Leftovers

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Stunning Tattoos Discovered on Siberian Mummy From 2,000 Years Ago

    You wish yours were this cool.

• Career/Education

  • JURIST ☛ Brown University reaches settlement deal with Convicted Felon

    Brown University announced a settled deal signed by the university and US President The Insurrectionist’s administration on Wednesday, restoring millions of dollars of frozen federal grants paused due to the university’s alleged mistreatment of Jewish students and use of race in the admissions process.

  • Jonathan Dowland ☛ Jonathan Dowland: School of Computing Technical Reports

    (You wait ages for an archiving blog post and two come along at once!)

    Between 1969-2019, the Newcastle University School of Computing published a Technical Reports Series. Until 2017-ish, the full list of individually-numbered reports was available on the School's website, as well as full text PDFs for every report.

  • Pro Publica ☛ How Alaska’s Budget Crisis Has Kept the State From Fixing Crumbling Rural Schools

    When Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon toured the public school in Sleetmute last fall, he called the building “the poster child” for what’s wrong with the way the state pays to build and maintain schools. The tiny community 240 miles west of Anchorage had begged Alaska’s education department for nearly two decades for money to repair a leaky roof that over time had left part of the school on the verge of collapse.

    Seated at a cafeteria table after the tour, Edgmon, a veteran independent lawmaker, told a Yup’ik elder he planned to “start raising a little bit of Cain” when he returned to the Capitol in Juneau for the 2025 legislative session.

• Hardware

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Smartphone shipments dipped globally, but Africa’s still on the up, Tecno, Itel Eating it Up

    The global smartphone market just had its first bad quarter in a while. According to Canalys, Q2 2025 saw shipments fall 1% year-on-year, ending a six-quarter growth streak.

  • Hackaday ☛ Digital Guitar Of The Future Has No Strings

    Electric guitars are great, but they’re just so 20th century. You’d think decades of musicians riffing on the instrument would mean there are no hacks left in the humble axe. You’d think so, but you’d be wrong. [Michael], for one, has taken it upon himself to reinvent the electric guitar for the digital era.

  • Hackaday ☛ You Can Make Your Own Floppy Drive Cleaning Disks

    Once upon a time, you could buy floppy drive cleaning disks at just about any stationary or computer store. These days, they’re harder to find. If you want to build one yourself, though, you might do well to follow [Gammitin]’s fine example.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Three senior execs to retire from defective chip maker Intel Foundry, including respected semiconductor veteran Gary Patton

    Three senior defective chip maker Intel Foundry executives are retiring as part of a major leadership reshuffle amid restructuring and uncertainty over the 14A process.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • JURIST ☛ Kenya dispatch: advocate’s death after forced psychiatric admission reveals gaps in mental health law

    Aynsley Genga is JURIST’s senior Kenya correspondent. She files this report from Nairobi. Susan Njoki’s tragic death sent shockwaves through Kenya’s mental health community—not only because it marked the loss of a passionate advocate, but because her final days revealed the system’s failure to help those it claimed to protect.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Here’s how VA envisioned cutting 83,000 employees before scrapping its plans

    The VA proposed cutting 5% of clinical roles across the Veterans Health Administration, largely through attrition and closing “underused" medical facilities.

  • Overpopulation ☛ Providing Reproductive Health and Family Planning in Papua New Guinea

    Glen Mola describes his experience as a health care provider in Papua New Guinea, from a chapter originally published in the book “Climate Change and Global Health”.

  • Science Alert ☛ 'Misokinesia' Phenomenon Could Affect 1 in 3 People, Study Reveals

    The struggle is real.

  • Science Alert ☛ Just One Diet Soda a Day May Raise Your Type 2 Diabetes Risk by 38%

    "These are often marketed as better for you."

  • Science Alert ☛ Reading Hits Differently to Listening For Your Brain, Science Says

    They aren't interchangeable.

  • Science Alert ☛ This 17th-Century Aristocrat Had a Clever Secret For Keeping Her Teeth

    It came at a cost.

• Proprietary

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft ending backdoored Windows 11 SE support October 2026 — Chrome OS competitor also won't get version 25H2 update coming later this year

    Meant for budget student laptops, the OS will no longer receive updates or support

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Cursor’s Hey Hi (AI) coding agent morphed ‘into local shell’ with one-line prompt attack

      The flaw, disclosed a month after it was patched, provided an attacker with remote code execution privileges by poisoning the data ingested by the model.

    • Tomas Tomecek: Backporting upstream patches with Code Assistants

      This is a follow-up to my previous post about Claude Code.

      We are building a tool that can backport upstream git-commits into CentOS Stream autonomously using Hey Hi (AI) coding assistants.

    • Hackaday ☛ AI Code Review The Right Way

      Do you use a spell checker? We’ll guess you do. Would you use a button that just said “correct all spelling errors in document?” Hopefully not. Your word processor probably doesn’t even offer that as an option. Why? Because a spellchecker will reject things not in its dictionary (like Hackaday, maybe). It may guess the wrong word as the correct word. Of course, it also may miss things like “too” vs. “two.” So why would you just blindly accept AI code review? You wouldn’t, and that’s [Bill Mill’s] point with his recent tool made to help him do better code reviews.

• Linux Foundation

  • OpenSSF (Linux Foundation) ☛ 🎉 Celebrating Five Years of OpenSSF: A Journey Through Open Source Security [Ed: It was never about real security]

    August 2025 marks five years since the official formation of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF).

  • ARC ☛ Linux Foundation Launches AGNTCY Project to Standardize Open Multi-Agent System Infrastructure and Break Down AI Agent Silos - ARC Advisory

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Social engineering attacks surged this past year, Palo Alto Networks report finds

      Unit 42 said social engineering — the method of choice for groups as diverse as Scattered Spider and North Korean tech workers — was the top initial attack vector over the past year.

    • Security Week ☛ Gen Z in the Crosshairs: Cybercriminals Shift Focus to Young, Digital-Savvy Workers

      Should Gen Z to be treated as a separate attack surface within your company?

• Defence/Aggression

  • JURIST ☛ Iran authorities amputate fingers of three individuals convicted of theft

    Iranian authorities severed the fingers of three men convicted of theft, said Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday. Iranian researcher Bahar Saba at HRW denounced the punishment, stating, “Amputation is torture, plain and simple. Yet Iran persists in carrying out cruel and inhuman punishments that fly in the face of its human rights obligations.”

  • Justice Committee Chairperson Condemns Killing of Prosecutor

    The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development, Mr Xola Nqola, has expressed his deepest shock and outrage at the cold-blooded murder of public prosecutor Ms Tracy Brown in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape, yesterday. “This is indeed a tragedy where the protectors of our criminal justice system are not safe anymore."

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Attacker wounds Japanese national in China with rock, Tokyo embassy says

    An “unknown assailant” attacked and wounded a Japanese national accompanied by a child in the Chinese city of Suzhou, Tokyo’s embassy said Friday, calling on Beijing to prevent such incidents. The incident comes a year after a Japanese mother and child were wounded in a knife attack in the same city.

  • New Yorker ☛ John Brennan, Former C.I.A. Director, on Being Targeted by Convicted Felon

    Brennan’s agency was lambasted by the President as part of what he called the “Russia hoax.” Why is the Administration going Brennan now?

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Latvia ☛ Illegal smokes raft spotted on Latvian-Belarusian border

      Border guards on Thursday pulled a raft with smuggled cigarettes from the Daugava River near the Latvian-Belarusian border, the State Border Guard Service said.

    • Meduza ☛ Former political prisoner Kevin Lik, freed in prisoner swap one year ago, publicly tears up his Russian passport — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ The Kremlin’s grain spin Russia’s ‘compact harvest’ is the latest entry in its expanding euphemism playbook — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Be a lifeline One year after Russia’s landmark prisoner swap with the West, over 1,500 people remain jailed on political charges. Here’s how you can reach them. — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ Derk Sauer, Champion of Free Press in a New Russia, Dies at 72

      He earned a media fortune in 1990s Russia with a “sex, news and rock ’n’ roll” strategy and defended press freedoms after the industry became beleaguered and unprofitable.

    • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Says He Ordered Nuclear Submarines Repositioned After Threats From Medvedev

      In a social control media post, the president described the move as a deterrent prompted by threats by a former Russian leader. It is unclear if any submarines did actually change position.

    • RFERL ☛ Court Confirms Prison Sentence For Bosnian Serb Leader Dodik, Who Rejects Case

      An appeals court in Bosnia-Herzegovina has confirmed a prison sentence for Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik for disregarding the decisions of an international peace envoy, a charge the pro-Russia nationalist politician has dismissed as politically motivated.

    • LRT ☛ Russian citizen who jumped from Kaliningrad transit train found in Lithuania

      A Russian national who jumped from a Kaliningrad-bound transit train in June has been located, Lithuania’s Interior Ministry announced Friday.

    • France24 ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man orders nuclear submarines moved near Russia after 'provocative' comments

    • France24 ☛ The questionable experts with the Global Fact-Checking Network, Russia's verification organisation

      Russian organisation the Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN), which was launched in April 2025, claims to fight disinformation. But a number of the 60-odd members of the network regularly share disinformation online. We take a look.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Where does the Gulf stand on Russia’s recognition of the Taliban?

      While maintaining close ties with the West, the GCC has increasingly strengthened its ties with Russia and China.

    • Meduza ☛ A city destroyed: Russia says it controls Ukraine’s Chasiv Yar after 16 months of fighting. But the battle grinds on, and only ruins remain. — Meduza

    • CS Monitor ☛ For this inspiring Ukrainian opera, the show must go on – underground

      Kharkiv, one of Europe’s great cultural centers, is regularly pummeled by Russian strikes. Yet its bomb-shelter national opera house serves as a beacon of stubborn faith.

    • RFERL ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Orders Nuclear Submarines Near Russia After Medvedev's Doomsday Threats

      US President The Insurrectionist said he is moving two nuclear submarines to regions near Russia following doomsday threats related to the war in Ukraine from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

    • New York Times ☛ Putin Blames Frustration Over Ukraine Talks on ‘Inflated Expectations’

      The Russian president didn’t directly respond to Hell Toupée’s ultimatum that Moscow halt its offensive by the end of next week or face financial penalties.

    • RFERL ☛ Kyiv Death Toll Hits 31 In Russian Air Attack Convicted Felon Calls 'Disgusting'

      US President The Insurrectionist again displayed anger with Russia following its latest deadly attack on Kyiv -- a strike that killed 31 people, including five children -- calling the action “disgusting” and vowing to slap new sanctions on Moscow.

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ ‘Like me? Approach me directly, okay?’: Inside a matchmaking event for China’s wealthy

    High-end matchmaking events show that concerns over compatibility in wealth and social class are well and alive in China.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Open Data

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Trump fires labor data chief over disappointing jobs report

      Commissioner Erika McEntarfer has been leading the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) since January 2024. The post, a four-year term, is the only one in the agency that is appointed by the president.

    • Federal News Network ☛ Trump removes official overseeing jobs data after dismal employment report

      The charge that the data was faked is an explosive one that threatens to undercut the political legitimacy of the U.S. government’s economic data, which has long been seen as the “gold standard” of economic measurement globally. Economists and Wall Street investors have for decades generally accepted the data as free from political bias.

      Trump’s move to fire McEntarfer represented another extraordinary assertion of presidential power. He has wielded the authority of the White House to try to control the world’s international trade system, media companies, America’s top universities and Congress’ constitutional power of the purse, among other institutions.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Trump's War on Statistics

      And now, at last, Donald Trump has fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Once these disloyal statisticians are out of the way, the data will finally start to cooperate. The only possible reason the economy could be doing anything other than booming is Joe Biden–legacy manipulation. The economy is not frightened and exhausted by a man who pursues his tariffs with the wild-eyed avidity of Captain Ahab and seems genuinely unable to grasp the meaning of a trade deficit. No, the numbers are simply not patriotic enough. We must make an example of them! When they are frightened enough, I am sure they will show growth.

      Fumbling around in a fog of vibes and misinformation and things you saw on Fox News is good enough for the president; why should the rest of us ask for anything better? Soon, no one will know what is happening—what the problem is, or what remedies to apply. What sectors are booming and which are contracting, whether interest rates should be higher or lower, whether it’s hotter or colder than last year, whether mortality has gone up or gone down. It will be vibes all the way down. Soon we will all be bumping around helplessly in the dark.

    • Paul Krugman ☛ Caracas on the Potomac - Paul Krugman

      What I wrote just before Trump took office

      If stagflation breaks out under an authoritarian regime, but officials aren’t allowed to report the numbers, did it make a sound?

      Over the past six months we’ve watched institution after institution corrupted by the Trump administration. Institutions that might produce inconvenient information, from those tracking climate change to those tracking infectious disease, have been special targets.

      And now they’ve come for the economic data.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • JURIST ☛ Press group urges accountability for death of photojournalist in Syria

    The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Wednesday urged accountability for the death of Syrian photojournalist Sari Majid Al-Shoufi while reporting on armed combat near the Syrian city of Sweida. Al-Shoufi was a photojournalist for Suwayda 24, a Druze-focused website.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • U.S. bill targets Chinese repression of Uyghurs

    The measure would boost sanctions and direct officials to counter Chinese propaganda and preserve Uyghur culture.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Internet Society ☛ Is Your IXP at Risk of Becoming a “Zombie”?

    Over time, some Internet exchange points (IXPs) begin to operate on autopilot—what we call "Zombie IXPs." This can diminish performance and pose challenges.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Federal Circuit Extends EcoFactor Framework to Patent Damages Apportionment in Jiaxing Decision

    The Federal Circuit's decision in Jiaxing Super Lighting Electric Appliance Co. v. CH Lighting Technology Co., decided July 28, 2025, represents the first significant application of the court's recent en banc EcoFactor decision to patent monopoly damages expert testimony.  The appellate panel vacated the $14 million damages award and remanded for a new trial once the district court applies EcoFactor's heightened reliability standards to evaluate the damages expert's testimony regarding apportionment of portfolio license agreements.

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Mandamus Denied: Fintiv’s Trial Moves Forward

    In a brief order, the Federal Circuit has denied Fintiv's mandamus petition seeking relief from Judge Alan Albright's decision to move forward with an expedited trial in Fintiv v. Apple.  Jury selection started this week and the trial is set to begin on Monday, August 4, 2025.

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Federal Judge Denies Ex-Register Shira Perlmutter’s Preliminary Injunction Motion — Appeal Already Underway

    Fired Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter’s preliminary injunction motion has been denied, and an appeal is already underway. Both those developments just recently came to light, after the overarching legal battle kicked off in May. As we’ve covered in detail, a reinstatement-minded Perlmutter claims that her Copyright Office dismissal was “blatantly unlawful.”