Leftovers

• Johnny Decimal ☛ 22.00.0133 Extend-the-end: a deep-dive

  Extend-the-end (EtE) is a new pattern that is still finding its feet in the real world. Here's a deep-dive and discussion of the use cases that I see on the forum & Discord.

• Science

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ The Best-Preserved Viking Ship in the World Just Survived Its Treacherous Final Journey

    On September 10, researchers secured the 71-foot-long vessel inside a large, vibration-resistant crate, which was attached to a track mounted on the ceiling. Between 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., it inched along to its newly constructed home, about 115 yards from its previous location.

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ CubeSats are fascinating learning tools for space

    • What is a CubeSat
    • Who builds and launches CubeSats
    • How you can build your own CubeSat

• Career/Education

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Jack Baty

    This is the 107th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Jack Baty and his blog, baty.net

  • Court House News ☛ First Circuit refuses to lift block on Trump order targeting libraries, museums

    A coalition of over 20 Democratic attorneys general sued Trump in April to block the March executive order titled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” claiming that the president was far overreaching his authority.

    The three federal agencies provide grants and other funding to public libraries, museums, workers and minority-owned businesses across the country. Each was created by Congress with statutory duties and hundreds of millions of dollars of congressional funding, the states said.

  • Mandy Brown ☛ To live

    Wisdom arises from foolishness, from errors and wrongs. From regret. Do not let anyone take your regret from you! Do not dishonor it by flinching when it shows its face. It is both what made you who you are, and a tool for weaving a different world.

• Hardware

  • Reuters ☛ Exclusive: US warns hidden radios may be embedded in solar-powered highway infrastructure

    U.S. officials say solar-powered highway infrastructure including chargers, roadside weather stations, and traffic cameras should be scanned for the presence of rogue devices – such as hidden radios – secreted inside batteries and inverters. The advisory, disseminated late last month by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration, comes amid escalating government action over the presence of Chinese technology in America's transportation infrastructure.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Undocumented Radios Found in Solar-Powered Devices

    Equipment used for transportation in the US is the latest critical infrastructure technology to have its security scrutinized. A year ago, the House of Representatives' Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) highlighted the overreliance of US ports on equipment made in China — equipment that often could be communicated with remotely. In November, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report found that nearly 100 large community water systems (CWSs) had serious security weaknesses.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Small Cypress ☛ it's the nihilism that scares me

    The things that helped me then are the same things that will help me now in my compulsive news consumption now: Spend time IRL with people. Talk to random people. Co-regulate in person with old friends you feel safe with. Touch literal grass and wait in lines with people without your phone.

  • Brad Taunt ☛ What Happens After I'm Gone? The Future of the Online Me

    Well, that’s a morbid headline…

    Let me start off by saying that I am doing well and in good health! This post is focused more on the concept of “future-proofing” my open source projects and stupid little mini-sites once I am no longer around to keep the wheels turning, so to speak. It’s something that most of us probably don’t think about. That makes sense, since it isn’t the most joyful thing to focus on. But it does impact our individual “homes” on the internet, no matter how small.

    So, I decided to write-up my current online fail-safes, along with my plans for keeping most things running smoothly after I’m gone.

  • The Conversation ☛ What owning a cat does to your brain (and theirs)

    Oxytocin also has calming effects in humans and animals, as it suppresses the stress hormone cortisol and activates the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest system) to help the body relax.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Can You Really ‘Rot’ Your Brain by Scrolling Too Much on Your Smartphone?

    Over the past few years, the idea implied by ”brain rot,” that our smartphones and the applications on them—such as the [Internet] and social media—may negatively impact our brains, has increasingly appeared throughout the media. In June 2024, the Guardian reported on a study suggesting that young people with [Internet] addiction experience brain changes that could make them more vulnerable to other addictive behaviors. And in March 2025, CBS News reported on a 2021 study that used MRI images to identify high brain activity in smartphone-addicted brains that made them easily distracted, which the researchers informally referred to as “brain rot.”

  • Futurism ☛ RFK Junior Says Mass Shootings Are Being Caused by Video Games

    During a press briefing to discuss his "Make America Healthy Again" commission's latest report on Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services secretary speculated about what caused a "sudden onset" of gun violence that kicked off in the 1990s. That's when he started throwing out a scattershot farrago of non-firearm related culprits.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Dutch students denied access to jailbroken laundry machines

    The Spinozacampus laundry room, which caters to around 1,250 University of Amsterdam students, has remained closed since July after an unknown attacker tampered with all five machines' digital payment system, allowing residents to wash their clothes for free.

  • The Register UK ☛ HybridPetya ransomware dodges UEFI Secure Boot

    A new ransomware strain dubbed HybridPetya was able to exploit a patched vulnerability to bypass Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Secure Boot on unrevoked Windows systems, making it the fourth publicly known bootkit capable of punching through the feature and hijacking a PC before the operating system loads.

  • IST ☛ Improving Private Sector Cyber Victim Notification and Support

    However, expanding the purpose and reach of the system to address any account compromise within the broader technology ecosystem may increase stakeholder willingness to invest in overcoming the technological, governance, and viability challenges.

    This report explores the challenges associated with developing the native-notification concept and lays out a roadmap for overcoming them. It also examines other opportunities for more narrow changes that could both increase the likelihood that victims will both receive and trust notifications and be able to access support resources.

    The report concludes with three main recommendations for cloud service providers (CSPs) and other stakeholders: [...]

  • Bitdefender ☛ British rail passengers urged to stay on guard after hack signals failure

    Passengers of the UK's state-owned London North Eastern Railway (LNER) have been warned to be vigilant after cybercriminals accessed traveller's contact details and some information about past journeys.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ I lasted less than a day on iOS 26

    I went into today’s testing of the latest iOS 26 Appleseed beta and I lasted less than a day. I impulsively decided to install it 30 minutes before I had to leave home for an appointment, current Lee doesn’t like future Lee!

  • The Register UK ☛ Google lands £400M MoD contract for secure UK cloud services

    The arrangement promises Google AI, data analytics, and cybersecurity, all in sovereign datacenters built in the UK. Defense intelligence and national security specialists will also use the systems to share secure information between UK partners, the MoD statement said. The aim is to strengthen secure communication links between the UK and US, adding to the security partnership the two nations share.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ Do not update to iOS 26 if you use larger text on your iPhone

    Now, above is the iOS 26 version. Buttons are squashed together and it’s easy to tap the wrong one. The interface just looks worse.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ It Turns Out That Google's AI Is Being Trained by an Army of Poorly Treated Human Grunts

      And it's not just the current crop of large language models — AI raters across the globe are being tasked to label data for AI-based, self-driving car software, and other related applications.

      "AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor," Distributed AI Research Institute's Adio Dinika told the Guardian. "These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable."

    • The Nation ☛ Elon Musk’s AI Grift

      On June 30, 2025, Morgan Stanley announced that it had helped raise $10 billion in debt and equity for xAI. Two weeks later, The Wall Street Journal reported that SpaceX, Musk’s privately held rocket company, had agreed to invest $2 billion in xAI, and Musk said that Tesla shareholders would be able to vote to do the same. The day before that, reports had surfaced that xAI was set for yet another fundraising round that would value the company as high as $200 billion, with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund set to lead the round, building on its $800 million xAI stake. Musk was now planning to double the new company’s assessed value in less than four months. The Muskonomy was booming.

    • The Conversation ☛ Why OpenAI’s solution to AI hallucinations would kill ChatGPT tomorrow

      It also turns out that the less a model sees a fact during training, the more likely it is to hallucinate when asked about it. With birthdays of notable figures, for instance, it was found that if 20% of such people’s birthdays only appear once in training data, then base models should get at least 20% of birthday queries wrong.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ How do AI models generate videos?

      The downside is that creators are competing with AI slop, and social media feeds are filling up with faked news footage. Video generation also uses up a huge amount of energy, many times more than text or image generation.

      With AI-generated videos everywhere, let's take a moment to talk about the tech that makes them work.

    • Crooked Timber ☛ Is Deep Research deep? Is it research?

      A typical interaction starts with me asking a question like “Did theorists of the demographic transition expect an eventual equilibrium with stable population”. Deep Research produces a fairly lengthy answer (mostly “Yes” in this case) and based on past interactions, produces references in a format suitable for my bibliographic software (Bookends for Mac, my longstanding favourite, uses .ris). To guard against hallucinations, I get DOI and ISBN codes and locate the references immediately. Then I check the abstracts (for journal articles) or reviews (for books) to confirm that the summary is reasonably accurate.

      A few thoughts about this.

    • India Times ☛ As AI tools reshape education, schools struggle with how to draw the line on cheating

      "The cheating is off the charts. It's the worst I've seen in my entire career," says Casey Cuny, who has taught English for 23 years. Educators are no longer wondering if students will outsource schoolwork to AI chatbots. "Anything you send home, you have to assume is being AI'ed."

    • Futurism ☛ Anti-AGI Protester Now on Day Nine of Hunger Strike in Front of Anthropic Headquarters

      "When you get into the systems that these companies are trying to build, that exceed human capabilities in every important respect, this is an entirely new class of danger," Reichstadter told Futurism from the sidewalk in front of Anthropic's office. " Whatever speculative benefits these systems could bring, the fact is that none of these companies have any idea, any practical roadmap for how to control that power once they build it."

      "None of these companies have a right to do what they're doing, which is consciously endangering my life, my family's life, all of our lives," the activist continued. "The correct thing for them to do is stop the global race toward really dangerous AI that we're all involved in."

    • The Register UK ☛ New RSL spec wants AI crawlers to show a license or pay

      The Really Simple Licensing (RSL) standard is intended to provide websites with a programmatic way to present web crawlers with licensing terms, and to gate site access based on license compliance, which may require payment.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Top China silicon figure calls on country to stop using Nvidia GPUs for AI — says current AI development model could become 'lethal' if not addressed

      Wei criticized the current AI development model across Asia, which closely mirrors the American path of using compute GPUs from Nvidia or AMD for training large language models such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek. He argued that this imitation limits regional autonomy and could become 'lethal' if not addressed. According to Wei, Asia's strategy must diverge from the U.S. template, particularly in foundational areas like algorithm design and computing infrastructure.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Apple retrains Siri AI for the Trump anti-’woke’ era

      Chatbots give answers that are almost right — then they hallucinate some nonsense, Siri does something stupid, and the owner gets annoyed. But chatbot answers tend to be reality-but-wrong, not completely detached. Wikipedia gets a high weight in the training data, for instance. The bots don’t start at wild-arsed conspiracy theories.

  • Social Control Media

    • SBS ☛ How the Charlie Kirk shooting suggests a 'vicious spiral' of political violence in the US

      Traditional ideological divides — once centred on policy disagreements — have morphed into a deeper, more personal animosity. That anger is amplified by a mix of social media, conspiracy theories and personal grievances.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Something Is Very Wrong Online

      This is the algorithmic [Internet] at work. It abhors an information vacuum and, in the absence of facts or credible information, gaps are quickly filled with rage bait, conspiracy theorizing, doomerism, and vitriol.

    • Vox ☛ Charlie Kirk’s Gen Z revolution worked

      To understand that lasting influence — why he resonated with Gen Z — it might be helpful to break down the elements of his appeal: [...]

    • The Verge ☛ Discord is distancing itself from the Charlie Kirk shooting suspect

      During a press briefing on Friday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said investigators spoke with Robinson’s roommate, and that the roommate “stated that his roommate, referring to Robinson, made a joke on Discord.” Investigators then asked to see the Discord messages and proceeded “to take photos of the screen as each message was shown,” Cox said. Cox added that the photos “consisted of various messages, including content of messages between the phone contact named Tyler with an emoji icon.” Some of the messages captured by authorities contained references to “having left the rifle wrapped in a towel” and “engraving bullets,” according to Cox.

    • CS Monitor ☛ ‘I couldn’t look away.’ Videos of killings prompt calls for social media guardrails.

      It’s a question that Americans across the country – and across political differences – are asking today after a week of gruesomely violent acts filled social media feeds. Images of murder appeared uninvited in schools and bedrooms, breakfast tables and playgrounds – Mr. Kirk’s shooting, caught on camera as he spoke to students at Utah Valley University, and the newly released video of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska being stabbed to death in August as she sat scrolling on her phone on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Four Theories of Meta

      As you can probably see, the theories get more cynical and, frankly, a touch conspiratorial. I am a firm believer in a modified version of Johnson’s first theory, which is that Meta is uncool and cringeworthy. That is not wrong, but I think it goes much farther. It is a deeply unfocused and uninteresting company. It jumps from one idea to another but, because it is still so dependent on ad revenue, everything must feed that machine. And personalized advertising is a fundamentally dull and kind of dirty thing no matter how much Meta wants to gussy it up in its marketing materials. That is not enough for Mark Zuckerberg, who is not hosting hour-plus livestreams before cheering crowds to show off ads. That would be a boring time for everyone. He wants the glory of hardware and platforms, but neither one is a meaningful part of what Meta actually does.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • [Old] CS Monitor ☛ Hack of therapy center in Finland shakes culture of privacy

      “This was the biggest crime in Finnish history, as well as one of the most horrific,” says Ms. Kortesuo, who is now writing a book about the breach and its societal repercussions.

      The Vastaamo hack and subsequent blackmail has deeply shaken Finnish society. While the crime would have been intrusive anywhere, it has struck at some of Finland’s cornerstone values, including privacy and faith in online connectivity. But it may at least be opening the door to a more public discussion of the importance of mental health and health care.

    • The Record ☛ Hacker convicted of extorting 20,000 psychotherapy victims walks free during appeal

      Kivimäki, who denied all the charges, has been in custody since 2023, when he was arrested in France and extradited to Finland. The release does not overturn his previous conviction and sentence for six years and three months, but under Finnish law he is presumed innocent while appealing the conviction.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Papers Please ☛ “America brought ‘predictive policing’ to China”

      [Diagrams obtained by AP News show how the functionality of IBM suspicion-generating software for analyizing relationships between cellphone users (left) was deliberately replicated by developers of Chinese pre-crime software (right)]We’ve often pointed to China as exemplifying modes of government surveillance and control of movement that we don’t want replicated in the USA.

      But a new report by independent journalist Yael Grauer and a team from the Associated Press, based on documents provided by courageous whistleblowers in China and the US, shows that US technology companies are sometimes leaders, not just followers, in the globalization of Big Brother tools and techniques.

      As a summary of key takeaways from the AP investigation puts it, “America brought ‘predictive policing’ to China”:

    • [Repeat] OpenRightsGroup ☛ Briefing: VPNs and the Online Safety Act

      Most of the people downloading VPNs are adults that do not trust the age assurance industry. Adults are now being asked to hand over personal data to companies they are unfamiliar with. This goes against many years of cybersecurity advice around being careful when handing over sensitive personal data online.

    • MacRumors ☛ AirPods Live Translation Blocked for EU Users With EU Apple Accounts

      The new Live Translation functionality requires AirPods updated with the latest firmware to pair with an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone running iOS 26 or later, so iPhone 15 Pro and newer models are supported. Apple has been beta testing firmware in concert with iOS 26 beta updates, and we expect the firmware to drop the same day that iOS 26 is officially released on September 15.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Cursor looks into selling your data for AI training

      Now, you might object: Anysphere wouldn’t be abusing just their customers’ data. Their customers’ customers’ data may have non-disclosure agreements with teeth. Then there’s personal data covered by the GDPR and so on.

      But all that sounds like a problem for future you. It makes money this morning. This afternoon can take care of itself.

    • EFF ☛ San Francisco Gets An Invasive Billionaire-Bought Surveillance HQ

      The San Francisco Police Commission, the Board of Supervisors, and Mayor Daniel Lurie have signed off on Larsen’s $9.4 million gift of a new Real-Time Investigations Center. The plan involves moving the city’s existing police tech hub from the public Hall of Justice not to the city’s brand-new police headquarters but instead to a sublet in the Financial District building of Ripple Labs, Larsen’s crypto-transfer company. Although the city reportedly won’t be paying for the space, the lease reportedly cost Ripple $2.3 million and will last until December 2026.

    • The Register UK ☛ Privacy activists warn of UK digital ID surveillance threat

      The civil liberties group says the government's argument that digital ID will meaningfully reduce illegal immigration or employment fraud is poorly substantiated and warns that touting digital ID as a political fix for migration problems is misleading. It argues that ministers have also been far too vague about the plan's scope, which it says could easily extend beyond right-to-work and right-to-rent checks to cover "online banking, booking a train ticket, shopping on Amazon, or scheduling a GP appointment."

      The result would be a "checkpoint society" where identity checks become an unavoidable part of daily life, Big Brother Watch says.

    • Inside Towers ☛ Appeals Court Upholds Verizon’s Nearly $47 Million Fine

      At issue is an FCC order that required Verizon to pay $46.9 million after prison telecom contractor Securus Technologies Inc. let a law enforcement officer track wireless customers without authorization. It was part of Verizon’s location-based services program that included more than 60 providers. The company argued it was entitled to a jury trial before the agency issued its order.

• Defence/Aggression

  • JURIST ☛ Rights group warns of increasing violence from extremist group in Niger

    The Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated on Wednesday that the armed group Islamic State in the Sahel Province (IS Sahel) has demonstrated a concerning increase in attacks against civilians, reporting that since March, the group has illegally executed 127 people in western Niger.

  • The Age AU ☛ ‘They burned it’: Nepal’s capital is choked with smoke and gripped by fear

    Days of violent protests have left the Himalayan former kingdom without a functioning government and with many of its institutions in ruins.

  • Techdirt ☛ After 30+ Deaths In Protests Triggered by Nepal’s Social Media Ban, 145,000 People Debate The Country’s Future In Discord Chatroom

    The use of popular digital platforms to criticize the government in this way was probably a key reason for the authorities’ botched clampdown on social media, which in turn led to the large-scale protests and ensuing chaos. And now another popular digital platform is being used in an attempt to find a way to move forward: [...]

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Gaslighting Spectacular: Trump's War on Reality

    But here's what makes the gaslighting particularly spectacular: Kirk himself spent years engaging in exactly the kind of rhetoric that Trump now claims is exclusively a left-wing problem. Kirk mocked the attack on Paul Pelosi, promoted conspiracy theories about the Minnesota legislative assassinations being false flag operations, and built his entire brand around the kind of eliminationist rhetoric that treats political opponents as existential enemies requiring destruction rather than fellow citizens requiring persuasion.

    The man who made light of an elderly man being attacked with a hammer in his own home is now being martyred as a victim of the very political toxicity he helped create and amplify. The irony would be delicious if it weren't soaked in blood.

  • BIA Net ☛ Turkish court orders access ban on Grok over 'national security' concerns

    The ruling was issued under Article 8/A of Law No. 5651, which allows for content restrictions to protect national security and public order, İFÖD reported. This is a common justification in Turkey for access bans. The name of the court has not yet been disclosed.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ This country is trying to ban social media at school. Here's how that's going | World News

    Data signal jammed, phones that are no longer ‘smart’, and no more Instagram, TikTok or anything like it — the rule is strict but the children say they are feeling freer after a school in the South American nation of Chile implemented this on campus for some students.

    It's part of an experiment which could be extended to the whole country.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ No TikTok, No Instagram: Chile School Phone Ban Revives Real-World Bonds

    In order to stimulate bonding among youngsters, the school also put in place a “comprehensive plan that also includes more games in the courtyard, board games in the library, soccer, tennis, basketball, and even championships,” he said.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Nepal crisis unfolds on gaming site Discord

    More than 100,000 citizens have now gathered to discuss the crisis in a Discord channel, which has become so influential that it is being livestreamed on news sites: Army chiefs have met with the channel’s organizers and asked them to name potential interim national leaders.

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Warfare economics have flipped, new data from Dedrone shows

    The mathematics of modern warfare economics have been turned completely upside down, and it’s largely due to drones that cost less than most people’s monthly rent.

    A new report from Dedrone by Axon reveals the stark economic reality facing military forces worldwide: a $500 DIY drone can now destroy an $82.5 million F-35 fighter jet. This isn’t theoretical — it’s happening on battlefields right now. And, it’s fundamentally reshaping how nations think about defense spending and military strategy.

  • FAIR ☛ Alex Main on Venezuelan Boat Assault

  • FAIR ☛ When Trump Took Over DC, NYT First Ignored, Then Belittled Protests

    Despite the late-summer sun bearing down, thousands of protesters marched towards the White House last Saturday carrying anti-Trump and Free DC signs. Many hailed from unions, activist organizations and religious groups. Two friends drove all the way from Illinois; “absolutely” it was worth it, they told the Washington Post (9/6/25).

  • FAIR ☛ Kirk Coverage Downplayed MAGA’s Culture of Violence

    Flags at half mast. A moment of silence at Yankee Stadium. The vice president skipped a 9/11 memorial event to be with Kirk’s family (USA Today, 9/11/25), and Kirk’s body was transported back to his home state on the vice president’s aircraft (CBS, 9/11/25). He was no mere pundit or activist, but a valued capo in the Trump political machine.

• Environment

  • Common Dreams ☛ EPA Seeks to Roll Back PFAS Drinking Water Rules, Keeping Millions Exposed to Toxic Forever Chemicals in Tap Water

    In its motion filed in federal court yesterday, the EPA asked the court to axe its determinations to regulate and enforceable standards for four PFAS chemicals: GenX, PFHxS, PFNA, and PFBS. Separately, the EPA previously announced that it will seek to extend the compliance deadline for PFOA and PFOS standards by two years from 2029 to 2031. More than 73 million people are served by water systems that have detected PFAS levels above the limits the EPA now seeks to rescind or delay.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ What von der Leyen’s call to ‘fight’ means for European energy and climate goals

    Will this speech—aimed to set the political priorities for the year ahead—inspire European nations to align country policies and investments towards a unified energy front? Will they work toward completing energy market and infrastructure integration across borders, forging investment-friendly markets and political certainty? Ordo the competing applause and cackles signal deepening fragmentation in vision and priorities across Europe?

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Register UK ☛ US official: Winning AI more important than saving climate

      Take a look at authoritative assessments of the state of anthropogenic climate change, and you'll find a common refrain: We're well past the one degree (Celsius) of warming threshold, and we're well on course to the 1.5°C limit beyond which the Earth will be plunged into climate chaos.

    • Doc Searls ☛ Car Goes

      When SUVs first came along, I craved one. I loved backroads, camping, and what one could do with four-wheel or all-wheel drive. But eventually I realized that the percentage of time I’d spend doing chancy things in places AAA wouldn’t go was sub-minimal, and that I would still need cargo space. So at various times I opted for boxy little cars: [...]

    • Simon Willison ☛ London Transport Museum Depot Open Days

      And if you can go on Saturday 20th or Sunday 21st you can ride the small-scale railway there!

    • Henrique Dias ☛ Autonomous Trains

      A few days ago, I was able to tick one more item from my impossible list: traveling on the front cabin of a subway train. When I wrote that, I meant that I wanted to see the view from the conductor’s point of view on a tunnel. Since I was in Copenhagen and they have a fully autonomous metro, I did not need to go far to complete that wish.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Save This Species: Temminck’s Pangolin

    • CBC ☛ Humpback whale tangled in fishing gear on B.C.'s coast freed after 3-day rescue

      While Tutu did have some lacerations from the ropes, Cottrell said they were fairly superficial, and the whale is expected to go on to live a healthy life.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ Larry Ellison is back on top, 48 years after he cofounded Oracle

    Then on Thursday, news broke that Paramount, the media conglomerate Ellison's family now controls, is preparing a bid to buy out the storied Warner Bros Discovery, threatening overnight to dominate Hollywood and culture.

  • Security Week ☛ F5 to Acquire CalypsoAI for $180 Million

    CalypsoAI has developed a platform designed to use agentic red teaming, real-time defenses, and automated security enforcement to secure AI at inference (ie, while the AI is in a live, operational state).

  • John Gruber ☛ Daring Fireball: Trump Hosts Dinner Humiliating Tech CEOs

    I’m not going to argue that any of these CEOs, Cook included, are playing this situation right. But it really shows the profound power imbalance. The president of the United States is so astonishingly powerful. And Trump is wielding that power in unprecedented ways. This entire fiasco is embarrassing, but the criticism really ought to be directed at Trump.

  • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Execs Are Extremely Upset

    As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a coalition of some of the most powerful tech companies, NGOs, non-profits, and labor groups in OpenAI's operating states of California and Delaware are lobbying attorneys general to crack down on the tech giant's restructuring efforts. OpenAI’s ambitions, they say, would be in violation of corporate law — specifically a statute outlining a non-profit’s responsibility to "protect assets held in charitable trust," such as ChatGPT.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ OpenAI signs contract to buy $300 billion worth of Oracle computing power over the next five years — company needs 4.5 gigawatts of power, enough to power four million homes

    In one of the largest cloud contracts ever signed, OpenAI has inked a deal with Oracle to purchase $300 billion worth of computing power over the next five years, according to WSJ. That's close to 100 times OpenAI's 2024 total revenue, but follows earlier gigantic partnership commitments between the two companies, including Oracle signing on to the $500 billion Stargate data center plan, and plans for another joint data center project announced in July.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • India Times ☛ Charlie Kirk killing: Rumors, misinformation rampant on social media

      Online posts also shared fake headlines about the killing, or real headlines with fake timestamps to claim the media had advance knowledge of the plan. And social media users trying to get clarity from AI chatbots found they were misled.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's Grok AI Says Charlie Kirk Survived the Shooting

      At press time, though, Grok's posts claiming Kirk survived the shooting are still live on X.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • India Times ☛ Wikipedia will not appeal dismissal of its UK Online Safety Act challenge

    The operator of Wikipedia said on Friday it would not appeal its defeat last month in a legal challenge to Britain's Online Safety Act, which sets tough new requirements for platforms and has been criticised for potentially curtailing free speech.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Marine recruiter fired after Charlie Kirk social media post

    Marine Corps officials are investigating whether a recruiter made an insulting social media post about conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was killed on Wednesday while giving a speech in Utah.

  • 404 Media ☛ Comcast Executives Warn Workers To Not Say The Wrong Thing About Charlie Kirk

    An email sent to NBCUniversal employees, including journalists at NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo and more, eulogizes Charlie Kirk as an "advocate for open debate" and reminds staff that even milquetoast statements about Kirk's death can result in their firing.

  • The Verge ☛ Tucker Carlson asks Scam Altman if an OpenAI employee was murdered ‘on your orders’

    In their back-and-forth about a half-hour into the chat, Carlson bluntly explains his reasons for believing the theory, and that “[Balji’s] mother claims he was murdered on your orders.” Altman brings up the police reports and their findings after an investigation, later remarking, “I feel strange and sad debating this, and having to defend myself seems totally crazy, and you are a little bit accusing me,” even as Carlson denies doing so.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Charlie Kirk Critics Fired for Attacking Slain 'Free Speech' Advocate

    The irony of this termination and a slew of similar firings over the past 24 hours is that Kirk and Turning Point USA, the conservative youth group he co-founded, branded themselves as the ultimate defenders of free speech. In a June debate at the Oxford Union, during a tour of the U.K. in which he condemned the country for its “totalitarian” censorship of its citizens, he argued, “You should be allowed to say outrageous things.” Last year, Kirk posted on X: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Mint Press News ☛ MintPress News Faces Shutdown Amid Unprecedented Attacks on Truth

    MintPress is one of the last remaining investigative media outlets in the United States willing to expose the individuals, think tanks, lobby groups, and foreign governments driving wars, expanding the police state, exploiting resources, and waging economic warfare at home and abroad.

  • [Old] "Eat Your Vitamins and Say Your Prayers: Bollea v. Gawker, Rev" by Nicole K. Chipi

    This Note explores the strategy employed by actors like Thiel, who have weaponized third-party litigation funding as a means of attacking and silencing an already weakened free press. While these “revenge litigation funding” schemes are fueled by the same kind of nefarious ends that underlie the rationale of champerty and maintenance—the legal doctrines that historically restricted third-party litigation funding—their protections do not sufficiently address the issue. This Note suggests additional avenues by which this threat might be ameliorated, including the adoption of stronger anti-SLAPP statutes, increased regulation of third-party litigation funding, and amendments to the discovery rules that would more readily unveil the presence of a vengeful funder.

  • [Old] Hulk Hogan v. Gawker: Invasion of Privacy & Free Speech in a Digital World - First Amendment Watch

    Hulk Hogan, a former wrestler whose real name is Terry Bolleau, sued Gawker Media for invasion of privacy after it published a sex tape of him and friend’s wife. Hogan’s suit was financially backed by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who’d been been outed as being gay by Gawker. A jury awarded a $140 million judgement to Hogan. Gawker initially vowed to appeal the award, but ultimately settled with Hogan for $31 million. However, the settlement was still too costly for the online media company, and Gawker filed for bankruptcy in June 2016. It was sold to Univision two months later for $135 million.

  • [Old] NPR ☛ The legacy of Hulk Hogan's sex tape scandal

    Backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, who had been outed as gay by the outlet, Hogan sued Gawker, a news and gossip site, after it published a surreptitiously videotaped sexual encounter between Hogan and the wife of a former friend. The black and white video was published under the headline, "Even for a Minute, Watching Hulk Hogan Have Sex in a Canopy Bed is Not Safe For Work But Watch It Anyway" and was accompanied by a lengthy article describing the tryst.

  • [Old] The Atlantic ☛ The Secret History of the Plot Against Gawker

    In the book’s biggest revelation, Holiday reports for the first time that a twentysomething acquaintance of Thiel’s, identified only as Mr. A, not only came up with the idea in April 2011—before the publication of the Hogan video—to target Gawker through an open-ended legal fund but also spearheaded the plot to take down Gawker using Thiel’s money.

    I spoke to Holiday last week about the new information he’s uncovered, whether he thinks Gawker could have saved itself before the trial, and whether news reporters reflecting on Gawker’s demise should live in fear of upsetting rich people with their work. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

  • [Old] Jacobin Magazine ☛ How Peter Thiel Killed Gawker

    But as we now know, Bollea had help. Peter Thiel has admitted to paying the lawyers as part of a larger, ongoing project to literally destroy Gawker. Many have already written about the dangerous precedent set by this case. The piqued super-rich, it seems, can now use litigation to destroy journalistic entities they don’t like.

  • [Old] The Guardian UK ☛ PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel admits to bankrolling Hulk Hogan's Gawker lawsuit

    Unknown to the jury or public, Thiel had secretly bankrolled Bollea’s legal case to the tune of about $10m. In 2007 Gawker had published a story revealing Thiel was gay. Publicly confirming his funding of the Bollea case after a report by Forbes, Thiel told the New York Times “it’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence”.

  • [Old] Hulk Hogan v. Gawker: A New Film Explores How Gawker Went Down | Vogue

    I didn’t pick this Gawker vs. Hogan case because it was simple and clean. I picked it because it was difficult and on the edges of free speech. That’s where the most interesting stuff is. But again, if you don’t believe in freedom for speech you don’t like, then you don’t believe in it at all. And what’s to stop Peter Thiel or someone using his tactics to go after any news organization? There’s nothing unique to Gawker about this.

  • CPJ ☛ 2 Cambodian journalists detained over border conflict coverage

    Phara, a reporter with the local TSP 68 TV Online, and Sopheap, a journalist with Battambang Post TV Online, were arrested separately on July 31 after returning from reporting on a Cambodia-Thailand border dispute in Uddar Meanchey province, news reports said.

  • NPR ☛ CBS shifts to appease the right under new owner

    CBS' new corporate owner has taken a series of concrete steps to address the concerns of the news division's sharpest critics — particularly President Trump and his allies.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFERL ☛ Afghan Children In Pakistan Fear Taliban Schools If Forced Home

    The Taliban-run madrasahs promote extremist religious instruction, raising fears that it could radicalize a new generation of Afghans.

    Shakil Arshad, who teaches students in the refugee camp, is worried about what will become of the children here.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Taliban deploys armed guards outside UN compounds

    The Taliban has deployed armed guards outside the UN compound in Kabul, Afghanistan, preventing local female staff from attending work.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Taliban Clampdown on Women Forces UN to Close Aid Centres for Afghan Returnees

    "It is a huge step, and it is creating an enormous amount of suffering for these people," he said, adding that these centres typically helped around 7,000 people a day.

    The work at the centres involves personal interviews and biometrics which he said cannot be done by men on Afghan women, he added.

  • The Atlantic ☛ How Do You Prove Your Citizenship?

    The problem is that ICE does not say what it accepts as definitive proof of legal status. Is it a driver’s license? A green card? A folder of immigration documents? Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign has swept up U.S. citizens and permanent residents over the past several months, leaving some detained for days despite individuals presenting officers with evidence of their legal status.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ California lawmakers pass bill banning law enforcement officers from covering their faces

    Senate Bill 627, written by Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley), includes exceptions for SWAT teams and others. The measure was introduced after the Trump administration ordered immigration raids throughout the Los Angeles area earlier this year.

    Federal officers in army-green neck gaiters or other face coverings have jumped out of vans and cars to detain individuals across California this summer as part of President Trump’s mass deportation program, prompting a wave of criticism from Democratic leaders.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Waving the Bloody Shirt

    At this point what do we know about who killed Charlie Kirk, and why?

    Nothing. And we may never know anything. In part that’s because there appears to have been a rapid degradation in the FBI’s effectiveness since Trump appointees took over and prioritized political loyalty over competence.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • El País ☛ Goldman Sachs: From CDs to Spotify: How the music industry has started making money again

    The music industry hit rock bottom in 2014, unable to transition to the digital era, but 11 years later it has returned to record revenues. The model has shifted from physical sales — CDs, vinyl, cassettes — to platform-based streaming, a new playing field that has rewritten the rules of how to make money.

  • The Scotsman ☛ Netflix warning as users could make £1,000 mistake

    UK viewers don’t need to have paid the licence fee to watch most things on Netflix - however live events still require you to be covered by one. If you are caught watching a live broadcast on streaming without having a TV licence, you could risk landing a fine of as much as £1,000.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• ABC ☛ Microsoft resolves European Union probe into Teams

  The European Commission said in a statement Friday that Microsoft's final commitments to unbundle Teams from its Office software suite, including further tweaks following a market test in May and June, are enough to satisfy competition concerns.

  The legally binding commitments will remain in force for up to 10 years and allow the company to avoid a potentially hefty fine.

• India Times ☛ EU says it accepts Microsoft's commitments to address competition concerns over Teams platform

  The firm pledged to sell versions of its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites without Teams and at a lower price than the version including the conferencing app, according to the commission.

• CNBC ☛ Microsoft sidesteps hefty EU fine with Teams unbundling deal

  Under the commitments, which Microsoft first unveiled in May, the U.S. software giant will make versions of its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software suites available at a reduced price without Teams, as well as allow customers with long-term licenses to switch to suites without Teams.

• STT Viestintäpalvelut Oy ☛ EU decides on Teams bundling – alfaview welcomes EU commitments for Microsoft | alfaview GmbH

  The proceedings were initiated due to the inclusion of Microsoft Teams in the Office suites. As the sole European complainant – with its own video conferencing solution in direct competition with Teams – alfaview contributed its technical expertise and market experience to the discussions with the Commission and Microsoft. In doing so, alfaview made a decisive contribution to a solution that creates more freedom of choice, innovation, and fair conditions for all market participants in Europe. To pave the way for this binding agreement, alfaview withdrew its complaint to the EU Commission a few weeks ago.

• The Verge ☛ Microsoft avoids EU fine after Slack complained about Teams bundling | The Verge

  Microsoft has avoided a fine from the European Commission after it was charged with EU antitrust violations for bundling its Teams app with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. The European Commission says it has accepted commitments from Microsoft to address competition concerns related to Microsoft Teams, following an anti-competitive complaint filed by Slack in July 2020.

• The Register UK ☛ EU regulators let Microsoft off the hook after Teams unbundl

  Brussels announced on Friday that it has accepted Microsoft's concessions, formally ending a five-year investigation triggered by a 2020 complaint from Slack, now owned by Salesforce. Slack had accused Redmond of using its dominance in Office to crush rivals by quietly bolting Teams onto Microsoft 365 at no extra cost, making it the default collaboration tool for millions of businesses overnight.

• Stratechery ☛ iPhones 17 and the Sugar Water Trap – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

  The most immediate potential payoff would have been search ad revenues that Apple might have earned in an alternate timeline where they competed with Google instead of getting paid off by them. This, to be sure, would likely have been less on both the top and especially bottom lines, so skepticism about the attractiveness of this approach is fair.

• Copyrights

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ College Textbooks: Wall Street’s New Cash Cow

    For years, textbook prices have burdened students already struggling with loans and sky-high tuition costs. Now Wall Street is taking over the market, tightening its grip on a staple campus institution: the college bookstore.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Employee Who Leaked ‘Spider-Man’ Blu-ray Sentenced to Nearly 5 Years Prison on Gun Charge

    A former employee of a disc manufacturing company in Memphis who stole hundreds of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, has been sentenced to 57 months in prison by a Memphis federal court. The length of the sentence is driven by an unrelated firearm charge. For the copyright infringement offenses, to which the defendant pleaded guilty, the court handed down a 21-month sentence to be served concurrently.

  • Wired ☛ I Wasn’t Sure I Wanted Anthropic to Pay Me for My Books—I Do Now

    Before I go farther, let me drop a whopper of a disclaimer. As I mentioned, I’m an author myself, and stand to gain or lose from the outcome of this argument. I’m also on the council of the Author’s Guild, which is a strong advocate for authors and is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for including authors’ works in their training runs. (Because I cover tech companies, I abstain on votes involving litigation with those firms.) Obviously, I’m speaking for myself today.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Employee Who Leaked ‘Spider-Man’ Blu-ray Sentenced to Nearly 5 Years in Prison

    A former employee of a disc manufacturing company in Memphis who stole hundreds of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, has been sentenced to 57 months in prison by a Memphis federal court. The length of the sentence is driven by an unrelated firearm charge. For the copyright infringement offenses, to which the defendant pleaded guilty, the court handed down a 21-month sentence to be served concurrently.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Personal/Opinions

    • HOLIDAY RECAP

      It's funny how bad I am at writing phlog posts on these holidays. Tiredness, lack of time, and the tiny keyboard on my Eee PC combine to produce the most attrocious nonsense which I only post because I'm too tired and rushed to read over it before uploading. At least I only subjected you to one of those this last holiday, where I not only had my location wrong but changed back and forth about how to spell that wrong location as I wrote. But that part's just honest really, since in real time I'm truely hopeless with remembering names for anything - places, people, and with particular inconvenience, roads. But on that trip, accompanied by six pages of handwritten instructions for weaving the Jag GPS-less through all sorts of empty backroads for about 1,000Km, I can pretty much proclaim success. By stopping so frequently at the various dams and studying the maps and route plan before setting off each time, I managed only one minor moment of thorough locational befuddlement on the roads. On the other hand between planing and revising the route I'm certain I spent far more time in preparation than in the actual driving. But since the driving was generally such fun, through all sorts of interesting countryside and terrain, with very little of the joy-killing stress that even light traffic causes me, I can't complain at all. Actually most of the roads were so deserted that it almost seemed weird at times.

  • Politics and World Events

    • Stop pretending to be anti-violence

      If you support the state, you support violence. The state’s edicts can only be enforced by violence. There can be no states, and no borders, without the constant threat of violence.

      If you support the market, you support violence. Market relationships require bodies to enforce contracts. Currently the state serves this role, but if you dream of a market without a state, you are only dreaming of a new apparatus to enforce contracts through violence.

      We have been subjected to a lifetime of propaganda that tells us to ignore the violence that benefits — and can only be carried out by — the ruling class, and abhor violence done by regular working-class people. It’s easy to see who benefits from this asymmetry. But the conditioning will never be complete. We’re miserable about the violence that occasionally slips into our awareness — images of genocide, videos of police brutality — and can only numb the dissonance.