Leftovers

• Robert Birming ☛ CSSunday

  I’ve spent this Sunday styling my blog. Considering the Zen of CSS, I’d say that counts as a pretty impressive meditation session.

• Science

  • CS Monitor ☛ Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’: How 100-year-old case helped shape evangelical Christianity

    The publicity-stunt-turned-trial also featured two of the most famous lawyers in the country: William Jennings Bryan, a firebrand populist and fundamentalist who had been the Democratic Party’s nominee for president three times; and Clarence Darrow, one of the most well-known trial lawyers in the country and a self-proclaimed religious skeptic and agnostic. The stage was set.

  • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: The New Lower Bound on Busy Beaver of 6.

    BB(n) is the max time a Turing machine of size n takes to halt on the empty string.

• Career/Education

  • TruthOut ☛ Regulating AI Isn’t Enough. Let’s Dismantle the Logic That Put It in Schools.

    AI in schools isn’t progress — it’s a sign of how far we’ve strayed from the purpose of education.

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - From invisible to indispensable: the evolution of IT professionals

    Australia’s IT professionals are navigating a digital landscape that's expanding at lightning speed. The local shift mirrors a global trend: as the volume of information continues to skyrocket, tech teams in Australia are not only keeping the lights on but actively shaping smarter, more secure digital systems.

• Hardware

  • Tedium ☛ Drone Shows: From Novelties To Mainstream In Record Time

    The evolution of drone shows, a concept that went from an art collective experiment in de-fanging warfare tech to a municipal favorite in record time.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Find that Hosing Glizzies Is Basically a Death Sentence

    The tragic news comes from a survey published in Nature Medicine, an esteemed biomedical research journal. Combing over 60 previous nutrition studies on processed foods — specifically cured meat, sugary drinks, and trans fatty acids, all staples of the North American diet — researchers determined there's "no safe amount" of processed food humans can eat.

  • Science Alert ☛ The News Cycle Is a Stress Monster. But There's a Healthy Way to Stay Informed.

    Unfiltered or uncensored images can have an especially powerful psychological impact. Graphic footage of tragedies circulating on social media may have a stronger effect than traditional media (such as television and newspapers) which are more regulated.

    Research shows consuming negative news is linked to lower wellbeing and psychological difficulties, such as anxiety and feelings of uncertainty and insecurity. It can make us feel more pessimistic towards ourselves, other people, humanity and life in general.

  • Michael's and Christian's blog ☛ Update of Swiss Mortality

    In 2021, I wrote a blog post about Swiss mortality and it turned out to be among the most read posts I have written so far. Four years later, I think it’s time for an update with the following improvements: [...]

• Proprietary

  • Game Rant ☛ 'I Feel a Deep Sense Of Pain From This Decision' EA Japan President Calls Out Microsoft Over Mass Layoffs

    EA Japan president Shaun Noguchi has criticized Microsoft after the company recently completed a massive round of layoffs. EA's Noguchi claims to "feel a deep sense of pain from this decision," which recently sent shockwaves through the gaming community.

    A few days ago, an initial report confirmed that Microsoft was planning to lay off 4% of its 228,000-strong workforce, potentially affecting up to 9,000 employees. In the days since, the scale of the layoffs has been confirmed, affecting many teams and projects. Rare's Everwild has reportedly been canceled as a result, as has the iconic Forza Motorsport series. Romero Games has allegedly shut down after funding for its project was pulled, and even Halo Studios has seemingly been affected. It has been a devastating period for Microsoft.

  • Indian Express ☛ Microsoft layoffs: Xbox executive suggests laid-off workers ask ChatGPT for career advice

    Amid sweeping layoffs at Microsoft’s gaming studios, an Xbox executive has urged employees affected by the job cuts to seek advice and emotional support from AI chatbots.

    “No Al tool is a replacement for your voice or your lived experience. But at a time when mental energy is scarce, these tools can help get you unstuck faster, calmer, and with more clarity,” Matt Turnbull, an executive producer at Xbox Games Studio, wrote in a LinkedIn post that has now been deleted.

    Stating that he would be “remiss in not trying to offer the best advice I can under the circumstances”, Turnbull said, “I’ve been experimenting with ways to use LLM AI tools (like ChatGPT or Copilot) to help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss.”

  • 1981 Media Ltd ☛ ‘I think Xbox hardware is dead’, says Microsoft gaming veteran

    One of the founding members of the Xbox team has questioned Microsoft’s multiplatform gaming strategy, and said they believe the Xbox hardware business is effectively “dead”.

  • The Strategist ☛ Whose cloud is it, anyway? Rethinking sovereignty in the shift to cloud infrastructure

    Cloud infrastructure is now the backbone of everything from social services and emergency response to critical industry operations and defence. The shift has been fast, and often invisible to users. What began as a convenience to save costs and increase flexibility has quietly become a question of national resilience. As more government systems migrate to commercial cloud platforms, the issue is no longer just where the data lives, but who holds real control over the systems that support it.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Fortune and Axios warm to AI

      Media companies are continuing to push the boundaries of how AI can be incorporated into journalism.

    • Simon Willison ☛ A quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four

    • Shrivu Shankar ☛ Building Multi-Agent Systems (Part 2) - by Shrivu Shankar

      My now 6-month-old post, Building Multi-Agent Systems (Part 1), has aged surprisingly well. The core idea, that complex agentic problems are best solved by decomposing them into sub-agents that work together, is now a standard approach. You can see this thinking in action in posts like Anthropic’s recent deep-dive on their multi-agent research system.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Venture capital is lending money against video cards

      The venture capitalists are diving into this wonderful market. 38% of this year’s venture debt borrowers have been generative AI and machine learning companies.

  • Social Control Media

    • El País ☛ What is doxing? A glimpse into the battle for anonymity on social media

      In Spain, since the start of 2025, there’s been a wave of doxing taking place on X. Accounts with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers – such as Captain Bitcoin, Sr. Liberal, Captain Spain and Noa Gresiva (built out of the phrase “not aggressive”) – have been doxed. Most are conservative accounts that were revealed by Román Cuesta, but several progressive ones have also been affected in response.

• Security

  • Security Affairs ☛ Critical Sudo bugs expose major Linux distros to local Root exploits

    Critical Sudo flaws let local users gain root access on Linux systems, the vulnerabilities affect major Linux distributions.

    Cybersecurity researchers disclosed two vulnerabilities in the Sudo command-line utility for Linux and Unix-like operating systems. Local attackers can exploit the vulnerabilities to escalate privileges to root on affected systems.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Verge ☛ TikTok’s ‘ban’ problem could end soon with a new app and a sale | The Verge

    The outlet reports that the Trump administration says it’s close to working out a sale to a group of “non-Chinese” investors, including Oracle, with current majority owner ByteDance maintaining a minority stake that would satisfy the terms of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

  • India Times ☛ TikTok building new version of app ahead of expected US sale: The Information

    TikTok is developing a new US version of its app ahead of a potential sale to American investors, aiming for a September 5 launch. Users must switch by March 2026. The deal, delayed by China’s resistance and US tariffs, now awaits further talks between President Trump and Chinese officials.

• Environment

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Contributor: We still rely on gasoline. Why is California adding to the cost and the pollution?

    Fossil fuels account for roughly 8% of California’s $3 trillion economy — but that’s the first 8%. “If you don’t get that first 8%,” I tell my students, “You don’t get the rest of our economy.” Oil powers everything from trucks to tractors to construction equipment. Without it, you can’t build roads or bridges or get goods to grocery stores. Without refined petroleum products, you don’t make cement, steel, plastics or even the lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Didier Stevens ☛ Quickpost: 12V Portable Power Station

      Thinking that quite some power got lost in the AC inverter, I set out to measure the amount of power I can get with its 12V DC output.

      I configured my electronic load to draw 5 A: [...]

    • YLE ☛ Finland backs Nokia-led plan for AI gigafactory

      The government has thrown its weight behind a bid for a massive artificial intelligence centre in Finland as part of an EU scheme to establish such gigafactories around Europe.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Howard Oakley ☛ Paintings of Norwegian Fjords 1900-28

      On the second day of this weekend’s visit to the fjords of Norway, we’ve reached the twentieth century, and a pupil of Eilert Adelsteen Normann (1848-1918).

  • Overpopulation

    • RFERL ☛ Kabul On Course To Be World's First Capital To Run Out Of Water

      Kabul’s population has grown from about 2 million in 2000 to more than 6 million in 2025, putting immense pressure on its water supplies.

      [...]

      “My monthly salary is 21,000 Afghani ($300) and I spend at least 5,000 Afghani ($70) on water for our family of 10 people,” he told RFE/RL on June 26. “We use this water for tea, cooking, washing-up, laundry, and bathing.”

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • APNIC ☛ Behind the scenes of Internet governance 

    As the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for the Asia Pacific, APNIC plays a crucial role in managing Internet number resource (INR) delegations and facilitating the development of community-led policies to manage them. Over the past two years, I’ve been actively involved in shaping some of those policies — a journey that’s been both technically fascinating and deeply rooted in community collaboration.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Seeing Language as a Tool of Authoritarianism

    In short, liberals and journalists treat language as transparent, whereas right wingers treat language as utilitarian.

    By transparent, I mean that liberals and journalists believe language serves as a way to describe and understand reality. This is, after all, built into the definition of small-l liberalism: that one can understand and describe the world, and using that understanding, engage in rational debates about how best to live in it. One can iteratively test descriptions of the world and policy prescriptions and improve our relationship with the world and each others.

  • Soylent News ☛ Patterns of Force: Star Trek's first space Nazis

    Unlike the complex allegory of the Cardassian Union, Patterns of Force leaves no doubt that it's about Nazis, with the abundant swastikas, Nazi flags, and Nazi salutes. I started writing this journal under the assumption that it's generally dismissed as a bad episode, but there's actually quite a bit of variance. As a bit of background, here's Memory Alpha's summary of the episode, with a detailed description of the plot. If Kraetos' guide to TOS can be viewed as a rating from one to four stars, this episode is three stars. The comments in Jammer's review have a lot of variance ranging from garbage to a great episode of TOS, but Jammer also gives this story three stars out of four. And Steve Shives' review acknowledges the shortcomings of this story but still concludes that it's a solid Star Trek story.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ ‘Why H-1B requests?’ Microsoft layoffs spark strong reactions; questions around foreign hirings

    Now, these layoffs have sparked strong reactions on social media, with some Americans questioning Microsoft's H-1B hirings. The tech giant had 4,725 H-1B visas approved in 2024. This year, social media users claimed that it has requested for 14,181 H-1B visas. However, the claim is unverified. There is no evidence to back the 14,181 number.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Semafor Inc ☛ How Americans are (and aren’t) getting the news

      [...] The difference is starkest for members of the youngest 18-to-29 age bracket, who also reported getting a greater share of their news from social media. [...]

    • France24 ☛ Beijing disinformation targeted French Rafale jets to boost sales of China-made planes, intel says

      French military and intelligence officials say China deployed its embassies to promote a disinformation campaign sowing doubts about the performance of Rafale jets during the India-Pakistan military clashes in May. It was aimed at undermining sales of the French-made fighter planes while promoting Chinese-made military hardware.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump Social Security Admin Shares Propaganda for ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

      The move to turn the Social Security Administration into yet another Trump propaganda organ comes as the agency’s services degrade — thanks in large part to Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which gutted its workforce, moved to shutter local offices, and sought to implement major technical changes due to baseless concerns about fraud. As a result of DOGE’s changes, Social Security recipients in need of assistance may now find themselves stuck on the phone for more than three hours, if their calls aren’t disconnected without warning.

      Amid that ongoing crisis, the Trump administration now has the Social Security Administration touting the Big Beautiful Bill as benefiting seniors in ways it does not.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CS Monitor ☛ Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’: A transformative moment in American journalism

    But the Scopes Trial was not just a conflict between science and religion. It was also a transformative moment in American journalism. The news media descended on Dayton, Tennessee, to cover what everyone agreed was as much a staged national “circus” as it was a small-town trial about teaching evolution.

  • The Local DK ☛ Inside Denmark: Danish embassy staff asked to hand over private messages

    A US freedom of information request has ordered embassy staff in Denmark to hand over some of their private messages among other information, while new work permit rules apply to a limited range of countries. Our weekly feature Inside Denmark looks at some of the Danish news stories we’ve been talking about this week.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Journalist union condemns Israeli settler attack on DW

    The German Journalists' Association (DJV) expressed concern following an attack on DW employees in the occupied West Bank.

  • NDTV ☛ Reuters' X Account Unblocked In India After Government Intervention

    The notice displayed on X till Sunday evening showed that Reuters' X account had been withheld in India "in response to a legal demand".

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Reuters' X Account Unblocked in India After Govt Intervention

    A government official said that "all blocked channels on X have been opened now".

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Reality My Medicaid Patients Face

    But he told our team that he lives in shelters, so he lacks a fixed address. He doesn’t have a cellphone. He could access government websites at a public library, except that his request for a power wheelchair, which Medicaid will cover, hasn’t been approved yet, and navigating the city in a standard one exhausts him. Plus, every time he leaves his stuff behind at the shelter to go somewhere, he told me, it’s stolen. At present, he doesn’t even own an official ID card.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ America has a tradition of breaking promises and displacing people. Migrants are the newest target.

    In visiting the alleged stump of the Council Oak, it occurred to me that no matter how maps are redrawn, the essential character of American power has remained unchanged in two centuries. Since the signing of the Council Oak treaty, political will has been wielded in our name to displace people from their homes. From Native Americans to migrants, the United States has routinely used force to remove or relocate individuals who have committed no crime other than being regarded as alien by the culture in power.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Scam Altman’s AI Empire Relies on Brutal Labor Exploitation

    Firms like OpenAI are developing AI in a way that has deeply ominous implications for workers in many different fields. The current trajectory of AI can only be changed through direct confrontation with the overweening power of the tech giants.

  • RFERL ☛ No More Ukrainian Classes In The Parts Of Ukraine Under Russia’s Thumb

    From the start of the Donbas war in 2014 to the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to justify Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine by citing the ostensible need to protect the Russian language, and those who speak it, from the government in Kyiv.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Registrar Snubs DMCA Subpoena, Claims Passive Conduit Immunity

    In a case being heard at a California court, domain registrar Dynadot has partially declined to cooperate with the disclosure requirements of a DMCA subpoena, claiming immunity as a conduit service provider. In response, a copyright holder has asked the Court to issue an order clarifying service providers' safe harbor protection. The case is certainly unusual but also forms part of a more complex set of events, that may ultimately culminate in a potential moment of clarity.