Leftovers

• Martin Chang ☛ Mapping the Geminispace (while in search of alien lifeform)

  .. a while later, it turns out that it can't find suspicious AI activity on the Geminispace. Which is reassuring - at least the containment failure is not so bad that even the small web is affected. On the other hand, the crawler does respect robots.txt and has to block crawling git repositories and Gemini games to make it finish in a reasonable amount of time.

• Chi Señires ☛ September 2026 Updates

  I did mention this in my previous post—and lol I said I’d write something in the few days after that but this took me a month to get back to—but it’s now a bit more official: I’ve stepped down as Friends of Figma, Manila1 User Group Leader, technically effective around July 2026 but it was more formally processed August 2026 😆 The new leader is Jasmae Mino! 👏

• Charalampos Kardaris ☛ Icons

  Publishing a side project requires completing a lot of different tasks. The creator needs to wear many different hats. Apart from architecting and programming the application, they have to think about the user interface and the user experience, write the documentation, promote the project in the various public channels and more.

  All the roles are bound to one person. Every role is important.

• NPR ☛ 60 years later, 'Star Trek' continues to 'live long and prosper'

  But after its third season, the network canceled the series. Shatner says Star Trek fans rallied to return it to the air. In syndication, the show continued its popularity, leading to prequels, sequels on TV and in film, video games, podcasts and fan fiction.

• Declan Chidlow ☛ Antiquated HTML Snippets and Artefacts

  With ever-changing devices, browsers, operating systems, form factors, specifications, personal preferences, tooling, and corporate interests, the web is in a constant state of flux. As a result, so is the HTML we write. For every line of the HTML specification itself that has changed since the language’s inception, there are many more bits of HTML that have seen what I’ll call ‘environmental’ changes. Adaptations to differing browsers, extensions, integrations, and systems which we find HTML existing in.

  This article doesn’t cover once-specced but now obsolete bits of HTML but instead looks at all the snippets that have wormed their way into websites as result of, or in combat against, third-party integrations, browser competition, vendor extensions, and platform-specific hacks. The bits of HTML that were included for reasons, and which have been forgotten for present irrelevance. The snippets that live on only in the markup of sites from bygone eras and in the minds of those who fought during the browser wars.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • LRT ☛ Lithuanian students outperform two thirds of their peers in latest PISA assessment

    Lithuanian 15-year-olds performed above the average of OECD countries in mathematics, reading, science and information problem-solving in the latest PISA assessment, ranking ahead of more than two-thirds of participating countries, officials said Tuesday.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Latest PISA survey reveals 4 in 10 Mexican students do not meet basic level in science, math and reading

    The 41.8% of Mexican students aged 15 who scored below the basic level in the science/math/reading triad was more than double the 19.7% average of all countries in the OECD.

  • Latvia ☛ Latvia's education system is not top of the class

    Latvian students' performance in science, mathematics and reading have deteriorated to a new low, but digital skills are better than the average of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, according to the latest edition of the important 'PISA' educational rankings.

  • Terence Tao ☛ Finite time blowup with smooth forcing term for the incompressible porous medium, Boussinesq, and incompressible Euler equations

    The basic strategy, due to Cordoba and Martínez-Zoroa, is to iteratively build up the solution to such equations in stages, repeatedly adding small high frequency corrections to a previous (forced) solution in a manner that makes the solution more singular towards the blowup time while keeping the forcing term well behaved. Rather than work with any specific equation, let’s work with a completely abstract equation

    \displaystyle N(u) = f

    where u is the solution, N is the nonlinear differential operator representing the equation of motion, and f is the forcing term. Of course this is far too general a setting to perform a full analysis, but it should suffice for this brief post.

  • TecAdmin ☛ What are Pythagorean Triples? 3-4-5, 5-12-13 Explained

    You already know the Pythagoras Theorem says a² + b² = c². But sometimes the three sides come out as nice whole numbers, with no decimals and no square root left over. These special number sets are called Pythagorean Triples.

  • TecAdmin ☛ How to Find the Hypotenuse of a Right Triangle

    The hypotenuse is the longest side of a right-angled triangle, sitting directly opposite the 90° corner. If you know the other two sides, you can always work it out — no measuring needed.

  • TecAdmin ☛ How to Find the Missing Side of a Right Triangle

    In a right-angled triangle, knowing any two sides is enough to work out the third. But the method changes depending on which side is missing. If the hypotenuse is missing you add; if a shorter side is missing you subtract.

  • TecAdmin ☛ What is the Converse of Pythagoras Theorem?

    The Pythagoras Theorem starts with a right-angled triangle and tells you about its sides. The converse of Pythagoras Theorem works backwards: it starts with three side lengths and tells you whether the triangle has a right angle at all.

  • Science Alert ☛ One of America's Most Widely Consumed Ingredients Linked to Metabolic Changes And Obesity

    "It's not the oil itself ... It's what the fat turns into inside the body."

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Uncover a Surprising Gut Connection in Fatal Asthma

    The lungs may not be where a fatal asthma attack begins.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Are Making Concrete With Human Poop – And It Gets 42% Stronger

    Wait, what?

  • Science Alert ☛ A Neuroscientist Just Challenged One of The Brain's Biggest Assumptions

    It's complicated.

  • Science Alert ☛ A Low-Plastic Diet Has Detectable Impacts on Urine Levels Within a Week, New Experiment Shows

    A hopeful sign.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Had People Eat Tomato Paste For 3 Months. Their Brain Scans Looked Different.

    It contains a powerful antioxidant.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Create a New Form of Ice at More Than 2,000 °C

    ... What?

• Career/Education

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ PISA test reveals alarming drop in reading and math skills

    Between 2015 and 2025, reading skills have seen the most significant decline, decreasing by 28 points in OECD countries, and by 16 points in the other participating countries and economies.

    Scores in math have dropped by 22 points across the OECD on average, compared to a decline of 8 points in the rest of the world.

    In science, the focus of the 2025 PISA assessment, a seven-point decline was measured in OECD countries, while the performances in other countries and economies remained broadly stable.

  • Spectator AU ☛ Claude ate my homework

    And the longer they used AI, the worse it got. After two years, scores on China’s high-school entrance exam were down 24 per cent and college entrance exam scores 18 per cent.

    The likely culprit is something researchers call cognitive offloading: outsourcing a task to free up your own working memory.

  • International Business Times ☛ England's Pupils Now Outread France, Finland as Global Reading Slump Deepens

    The PISA 2025 results show how widespread that decline has been. Across OECD countries, the average reading score fell 14 points between 2022 and 2025, from 477 to 463. Thirty-three of the 41 highest-performing education systems recorded a significant drop.

    Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's director of education and skills, said teenagers' ability to read complex texts had fallen by the equivalent of two school years over the past decade. He described reading as the 'mother of all skills'.

  • Phirephoenix ☛ things I wish every event organizer would do for their event listings

    Another side effect of running a community calendar for a year and a half is that I now have quite a lot of Opinions™ about how events are promoted online. At time of writing, Show Up has posted over 3,100 events from over 900 groups, and I’ve easily looked at another half as many that weren’t good fits. These opinions are, shall we say, painfully acquired.

    Here’s what I wish every event organizer would do for their event listings.

  • David Roessli ☛ Smashing Conference Freiburg 2026

    I’m grateful to be able to take part in events such as these, meeting up with friends, being inspired by the stories being shared, discovering new tools, sharing thoughts and feelings on our industry has always been a big booster for me.

  • New York Public Library ☛ The Adventures of the REAL Winnie-the-Pooh | The New York Public Library

    The New York Public Library is celebrating 100 years since the publishing of Winnie-the-Pooh this fall! Join us for an anniversary display featuring original illustrations from the books, visit the stuffed toys that inspired them, attend a very special birthday event, and more. Explore everything the Library has to offer.

  • New York Public Library ☛ The New York Public Library Is Celebrating 100 Years of Winnie-the-Pooh, One of the World’s Most Famous Children’s Book | The New York Public Library

    The Library will also mark this literary milestone with a fall display of its collection items related to the famous bear. Opening on September 10 during Library Open House Week, Silly Old Bear! Winnie-the-Pooh at 100, a special pop-up display showcasing the origins of a classic story that continues to draw new fans, will open to the public at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 42nd Street. It will remain open through November 30.

  • New York Public Library ☛ Silly Old Bear! Winnie-the-Pooh at 100 | The New York Public Library

    Born out of the bedtime stories that English author A.A. (Alan Alexander) Milne invented for his son Christopher Robin Milne—and featuring characters modeled in part on Christopher’s stuffed toys—Winnie-the-Pooh enchanted audiences with its simple but thought-provoking tales, set mostly within the fictional Hundred Acre Wood. Readers were equally taken with illustrator E.H. Shepard’s charming, innovative line drawings, which provided dynamic, whimsical representations of the characters’ many follies and foibles.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Students who don’t use AI are ahead on every measure

    Around the world, results have gone down over the past ten years. But PISA includes an AI measurement. How do students do when they use the chatbot in school?

    It turns out that winners don’t do chatbots. The graphs show that students with little or no AI use trounce the students who do use the AI: [...]

  • AOb ☛ Reading performance of Dutch 15-year-olds declines again

    The reading performance of Dutch fifteen-year-olds has not improved over the past three years; it declined further in 2025 compared to 2022. International research shows this. Scores did not improve in the exact sciences, natural sciences, and mathematics either.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Tech enthusiast finds $12,000 stack of RAM in their garage — work let them keep an old server stuffed with 1,920GB of DDR4

    A computing enthusiast found a fat stack of DDR4 RAM sticks that might be worth $10,000 in their garage.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ NEC has quietly quit quantum computing hardware development, report claims — company says it will continue to evaluate practical applications and industrialization of quantum technologies

    NEC reportedly quits development of quantum computers, but plans to explore practical applications for such systems.

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ The Pilot Custom 743 With FA Nib Review

    Anyway, this time, we’re taking a look at the Pilot Custom 743 with the Falcon or FA nib. I am a big fan of Pilot’s golden nibs: they have never failed me and they’re smooth yet provide a rich writing experience. Yet this time, I was “chasing nibs, not pens”, so I planned on acquiring an FA nib. The unique draw (ha!) of such a nib is the fact that the tines can spread with a bit of applied pressure, thereby producing a great variety of line thicknesses. That sounds complicated, but seeing is believing, so let me just paste in my review written in my notebook to get you to run out and buy one for yourself.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ This founder is teaching chips how to recycle (their energy)

    Throughout the history of the computer chip, engineers have treated waste heat as an inevitable cost of a calculation. Hannah Earley, however, thinks it’s a design choice. Earley, 31, is cofounder and chief technology officer of Vaire Computing, a startup building chips that recycle energy usually thrown away as heat—a strategy known as reversible computing.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Digital Music News ☛ Live Nation, AEG, Radiohead’s Philip Selway Back New $370,000 Touring Mental Health Fund

    The Music Industry Therapist Collective launches an industry-funded occupational health program for artists and crew on small- and mid-scale tours. The Music Industry Therapist Collective CIC (MITC) has launched the Pay It Forward Fund, an industry-funded, free-at-source, occupational health program for artists and crew on small- and mid-scale tours.

  • Science Alert ☛ WHO Issues New Guidelines on How to Reduce Dementia Cases by 45%

    With 14 risk factors we can target.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Find How Long You Can Sit Before Cancer Risk Climbs – And We're in Trouble

    A first-of-its-kind study published in PLOS Medicine shows that the way we break up and accumulate periods of prolonged rest throughout the day may have a huge impact on health.

    Most striking of all, researchers found that for every extra hour of prolonged sitting in the day, people in the study faced a significantly higher risk of cancer and cancer mortality.

    "What our data shows is that sitting for more than 30 minutes at a time is particularly linked to a higher risk of cancer," says epidemiologist and senior author Frederick Ho from the University of Glasgow.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Britain’s Health Crisis Is Becoming a Political Crisis

    The latest figures are extraordinary. Healthy life expectancy in the United Kingdom has fallen to its lowest level since the present Office for National Statistics series began in 2011 to 2013. A boy born today can expect around 60.7 years of good health; for a girl, the figure is 60.9. Yet even these averages conceal the more disturbing story. In the most deprived areas of England, healthy life expectancy is just 49.8 years for men and 48.2 for women. In the least deprived areas, it reaches 69.2 and 68.5 years, respectively. Measured across the deprivation gradient, the gap is 19.3 years for men and 20.1 for women.

  • Vintage Everyday ☛ 25 Amazing Photographs of Horse-Drawn Combine Harvesters From the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

    During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, horse-drawn combine harvesters reached their absolute peak of scale and complexity, transforming vast agricultural landscapes like the American West and Pacific Northwest. Facing a major rural labor shortage after the California Gold Rush, manufacturers pushed mechanical boundaries to engineer giant, wooden “pull-type” behemoths that relied entirely on massive teams of animals for power.

  • PC World ☛ Why I'm a standing desk convert: 6 ways it leveled up my life

    I’m a standing desk evangelist. Ask anyone in my life who’s a desk worker and they’ll tell you that I’ve badgered them about switching. Whether it’s expensive or affordable, it doesn’t matter—just get one!

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Where’s the Beef (Coming From)?

    “Mary had a little lamb, but when she saw it sicken, she sent it off to Packingtown, and now it’s labeled chicken.”

    Hi, Paul Krugman here. That’s a little ditty that was circulating, I can’t find any original source, around 1905, when Upton Sinclair published “The Jungle” — about the meatpacking industry, one of the sort of founding documents of the progressive movement.

    The topic today is Donald Trump and beef, because here we are back in Upton Sinclair territory.

  • David Pogue ☛ “Bummer of a Summer”: Interview with the Chopt Salad founders

    The thing is, these salad restaurants do not use iceberg lettuce. They were innocent bystanders in a consumer panic.

    Today, I’m offering something different for “Pogue’s Posts”: a 13-minute video interview with Colin McCabe and Tony Shure, cofounders of Chopt, in which they discuss what it was like to be caught in the crossfire. It’s the first time I’ve featured a video interview, and I’d love to know what you think of this format!

    Here’s a transcript.

• Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware

  • Qt ☛ Qt Design Studio 4.8.3 Released

    Qt Design Studio 4.8.3 Is Here! Qt Design Studio 4.8.3 is a maintenance release that builds on foundations of 4.8.2: a round of improvements to the Figma design workflow from both ends of the pipeline, fixes to property editing for Qt for MCUs projects, and a refreshed set of Hey Hi (AI) models.

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

    • Olaf Alders ☛ Who Handles Your Security Reviews?

      LLMs are very good at finding exploits, but they're also really good at creating them — just like humans. So who handles your security reviews?

    • Futurism ☛ AI School Hooking Children Up to Heart Monitor in Front of Class While Playing Critiques of Their Work

      "It's pretty clear that there's an absence of any moral compass at all."

    • Futurism ☛ Fashion Founder Emily Oberg Says She Tried Using Hey Hi (AI) for Photo Shoots, and It Was a Failure Because It Will “Never Possess Good Taste” Like Humans Do

      "The smartest Hey Hi (AI) in the world can learn everything there is to know about taste and style, but the feeling will never be there."

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Security Week ☛ Party’s Over for Crypto Scammers Who Went on a Spending Spree After a $240 Million Bitcoin Theft

      The scammers purchased fleets of sports cars, flew on private jets, hired security guards and rented mansions in Miami and the Hamptons.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Thailand arrests 12 South Koreans in scam centre bust

      Around 40 suspects accused of call centre scams have been arrested in Thailand since 2015.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China’s top court posts guidelines on deepfakes, voice cloning, algorithmic price discrimination

      China’s top court issued guidelines on Monday covering a range of emerging pitfalls associated with artificial intelligence, including unauthorised deepfakes and voice cloning, state media reported. The move provides judicial guidance for AI-related disputes in China, which is currently engaged in an intense competition with the United States for dominance in the key technology.

  • Confidentiality

    • Digital Music News ☛ Hybe’s Weverse Suffers Major ‘Personal Data Leak,’ Tees Up ‘Full Investigation’ to ‘Minimize Exposed Information’

      Hybe’s Weverse has acknowledged suffering a “personal data leak” affecting north of 420,000 accounts’ purchase details and more. The superfan app’s president, Zooil Yang, just recently disclosed the breach and outlined the compromised information in a general notice.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Belgian-Chinese semiconductor researcher arrested over alleged GaN trade-secret theft — prosecutors suspect BelGaN insiders transferred chip IP to China before the company collapsed

    Belgian authorities have arrested a former BelGaN researcher on suspicion of industrial espionage, alleging that proprietary gallium nitride semiconductor technology was transferred to a Chinese rival as the Belgian chipmaker headed toward bankruptcy.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea says monitoring North Korea border incursions, maintains readiness

    A report had said North Korean troops were sighted crossing the military demarcation line more than 20 times in August.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Conflict over Taiwan would be disastrous, de facto US ambassador says

    The upcoming US-China summit is an opportunity to avoid miscalculations, the top US diplomat in Taipei said.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • New York Times ☛ Hungary Expels 10 Russian Diplomats, Signaling a Shift

      The housecleaning puts the new government more in line with how European allies relate to Moscow, tempering cozy ties developed under Viktor Orban’s administration.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania’s abstention in UN world map vote is down to shade of Crimea, FM says

      The UN General Assembly has approved a new world map designed to more accurately depict the relative size of the world’s continents, enlarging Africa while reducing the apparent size of North America and Europe. Lithuania was in a minority of not supporting the resolution.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Kremlin says Russia will not consider Tokyo's request to dismantle new World War Two memorial

      MOSCOW, Sept 8 - The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia will not consider Japan's request to dismantle a new World War Two memorial in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk.

    • The Straits Times ☛ China, Russia stress strategic ties with North Korea in anniversary messages to Kim

      Kim also received congratulatory messages from leaders of several other countries.

    • LRT ☛ Baltic states discuss joint response to Russian, Belarusian grain transit

      Lithuania is discussing a joint response with Latvia and Estonia to efforts to transit Russian and Belarusian grain through the Baltic states, Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said Tuesday.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

      Authorities accuse the 36-year-old and co-conspirators of collecting more than 5,000 victim login credentials to various banks.

    • New York Times ☛ Russia Bombards Kyiv Soon After Witkoff, Kushner Leave

      Russia agreed not to bomb Ukraine’s capital during Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s visit there. The respite was short-lived.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Pounds Ukrainian Capital, Killing At Least 5, Hours After US Envoys Depart

      Russia hammered the Ukrainian capital with drones and ballistic missiles, killing at least five people in a major attack hours after White House envoys left Kyiv amid a renewed push for peace negotiations.

    • RFERL ☛ Top Ukrainian Prosecutor Resigns Amid Corruption Allegations

      Ukraine's top prosecutor said he had submitted his resignation as anti-corruption investigators homed in on an embezzlement scheme connected to a top official in the prosecutor's office.

    • LRT ☛ EU foreign policy chief on US envoys’ Moscow visit: Russia is not interested in peace

      EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Monday she hoped US negotiators who visited Kyiv over the weekend had seen for themselves that Russia is not genuinely interested in ending its war against Ukraine.

    • France24 ☛ Missiles or mediation? Convicted Felon envoys shuttle between Russia and Ukraine

      Exactly two months ago, Ukraine’s momentum was all the talk at a Nato summit in Turkey. What with its long-range drones and The Insurrectionist’s surprise announcement that the US would allow Kyiv to produce Patriot anti-ballistic missiles on home soil. That was then. This is now: Convicted Felon's deal's yet to materialize, Russia’s ramped up cruise missile launches and Ukraine’s run out of air defenses to stop them. Moscow's also failing to stop incoming missiles. What happens in war when for both sides, offense proves better than defense?

    • France24 ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man tells Putin he wants swift end to Ukraine war, Kremlin says

      US President The Insurrectionist told Russian President Vladimir Putin he wanted a swift end to the Ukraine war, the Kremlin said, arguing that peace could pave the way for a broad restoration of US-Russia ties. The hour-long call Tuesday followed weekend talks by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow and Kyiv to try to revive stalled peace efforts.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • France24 ☛ Key post-9/11 air toxicity information was kept secret for 25 years

    New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani released tens of thousands of previously undisclosed documents on Tuesday detailing what city officials knew about toxic air after the September 11 attacks, as the 25th anniversary approaches and thousands continue to suffer from related illnesses.

• Environment

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Nepal flood death toll rises to 1,357 as rescuers scour tunnels

    The death toll from Nepal’s devastating flood rose on Tuesday to 1,357, with 5,326 people still missing, the country’s disaster authority said nearly two weeks after the August 26 disaster.

  • New York Times ☛ Southern California Is Hot and Steamy Again

    Temperatures soared across the region on Tuesday. The muggy weather will get worse before it gets better.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Strategist ☛ Electrification of Australian mining is crucial for making the industry energy secure

      If the need to electrify Australian mining wasn’t clear before the 2026 Iran crisis, it is now. The industry must stop relying on imported diesel and advance towards energy security.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysian data centres guzzle more power as temperatures soar

      Malaysia plans to retire the last of its coal-fired power plants by 2044.

    • New York Times ☛ Chinese Ship Takes Arctic Shortcut: Smart Business? Or a Political Flex?

      Melting ice is opening a trade route through the Arctic. China has begun the first regular service, part of its polar ambitions.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Five dead after helicopter crashes in northern Sarawak

      Four Malaysian health ministry personnel and one pilot were on board the helicopter.

    • New York Times ☛ They Fled Cuba for Better Lives. They Were Cut Short by a Cargo Plane.

      Days after an Amazon cargo jet plowed into a van at Miami International Airport, killing five, portraits of the victims started to emerge.

    • Futurism ☛ Amazon Cargo Jet Crashes Just Feet From Parking Lot Full of Tesla Cybercabs, Killing Five

      What were they doing there?

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ China’s Pooh-tin tells UK’s Burnham they have more common interests than differences

    Their Sept 8 call was the first publicly known conversation between the two leaders.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Goods from Mexico now make up almost one-fifth of the US import market

    Mexico's share of the $332.92 billion U.S. import market in July was 18.2%, ahead of Canada (10.1%) and more than double that of China (8.1%).

  • Enrico Zini: Financial risks in 2026

    I asked the banker who is my reference at the bank something like this:

    Give that we are talking about the consequences of the tantrum of a fascist foreign government, what happened to them (who are also people close and dear to me), in some future can very well happen to me.

    Suddenly my risk profile shot up under the roof.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Straits Times ☛ Mao, Cultural Revolution cast long shadow over China 50 years on

    BEIJING, Sept 9 - China on Wednesday marked half a century since the death of Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic, who brought roughly a quarter of the world's population under Communist Party rule and whose spectre still haunts China's future.

  • New York Times ☛ Tung Chee-hwa, Who Led Hong Kong After Its Return to China, Dies at 89

    As the first leader of the former British colony after its handover, he balanced the demands of Beijing and Hong Kongers, making it clear that Beijing was now in charge.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's first leader under Chinese rule, dies at 89

    HONG KONG, Sept 8 - \"For the first time in history, we, the people of Hong Kong, will be master of our own destiny.\" On July 1, 1997, Tung Chee-hwa delivered his first speech as chief executive of the territory, following its handover from the United Kingdom to China.

  • France24 ☛ Kenya cracks down on foreign traders

    In tonight's edition, Hundreds of Burundians flocked to ⁠their embassy in ​Nairobi to get travel documents to return home. Also, in his first speech to the National assembly, Senegal’s Prime Minister Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo slams the rise of xenophobic rhetoric on the continent. And I speak to the founder of an Hey Hi (AI) surgical non-profit of the work being done in Tanzania to extend the reach of the country's 27 over burdened neurosurgeons.

  • New York Times ☛ Why Politics Has Become So Frenzied

    The political historian Anton Jäger on his theory of “hyperpolitics.”

  • The Straits Times ☛ ‘Have some shame’: Philippines slams China after memo mishap

    The bizarre incident was captured on video at the Seoul Defence Dialogue on Sept 8.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Futurism ☛ Dolly Parton’s Sister Begs Public to Stop Posting “Fake Hey Hi (AI) Garbage” in the Wake of the Beloved Singer’s Death

      "it's been challenging to absorb and or ignore."

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Straits Times ☛ Australia sees no threat to US ties after White House criticism of social control media reforms

    Australia said on Wednesday it sees no risk to its relationship with the United States after reports that the Convicted Felon administration criticised Canberra's plans to target social control media algorithms, which critics say would curtail free speech.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Straits Times ☛ Search resumes for missing Indonesian journalists on volcano mission

    The journalists were on a mission to capture photos of the eruption of Mount Anak Krakatau.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Scoop News Group ☛ In most cities, nobody owns the whole network

    July’s intrusions reached water controllers that sat on a cellular link no city network scan would find. Naming an owner and paying for the fix are decisions a utility can make this fiscal year, out of money it already applies for.

  • Internet Society ☛ Community Snapshot—August

    Our community works locally, regionally, and globally to keep the Internet a force for good. We are highlighting a couple of their initiatives from August.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Sony threatens to cut off customer support and pursue legal action over harassment as backlash to PlayStation’s physical-disc phaseout intensifies — company to move forward with no disc decision despite several lawsuits

    Sony Japan has introduced a customer-harassment policy as anger continues over PlayStation’s plan to phase out physical game discs by 2028.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Patents

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ CAFC Oral Args

      preview of four patent monopoly cases with oral arguments before the federal circuit on Sept 8, 2026.

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ It’s Down There Somewhere: Viavi’s Section 285 Fee Award Affirmed

      The Federal Circuit affirms a Section 285 fee award against Viavi: no rule requires reverse engineering, but the accused phones were easy to buy.

    • Software Patents

      • Linux Magazine ☛ Advanced Video Coding Still Under Patent

        Brazilian patent monopoly BRPI0109962B1 has expired, which means that DivX and Xvid are no longer problematic for Linux, but it doesn’t mean that video is all of a sudden fully unleashed.

      • Unified Patents ☛ App-Pop-Up GUI patents being investigated

        The team at Unified is using Pearl to identify and chart prior art against patents owned by App-Pop-Up Incorporated.

  • Trademarks

    • Right of Publicity

      • NYPost ☛ Ric Flair files $10 million lawsuit against talent agency he alleges hoodwinked him out of his digital identity

        Wrestling legend Ric Flair is suing a digital 'influencers" talent agency he claims hoodwinked him out of his image and likeness.

  • Copyrights

    • Public Domain Review ☛ The Ties that Bind: Central Asian Ikat (ca. 19th century)

      Vibrant textiles from the dazzling Timurid metropolis of Bukhara.

    • Digital Music News ☛ AFM v. Universal Music and Warner Music Legal Battle Continues — Union Fires Back Against the Majors’ Aggressive Dismissal Push

      Amid an intensifying Hey Hi (AI) licensing legal battle with Universal Music and Warner Music, the AFM is firing back against the majors’ dismissal arguments – including by maintaining that the relevant provision of their labor contract “is reasonably susceptible to more than one interpretation.”