Leftovers

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Marisa Kabas ☛ The night the letters came down

    Tens of thousands of people across the country sat glued to our screens watching a livestream that began early afternoon on the east coast and stretched deep into the night. We sat patiently as construction workers in fluorescent vests slowly erected an elaborate set of scaffolding: We stood by as a last ditch court filing threatened the completion of the project: We waited through rain and thunder: The longer it went on, the more we dug in. We needed to see the letters fall.

  • [Old] BBC ☛ BBC World Service - The Documentary, Crypto Wars

    Hacking, security and encryption - the history of the war between governments and geeks to control computer cryptography.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] Life in the ancient Arctic: tiny teeth of newly discovered species suggest it was a cradle of mammalian evolution

  • Science Alert ☛ This Week in Science: World's Biggest Scorpion, a Whale Graveyard, And More!

    Our weekly science news roundup.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Link a Single Gene to Rapid Growth, But It Comes With a Catch

    There's a price to pay.

  • Science Alert ☛ Brushing Your Teeth Could Help Prevent a Deadly Hospital Infection

    A surprisingly simple action can make a major difference.

  • Science Alert ☛ Mysterious Predator That Butchered Ancient Birds Is Finally Unmasked

    Terror in the skies.

  • Science Alert ☛ What Is Alexithymia? The Hidden Experience of Millions Explained

    It’s not easy to tell if someone has it.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Made Espresso Without Hot Water, And People Couldn't Tell

    Wait, what?

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Nutrition grade label draws scepticism from consumers, business owners in Indonesia

    The Nutri-Level is currently not mandated, pending another regulation formalising the nutrition label.

  • New York Times ☛ Ebola Comes for Congo’s Most Vulnerable Children

    The arrival of a sick newborn at Saint Nicholas Orphanage in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo set off an Ebola outbreak that quickly spread among the country’s most vulnerable. Local health authorities are now monitoring the children’s home, but at least two babies have already died.

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Concerned Latest Gene Editing of Human Embryos Could “Open the Floodgates”

    It's a "gateway to embryo editing to do enhancements."

  • Futurism ☛ Working From Home Has a Grim Effect on Your Brain, Surprise Research Finds

    Pros: no commute. Cons: mental anguish.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • Fortune ☛ ‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employee’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers [Ed: Way to say it's just a bubble]

    Meta announced in a memo earlier this year it plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, about 8,000 employees, as well as scrap plans to hire for 6,000 open positions. It’s part of an effort to “run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making,” according to the memo. Microsoft has offered thousands of its own employees a voluntary buyout, the largest the company has ever offered.

  • So-Called 'Artificial Intelligence' ('AI') / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ AI costs spike as subscriptions hit pricing wall — firms turn towards Chinese LLMs, open-source models to extend budget

      Companies look for cheaper alternatives as token costs for frontier Hey Hi (AI) models skyrocket, potentially impacting Proprietary Chaffbot Company and Anthropic's bottom lines. Subscriptions also take a bite out of these startup's profitability, as utilization rates higher than 5.7% could lead to losses.

    • The Straits Times ☛ AI ‘ghost cases’ haunt South Korean courtrooms

      Courts are increasingly calling out such false citations.

  • Windows/Microsoft TCO

    • Security Week ☛ NPM 12 Will Change Script Execution Behavior to Prevent Supply Chain Attacks

      By default, npm install will no longer execute scripts from dependencies, unless explicitly allowed.

• Security

  • China-nexus group hid in Linux login system for nearly a decade

    As detailed in The Hacker News, a sophisticated China-nexus threat group, tracked as Velvet Ant by Sygnia, has been discovered to have operated undetected on an organization's network for approximately 10 years by compromising the core Linux login system itself. Instead of relying on conventional malware, the group stealthily modified trusted components like PAM and OpenSSH, allowing them to maintain persistent access and exfiltrate credentials without triggering standard security alerts.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • CS Monitor ☛ Congress lets part of spy law lapse. What's next for counterterrorism efforts?

      At a time of heightened security risks, renewal of a prominent intelligence tool is caught in a standoff between Congress and The Insurrectionist.

    • JURIST ☛ Canada privacy watchdog says Grok generates explicit deepfakes without users’ valid consent

      The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said in a report on Thursday that X (formerly Twitter) had not obtained valid consent to collect users’ personal information before generating explicit deepfakes.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea says ‘denuclearisation’ is a matter terminated irreversibly

    US and South Korea recently held nuclear deterrence talks as the North expanded arms push.

  • France24 ☛ Switzerland holds Brexit-style referendum on 10 million population cap

    Swiss voters will decide on Sunday whether to approve a proposal to cap the country's population at 10 million by 2050, a measure critics say could have Brexit-like consequences for the economy and relations with the European Union. The referendum reflects growing anti-immigration sentiment seen across Europe.

  • New York Times ☛ Top Haitian Security Official Kidnapped

    A security expert who had recently become chief of staff to the new defense minister was abducted, the latest example of violence gripping the country.

  • France24 ☛ Lebanon reports Israeli strikes in south and east amid broad evacuation warnings

    The Israeli army on Saturday issued evacuation warnings for the southern city of Nabatieh and more than 20 other locations across Lebanon as strikes were reported in the country's south and east. The latest strikes came as the US and Iran indicated they were close to reaching a deal on ending the Middle East war that could also include Lebanon.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan launches website for Chinese nationals to report intelligence

    It said the tactic was following the lead of agencies in countries like the US, Britain and Israel.

  • Site36 ☛ Israel’s state-owned arms company IAI agrres with Berlin mayor for production in the capital

    The arms manufacturer IAI is planning production facilities in Berlin – and rival Elbit Systems is also pushing into the German market, having signed a similar partnership with Diehl Defence for kamikaze drones. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is Israel’s largest aerospace company and is state-owned.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • France24 ☛ UK Defence spending under scrutiny as former minister warns "Putin will be watching this carefully"

      When he came into office, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared that the first duty of a leader is to keep the country safe. His defence secretary, John Healey, resigned this week, telling his boss that he was making the country less safe. It was a stinging letter, claiming Sir Keir was unable to make the financial commitments needed to defend the country against the spectre of a Russian attack. A second defence minister, Al Cairns, also resigned for the same reasons.They had both seen a long-delayed British Defence Plan, which has still not been made public.

      France 24’s Gavin Lee speaks to Tobias Ellwood, a former Conservative MP and former chair of the Defence Select Committee.

    • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea protests against Seoul-EU rebuke of Russia ties

      North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said cooperation with Russia was an “exercise of sovereign rights”.

    • France24 ☛ NATO weighs options to defend Europe as the US plans for conflict elsewhere

      NATO's top military officer is weighing alternative plans to defend Europe should it come under attack from Russia, after the United States announced that it is cutting the number of aircraft and warships it would provide in a security crisis. We discuss it with our guest, André Loesekrug-Pietri, president of the Joint European Disruptive Initiative.

    • LRT ☛ Vilnius yellow air alert lifted after radar contact identified as weather balloon

      A yellow-level air threat alert issued for Vilnius county on Saturday morning has been lifted after the object that triggered it was identified as a weather balloon that had drifted into Lithuanian airspace from the direction of Belarus.

    • New York Times ☛ Russia Is Rich in Ballistic Missiles. Ukraine Is Short of Ways to Stop Them.

      Ukraine is running out of American-made Patriot air-defense interceptors, and is pleading for more.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Ukraine used ten AI-controlled ‘Terminator’ drones to kill Russian soldiers two years ago, marking first autonomous killings of humans — autonomous killer quadcopters left ‘everything dead’ says senior Ukrainian defense industry figure

      A watershed moment occurred on the battlefields of Ukraine in 2024 when 10 fully autonomous AI-controlled quadcopter drones were sent to the front lines against Russia with ‘Terminator Mode’ engaged.

    • Futurism ☛ Autonomous Robots Confirmed to Have Killed Human Soldiers

      "We just launch it and we know everything will be dead — everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead."

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ The El Niño Situation Is Looking Absolutely Brutal

    It is upon us.

  • Futurism ☛ Fish Already Cooking Alive Across the US Ahead of Blistering Summer Heat

    "Usually it happens later down in the summer when it's really hot."

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ More than 75 data center build-outs worth $130 billion have been successfully blocked in the first three months of 2026 — bipartisan opposition mounts nationwide over fears of soaring power and water costs [iophk: Many Microsoft data centers have only broken ground, destroying the land they are on but not advanced further. The 'investors' got their money from the scam and moved on, finishing the center or not turns out to be irrelevant. ]

      A research firm says the number of blocked data centers in the first quarter of 2026 already matches the number of projects stopped in 2025. The opposition also comes from both sides of the aisle, despite Hell Toupée's push for more Hey Hi (AI) development inside the U.S.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Conversation ☛ 2026-06-03 [Older] Great apes: what we know about their cognition, cooperation and curiosity after two decades of research

    • The Conversation ☛ 2026-06-02 [Older] Birds masturbate, and that’s perfectly normal

    • The Conversation ☛ 2026-06-04 [Older] The pigeon fanciers of the Bronze Age

    • The Conversation ☛ 2026-06-05 [Older] White storks: why introducing non-native species in rewilding projects can be a good idea

• Finance

  • Futurism ☛ Visa Officially Allowing Hey Hi (AI) Agents to Go Ham With Your Credit Card

    This will in no way backfire.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • JURIST ☛ Federal court blocks Texas AG lawsuit against Democratic fundraising platform

    The US District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted a preliminary injunction against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, effectively blocking Paxton from pursuing a lawsuit against the Democratic Party’s fundraising platform, ActBlue.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ What they carry: The unseen burdens of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong

  • JURIST ☛ British Columbia judge rules Victoria municipal council can legislate to remove encampments

    The Supreme Court of British Columbia (BC) ruled on Friday that the city of Victoria can enact bylaws to vacate encampments within its authority. This ruling does not prevent the court from reviewing the bylaws’ constitutionality if the petitioners decide to make that challenge.

  • Craig Murray ☛ Sentencing the Innocent

    Judge Johnson had proved his fascist credentials through rulings much earlier in the Filton trial than his vicious sentencing. Indeed, he had arguably already shown them when he released Tommy Robinson from a prison sentence, or when as a barrister he had chosen to work for the intelligence services and Ministry of Defence.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Decision making in hard situations

    During the internet blackout, one of the main sources of entertainment for me was watching movies.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Futurism ☛ Meta Employee Laid Off, Immediately Detained by ICE

    Completely heartless.

  • Patents

    • KOL492 | Menger Institute Podcast #6: Property Rights, Patents, Anarchy, Patents, Anarchy, Technology, Long-Term Hope for Freedom and the Technological Death of the State