Leftovers

• David Bushell ☛ RSS Club #009: Domains – David Bushell

  I’ve lost track of how many domains I’ve bought for a year and never used. “Buying” is the wrong terminology. “Renting” or “leasing” should be legally enforced.

• Kyle Labriola ☛ Thinking Back on Rick and Morty

  Weirdly enough, I do remember where I was when Rick and Morty premiered.

  I was in my second semester of my sophomore year of college. At the time, I was at the Rochester Institute of Technology, majoring in Illustration (but considering a switch to Animation) in hopes of maybe pursuing TV Animation as a career. Game development and animated films felt like pipe dreams, but maybe I would be good enough for the TV cartoon pipeline.

• Ruben Schade ☛ A decluttering retrospective

  One thing I have done since is be a bit smarter about what I store. I realised last year that I was storing MP3 versions of FLAC files, when really I could just keep and use the latter. I also actively use more ZFS-specific features because they save space and time.

  But who knows? If hardware prices remain stubbornly high thanks to slop fondlers, I may need to revise this when the drives fill up. Fingers crossed we can keep using what we currently have for a while yet.

• Zach Manson ☛ notes: email

  Email is infuriating until you realise it's just paper that can teleport, and each reply is also just paper, and it has all the same strengths and weaknesses of letters written on paper.

  Which makes it immediately clear why email is so bad at being a group chat.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A Finnish Metal Detectorist Was Shocked to Unearth a Trove of Viking Age Silver in His Hometown. Then His Detector Went Off Again

    The next day, Esko Tikkala, an archaeologist at the nearby Lahti City Museums, arrived to inspect and excavate the artifacts. According to a statement from the museums, the collection includes a fragment of hacksilver, a silver bracelet, a silver charm, a silver bead and many silver coins—which have not yet been cleaned, separated or counted. The coins alone weigh just under ten pounds; experts say there must be thousands.

  • Daniel Estévez ☛ Decoding the Roman Space Telescope

    I planned the observation for 2026-08-31, between 05:00 and 09:30 UTC, which is the first time that the spacecraft would be visible from the ATA and above the 16 degree elevation mask of the antennas. During this observation the spacecraft was at a distance of roughly 200000 km. The plot below shows the azimuth and elevation used for antenna tracking, and the distance to the object.

  • Hackaday ☛ The Heavy Disco-Ball Satellite Designed To Do… Nothing

    The lens-like objects covering the surface of LAGEOS-1 are corner cube retroreflectors, which have the nifty effect of always reflecting incident light right back towards its source.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Atlantic Ocean Has a Hidden 'Heat Valve' That Controls Earth's Temperature – And It Could Be Closing

    Here we go.

  • Science Alert ☛ A Man Went to Hospital With Blood in His Urine. Doctors Found a Needle in His Heart.

    Somehow, it kept beating.

  • Futurism ☛ China Deploys Rare Type of Space Junk That Pollutes Orbit for Hundreds of Years

    Oh, great.

  • Science Alert ☛ Physicists Just Turned The Entire Planet Into a Dark Matter Detector – And Strange Signals Kept Turning Up

    Just axion questions.

  • Science Alert ☛ Astronomers Spotted a 'Bear' on Mars

    Oh my!

  • Science Alert ☛ Researchers Discover a Green Hydrogen 'Goldmine' Beneath Australia's Red Dirt

    "Could be transformative for our energy future."

• Career/Education

  • Greece ☛ Digital nomads seeking peace and quiet

    As tourism market executives note, digital nomads and remote work in general experienced an explosive increase during the pandemic, but this trend does not seem to be abating. “Quite the opposite. We are seeing more coworking spaces opening, especially in slightly more rural destinations such as Arcadia, Kalamata, Ioannina, Volos, Chios, Corfu, but also in Leros and Kastoria,” they tell Kathimerini.

  • Alisa Sireneva ☛ Don't call yourself an artisanal programmer

    Which is where the dichotomy falls apart in my eyes. By the book, I’m an artisanal coder, since I don’t use LLMs. But if the industry calls the opposite of “artisanal programmer” a “software engineer”, isn’t there a subtext that I’m not an engineer? This may seem like a minor point, but it matters on a subconcious level. Care, attention, and precision are the defining characteristic of engineering – so why is this term appropriated by people who are becoming closer and closer to managers?

    Back in my day (ahem), developers hated management that wouldn’t allocate time to dealing with tech debt, and the “move fast and break things” attitude was considered childish. Nowadays, common knowledge among developers says that vibecoding (I’m using the term loosely) is the norm, and wasting time on reliability work is unserious. Who is in the right?

  • Jason Becker ☛ Media Literacy is Dead

    People today have no attention span. They can't handle having a second screen near by. They don't appreciate character development.

    We need people to read books again so they understand how this stuff works. And I don't mean the people online who thinks its gatekeeping to say when you read a book, yes, you have to read all the words in the book, not just the dialog.

  • James G ☛ Perspective

    The perspective of the painting; the painting of perspective; the perspective of the viewing. The contrasts of the colours between canvases. The contrasts of light between rooms.

  • Mat Duggan ☛ I Am a Flat-Rate Monthly Responsibility Service

    If you like to test and iterate on your theories as you work, software is a dream. I don’t need a lab, or equipment, or really anything other than any laptop ever made. It’s like being a scientist if the only thing you needed was one test tube, one beaker, and some loose mercury rolling around on your desk.

    The driver for me going further and further down the stack was that you don’t get a rush for solving the same problem twice. The first time I diagnosed a blown capacitor on a videocard, there’s a rush. The tenth time, it’s just a job. Fixing problems in a GUI was good for a while, but eventually, you want harder problems that exist exclusively inside of CLIs. Debugging closed-source software is boring because you capture the logs and produce a bug report like a good little citizen. Open-source software lets you go right down to the metal.

  • Protesilaos Stavrou ☛ The courage of the polymaths

    The polymath has courage in that they are prepared to move outside the comfort zone of any given specialisation. They have the audacity to draw linkages that others do not discern, not as a matter of superior intellect but as a result of trying in earnest. By “polymath” I apply the term in its original meaning, the one who has knowledge of many things, without implying that such a person is necessarily a genius.

• Hardware

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s expanded espionage law takes effect amid push to protect chip technology

    Espionage for a foreign country or organisation will carry a minimum sentence of three years in prison.

  • David Revoy ☛ Gaomon PD1161 V2 - review on GNU/Linux - David Revoy

    So, in the review, I listed that the drawing and painting experience is not terrible compare to almost all other aspect; and my second positive thing about this tablet is that Gaomon made something out of the box for my GNU/Linux KDE Plasma install. Is it because they reuse addresses of a previous model already integrated in the kernel? In udev-hid-bpf? I tried to search, but it was hard to understand where this support comes from.

  • Hackaday ☛ Looking At A TRS-80 12 MB External Hard Drive From 1983

    The connection to the TRS-80 computer is handled by a ribbon cable, while the HDD has its own built-in power supply, rated at 60 Watt.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ GLP-1 Users Are Being Cruelly Shamed by Their Own Families

    "This has been a life-changing drug so far, and I can't share it with the person I'm closest with."

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Gave Cash to Low-Income Moms, And It Altered Their Babies' Aging

    Life-changing.

  • SBS ☛ 'Their kids have never seen their arm': The tattoos people are desperate to remove

    For some clients, the tattoos they want removed carry a darker history — racist symbols, hate-related words and, in some cases, racist slogans.

    For five years, Anderson's clinic has run a charity program offering free removal of these tattoos.

    "We've done al-Qaeda tattoos, we've done swastikas and white power symbols," he says.

  • [Old] BBC ☛ BBC - History - British History in depth: Black Death

    On average, between 30-45% of the general populace died in the Black Death of 1348-50. But in some villages, 80% or 90% of the population died (and in Kilkenny at least, it seems likely that the death-rate was 100%!). A death-rate of 30% is higher than the total British losses in World War I.

    Nor was 1350 the end of it. Plague recurred! It came back in 1361-64, 1368, 1371, 1373-75, 1390, 1405 and continued into the fifteenth century. Death rates in the later epidemics may have been lower than the Black Death, but the sources reveal a new horror: [...]

• Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware

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

    • Futurism ☛ Aging Congress Is Completely Ill-Equipped to Regulate AI, or Seemingly Even Understand It

      "There is a percentage of my colleagues who are still trying to spell AI."

    • Futurism ☛ Werner Herzog Demolishes Talentless Hacks Who Use Hey Hi (AI) to Imitate Other Filmmakers

      "It's mimicry of something that has happened before."

    • France24 ☛ Anthropic boss calls for Hey Hi (AI) slowdown, Altman and MElon agree

      Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Saturday called on artificial intelligence (AI) firms to slow down the development of the powerful technology, amid mounting worries over the risks of "superintelligent" computer systems.

    • RFERL ☛ Anthropic Disrupts Iran's Use Of Claude To Spread Propaganda, Spy On Dissidents

      Anthropic said it has disrupted attempts by Iran to use its artificial intelligence (AI) models to disseminate state propaganda and spy on ethnic minorities and dissidents.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Iran and Houthi rebels used Anthropic's Claude Hey Hi (AI) to target US warships and build hypersonic missiles — Houthi rebels also used the bot to code ballistic missile guidance systems

      'Great Satan's' Hey Hi (AI) comes in handy.

    • New York Times ☛ Why It’s Difficult for Tech Companies to Rein In A.I.

      Researchers say artificial intelligence is developing faster than the systems put in place to monitor and control it.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Security Week ☛ BlueMoon Exploit Kit Chains Recent Chrome, backdoored Windows Zero-Days

      Multiple espionage-motivated threat actors have adopted BlueMoon in opportunistic, rushed deployments.

• Security

  • Redtail Malware Payload: Technical Analysis and Behavior

    RedTail is a multi-architecture Linux malware family with capabilities for extensive host profiling and process masquerading. It establishes persistence through crontabs, modifies host firewall rules, and attempts to interfere with monitoring tools by terminating processes such as inotify and strace. The malware also generates network traffic over DNS-over-TLS on TCP port 853 to potentially reach remote infrastructure.

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ BRICS: What is in the joint statement from the 11 members?

    Members of the 11-nation BRICS group including China, Russia, Iran and India called for calm in the Middle East at a summit in New Delhi on Saturday, overcoming earlier divisions to issue a joint statement.

    Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping, who joined Russian, Iranian, Indian and other leaders in India's capital, told the summit that the Middle East war "does not serve the common interests of the international community".

    France 24's Andrew Hilliar tells us more.

  • France24 ☛ BRICS nations urge 'maximum restraint' in Middle East war

    Members of the 11-nation BRICS group including China, Russia, Iran and India called for calm in the Middle East at a summit in New Delhi on Saturday, overcoming earlier divisions to issue a joint statement.

  • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea fired projectile towards sea, says South Korea

    The North had also fired a barrage of missiles into the sea on Aug 20.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • JURIST ☛ Recruitment of foreign nationals in Russia-Ukraine War amounts to human trafficking, Amnesty International says

      Amnesty International on Thursday condemned Russia’s recruitment of foreign nationals from socio-economically disadvantaged countries to fight in Ukraine as human trafficking, stating that they were primarily recruited via deceptive job offers, had their immigration status exploited, and were handed over to Russian military forces by third-party actors. 

    • RFERL ☛ Zelenskyy Says Latest Russian Missile And Drone Attacks Targeted Civilian Sites Across Ukraine

      A fresh round of Russian strikes on Ukraine killed at least three people and wounded dozens of others over the past 24 hours, Ukraine's president said on September 12, adding that the strikes targeted civilian sites and infrastructure across the country.

    • JURIST ☛ UNDP warns Russian drone attacks on Chernobyl endangers the health and safety of millions

      United Nations Development Program (UNDP) administrator Alexander De Croo on Thursday warned in an interview that frequent drone attacks on the Chernobyl site in Ukraine are “really gambling with the safety of millions of people,” calling for urgent international action to prevent a nuclear catastrophe.

    • Latvia ☛ Is stolen grain from Ukraine being shipped via Latvia?

      If the checks reveal that the relevant grains do come from Ukraine, a month will have passed and the specific cargo will have already moved on in transit. However, the PVD will have information about the carrier and the origin of the grains. "This will be a reason for making other decisions in the future at the European Union level," said Balodis.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Strikes Kill 9 Across Ukraine, As Zelenskyy Offers To Meet Putin At Miami G20

      Russia continued to pound the Ukrainian civilian population, killing at least nine people in attacks throughout the country, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated he'd be willing to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the upcoming G20 summit -- something the Kremlin called “impossible.”

    • France24 ☛ Russia's Putin arrives in India as BRICS leaders begin talks

      President Putin arrived as talks among leaders of the BRICS diplomatic bloc began on Friday in India, amid global geopolitical turmoil, including the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.

• Environment

  • New York Times ☛ Tracing the Path of Nepal’s Flood

    Mujib Mashal, our South Asia bureau chief, travels to points along a river in Nepal that turned into a deadly torrent, killing more than 1,300 people and leaving over 5,000 more missing as entire, towns bridges and roads were swept away.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Children in flood-hit Nepal grapple with loss, cling to hope

    There are more than 500 children separated from their parents.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Clearer skies return to parts of Malaysia but many remain cautious

    For working parents, better air quality means fewer disruptions to their daily routines.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Straits Times ☛ Rescuers searching for 140 people from Indonesia passenger ship, official says

      103 people had been evacuated using different ships and some of them would be taken to an East Java port.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Philippine ferry fire death toll jumps to 76 as identification process begins

      Thirty passengers and 13 crew members have so far been rescued, while 54 people remain unaccounted for.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Science Alert ☛ A Worrying New Trait Has Appeared in an Isolated Cat Species on a Japanese Island

      Scientists aren't sure what's behind it.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • New York Times ☛ Judge Rules Homeland Security Plan to Cut FEMA Staff in Half Is Unlawful

    The judge said the plan would hinder the agency’s ability to respond to disasters.

  • New York Times ☛ Republican Campaign Aide Is Fired Over Nazi Photo

    Senator Jon Husted, running in a high-stakes race in Ohio, dismissed his political director because of social control media activity displaying a “complete lack” of judgment, a spokeswoman said.

  • The Straits Times ☛ India wants to buy fewer Chinese imports, but keeps needing more

    India now buys roughly seven times as much from China as it sells there.

  • The Straits Times ☛ India's Modimir and China's Pooh-tin push business links, border peace as ties revive

    India and China's leaders pledged on Saturday to build up business and transport links, New Delhi said, as both rebuild ties badly damaged by a 2020 military clash on their disputed Himalayan border.

  • The Straits Times ☛ ‘Pacific drugs highway’: Australia’s new plan to target cocaine traffickers moving through islands

    Australia’s move could counter China’s influence in the Pacific, but its aim is primarily to prevent “narco-states”.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • New York Times ☛ How Convicted Felon Is Wielding Power to Stifle Speech

    Hell Toupée has harnessed agencies across the government to curtail press freedoms, a sweeping campaign that free speech advocates say will have lasting effects.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea approves jeans for civil service job interviews but says no to ties, formal dress shoes

    Hiking clothes, athletic wear, shorts, sleeveless tops, high heels and slippers are not recommended.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Patents

    • Much Ado About Injunctions: Redux

      Patent policy debates have raged since 2006 when the Supreme Court decided eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006).