Leftovers

• Jeroen Sangers ☛ Implementation intentions correct the planning fallacy

  They also help with the planning fallacy: our habit of estimating how long something takes by imagining it going well. No traffic, no interruptions, no discovering halfway through that the file is somewhere else. Specifying the circumstances forces the obstacles into view before you commit to a time.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • SBS ☛ Why this little-known meteor shower is one to watch this week

    The Aurigid meteor shower will remain active until 5 September, with activity expected to peak on the night of 31 August to 1 September.

  • Quanta Magazine ☛ Does Computer Science Need Computers?

    The pioneering computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra, winner of the 1972 A.M. Turing Award and inventor of one of the most iconic algorithms in all of computing, was nothing if not opinionated. Certain programming languages drew his ire, for example: He once dubbed Fortran “the infantile disorder” and stated that “the use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.” In justifying his disdain for using computers in his own work, he wrote, “Medical researchers are not required to suffer from the diseases they investigate.”

    I first encountered Dijkstra’s hot takes nearly four years ago, not long after I joined Quanta as a staff writer covering computer science. The subject was new to me — I’d been a physics journalist, and before that a physicist — and I soon learned that most people don’t know how to interpret “computer science writer.” In the broader public discourse, computer science is practically synonymous with programming or coding, but at Quanta we cover the less understood theoretical side of the field. Then I stumbled on my favorite of the many memorable declarations attributed to Dijkstra: Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ AI Doesn't Mean the End of Mathematics—at Least Not Yet

    These results are relatively low-hanging fruit for AI; none of them required developing an extensive new theory. This does not make the discoveries trivial, or the AI’s achievements less impressive. Choosing the right direction, and recognizing an unexpected connection between subjects, are themselves forms of creativity. They are the same sorts of capabilities that led to AIs playing the game of Go at the grandmaster level, or doing Nobel-prize level chemistry in the area of protein folding.

• Career/Education

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Documentaries used to be so chill

    That turns out to be a bit of theme for this post, because it’s something I only noticed borrowing some documentaries from the late 1980s. The pacing is so chill. There aren’t huge graphic flashes, intense music, or rapidfire cuts to keep us engaged. They present what they need to, in the time they need. There are entire segments where you’re watching the topic of the documentary, with no background music or commentary at all, for minutes at a time. It doesn’t matter if it’s about locomotives, or computers, or birds, or by some fluke a combination of all three.

  • Ken Klippenstein ☛ Dolly Parton’s Superpower

    “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one,” Dolly once said.

  • Jacky Alciné ☛ Being kicked out of the tech industry

    Giving up is okay. But this feels more like being kicked out. Getting more than 5 rejections a day despite my past work is humiliating. Having to be told that "you're great but no" more than 6 times a day is demeaning. And having to hear that it'll take a year to find a job — how the fuck does society claim to be in a good place if folks have bills to pay during this time[2]? I don't see how I'm supposed to keep trying when I keep getting "no"s from people who claim to open to the ideas of a "yes".

  • Doc Searls ☛ Blame Canada?

    This mirrors what some colleagues are saying at Indiana University, where I currently hang. Here’s one story. Another. Another. Another. Another. Another.

• Hardware

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ Royal Standard Typewriter Collection

    I’m slowly closing in on a completist collection of Royal standard typewriters.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Air Force Times ☛ They survived an Iran war drone attack. Six months later, they’re struggling to get care.

    The War Horse spoke with four Army Reserve soldiers from the 103rd Sustainment Command who were wounded in the attack. They described delayed testing and treatment, inconsistent care depending on which Soldier Recovery Unit received them and restrictions from taking leave to visit family. All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they remain on active-duty orders and feared retaliation that could damage their careers.

    The War Horse corroborated key details of their accounts through separate interviews and reviews of medical records, photographs and documents from the attack and its aftermath.

  • New Republic ☛ They’ve Been Screwed Over for 160 Years. Trump Is Screwing Them More.

    “Mother Nature drives our bus,” Haynie is fond of saying. The weather may determine a day’s work, but federal policy has too often seemed determined to separate Black farmers from their land. As Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade wars exacerbate one of the worst agriculture crises in decades, his administration has scrapped USDA programs designed to help remedy that history. Haynie is fighting to ensure Black farmers have a future—by not just surviving, but trying to forge one.

• Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware

  • The Record ☛ PaperCut warns of hackers using printer management software flaw in attacks

    PaperCut’s software is used widely across large organizations like universities, corporations and governments. Organizations use PaperCut software to manage a variety of printer brands including Canon, Epson, Xerox, Brother and more.

    The company urged customers to remove their servers from the public internet and restrict web access to only trusted IP addresses. Customers need to take every step to ensure PaperCut server’s web interfaces cannot be reached from untrusted internet addresses.

  • Wired ☛ Microsoft Teams Has Become a Haven for Scammers in China

    Fraudsters are exploiting enterprise chat apps like Teams and Webex to trick Chinese victims into transferring large sums of money, fueling a wave of complaints.

  • Android Police ☛ I'm finally giving up on Google Maps on Android; here's what I'm replacing it with

    But over the last year or two, opening Google Maps started feeling less like launching a clean utility and more like stepping into a social directory.

    The visual clutter on the home screen became impossible to ignore.

    Instead of clear, glanceable road layouts, my screen was covered in local recommendations, weather details, user reviews, and more.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Apple Reverses Proposed Hide My Email Domain Change

    The whole point of an email address like this is that it can be used anywhere someone does not want to provide an address that can be tied to them or remarketed to, or if they want to be able to cut off communications. This change, if implemented, would have made these addresses basically useless. I am glad to see this was reversed.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ Why can purging snapshots fail?

    Earlier this week I reported that purging Time Machine snapshots to reclaim free space was unreliable in macOS Tahoe 26.6.2. Since then I have run further tests and browsed thousands of log entries, and this article attempts to explain what I think is going wrong, and how you can work around it.

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

    • India Times ☛ Child abuse victim sues Elon Musk's xAI over AI-generated images

      The complaint, lodged Wednesday in the Northern District of California by an anonymous plaintiff identified as Jane Doe 1, alleges that xAI designed Grok to alter real photographs of identifiable people into sexual content and then published the results directly to the X social media platform (formerly Twitter).

    • Futurism ☛ Mark Zuckerberg Had a Secret Plan to Replace Meta Staff With AI Agents, and It Backfired Spectacularly

      In May, Meta laid off roughly ten percent of its global workforce, affecting almost 8,000 people. The vast culling came amidst repeated promises of an AI-led technological revolution that would make human labor a thing of the past. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in particular, was clearly infatuated by the idea.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Data Centers Are a Distraction

      What humanity needs is an international AI nonproliferation treaty.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Widespread use of AI tools could make it harder to craft effective business communications

      Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT make it easier for business owners to produce polished pitches, business plans and other communications, but according to new research from The University of Manchester and Canada's University of Alberta, their widespread use could ultimately make it harder for businesses to effectively communicate with their audiences.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

      A class action lawsuit filed by victims of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) accuses xAI of training Grok’s synthetic deepfake “nudify” capabilities on real images and videos of child abuse.

      The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names Jane Doe 1 and other anonymous individuals as plaintiffs, calling Doe “an identified victim of child pornography tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation Notification Program.”

    • BoingBoing ☛ Grok's child-porn nightmare just got worse

      A new lawsuit sheds some light on all those CSAM problems with Elon "Pedo Guy" Musk's Grok: it claims Grok was trained on child pornography, resulting in the child pornography problems created by Grok.

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Retiring my gag agents file

      Merely having this file in the repo has caused three issues: [...]

    • Namanyay Goel ☛ fuck your AI slop: 5 rules of writing cold messages that actually get sales

      I’ve been helping SF companies get sales and one of my customers came to me with a cold message that he wasn’t getting any good results with it. A competitor tool generated it. Can you find out what’s wrong here?

    • Murtuzaali Surti ☛ Should Your Website Serve Markdown to AI Agents?

      This is the problem acceptmarkdown.com wants to solve. The pitch is simple. When a client sends Accept: text/markdown in its request, your server responds with a clean Markdown version of the page instead of HTML. Same URL, different representation. The idea made the rounds on Hacker News recently and the comment section turned into a proper fight, which usually means the topic is worth unpacking.

      So here's how it works, who's actually using it, and my honest take on whether you should bother.

    • John D Cook ☛ Making the unnecessary easier

      I’m not trying to avoid using AI. As I said at the top of the post I’m looking for more ways to take advantage of it. But I don’t want to fall into the trap of doing more easily what doesn’t need to be done. Or, to put a finer point on it, I don’t want to find ways for my business to do things that we do not need to do, things that other businesses may need to do.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Your AGENTS.md file doesn’t actually do anything

      Having an AGENTS.md increases the token cost quite a lot — whether the file is chatbot-generated or human-written. (Anthropic probably considers this a feature.) The bot churns through more stuff, but it’s no more likely to finish your task successfully.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Choking is sold to teens as a safe sexual practice. The research says it never is

      But school systems are not prepared to engage in this level of sexual education, and young people’s information environment, especially on social media, is flooded with misinformation.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Meta wins by settling

      Instead, the settlement removes a significant regulatory hurdle that has weighed on Meta’s stock and allows the company to avoid a potentially lengthy trial that could have exposed more internal documents about its treatment of young users, according to over a dozen analysts and legal experts.

      It also sent Meta’s shares about 1% higher, suggesting investors welcomed an outcome that will cost the company far less than the $1.4-trillion in penalties it said the states were seeking before trial.

    • India Times ☛ Meta's social media settlement leaves its money machine unscathed

      The social media giant agreed on Wednesday to pay as much ​as $18 billion over a decade and limit how teenagers ​use Facebook and Instagram under a sweeping agreement with nearly all U.S. states to resolve claims that it designed those ​platforms to addict children. Meta denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.

      While the headline figure is among the largest ever settlements paid by a technology company, it is unlikely to strain a business that earned more than $60 billion last year. The settlement left untouched the personalised feeds and ad targeting that underpin its profits.

    • University of Michigan ☛ Social media kills whimsy

      Despite the movement’s inherent characteristics of finding individualized personal enjoyment, whimsy has degraded into a standardized trend. When cross-referencing thousands of posts on the internet that have the tag #whimsy, similarities across the trend begin to emerge. It becomes increasingly clear that in order to be “properly” whimsical in the eyes of social media, you must dress and act a particular way. If you aren’t adorned with a certain amount of jewelry or layered vintage clothing, decorating your house with bright, fun colors and over-consuming the internet’s favorite items, you are not an authentically whimsical person.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Meta settlement aims to protect kids. Experts worry it won’t.

      Expanded parental control on Instagram and Facebook. A ban on certain beauty filters. Two-hour daily time limits for users under 18. These are some of the requirements Meta leadership agreed to in a $17.1 billion historic settlement with nearly every state in the nation. Meta says these sweeping changes are a safety overhaul intended to protect children.

      But will it work?

      Probably not, some digital safety researchers and advocates say.

    • International Business Times ☛ Mark Zuckerberg Faces Biggest Reckoning Yet as Meta Settles Landmark Lawsuit for 17B

      About $12.7bn of the total is guaranteed over ten years, with the remaining $5bn contingent on rivals Snap, TikTok and YouTube adopting comparable protections, including tighter one-hour-per-app limits and wider overnight blocks from 10pm to 7am.

    • International Business Times ☛ Tributes Towards A66 Joyriders Worsen as a Mob of Youths Set Fire To Several Cars Near Haswell, County Durham

      Eyewitness footage circulating across social media showed masked youths in tracksuits letting off blue flares, setting off fireworks, and driving vehicles recklessly across open farmland before torching multiple automobiles.

    • The New Stack ☛ X sent Nitter a cease-and-desist. Then it went after the source code.

      When Elon Musk’s X sent cease-and-desist letters demanding that Nitter — an open-source alternative front end for the social media platform — permanently shut down its instances and remove the project’s source code repository, it went after the code itself.

    • Rohanrd ☛ Age of Distractions

      Large corporations have poured billions to ensure as many eyeballs as possible remain active on their platforms. Why is notification on every social media plotform, red? Because we humans associate red with danger, something that needs our attention. That is why traffic light for stop is red. These large corporations have discovered numerous such hacks and they employ it without any regard for users well being. For them our attention is worth billions. The real question is how much our own attention is worth to us? What would we achieve if we could direct all our energy into our own well being?

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Michael Tsai ☛ GitHub Outage

  • Andrew Nesbitt ☛ Now Hiring: Senior Open Source Maintainer

    This role is not eligible for relocation assistance or visa sponsorship.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Times ☛ Customer data stolen in cyberattack on three British airports

      MAG, which operates the Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands airports, said the data of 8.7 million customers had been compromised.

      The information included email addresses, phone numbers, vehicle registrations and postcodes.

    • Futurism ☛ Meta Working on "Kill Switch" in Face of Overwhelming Disgust With Its "Pervert Glasses"

      Much like Google’s infamous Google Glass smart glasses, Meta’s camera-equipped AI Glasses have turned into a widely derided gadget associated with horrendous public behavior and unwanted surveillance.

    • Futurism ☛ Welp, They're Officially Displaying Ads Directly on Your Monitor

      Sure, it’s nice being able to have your streaming apps in one place, but the tradeoff is hellish: these TVs, by default, come stuffed with ads and track an alarming amount of personal data. Some are even shipping with AI integration, with remotes featuring a dedicated AI button — because of course they are.

      Now, computer monitors may be going the same way.

    • International Business Times ☛ Teen Vigilantes Charged With Criminal Conspiracy After Torching AI Police License Plate Readers

      According to the Chester County Sheriff's Office, they bypassed security poles with saws and battered the digital units with hammers until internal lithium battery packs exploded into roaring flames in the Edgemoor area.

    • Mat Duggan ☛ You Know GDPR Is Good Based on Who Hates It

      What I love is that he doesn't argue with the hate. He doesn't say they're wrong to hate him, or that the hate is unfair. He says the hate is evidence. The process is working. I've always treated it as a metric: if you're doing something hard and nobody hates it, you probably aren't doing it. If the right people hate it and those people happen to be some of the worst people alive, so much the better.

      By that standard, the GDPR (Europe's General Data Protection Regulation) is doing beautifully.

    • Indiana Daily Student ☛ Indiana law requires background checks on certain international students

      To admit these students into engineering, computer science, virology, microbiology or artificial intelligence programs, the university will have to conduct a background check.

      The check would review the student’s current and past affiliations, support related to their education, funding, training and research, collaborations, intellectual property and employment agreements. It would also check if the student was employed by or served in the military of the foreign adversary.

    • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ NYC's Buzziest Nightclub Announces Stance On Smart Glasses: Even Try To Bring Them In, You’re Banned Forever

      “Our no photo/no video policy exists to protect the privacy, safety and freedom of everyone on our dance floor,” the announcement begins. “Devices that allow discreet recording are incompatible with that policy.”

      “Anyone bringing smart glasses into the venue, whether wearing them or carrying them in a bag,” it adds, “will be asked to leave and may be permanently banned.”

    • Futurism ☛ Police Use Surveillance Cameras to Narc On Guy Who Found $30 on the Ground

      In other online spaces, the department’s post sparked discussions about surveillance and its abuses — a touchy issue right now, with the overwhelming public backlash against the AI-powered surveillance company Flock and its vast network of cameras blanketing the country.

    • Ghacks ☛ AliExpress Ran Silent Browser Audio to Fingerprint and Track Devices, Researchers Find

      Looking at the site's code, the developer found it used the Web Audio API to build audio-processing graphs set to zero volume. There was no audible sound, but the process still connected to the computer's audio system and kept the audio path active in the background.

      This seems to be what interfered with the headphones' ability to switch devices. Since the processing graph ran at zero gain and connected directly to the system's audio output, muting the browser tab had no effect.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Show me your friend...

    For those who in 2022 were dismayed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent relentless destruction of the country and its people, the shock of Trump’s open siding with Putin in early 2025 was comparable to the blow experienced at the start of the war. The betrayal was unexpected. For nearly three years, the US had helped Ukraine by providing arms and sharing intelligence. True, Biden’s support seemed limited and half-hearted – like other western leaders, he chose to exercise extreme caution when dealing with a state that possessed nuclear weapons and threatened to use them, but at least he had no doubt as to who was the aggressor.

  • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ Election Deniers Could Soon Control Elections in Three Swing States

    Candidates with a history of denying the 2020 election results are on the ballot in states across the country this fall, running for the position of secretary of state. If they win, they would be uniquely positioned to exert control over their states’ elections.

  • Vox ☛ An obscure documentary that heralds the rise of a new Islamophobia

    The Great American Conflict, a 75-minute documentary produced by a Texas-based organization dedicated to converting Iran to Christianity, declares its goal right at the beginning: “to reveal the true Islam to all people, especially in the West,” Iran Alive Ministries’s founder Hormoz Shariat says. “This film is also meant to be a warning to America. There is a serious threat of Islam in our nation.”

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Democrats Are Losing the Billionaire Primary

    Spooked by anti-billionaire talk from the Democratic Party base, ultrawealthy donors are backing Republicans this cycle. That confronts the Democrats with a choice they’ve spent years avoiding: chase big money or build mass politics.

  • The Record ☛ Finland appeals court revives case against Eagle S Officers over cable breaks

    The unanimous decision reverses a ruling that had alarmed the maritime legal community, where lawyers warned it could leave ships flying flags of convenience free to damage undersea infrastructure in international waters without consequence.

    Henrik Ringbom, professor of maritime law at Åbo Akademi University, had said of the judgment: “As long as you have a flag state that doesn't care, you can now count on the freedom of navigation to continue to break cables without consequences. This means that no one can do anything about it. This is completely unreasonable.”

    In its new ruling, the appeals court held that the alleged crimes were actually committed in Finland because the damage, and its effects on the country’s power and telecommunications supply, occurred there.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • International Business Times ☛ Trump's DOJ Is Reportedly Facing Contempt-of-Court Risk Over Alleged Hidden Epstein Files

    The US Department of Justice is reportedly risking contempt of court as it resists a federal judge's order to hand over handwritten FBI interview notes and explain redactions in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

    The latest twist comes in a long-running lawsuit brought by journalist Katie Phang, who has pressed the Trump administration to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

• Environment

  • India Times ☛ data centre: Australia data centre firm NextDC reports rising water, energy use with profit beat

    The company's water usage effectiveness (WUE) ratio climbed to 2.40 litres per kilowatt-hour in the year to June, from 2.25 the prior year, while its ‌power usage effectiveness (PUE) ⁠ratio, ⁠which measures how much electricity a data centre needs for cooling and other overheads, rose to 1.49 from 1.44. Both metrics have worsened for three consecutive years.

  • Green Party UK ☛ Green Party calls for govt to ‘slam the brakes’ on new data centre approval after water shortage fears

    Currently, data centres are automatically classed as ‘critical infrastructure’ — along with vital sectors like energy, water and food – meaning that they are prioritised for access to water and energy, even in droughts like those we’ve seen this summer.

  • New Republic ☛ The Data Center Backlash Is a Rare Bright Spot in American Politics

    Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer reported earlier this month that his own outlet’s survey found an extraordinary depth and breadth to public opposition to AI data centers. “Data centers are 43 points underwater with Republicans, 65 points underwater with independents, and 75 points underwater with Democrats,” he wrote. “Notably, local data centers are 63 points underwater with rural voters, a group that has skewed more Republican over the past decade.” In an age of hyperpartisanship, there’s something almost comforting about how many people, from all walks of life, hate AI.

  • Science Alert ☛ A Man Crashed His Car Into a Deer. Then He Mysteriously Became Sick.

    Due to its potential dangers to human health – and specifically its capacity for bioterrorism – the bacterium is monitored by the US government as a Tier 1 agent/toxin, and has long been studied for its military potential as a biological weapon.

  • TruthOut ☛ The Rapid Buildout of Data Centers Is Weakening the Clean Air Act

    But new guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency about “islanded” power plants — those built to serve a single facility rather than the electricity grid — shows there aren’t as many reliable safeguards against the environmental and climate impacts. The EPA published guidance last month clarifying that the Clean Air Act’s Acid Rain Program “does not apply to power generation facilities that are not connected in any way to the larger electricity grid.” It’s part of a broader effort, experts said, to loosen regulations for data centers and the power plants built to serve them.

  • The Verge ☛ Trump’s EPA wants to let data centers hide their air pollution

    The EPA plans to toss out a federal rule requiring public notice and an opportunity to comment when certain industrial sites apply for an air permit. Advocates warn that the move would allow data center developers and other industries to break ground without giving nearby residents a say, or even a warning that construction is planned.

    “You can see why that would be so interesting to an administration that wants to rush through the construction of data centers,” says Keri Powell, senior attorney and air program leader at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC). “What EPA would be allowing would be all of those facilities to go through and just not have to deal with the public, issue the permits in secret behind closed doors. Nobody knows what’s happening until the bulldozers are out there.”

  • Inside Towers ☛ Harford County, MD First to Ban Data Centers in the State

    Harford County, MD is the first county in the state to ban data centers outright, reported WBFF-TV. The Harford County Council members unanimously passed legislation on the issue and County Executive Bob Cassilly signed it into law last month. While data centers were not previously allowed in Harford County, the legislation codifies a permanent ban.

  • Sinclair Inc ☛ Harford County becomes first Maryland county to ban data centers

    While data centers were not previously allowed in Harford County, the legislation codifies a permanent prohibition. While many Maryland counties have put moratoriums or temporarily restrictions on data centers in place, Harford County is one of the first counties in the state to ban them.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ El Niño climate patterns supercharged by burning of fossil fuels, study finds

    It’s well understood that El Niño, which typically brings a surge of global heat, further amplifies the escalating climate crisis, with next year almost certain to be the hottest on record globally. But the new research has established that the reverse is also the case: human-caused global heating is making El Niño itself more intense when it does arrive.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • India Times ☛ IREN Data Center: Data center firm IREN signs new deal with frontier AI lab; quarterly loss hits shares

      IREN shares ‌fell more ⁠than ⁠7% in extended trading after the company swung to ​a quarterly loss, driven by costs tied to retiring ​bitcoin mining hardware as it shifts to AI cloud services.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Nvidia's top AI chips are coming to a Centurion data centre

      Announced on Wednesday at the Activate AI conference in Cape Town, the venture pairs Stratos Lab as cloud operator, Dubai-based integrator Ecoblox and carrier-neutral operator Digital Parks Africa (DPA) as initial host. Taiwan’s Giga Computing, a Gigabyte company, is supplying the servers.

    • SBS ☛ Australia wants more data centres. A disagreement over power sources stands in the way

      The federal government has proposed legislation to force data centre developers to provide their own renewable energy source.

      Both the Queensland and NT governments provided considerable pushback, with the final national agreement failing to mention renewable energy directly.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Digital Camera World ☛ "People keep asking me if it's AI. That's not an insult though, because it just doesn't seem real": photographer captures threatened species that wins Australia's most prestigious nature photo competition – but his drone almost died out on the ocean

      "To see and capture such a large one in the wild was a privilege, but what made this encounter even more special was that the sawfish was swimming through an area full of turtles.

      "With the light fading and the drone battery beeping, I waited patiently for this exact moment before bringing the drone back to land at a critical 3%, all while being eaten by mozzies and sand flies to maintain connection!!"

    • Jonathan Kamens ☛ Trustees hike: Charles River Peninsula

      As the placard above makes pretty clear, most of the peninsula is covered by a big grassy field, but there’s a border of woods between the field and the river. The main hiking trail at the property goes around the edge of the field, but for much of the way around there are also other trails you can walk on in the woods, close to the river. That’s where I saw these cuties.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Nvidia is buying the home of open-source AI

    A deal of that size would mark one of Nvidia’s largest acquisitions to date and underscore how the Jensen Huang-led company at the centre of the AI boom is betting that demand for the technology is expanding rather than peaking.

    It would also give Nvidia control of Hugging Face, which hosts open-source large language models and datasets, at a time when builders of closed-source models such as Anthropic and OpenAI are seeking to create their own chips as an alternative to Nvidia’s GPUs.

  • India Times ☛ SoftBank seeks another $10 billion loan for OpenAI stake funding

    The loan would add to SoftBank’s flurry of recent debt financing activities tied to its bet on OpenAI, including a potential bond sale of as much as $20 billion, despite concerns about growing credit risks in the artificial intelligence sector. SoftBank, founded and led by billionaire Masayoshi Son, is slated to invest close to $65 billion in OpenAI by October.

  • Futurism ☛ Data Shows That Mark Zuckerberg Is the Anti-Dolly Parton: Instead of Being Loved by Everybody Across the Political Spectrum, Pretty Much Everybody Despises Him, Regardless of Their Beliefs

    The data showed that most other figures, like Donald Trump or Taylor Swift, are beloved by one party and despised by the other, in a clear illustration of how divisive politics have become in a toxic era of discourse.

    One figure stood out, though: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, instead of being adored by one faction and reviled by the other, is simply detested by almost everybody.

    The dichotomy is incredible. Parton boasted 78 percent favorability among Democrats, the UMASS CPC data showed, and 73 percent favorability among Republicans. As expected, she’s pretty much universally adored.

  • The Conversation ☛ Star Trek at 60: the secret of this pioneering series was its exploration of humanity, not aliens

    From its very first broadcast episode on September 8 1966, Star Trek established that its true subject was the exploration of humanity itself. For all its reputation as an action-packed space adventure, the franchise has endured because it repeatedly returned to a universal question: what does it mean to be human?

  • TruthOut ☛ Nevada Governor Endorsed Data Centers Days After AI Investor Donated $1 Million

    Three days after a prominent artificial intelligence investor and his wife donated $1 million to a political action committee boosting Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s reelection campaign, Lombardo publicly endorsed the state’s booming data-center buildout. A week later, the PAC collected another $1 million from the wife of a developer building those facilities in Nevada, according to campaign finance records reviewed by The Lever.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Datacenters in Spaaaaaaace!

    I’m not saying that with Musk money, one can’t blight the sky with computer hardware, I’m sure he can. I’m not even saying that humanity can’t decide to put a bunch of GPUs in racks and fire them at the sky, we can, if is what we’re determined to do. I’m saying they won’t be worthwhile data centers, because for all the ways Elon Musk bribes his way through the American landscape, physics isn’t, and will never be, on the take.

    Data centers aren’t popular neighbors just about anywhere on Earth. They suck, pollute, and immiserate everything around them. So the titans of our gilded compute age are figuring they can get away with putting their water chugging, polluting, natural gas guzzling giant computer farms in space; specifically into low Earth orbit around our planet.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Everyone hates datacentres. Do we really need them? - video

    AI companies have promised us world-shifting technology. But there’s a cost: loud, unsightly datacentres that drain environmental resources. As the government pushes their rapid growth, can local communities do anything to push back? Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s global technology reporter Aisha Down about the backlash to datacentres across the UK and around the world

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Salon ☛ The long afterlife of QAnon conspiracy theories haunting American politics

      As a scholar of conspiracy theories and extremism, I’ve watched QAnon seep from the margins into mainstream American politics over the past decade. While Q stopped posting in 2022, the movement did not disappear. As we near the 10-year anniversary of QAnon, these theories continue to haunt America’s politics.

    • Truthdig ☛ What Standing Rock’s Propaganda War Means Today

      But there was another force at play.

      The pipeline’s parent company, Energy Transfer Partners, which is now known simply as Energy Transfer, hired a private security company, TigerSwan, to protect its project. Never-before-published documents show that TigerSwan sought to use social media to identify and exploit divisions between the Standing Rock movement and the mostly white surrounding communities.

      The company’s Facebook operation was part of a larger propaganda effort by Energy Transfer meant to steer public support away from the protests and toward the pipeline.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ Iranians Say SIM Card Cutoffs Have Become A Tool To Punish Critics

    Because access to banking, government, insurance, judicial, and even educational services in Iran is now tied to a verified mobile number and one-time SMS codes, cutting off a person's SIM effectively locks them out of a wide range of essential services and civil rights.

  • RFERL ☛ As Iran Threatens Radio Farda And Other Media, US Points To Tehran's Record Of Targeting Journalists

    "The Iranian regime has repeatedly harassed and attempted to kidnap and kill journalists and Iranian dissidents worldwide simply for exercising their freedoms. This is longstanding, despicable behavior from a regime that has propagated terror globally for decades," the spokesperson said.

  • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Abkhazian blogger Daur Buava found dead in Tbilisi

    Abkhazian blogger Daur Buava has been found dead in an apartment in Tbilisi on Thursday night, with the cause of his death currently unknown. Buava was an outspoken proponent of dialogue between Georgians and Abkhazians.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ In full: Tiananmen vigil activist Chow Hang-tung's mitigation after guilty verdict in national security trial | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP

    1. The 206-page judgment, after all, boils down to saying that pursuing democracy is a crime.

  • American Library Association ☛ What Fayetteville Public Library v. Murray Means for Arkansas Libraries - Intellectual Freedom Blog

    It’s no surprise that a group of concerned publishers, booksellers, authors, library associations, libraries, library workers, and library users challenged Sections 1 and 5, saying they were unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. They were concerned that Act 372 would force Arkansas libraries to create and monitor “adult-only” sections and lead library workers to censor materials over fear of criminal charges.

    These plaintiffs challenged the law before it took effect, which is a “facial” challenge. Facial challenges can prevent an unconstitutional law from taking effect, but courts sometimes dismiss such cases in favor of future “as-applied” challenges, which are fact-specific lawsuits filed after the law has taken effect and violated people’s constitutional rights.

  • Dedoimedo ☛ Cherish your physical books and media

    A few weeks ago, I wanted to re-watch The Dictator, with Sacha Baron Cohen. Perhaps his best work. I loaded the movie on a streaming service, and I noticed its unusual duration. Only 1h 19min. Strange. I distinctly know that I have watched this piece in all its glorious length of 1h 39min. For some reason, someone seems to have decided to prune about 20 minutes of content from this film. Now, technically, it's 20% of a 100min run, which is a lot, but realistically, it's almost 100% of all the funny "controversial" scenes that make The Dictator what it is, for better or worse. The neutered version feels like a parody on some silly fool from a foreign country rather than a witty take on the modern world.

    Then, I noticed a similar trend with lots of other comedies. A few seconds here, a few seconds there, the catalog on streaming services differs from hard-copy versions that I know. Small yet meaningful changes. To what end, one might wonder? Add to that the arbitrary decisions by media giants to discontinue parts of their digital catalogs at whim, decisions to restrict or even remove physical media, and you start wondering. I cannot attribute these phenomena to malice or any grand conspiracies, but my observation sure did reinforce my long-standing choice to buy paper books and DVDs as my now-and-future entertainment. Let's talk.

  • ABC ☛ Beverly Hills substitute teacher's lawsuit against school district claims she was fired over anti-Trump social media post

    "It said, 'Posts which appear to be from your personal account have come to my attention. Please plan to meet with me tomorrow to discuss,'" DeSimone told reporters. "Mr. Horvath told her, look we don't want you here anymore.' She goes, 'Am I fired?' 'Yeah, we don't want you coming back.'"

    Now, nearly two years later, Garratt is suing the district, arguing that it punished her for expressing her political views on her own time and her own Facebook page.

    Garratt is seeking unspecified damages and arguing that the district violated both state labor law and her First Amendment rights.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Zambia opposition leader Brian Mundubile detained following election

    The detention of Brian Mundubile and Makebi Zulu on Thursday risks clouding Lusaka’s credentials as a relatively stable southern African democracy and denting investor confidence in Africa’s second-largest copper producer.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Zambian opposition leader in police custody: state media

    Zambia's national broadcaster reports that Brian Mundubile, who wanted to challenge this month's presidential election results, and his running mate have surrendered to police and are being interviewed.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ Former Stars and Stripes Journalists Sue Pete Hegseth After Firings

    The Pentagon fired three journalists — Publisher Max Lederer, Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte — on Aug. 21 for insubordination. The purge violated their First Amendment rights, the lawsuit alleges.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Environmental journalists in Africa facing violence, says report

    The International Press Institute, a nonprofit that aims to protect media freedom, recorded 26 incidents of attacks and threats in the five months to March. Those reporting critically on natural resource exploitation — especially illegal mining, deforestation, and oil management — were at particular risk, it said.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Three journalists sue Pentagon after being fired from military news outlet

    The three journalists were all employees of Stars and Stripes, which their court filing calls “the U.S. military’s independent news source since the Civil War with a long history of editorial independence, free from news management or censorship by military command”.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Techdirt ☛ ‘Right To Repair’ State Laws Continue To Surge, But Enforcement Remains Nonexistent

    One strange trend I keep seeing however (and this is perpetuated in the Guardian piece): despite major progress on passing new legislative proposals, I’ve yet to see a single state enforce any aspect of a new right to repair law despite absolutely no shortage of corporate offenders. And in several of these states these laws are approaching four or five years of age.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Can Trump affect mail-in voting this fall? What to know about court cases.

    Within days of Mr. Trump signing the order, two lawsuits were filed challenging it, one from a coalition of Democratic states led by California and one from a coalition of advocacy groups. Judge Indira Talwani, a federal judge in Massachusetts, oversaw both cases.

    The Constitution says that “the Times, Places, and Manner” of federal elections “shall be prescribed” by the states. Congress may alter those rules, the document adds, but it is silent on whether the president can. In both cases, Judge Talwani held that Mr. Trump’s order would likely be found unconstitutional and temporarily stayed the order.

  • TruthOut ☛ Trump Admin Eyes Deal to Give Away Yosemite Park Land to Real Estate Firm

    The proposed deal, first reported by NOTUS, would benefit Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a real estate investment company, which owns 83 acres of land adjacent to the park. According to sources with knowledge of the proposal, Kingsbarn would be given the land to allow it to develop a road from its property to one of the more popular destinations in the park, a large grove of ancient sequoia trees just five miles away, to which the property doesn’t currently have easy road access.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Is Trump giving away part of Yosemite National Park to Kingsbarn Realty? What we know so far

    The report states that the discussion to give away the land parcel to Kingsbarn Realty Capital started in the Spring of 2025. The plan is to make the transfer through a "web of limited-liability companies" operated by Kingsbarn, it adds.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Preserve the stuff we own’: how right-to-repair laws are surging across the US

    Even though automakers made concessions more than a decade ago, they have continued to prevent consumers from accessing their vehicle data. That then makes it harder for independent mechanics to diagnose and fix the machines.

  • Elliot Jay Stocks ☛ The search for a Spotify alternative

    About six months ago, I realised I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable paying for our Spotify Premium Family plan. The company had hiked its prices yet again. It had changed its policy to remove any royalty payments to artists with under 1,000 streams a year — despite already taking the number one spot for the worst-paying streaming service (already a low bar). And Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is investing the huge personal profits he’s made from these tactics into AI-powered weaponry. So I decided, like quite a few folks have recently, that it was time to look for an alternative streaming service.

    And in those six months, I’ve been trying pretty much all of them. This post is intended to serve as a non-exhaustive list of considerations for anyone else of doing the same. (Because it was exhausting, believe me.)

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘It brings me joy’: how young people are making CDs cool again

    This tallies, of course, with sales of CDs themselves. A report this year found that the growth of CD sales is up 16%, compared with vinyl’s 2.4%. HMV reports that sales of CDs are up 10% year on year – thanks to artists often providing unique content on the format. “K-pop has been a massive driver, with BTS the most obvious example of artists that have led the resurgence,” says the managing director, Phil Halliday. “But it goes much wider than that. We’re seeing very strong CD demand around artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande and Olivia Dean.”

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • India Times ☛ Google spam policy: Google changes spam policy in EU to avert antitrust fine

    The US tech giant found itself in EU regulators' crosshairs after publishers complained ‌about its ⁠site reputation abuse ⁠policy.

    It targets the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site in an attempt to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of the host site's ranking signals, commonly referred to as parasite SEO.

  • Robert Reich ☛ The Truth Behind Your High Electricity Bills

    Private utility companies like PG&E, Duke, and Exelon control electricity for nearly 70% of Americans — and they’re using that monopoly power to drive up your bills while pocketing record profits.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Belgian Orders Demand Pirate Site Operators' Bank Details, Crypto Wallets and Server Logs

      Over the past two years, Belgium's anti-piracy blocklist has grown past 1,500 domains. This week the government's anti-piracy department expanded its effort, ordering domain registrars and a registry to hand over names, bank accounts, crypto wallets and connection logs linked to pirate site operators. The intermediaries are not allowed to inform their customers about these efforts.