Leftovers

• Vintage Everyday ☛ Weird Al Yankovic’s “Even Worse” Album on Sale Next to Michael Jackson’s “Bad” Album

  Released in April 1988, Even Worse was Yankovic’s fifth studio album. The album’s title and cover art were direct parodies of Jackson’s Bad. The cover featured Yankovic in a similar pose and outfit, with the title Even Worse printed in a font that mimicked the Bad logo.

• Joel Chrono ☛ Small website updates

  I keep wanting to make a more substantial website redesign, but I keep getting busy with other things, or just distracted, or playing videogames and stuff like that. Oh well, one day inspiration will strike, I’m sure.

• Alex Ewerlöf ☛ Service Level Assessment Graph

  This post connects the service level terminology to a visual representation that allows getting to meaningful SLIs and setting reasonable SLOs.

  At the heart of the Service Level Assessment is a graph.

• Robert Birming ☛ The balance of just enough

  The right amount is the best.

  Maybe that’s what it all comes down to.

• Paul Krugman ☛ The Economics of Smoot-Hawley 2.0, Part I

  Unless the courts rule Trump’s tariffs illegal — which they clearly are, but I fully expect the Supreme Court to uphold them anyway — Smoot-Hawley 2.0 is the new normal.

  How should we think about this astonishing policy reversal? Beyond the paywall I’ll discuss the following issues: [...]

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Find new blogs to follow from this year’s Blaugust participants

  Blaugust has started with a bang again and we have over 100 participants blogging this year and more are still joining. It’s a lovely community for sure.

  While a lot of Blaugust fun is for people who write a blog themselves, it’s also a great way for readers to find new blogs to read and follow.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ Pewabic Pottery: Still handcrafted in Detroit

  At a time when women didn't run many businesses, Mary Chase Perry was good at selling and not afraid to take on large-scale projects. Pewabic's co-founders combined art, technology and entrepreneurship.

  This allowed them to experiment and create new, iridescent glazes — each attempt meticulously recorded in notebooks — and those glazes allowed Perry to "paint with fire," as she often said.

• Science

  • Paris Buttfield-Addison ☛ Space News, August 2025 | hey.paris

    The most valuable 14 seconds in Australian aerospace history happened last month, while the most expensive corporate rivalry ever fought in orbit just turned 40.

  • International Science Editing ☛ China to end the reign of the impact factor?

    As the JIF is based on a narrow two-year window, it favours faster moving research fields (e.g., molecular biology) over slower moving fields (e.g., mathematics), as such fields tend to have a higher proportion of citations to recent (1–2-year-old) publications [11]. The JIF also fails to account for research whose impact may take longer than 2 years to be fully realised [12].

  • Wired ☛ Efforts to Ground Physics in Math Are Opening the Secrets of Time

    Mathematicians have had some success with the second step, proving that it’s possible to derive a macroscopic model of a gas from a mesoscopic one in various settings. But they couldn’t resolve the first step, leaving the chain of logic incomplete.

    Now that’s changed. In a series of papers, the mathematicians Yu Deng, Zaher Hani, and Xiao Ma proved the harder microscopic-to-mesoscopic step for a gas in one of these settings, completing the chain for the first time. The result and the techniques that made it possible are “paradigm-shifting,” said Yan Guo of Brown University.

• Career/Education

  • Connor Tumbleson ☛ Travel Blog: Denver, CO

    Thankfully outside of a small delay our flight made it home without much fuss which was way better than my flight out there. Looking back I only spent $20 on transportation ($10 each way) on light-rail tickets which was a lot less than I anticipated. It was a fun conference weekend, but boy taking a week off work has put me behind in things.

  • The New Stack ☛ IT Orchestration Is the Secret Behind Smooth, Scalable IT Operations

    The success of Coachella — and any music festival, for that matter — is not accidental. Behind the smooth transition between 150+ artists across multiple stages is the complex orchestration of timing, resources, and coordination. It’s an impressive undertaking, and one could argue there are similarities between festival production and enterprise IT operations.

    I have always been intrigued by the parallels between IT operators and backstage workers, who are often unsung heroes quietly working behind the scenes to provide the audience with a seamless and enjoyable musical experience.

  • Daniel Doubrovkine ☛ How to Disagree and Commit like Switzerland

    Everyone, regardless of their initial position, must fully commit to implementing the chosen direction. This means actively working toward the success of the decision, not just grudgingly complying. You must be able to explain and advocate for the decision to others, as if it were your own choice. This collective commitment transforms a potentially divisive decision into a unified team effort, ensuring the organization moves forward together rather than being pulled apart by lingering disagreements.

  • El País ☛ The Cuban women who whisper to cigar rollers

    For Torres, the reason is simple: “The radio isn’t going to answer your questions about your child’s homework, or celebrate your birthday, or offer condolences when a loved one dies.” For cigar rollers — in addition to being “an encyclopedia with legs” — the reader is a central part of the team.

• Hardware

  • Old VCR ☛ A real PowerBook: the Macintosh Application Environment on a PA-RISC laptop

    I like the Power ISA very much, but there's nothing architecturally obvious to say that the next natural step from the Motorola 68000 family must be to PowerPC. For example, the Palm OS moved from the DragonBall to ARM, and it's not necessarily a well-known fact that the successor to Commodore's 68K Amigas was intended to be based on PA-RISC, Hewlett-Packard's "Precision Architecture" processor family. (That was the Hombre chipset, and prototype chips existed prior to Commodore's demise in 1994, though controversy swirled regarding backwards compatibility.) Sure, Apple and Motorola were two-thirds of the AIM alliance, and there were several PowerPC PowerBooks available when the fall of 1997 rolled around. But what if the next PowerBooks had been based on PA-RISC instead?

• Proprietary

  • Simon B Støvring ☛ How To Bring Back Oddly Shaped App Icons in macOS 26 Tahoe

    Fortunately, there's a way to bring back the personality and charm that custom icon shapes add to macOS. This post shows how to do it both as a macOS user and as an app developer.

  • Jacky Alciné ☛ Destacked: Why I Avoid Substack As Much as Possible

    The article goes on to highlight that the problem is not new to Substack. The silent problem is that publications on there who are now "stuck" — be it for fiscal reasons or for reach — are passively becoming okay with this. Molly White, at one point in time, was on Substack herself. She invested some time, with her technical know-how, to move from it to a self-hosted Ghost setup two years later. She also noted the difficulty of doing something like this: companies can insulate you from the headache of being an independent publisher on the Web. This demonstrates that it's not difficult for us to escape places that aren't aligned with. But it does take effort; as it tends to be with anything worth doing.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ System failure hits South Africa's busiest airport

    ATNS said the system failure on Friday — a busy day for the airport — was affecting air traffic control operations, specifically the flight plan management system. Update: The problem was resolved at 5pm.

    It didn’t immediately specify what caused the failure. “As a result, operational disruptions are occurring, and departure delays are expected,” the company said in a statement.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Cyber Show ☛ #052 | S6 | In The Chair | Stop Gen AI with Kim Crawley

      Kim Crawley of StopGenAI.com talks to us about gaming, teaching, communicative trust, labour law, hacking, socialism and attempts by power to redefine computing technology in ever less empowering forms

    • Futurism ☛ Zuckerberg Says Meta Is Now Seeing Signs of Advanced AI Improving Itself

      Specifically, the exec boasted that in recent months, Meta has "begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves" — a bold claim that Zuckerberg suggests is a precursor to "developing superintelligence."

    • Ava ☛ false expectations | ava's blog

      Now here’s the thing: We all have grown up with a workplace where, when computers are present, everything you needed was usually already installed thanks to your IT department. They had preselected and narrowed down your choice, maybe even eliminated it. Especially the older generation that has used computers in a work context for far longer than me just knew: This is for mail, this is for spreadsheets, this is for documents, this is for slides. One thing did one thing. And it worked and had all the features needed.

  • Social Control Media

    • Computing UK ☛ Australia bans YouTube for under 16s - Asian Tech Roundup

      Australia has added YouTube to the list of apps to be banned for under-16s.

      The video platform had been excluded from the country’s incoming online safety legislation, which originally targeted Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and X, but legislators have now changed their mind.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • CBC ☛ 'Can I see some ID?' As online age verification spreads, so do privacy concerns

      "When my kids sent me a form saying, 'Upload your driver's licence,' you can imagine the amount of resistance that I had towards that," he said.

      While he had no problem with his kids playing the game, Rogerson declined to upload his ID, unsure how securely his data would be stored. His kids have had to give up Murder Mystery as a result.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ It's been 80 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Time to raise some L.

    Wednesday marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a grim milestone that has me pondering the nature of time, memory and hope. It’s been slightly more than an average human lifetime since the bomb devastated Hiroshima, and those who are still around to recount the unthinkable are increasingly few. Once Hiroshima and Nagasaki fade from living memory, how will its warning be passed to future generations?

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ The murderous, thieving overlords of Hamas are the true oppressors of the Palestinians

    Hamas and Iran’s other regional proxies have a similar intent, though the ayatollahs in Tehran sought to speed things up by developing nuclear weapons. Although their tactics and public-facing rhetoric are different, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party have pretty much the same objective as Hamas. That’s why the US State Department recently sanctioned them for funding and supporting terrorism and inculcating violent jihad into their population.

  • ANF News ☛ DEM Party calls for recognition of the Yazidi genocide

    The statement read: "During this atrocity, more than 5,000 Yazidis were massacred, thousands were abducted; women and children were enslaved and subjected to systematic torture. Despite 11 years having passed, over a thousand Yazidi women and children are still missing, and their fate remains unknown. Although some international institutions and states have recognized these attacks as genocide, the international public has yet to form a comprehensive and binding recognition of it."

  • ANF News ☛ Kongra Star: We'll exert all our efforts to rescue the missing girls and women taken captive by ISIS

    Kongra Star, the umbrella organization of women in North-East Syria, released a statement marking the 11th anniversary of the ISIS genocide against the Yazidi community in the city of Shengal (Sinjar) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

    The Kongra Star statement on Sunday includes the following: [...]

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ A Nazi-Era Law Still Lands Poor People in Jail in Germany

      In Germany, at least 8,000 people go to jail each year for failing to pay public transit tickets. The relevant part of the criminal code was introduced under the Nazis — yet is still routinely used to imprison mostly poor non-payers.

    • W Evan Sheehan ☛ That Time I Couldn’t Change a Fucking Bike Tire

      The kid (he couldn’t have been more than 15) to whom I spoke took me back to the shop where I kinda got a blank look from the guy in the shop. He told me they could put the tires on for me and charge me for a tire change, but he wouldn’t let me watch him put the tires on. I said I didn’t really want them to do this for me, I wanted to know if these tires would fit the rims; if they could get the tires on, I needed to know how they did it so I could use whatever tricks they used in the future and change my own tires. He kind of relented and did one of the tires right then (although I did get asked to step out of the shop because I had on open-toed shoes). He got the tire on pretty quickly using some tool I’d never seen before.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft breaks from 30-year tradition of naming rivals in filings

    Microsoft has stopped naming its competitors in its annual report, ending a 30-year-long practice. The company is now focusing on broader market trends to describe the competitive landscape. Other tech giants like Amazon and Alphabet have also stopped this practice, while Apple, Meta and Nvidia still follow it.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Former VK Chief Takes Over Russian Gaming Studio Behind World of Tanks

    Boris Dobrodeev, 34, is the son of Oleg Dobrodeev, head of the state-owned media conglomerate VGTRK.

    He now heads IT Technologies, the firm that formally took over Lesta in mid-July following a transfer of management rights from the federal state property agency Rosimushchestvo.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • New York Times ☛ Putin Widens Effort to Control Russia’s Internet

    The authorities are cracking down on workarounds that Russians have been using for access to foreign apps and banned content, including through new laws signed by President Vladimir V. Putin this week. Moscow has also been impeding the function of services from U.S. tech companies, like YouTube, that Russians have used for years.

    At the same time, the Kremlin is building out a domestic ecosystem of easily monitored and censored Russian alternatives to Western tech products. That includes a new state-sanctioned messaging service, MAX, which will come preinstalled by law on all new smartphones sold in Russia starting in September.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Putin Signs Law Allowing Police to Freeze Bank Accounts Without Court Orders

    The legislation, passed by the lower-house State Duma on July 22 and approved by the upper-house Federation Council on July 25, allows Interior Ministry officers to suspend any banking transactions by private citizens for up to 10 days based solely on suspicion of criminal activity.

    The freeze can be imposed “in urgent cases” with the approval of both the head of the investigative body and a supervising prosecutor. Authorities are then required to file a formal petition with a court within the 10-day window.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Anne Helen Petersen ☛ An Obituary for Reading the Internet

    In hindsight, this period probably reached its apex at some point in 2014 to 2015, when people were arguing over whether there was too much longform journalism on the [Internet] (the actual subject of at least two longform interviews). There were entire sites — two of them! — dedicated to curating the best longform on the [Internet]. And people read these long-ass pieces! And not just me, a person who also wrote these long-ass pieces! Indeed, many of you originally found me by reading one of those pieces.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Influencer sues Guardian for defamation in Mumford & Sons review

    In a post to Mr Ngo on social media, Mr Marshall wrote: “Congratulations. Finally had the time to read your important book. You’re a brave man.”

    Following an outcry, Mr Marshall stepped back from the band saying he would “examine my blind spots”, before quitting just weeks later.

    In a blog post, he wrote: “The truth is that my commenting on a book that documents the extreme far-Left and their activities is in no way an endorsement of the equally repugnant far-Right.

    “The truth is that reporting on extremism at the great risk of endangering oneself is unquestionably brave.”

    Mr Ngo, who is represented by London-based Patron Law, is a senior editor at The Post Millennial, a Canadian news website.

    He is an outspoken figure who has garnered controversy for his coverage of Antifa and Muslims.

    [...]

    GNM is defending its stories, with editor-in-chief Katharine Viner telling the court there was a “very high public interest” in reporting the claims.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Pivot to AI ☛ UK ‘AI Action Plan for Justice’ — a magic infallible AI pre-crime detector!

    A system like this has long been a great dream of policing. And it always works out that the machine-learning system efficiently learns the biases in its training data and consistently picks alleged future offenders who just happen to be poor, or the wrong race. Then the department operating the system blames the computer and not how they set it up or how they didn’t check its results.

    The Ministry of Justice specifically set up the homicide prediction project with “ethnicity” as a data type. They knew what results they wanted.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ For the First Time in Nearly a Century, Adult Winter-Run Chinook Salmon Are Swimming in California's McCloud River

    These efforts are probably delaying the species’ extinction. But, to the members of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, they’re far from ideal.

    “The salmon that exist right now, they don’t know how to mountain climb, they don’t know how to go up waterfalls, because they’re blocked,” says Rebekah Olstad, salmon restoration project manager for the tribe, to the Guardian’s Cy Neff. “So, it’s generations and generations of eggs and salmon who don’t have those genes anymore to be wild.”

    If removing Shasta Dam is not an option, then tribal members would like to see the construction of a fish passage that would allow the salmon to complete their seasonal migrations on their own.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Utah's Native American Summit: Bringing the state's tribes together

    Utah's annual Native American Summit convened at Utah Valley University on Friday.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Register UK ☛ China's IPv6 adoption takes a decent leap forward

    An August 1 announcement by the Administration reported that as of June 2025 China was home to 834 million active IPv6 users, accounting for 75.29 percent of all netizens.

    However IPv6 traffic accounted for only 31.12 percent of national network traffic. 66 percent of traffic on mobile networks ran over IPv6, while 28.32 percent of traffic on fixed networks used the protocol.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • US News And World Report ☛ Popular 1980s Actor Loni Anderson of the Hit TV Series 'WKRP in Cincinnati' Has Died

    “WKRP in Cincinnati” aired from 1978 to 1982 and was set in a flagging Ohio radio station trying to reinvent itself with rock music. The cast included Gary Sandy, Tim Reid, Howard Hesseman, Frank Bonner and Jan Smithers, alongside Anderson as Jennifer Marlowe, whose good looks were matched by her intelligence.

  • [Old] Techdirt ☛ TV Shows On DVD Change Music To Avoid Licensing Issues

    Someone recently sent me an interesting article about how a more recent syndication package of the famous old sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati has all different music than the original showing – sometimes even dubbing over dialog in the show to match the music. This was done (of course) because of music industry licensing rules, which would require plenty of extra cash to re-license those songs for syndication (though, some stations still play the old syndicated versions with the original music). Now, however, it appears there’s a similar situation with TV shows going to DVD. TV shows coming out on DVD has become a huge business that very few folks in the television industry expected. When the studios licensed the music for the TV show, they didn’t include rights for future DVD releases – and, now, many DVDs are coming out with different music than was originally played on the air. This seems incredibly short-sighted (like so many things) on the part of the music industry. Because they want a little extra cash now, they’re cutting out all those fans who are going to watch these DVDs repeatedly, where many are likely to remember the music that is played. So, they’re missing a huge publicity opportunity in favor of a few upfront dollars.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ U.S. Anti-Piracy Bills See Headline Blocking Claim Squeezed By Democracy

    With two pirate site blocking bills under discussion in the U.S., and a third expected in the weeks ahead, a key statistic seems to be shrinking. During 2024 it was claimed that site blocking is a common tool in ~60 countries, a figure now reframed as "50 democratic countries" in the latest blocking bill. Yet if countries are excluded from the total on the basis they have never blocked, no longer block, or fail to meet the democratic threshold, the total may shrink to less than 40.