Leftovers

• YLE ☛ Helsinki ranks among top 5 friendliest tourist cities in Europe

  Only the Irish cities of Cork and Dublin and the Italian city of Siena beat out the Finnish capital in a recent Conde Nast Traveller ranking.

• Jim Nielsen ☛ People and Blogs and Me

  He’s already interviewed a series of people, most of whom I was unfamiliar with, so it’s exciting to discover how much larger the world of RSS is!

• Manuel Moreale ☛ People and Blogs

  As I wrote before, my dream is to be able to spend my time helping people going online with their blogs and discover that there are better ways to inhabit the web, and so it would honestly be amazing if this series helped me get there.

• Kev Quirk ☛ Blogs, Gardens, and Thinking Aloud in Public

  Yeah, don’t get it. I write a post, publish it, then rarely edit it again. Reading about what a digital garden is makes me feel like those who have embraced the contecept have simply moved the onus of content curation from the computer/database, to their brain.

• Matt Rickard ☛ The Silent Todo List

  The silent todo list is all of the distractions that sit in front of us. Things that are subtle reminders of non-urgent tasks for some future date. Read-later bookmarks. Endless tabs. A cluttered inbox. A messy desk or computer desktop.

• Elliot C Smith ☛ Write more crappy blog posts

  If you hold off hitting publish until a great idea comes along, your writing probably wont be ready to capture it.

  Why it matters: Every now and then you'll have a thought. One you think is novel enough to be worth sharing. If you are at all compelled to write online, you might be tempted to blog about it. Having an idea you can't quite articulate can be incredibly frustrating. Much like everything else we do, the answer is more practice.

• CBC ☛ How the iconic Lonely Planet travel guides became 'the backpacker's bible'

  This year marks 50 years since the first Lonely Planet book, Across Asia on the Cheap, was published. Lonely Planet was co-founded by married couple Tony and Maureen Wheeler after they embarked on an overland trip through Europe and Asia to Australia.

  Since then, they've published hundreds of the guidebooks, covering destinations on every continent. Now owned by Red Ventures media company, the company has also launched a website, an app and a YouTube channel, among other properties.

• Hackaday ☛ The Eternal Dilemma

  It’s two weeks until Supercon! We can almost smell the solder from here. If you’re coming, and especially if it’s your first time, you’re soon to be faced with the eternal dilemma of hacker cons, only at Supercon it’s maybe a trilemma or even a quadralemma: hang out with folks, work on the badge, go to talks, or show off all the cool stuff you’ve been working on the past year?

• Rick Carlino ☛ My 50-Mile Ultramarathon Packing List

  Ultra-Marathon Packing List That Isn’t SEO Spam

  Every Ultramarathon packing list I found on Google was cluttered with cookie consent banners, email capture forms, ads, and marketing fluff. After running the Des Plaines River 50-Mile Ultra, I’ve decided to publish a cleaner version that genuinely informs you about what to pack instead of enticing you to click on various distractions.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Just 1% of All Possible Chemicals Have Been Discovered. How Can We Find More?

    Check your pockets.

• Hardware

  • Ruben Schade ☛ The Micro 8088, and my dream pedestel machine

    Micro 8088 is an easy to build IBM PC/XT compatible processor board. It uses a fairly common Faraday FE2010/FE2010A chipset, that implements most of IBM PC/XT LSIs (Intel 8xxx ICs) and glue logic. Micro 8088 uses SRAM ICs to implement the system RAM, and a Flash ROM IC to store the BIOS, further reducing the number of components, and simplifying the build process.

  • [Repeat] Dan Langille ☛ Preparing a server for sale – Supermicro 846 – 10 x 5TB HDD

    After powering off the server about 8 months ago, I took the first steps to selling it. I opened it up and took out 2x NVMe sticks (1TB each, ZFS mirrored, giving a 930G zpool) INTEL fiber NIC (Intel X540-AT2) I’ll be keeping those items.

  • Talospace ☛ The next Raptor OpenPOWER systems are coming, but they won't be Power10

    Raptor yesterday officially announced that we're not getting Power10 systems. The idea is we're going to be getting something better: the Solid Silicon S1. It's Power ISA 3.1 and fully compatible, but it's also a fully blob-free OpenPOWER successor to the POWER9, avoiding Power10's notorious binary firmware requirement for OMI RAM and I/O.

  • Hackaday ☛ Atomic Antenna Uses Lasers

    If you think about it, an antenna is nothing more than a radio frequency energy sensor, or — more precisely — a transducer. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there could be different ways to sense RF that would work as an antenna. A recent paper in Applied Physics Letters explains an atomic antenna comprised of a rubidium vapor cell.

  • Hackaday ☛ Bluetooth Device Visualizer Reveals Devices In Vicinity

    Have you ever wondered how many Bluetooth devices are floating around you? You could use one of those creepy retail store Bluetooth tracking systems, or set your smartphone to scan. Alternatively, you could use the Bluetooth Devices Visualizer from [Jeremy Geppert].

  • Hackaday ☛ Building A Robot Bartender For Amazon

    [Audax] built an unassuming side table with a party trick. It could retract a glass inside and fill it up with bourbon. The nifty device gained plenty of positive attention online, leading to a commission from Amazon to build a new version. Thus, [Audax] set about a redesign to create an even more impressive drink delivery system. (Video, embedded below.)

  • Hackaday ☛ PC Case Makes Portable Power Supply

    Recently, we’ve seen a lot of semi-portable power stations. These have some big rechargeable battery and various connection options. [Dereksgc] wanted to make his own and decided the perfect housing would be a small PC tower case. (Video, embedded below.) It makes sense. There are plenty of easy-to-work front panel inserts, a power supply box with an AC cord (the power supply is long gone), and it is big enough to fit the battery. You can see the result in the video below.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AMD's Radeon Technology Group is Reportedly Reducing Its Headcount in China

    AMD is realigning workforce, possibly focusing on datacenter and AI operations.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ U.S. Govt Mulls Blocking China's Access to Cloud GPUs

    U.S. government is mulling to block access of Chinese companies to AI and HPC GPUs in the cloud.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Aren’t milkshakes mixed?

    I suppose milkmixed doesn’t sound as appetising. But then, that etymology leads to the thickshake, which makes even less sense.

    It reminds me of how a food from Hamburg was updated to be called a cheeseburger, despite the original one not being made of ham. James Bond also asked for his Martinis to be shaken nor stirred, though that would make it a Bradford.

  • BBC ☛ Recycling reforms see separate food waste bins for England

    Long-awaited plans to reform recycling in England have been announced by the government.

    Most households will have a weekly food waste collection by early 2026 and there will now be a standardised list of items that councils must recycle.

    The government says the new rules are designed to make recycling simpler and to avoid people needing what it called an "excessive number of bins."

  • VAERS and plasmid DNA “contamination” of COVID-19 vaccines: The nonsense continues

    Unfortunately, I have found myself writing a lot about the antivax false claim that COVID-19 vaccines are causing a wave of “turbo cancer” in young people, mainly because, aside from the usual quacks like Peter McCullough, Harvey Risch, and William Makis, a seemingly “respectable” cancer doctor named Wafik El-Deiry has also been amplifying such claims in the name of “open-mindedness” and wanting to consider “all scientific possibilities.” In brief, the claim is that COVID-19 vaccines are causing “turbo cancer,” which is never really well-defined as a term but seems to mean—in antivax parlance, at least—rapidly growing and unusually aggressive cancers arising de novo or the recurrence of cancers that had been in remission in a particularly aggressive and fast-growing form soon after vaccination with mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. The fantastical mechanisms proposed are many, but most come down to the claim that the vaccines are “contaminated” with plasmid DNA used to make the mRNA used I the vaccines and left over from the manufacturing process and that that plasmid DNA contains SV40 sequences. It’s a conspiracy theory that goes right back to the old conspiracy theory that contamination with SV40 virus found in polio vaccines in the early 1960s was responsible for a wave of cancer decades later. (Hint: It wasn’t. Also, SV40 promoter sequences are not the same thing as the intact SV40 virus, the latter of which is oncogenic.)

  • Science Alert ☛ Groundwater in The US Is Becoming Dangerously Salty, Scientists Warn

    This has been building for decades.

  • Science Alert ☛ Toxic Impact of Lead Exposure Is Much Greater Than We Knew, Report Warns

    A heavy burden.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Understanding the basics of Lambda Function URLs

    This article provides an introductory exploration of Lambda Function URLs. Learn about their definition, discover when and why they are utilized, and delve into key security considerations. Get a solid grasp of this essential aspect of AWS Lambda in a concise and informative read.

  • VPC Peering vs AWS PrivateLink vs Transit Gateway

    In this blog, we explore the methods of inter-VPC communication, comparing VPC peering, AWS PrivateLink, and Transit Gateway. We'll shed light on the unique strengths of each method and help you navigate the best choice for your cloud network architecture. Discover the ideal solution for your cross-VPC connectivity needs.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • JURIST ☛ India Supreme Court acquits woman by upholding her right to reproductive privacy

      The Supreme Court of India overturned the conviction of a woman sentenced to life imprisonment for the alleged murder of her new born child Thursday, holding that a woman could not be compelled to reveal matters relating to her private reproductive choices.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Federal News Network ☛ AP visual analysis: Rocket from Gaza appeared to go astray, likely caused deadly hospital explosion

    An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos found that the deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital Tuesday was likely caused by a rocket fired from inside Palestinian territory that veered off course and broke up in the air before crashing back to the ground. A lack of forensic evidence and the difficulty of gathering that on the ground in the middle of a war means there is no definitive proof the break-up of the rocket and the explosion at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital are linked. However, AP’s assessment is supported by a range of experts with specialties in open-source intelligence, geolocation and rocketry.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Germany: Illegal immigration set to exceed record high

    Data released by the German Federal Police on Saturday showed that 21,366 individuals illegally entered Germany in September.

    The number — the single highest monthly tabulation of "unauthorized entries" into the country since February 2016, when 25,650 came after the peak of the so-called "refugee crisis" — follows a seven-month trend of increasingly high entry numbers.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Social Media’s ‘Frictionless Experience’ for Terrorists

    “For following the war in real-time,” Elon Musk declared to his 150 million followers on X (formerly Twitter) the day after Israel declared war on Hamas, two accounts were worth checking out. He tagged them in his post, which racked up some 11 million views. Three hours later, he deleted the post; both accounts were known spreaders of disinformation, including the claim this spring that there was an explosion near the Pentagon. Musk, in his capacity as the owner of X, has personally sped up the deterioration of social media as a place to get credible information. Misinformation and violent rhetoric run rampant on X, but other platforms have also quietly rolled back their already lacking attempts at content moderation and leaned into virality, in many cases at the cost of reliability.

  • Harvard University ☛ As Students Face Retaliation for Israel Statement, a ‘Doxxing Truck’ Displaying Students’ Faces Comes to Harvard’s Campus

    Amid continued national backlash and doxxing attacks, at least nine of the original 34 co-signing Harvard student groups as of Thursday evening withdrew their signatures from the statement — originally penned by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee — that called Israel “entirely responsible” for the violence. In a later statement, the PSC wrote that it “staunchly opposes” violence against all civilians.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Disinformation before Election: A new challenge for Democracy

    One of the biggest threats to democracy and the integrity of elections is disinformation as it is responsible for creating confusion and a sense of being inundated among voters, ultimately diminishing their trust in the electoral process. It has the potential to shape voters’ perceptions and convictions, thus potentially impacting their actions which serves as a tool to disseminate groundless election denialism, complicating efforts to furnish voters with factual details.

  • Spiegel ☛ Diplomacy on the Precipice

    Few theories have been more popular in recent years than that which posits the end of globalization. Now it turns out that a single spark in the Middle East could quickly expand into a much larger blaze. Biden has already sent two aircraft carriers formations to the eastern Mediterranean – not only as a symbol of solidarity with Israel, but also as warning to Iran and its allied Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon. It doesn't take much imagination to envision a worst-case scenario in which this conflict escalates into a global conflagration.

  • Site36 ☛ Engine failure and crash: Frontex drones in Malta and Greece grounded

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • YLE ☛ New tram line takes inaugural trip from Espoo to Helsinki

      Besides an orchestra marking the occasion, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) was also in attendance for the light rail line's commencement ceremony.

    • The Atlantic ☛ The Real Reason You Should Get an E-bike

      I was very wrong. The first thing I noticed was the savings. Between car payments, insurance, maintenance, and gas, a car-centered lifestyle is expensive. According to AAA, after fuel, maintenance, insurance, taxes, and the like, owning and driving a new car in America costs $10,728 a year. My e-bike, by comparison, cost $2,000 off the rack and has near-negligible recurring charges. After factoring in maintenance and a few bucks a month in electricity costs, I estimate that we’ll save about $50,000 over the next five years by ditching our car.

    • Futurism ☛ Guy Who Stole Billions in Bitcoin Lived a Sad Life

      They then served him with a search warrant and tore his house apart until they found the computer that contained the rest of the 2012 Silk Road theft that netted Zhong 50,000 bitcoins, which ended up being worth a whopping $3 billion. It was the Justice Department's largest crypto seizure to date, and because nobody came forward to claim it, all of the proceeds went into government coffers.

    • CNBC ☛ The secret life of Jimmy Zhong, who stole – and lost – more than $3 billion

      Over the years, the value of the bitcoin stolen by the Silk Road hacker had soared to more than $3 billion, according to court documents. Investigators could track the location of the currency on the blockchain, which is a public ledger of all transactions. But they couldn't see the identity of the new owner of the funds. So they watched and waited for years as the hacker transferred funds from account to account, peeled some away, and pushed some of it through [cryptocurrency] "mixers" designed to obscure the source of the money.

      Finally, Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics company that was tracing the digital wallets containing the stolen Silk Road assets, saw the hacker made a tiny mistake. He transferred around $800 worth to a [cryptocurrency] exchange that followed established banking rules, including so-called know your customer processes, requiring real names and addresses of account holders.

    • Medium ☛ The Energy Dilemma: Bitcoin, AI, and the Power Predicament

      Bitcoin mining, the process that secures the network and validates transactions, has been criticized for its substantial energy use. The energy-intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm employed by Bitcoin miners has led to concerns about its environmental impact.

  • Space/Nature

    • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Just Came Up With a Wild Idea For Making Oxygen on Mars

      And we could use it on Earth too.

    • Science Alert ☛ We May Be Witnessing The Death of Nature, Expert Warns

      Has it come to this?

• Finance

  • Fortune ☛ The laid-off masses have a message for Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Benioff: We’ll never come back

    For some workers, it doesn’t matter how grim the economy is, how dismal the job market, or how thankless their current job. If they were laid off—especially during the pandemic—many workers would never dream of returning to the place that dropped them.

    Tech companies have laid off nearly 245,000 workers this year alone, per tracker Layoffs.fyi, and Silicon Valley heavyweights like Meta and Salesforce have led the pack, each culling thousands of jobs apiece.

  • New York Times ☛ How $17.2 Million in Gold and Cash Disappeared From Toronto’s Airport

    A lawsuit offers a glimpse into the victim’s view of the April heist, though the case remains unsolved.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Meduza ☛ The Washington Post: Owner of Russian Forbes claims to have bought entire Forbes Media Group — Meduza

  • France24 ☛ Republicans return to drawing board as Jordan falls short in US House speaker bid

    A damaging, weeks-long Republican leadership crisis deepened further Friday, leaving the paralyzed US legislature unable to perform even basic functions like funding the government and addressing growing national security concerns.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Inside the meeting of Republican electors who sought to thwart Biden’s election win in Georgia

    A December 2020 meeting of Republican electors in Georgia is a central part of the case against Donald Trump and 18 other people accused of conspiring to overturn Joe Biden's 2020 electoral win in the state. The meeting was cited Friday as attorney Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty to a felony. Chesebro is accused of helping to orchestrate the meetings in Georgia and elsewhere to send slates of Trump electors to Congress from states Biden won. Prosecutors said the 16 Republicans who gathered in Georgia's capitol were “fake” electors. Their defenders called them “alternate” or “contingent” electors, saying they were trying to preserve Trump’s legal options as a lawsuit challenged Georgia’s election results.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Ramsey County Lawsuit says new law violates disability pay for disabled first responders

    Law enforcement in general has seen an uptick in officers claiming post-traumatic stress disorder following racially-tinged riots after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd.

  • RFA ☛ In Taiwan, even the street food vendors elect their own president

    The environmentally friendly Ningxia Night Market is thriving thanks to its popularity among local residents.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Australia PM to visit China, reaches deal to resolve WTO wine dispute

    The leaders will discuss cooperation in areas such as economic links and climate change.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Rempang land dispute casts new spotlight on old complaints over Chinese investments in Indonesia

    Some residents of the island, adjacent to Batam, have been told to move out to make way for a China-funded investment project.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Reason ☛ 303 Creative at Hamilton College

    "Free speech is really getting out of control," one panelist asserts

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Indian doctor in Bahrain dismissed over anti-Palestine tweet

    A 50-year-old Indian internal medicine specialist has been dismissed from his job in Bahrain over an anti-Palestine tweet, his employer in the Gulf country has said.

    The Royal Bahrain Hospital in a statement on Friday described Dr. Sunil Rao’s tweet, which he had subsequently deleted, as a violation of the hospital’s code of conduct.

  • [Repeat] CS Monitor ☛ Free speech on college campuses: Is it time for a reset?

    Today, the college experience can seem like it has simply become an endless competition of moral opprobrium. Opposing sides castigate the other as holding, in effect, monstrous points of view – unfit to function within society.

    As the Monitor reported earlier this year, thinkers on both the right and left have begun to doubt the very concept of a free “marketplace of ideas.” Conservatives, especially, say that American institutions of higher education have become hostile to their ideas to the point of out-and-out censure.

  • Meduza ☛ Founder of project commemorating victims of political repression disappears after being detained in Russian city of Tver

    “At the moment, we don’t know where Andrey is located. His phone is not available. All police agencies, temporary holding facilities, special detention centers, Federal Security Service, Investigative Committee and others have told Andrey’s lawyer and father that they don’t have him in their custody. We couldn’t reach medical facilities, no one answered the phone,” reads the project’s statement.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian propagandist fires Middle East pundit for insulting Foreign Ministry officials — Meduza

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Federal News Network ☛ ACTORS STRIKE PHOTOS: See images from the 100 days film and TV actors have been picketing

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood’s TV and film actors have been striking for 100 days now, and there’s no end in sight. The strike began July 14 at what should have been a celebratory time…

  • Federal News Network ☛ The Hollywood actors strike hits 100 days. Why hasn’t a deal been reached and what’s next?

    Film and TV actors are still on strike in what has become the longest walk-off in their history. The strike by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists hit its 100th day on Saturday, while writers are busy back at work after ending their strike. There is no end in sight for actors. Their talks abruptly ended Oct. 11 when studios walked away from the negotiating table saying the two sides were too far apart to go on. The prolonged strike means films and TV shows will remain sidelined indefinitely, and it's already starting to affect the upcoming awards season.

  • teleSUR ☛ Strike Could Prevent the 2024 US Film Awards Season

    The awards season includes the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, the Critics Choice Awards, and the Oscars.

  • teleSUR ☛ GM and Stellantis Workers Strike Enters 36th Day

    "We costed the companies' offers... and there is more to be won," UAW President Fain said.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Dedoimedo ☛ The shitshow called the mobile Internet

    Today, I have a juicy article slash rant about the sad state of mobile Internet networking, covering multiple countries, ISPs, router hardware models, and setups, 4G, 4G+ and 5G connectivity, signal strength, download and upload speed, latency, and quality of service due to environmental and usage conditions, level of technical support from different providers, CG-NAT, static IP and IPv4/IPv6 provisioning, traffic shaping, throttling and filtering, various mobile router hardware models, technical specifications and capabilities, firmware options, management options, device functionality, LAN limitations compared to classic phone/cable routers, Mesh technology, external antenna options, performance and stability, general usability, other observations, and more. Enjoy, hopefully, I know I didn't.

• Monopolies

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ An interoperability rule for your money

    The biggest reason for staying with a bad company is if they've figured out a way to punish you for leaving. Businesses are keenly attuned to ways to impose switching costs on disloyal customers. "Switching costs" are all the things you have to give up when you take your business elsewhere.

    Businesses love high switching costs – think of your gym forcing you to pay to cancel your subscription or Apple turning off your groupchat checkmark when you switch to Android. The more it costs you to move to a rival vendor, the worse your existing vendor can treat you without worrying about losing your business.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ UNC3T and INTERPOL Awarded for Taking Down Piracy Group EVO

      The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has awarded INTERPOL's digital piracy unit and Portuguese cybercrime police unit UNC3T for their role in the dismantling of piracy release group EVO last year. The notorious group was one of Hollywood's prime targets and often the first to release high-quality movie screeners. The group's leader was arrested in Portugal and will be prosecuted.