a company from China can prevent Prusa Research from making printers, but it does mean they can’t sell them in China. It’s going to get ugly when a company uses a Chinese patent as prior art to convince the US Patent Office to issue a patent here, and spend thousands of dollars to correct this kind of oversight.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • New York Times ☛ He Sold His Likeness. Now His Avatar Is Shilling Supplements on TikTok.

      As it turns out, he didn’t actually perform in any of the videos.

      Instead, the ads were made using his “digital avatar,” fueled by artificial intelligence, after he licensed his likeness to TikTok last year. Now, a version of Mr. Jacqmein is out on the internet, peddling whatever an advertiser might want him to sell as long as it complies with TikTok’s marketing guidelines.

      It’s what Mr. Jacqmein signed up for, but now that he has seen his avatar out in the wild, he has regrets.

• Copyrights

  • Rolling Stone ☛ John Fogerty on His New Album, Creedence Classics and Dark Times

    You got the publishing rights back to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s songs two years ago. It’s been a long journey.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Sky's Piracy=Malware Campaign Aims For 'Holy Grail' of Behavioral Change

    Since September 2023, a national campaign run by Sky and entertainment partners has attempted to convince illegal stream consumers to dump them in favor of platforms operating on the right side of the law. To encourage that important step, the BeStreamWise campaign focuses on the dangers of piracy; malware, credit card fraud, the risk of 'letting criminals in'. Through use of a particular model, the campaign hopes to achieve "the Holy Grail of behavioral change."