Leftovers

• Sara Jakša ☛ Conversation about Fanfiction with Zachary Kai and Sara Jakša

  Over the last two months or about me and Zachary have traded questions and answers about fanfiction. Below here is the recording of our exchange.

• Joel Chrono ☛ An analog desk clock

  It’s obvious, of course it is, time moves forward, clocks keep ticking.—although this one doesn’t because it had no seconds hand but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here.

  Time is not something to be fixated on, I guess that’s what makes analog clocks kind of neat? I have been so used to have numbers changing, everytime I look down at my watch, or my phone. A set of digits telling me exactly when I’m at through the day.

• James G ☛ Sharing ideas on my website

  By the end of writing a blog post, I have notes on an idea that I can share with others.

• Carl Svensson ☛ Pixel Art

  I am active on the demo scene, using the handle "Grip". I mostly do pixel graphics on Amiga and Commodore 64. On the former platform, I tend to use Grafx2 on Linux or Deluxe Paint IV on real hardware. For C64 graphics, I use the excellent Pixcen, running under the equally excellent Wine.

• Robert Birming ☛ Cookies and blogs

  But there’s a silver lining. A little corner of the world where generosity still blooms: the blogging community.

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Naming devices is fun

  One thing stuck with me though. In addition to just a cool multi-screen setup, Stefan also gave his workstations and servers names. Not just “Laptop” or “Desktop-123” but cool names like Argon, Xenon and Poseidon, to name a few.

• Science

  • Wired ☛ How Supercomputing Will Evolve, According to Jack Dongarra

    High-performance supercomputing—once the exclusive domain of scientific research—is now a strategic resource for training increasingly complex artificial intelligence models. This convergence of AI and HPC is redefining not only these technologies, but also the ways in which knowledge is produced, and takes a strategic position in the global landscape.

    To discuss how HPC is evolving, in July WIRED caught up with Jack Dongarra, a US computer scientist who has been a key contributor to the development of HPC software over the past four decades—so much so that in 2021 he earned the prestigious Turing Award. The meeting took place at the 74th Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany, which brought together dozens of Nobel laureates as well as more than 600 emerging scientists from around the world.

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

• Career/Education

  • Brad Frost ☛ 10 years of working with my brother, Ian!

    While this has been our dynamic our entire lives, we know it’s not a relationship built on punch-you-in-the-arm big-brother exploitation, but one of deep love, collaboration, and partnership. We have different, complementary personalities: I have our mom’s loquacious hyper-extroverted dynamo energy, while Ian inherited our dad’s quiet and reserved steadiness. This yin and yang relationship is why we don’t fall into the “I could never work with my sibling!” sentiment we constantly hear from people when they find out we work together.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Why the White House Backed Down From Its First Big Education Cuts

    “After months of being told to ‘wait it out,’ districts are now supposed to pick up the pieces and act like everything’s fine,” Steven Johnson, the superintendent of Fort Ransom School District, in southeastern North Dakota, told me. “I’ve got to be honest—this doesn’t sit well out here. You can’t freeze money that was already allocated, leave schools hanging through hiring season and budget planning, and then expect us to just be grateful when it finally shows up. Rural folks don’t like being jerked around.”

    While the funds were frozen, an informal alliance emerged between rural and big-city educators who pushed back against the president. Lawmakers from some of the reddest parts of the country opposed the funding pause too, an early warning signal to the White House as it weighs plans that might further disrupt the public-education system.

  • EFF ☛ EFF at the Las Vegas Security Conferences

    It’s time for EFF’s annual journey to Las Vegas for the summer security conferences: BSidesLV, Black Hat USA, and DEF CON. Our lawyers, activists, and technologists are always excited to support this community of security researchers and tinkerers—the folks who push computer security forward (and somehow survive the Vegas heat in their signature black hoodies).

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ SIGGRAPH 2025 Announces Keynote Presentations Featuring Top Technological Marvels Shaping Our Trajectory Toward a Better Future | Press Releases | reformer.com

    This year's Keynote Presentations bring together the most innovative minds across science, technology, and design. The ultimate goal of the keynote lineup is to share bold ideas, ignite inspiration, and stimulate critical thinking of attendees.

  • Security Week ☛ Black Hat USA 2025 – Summary of Vendor Announcements (Part 1)

    The first part of this roundup covers announcements made in the days leading up to the event, as well as some of the announcements made on Monday, August 4.

  • Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Solutions and references

    A different approach is usually needed when the context is learning. Providing a copy-pasteable solution is usually not very beneficial to someone who is trying to learn something. It provides a shortcut that lets them avoid thinking about it and it stops them from learning how to solve similar issues later.

    In learning context, a “show how to figure it out” is much better approach. Providing the references is a good extra but often helping the person to learn how they can in the future learn similar things is the long-term solution that benefits both sides.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Sean Voisen ☛ The imp of optimization

    Every day the imps of optimization whisper seductively: measure this, track that, finish this, optimize all the things. But the perfectly optimized life exists beyond a horizon that recedes as we approach it—there’s always another metric to track, another improvement to make. Instead of chasing this impossible goal, maybe we can cultivate a counterbalancing skill: the ability to discern between that which requires optimization and that which deserves reverence.

    Some activities—work projects, athletic training, learning new skills—genuinely benefit from measurement and improvement. But others—walking, sleeping, reading, meditation, meals with family and friends—perhaps these are things to be savored. And if so, we should hold them sacred. We should allow walks to remain unmeasured wanderings, meals to be consumed without photographic evidence, books to be read mindfully and without hurry.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ This New Bionic Knee Is Changing the Game for Lower Leg Amputees

    The third layer of the prosthesis is what Shu refers to as the “mechatronics layer,” or the robotic limb that is then attached directly to the titanium implant. According to Shu, this robotic limb is but a secondary feature to the two other prosthetic layers that are integrated into the body: “If there’s a better leg that comes out five years in the future, you can upgrade,” Shu says. “You can replace the system with a faster, better leg, and you still have all the control aspects.”

• Proprietary

  • Sean Conner ☛ A bit of a deep dive into the Feedly bot

    But then in September of 2023, the number of requests for the https: version shoots up over 4,000, almost 6,000 in October 2023, and in November of 2023 the “poller” first shows up, only to go away in December of 2023, only to show up again in March 2024 and stick around from there. So it's clear to me that the backend at Feedly changed, and from my point of view, not for the better.

  • Six Colors ☛ David Pogue’s new book: 50 years of Apple

    Longtime Macworld and New York Times columnist and prolific author David Pogue has a new project: a 600-page book about Apple’s history: [...]

  • SANS ☛ Stealing Machine Keys for fun and profit (or riding the SharePoint wave)

    The original SharePoint vulnerability is a deserialization vulnerability that allowed an attacker to execute arbitrary commands – while these could be literally anything, majority of exploits that we analyzed resulted in attackers dropping an ASPX file that just revealed the IIS Machine Key to them. This prompted me into diving a bit deeper into how this can be abused.

  • [Repeat] Abdelkader Boudih ☛ AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning

    On July 23, 2025, AWS deleted my 10-year-old account and every byte of data I had stored with them. No warning. No grace period. No recovery options. Just complete digital annihilation.

    This is the story of a catastrophic internal mistake at AWS MENA, a 20-day support nightmare where I couldn’t get a straight answer to “Does my data still exist?”, and what it reveals about trusting cloud providers with your data.

    [...]

    But you’re not being targeted—you’re being algorithmically categorized. And if the algorithm decides you’re disposable, you’re gone.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • India Times ☛ Tesla, Elon Musk sued by shareholders over Robotaxi claims

      Ilon Musk and Tesla face a lawsuit from shareholders. They allege securities fraud related to self-driving vehicles. The suit claims Tesla concealed safety risks. A recent robotaxi test showed vehicle malfunctions. Tesla's stock price dropped significantly after the test. Musk and Tesla are accused of overstating autonomous driving capabilities. The lawsuit seeks damages for shareholders during a specified period.

    • Futurism ☛ Top AI Experts Concerned That OpenAI Has Betrayed Humankind

      But with its attempts to move away from nonprofit status and restructure as a for-profit entity, the letter's long list of signatories — which include British film and TV star Stephen Fry, for some reason — are no longer convinced that OpenAI plans to uphold the humanity-benefitting part of the bargain.

      "We call for at least a basic level of transparency about how this transition will affect your legal commitments to the public," wrote the signatories, who include several OpenAI expats like alignment researcher Jacob Hilton and Georgetown researcher Helen Toner, who worked to oust Altman during November 2023's failed CEO coup.

    • Futurism ☛ If the AI Bubble Pops, It Could Now Take the Entire Economy With It

      For now, companies are riding a tsunami wave of AI hype, with insatiable investors pumping stocks to unprecedented heights. As tech journalist Brian Merchant pointed out in his newsletter, Blood in the Machine, Apple was the first to hit a $1 trillion valuation in 2018. A whopping nine AI companies have since joined those sky-high ranks since then, with AI chipmaker Nvidia tripling its valuation to an astronomical $4 trillion in less than a single year.

      Confoundingly, companies are far from proving there will be a meaningful return on investment after all is said and done. While chatbots have become incredibly popular, they remain extremely expensive to train, run and maintain, racking up massive utility bills for AI companies.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Epstein Files Blew Up a Pro-Trump AI Bot Network on X

      That remarkable schism between automated X accounts is described in a new report from Alethea, an analytics firm that specializes in online risk mitigation technology. Its AI platform, Artemis, uncovered at least 400 bogus X profiles involved in the campaign, which relied on what the company’s researchers termed “PromptPasta.” As opposed to so-called “copypasta,” where phrases are copied verbatim from one account to the next and therefore more noticeable, the LLMs respond to user inputs with a range of similar though differentiated answers. “The outputs of PromptPasta are nuanced, with variations in phrasing among the posts that correspond to each LLM prompt, making them harder to detect than identical posts shared via copypasta tactics,” the Aletha report explains. “The network’s scale, speed, and narrative discipline illustrate how generative AI is lowering the barrier to sophisticated influence operations.” The identity of the actor or actors behind the network remains unknown.

    • 404 Media ☛ Wikipedia Editors Adopt ‘Speedy Deletion’ Policy for AI Slop Articles

      Wikipedia editors just adopted a new policy to help them deal with the slew of AI-generated articles flooding the online encyclopedia. The new policy, which gives an administrator the authority to quickly delete an AI-generated article that meets a certain criteria, isn’t only important to Wikipedia, but also an important example for how to deal with the growing AI slop problem from a platform that has so far managed to withstand various forms of enshittification that have plagued the rest of the [Internet].

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ AI interpretability has the same problems as philosophy of mind

      If you want to know how a particular AI language model works, the current state-of-the-art approach is to use a “probe”. Pick one layer of the model - a single region of its “brain” - and train a smaller classifier model to see if there are neuron patterns that light up reliably in response to particular concepts. This is the core technique of a field called “mechanistic interpretability”.

      Does this mean we can stop talking about AI “personalities”, because we can now scientifically determine how AI models think? I don’t think so. The process of probing AI brains is more philosophically fraught than it might seem at first. However, as I’ll argue, so is the process of probing human brains. Mechanistic interpretability and “folk psychology” both have a role to play in helping us understand AI models.

    • Cloudflare ☛ Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade website no-crawl directives

      We are observing stealth crawling behavior from Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine. Although Perplexity initially crawls from their declared user agent, when they are presented with a network block, they appear to obscure their crawling identity in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences. We see continued evidence that Perplexity is repeatedly modifying their user agent and changing their source ASNs to hide their crawling activity, as well as ignoring — or sometimes failing to even fetch — robots.txt files.

    • Jussi Pakkanen ☛ Let's properly analyze an AI article for once

      One of the great wonders of statistical science of the previous century was without a doubt the Soviet Union. They managed to invent and perfect dozens of ways to turn data to your liking, no matter the reality. Almost every official statistic issued by USSR was a lie. Most people know this. But even most of those do not grasp just how much the stats differed from reality. I sure didn't until I read this book. Let's look at some examples.

    • Kevin Kelly ☛ The Technium: Artificial Intelligences, So Far

      I wrote this short memo last November, 2024, at the invitation of Wired Mid-East for their year-end issue. I think it still holds up nine months later, and represents where we are on this astounding journey.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Bragging about replacing coders with AI is a sales-pitch

      The return on that capital only comes from one place: workers' wages. AI – as a financial phenomenon – represents that AI will a) replace, and/or; b) frighten workers to the point where more of the revenues generated by firms that buy AI tools will be returned to executives and shareholders, at the expense of their workforce.

      This is why AI bosses are so eager to cite statistics – conjured out of thin air, without any backing – about how AI is about to replace the majority of workers: [...]

    • BSDly ☛ That grumpy BSD guy: Those Titles the AI Bot Thought I Had Written

      Beware of robots generating your references. They could very well take it upon themselves to lie on your behalf. Testing in 2023, I observed a whopping 25% truth in the result. What is the truth rating in 2024?

  • Social Control Media

    • France24 ☛ TikTok Tan line trend sparks health concerns

      A growing number of Fentanylware (TikTok) videos depict young girls giving tips on how to get halterneck tan lines, or “burn lines,” primarily through sun exposure. Digital Parenting Coach, Elizabeth Milovidov, joins us to tells us more about this new trend and how it can be highly dangerous for the health.

    • ANF News ☛ Anger on social media directed at Kurdish children - Part One

      Yasemin Soydan warned that the growing online outrage in the Minguzzi case unfairly targets Kurdish children, and it cannot be addressed through exclusion and violence.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Tea App: It Wants to Keep Women Safe. Is It Working?

      A couple of months ago, Brianna, a 22-year-old who lives in Milwaukee, downloaded the Tea app. Created to provide a space for feedback on potential dates for other women, she understood that it was almost akin to Yelp, except that instead of rating businesses or restaurants, users were rating men. She scrolled through photos of those in her area, accompanied by either red flags or green flags and anecdotes from women who said they had dated or interacted with them. She read warnings about men who were too persistent and couldn’t take no for an answer. “It felt like an app full of men to avoid,” she says. But Brianna noticed that genuine harms were being conflated with differences in compatibility. “It’s like, this guy might not be terrible, he just may not be for you,” she says. “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” (Brianna, like many of the women in this story, asked to go by her first name to protect her privacy.)

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ Active infrastructure for Candiru spyware linked to Hungary, Saudi Arabia | The Record from Recorded Future News

      DevilsTongue has been deployed through both attacker-controlled URLs such as those found in spearphishing emails, Vögele said, and through strategic website compromises known as watering hole attacks, which usually take advantage of vulnerabilities in web browsers.

    • The Record ☛ Dutch Caribbean islands respond to cyberattacks on courts, tax departments | The Record from Recorded Future News

      The countries are part of what is known colloquially as the Dutch Caribbean, which includes Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten. The islands have nearly half a million residents and are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Semafor Inc ☛ OpenAI introduces new open models, rivaling offerings by China’s DeepSeek and Meta’s Llama

      The move comes as open models have grown increasingly popular. In January, China’s DeepSeek released its free R1 model, causing some investors to lose faith in the value of AI companies that charge users. In recent months, Alibaba’s Qwen family of models has seen wider adoption, enticing more businesses to employ them in AI tools.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ OpenAI has finally released open-weight language models

      In the company’s many years without an open LLM release, some users have taken to referring to it with the pejorative “ClosedAI.” That sense of frustration had escalated in the past few months as these long-awaited models were delayed twice—first in June and then in July. With their release, however, OpenAI is reestablishing itself as a presence for users of open models.

    • Wired ☛ OpenAI Just Released Its First Open-Weight Models Since GPT-2

      What sets apart an open-weight model is the fact that its “weights” are publicly available, meaning that anyone can peek at the internal parameters to get an idea of how it processes information. Rather than undercutting OpenAI's proprietary models with a free option, cofounder Greg Brockman sees this release as “complementary” to the company’s paid services, like the application programming interface currently used by many developers. “Open-weight models have a very different set of strengths,” said Brockman in a briefing with reporters. Unlike ChatGPT, you can run a gpt-oss model without a connection to the [Internet] and behind a firewall.

    • Drew Breunig ☛ Initial Thoughts on GPT-OSS

      OpenAI released its open-weight model, gpt-oss, today. It comes in two sizes, 120B and 20B, the latter of which runs briskly on my Mac Studio. I’m sure I’ll have more impressions as I use it in anger over the next few weeks, but here’s my initial thoughts: [...]

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • 404 Media ☛ Florida Sues Huge Porn Sites Including XVideos and Bang Bros Over Age Verification Law

      The state of Florida is suing some of the biggest porn platforms on the [Internet], accusing them of not complying with the state’s law that requires adult sites to verify that visitors are over the age of 18.

      The lawsuit, brought by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, is against the companies that own popular porn platforms including XVideos, XNXX, Bang Bros and Girls Gone Wild, and the adult advertising network TrafficFactory.com. Several of these platforms are owned by companies that are based outside of the U.S.

    • PC Mag ☛ How I Set Up Passkeys on My iPhone and Ditched Passwords For Good

      Passkeys on your iPhone eliminate passwords for supported apps and websites, letting you sign in with Face ID, Touch ID, or another secure method instead.

    • Kolide Inc ☛ Apple's Passkeys Are a Big Step to a Passwordless Future

      Google and Microsoft are rolling out their own passkeys and interoperability between platforms is one of the technology’s biggest selling points. So why is Apple getting all the headlines? As The Verge points out, “in order for the technology to succeed, it needs that marketing push.” And Apple is the acknowledged champion of hype-generation, so it makes sense for them to lead the charge.

    • EFF ☛ Blocking Access to Harmful Content Will Not Protect Children Online, No Matter How Many Times UK Politicians Say So

      During the four years that the legislation behind these changes—the Online Safety Act (OSA)—was debated in Parliament, and in the two years since while the UK’s independent, online regulator Ofcom devised the implementing regulations, experts from across civil society repeatedly flagged concerns about the impact of this law on both adults’ and children’s rights. Yet politicians in the UK pushed ahead and enacted one of the most contentious age verification mandates that we’ve seen.

      No one—no matter their age—should have to hand over their passport or driver’s license just to access legal information and speak freely. As we’ve been saying for many years now, the approach that UK politicians have taken with the Online Safety Act is reckless, short-sighted, and will introduce more harm to the children that it is trying to protect. Here are five reasons why: [...]

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Lyft is partnering with Baidu to deploy robotaxis in Europe

      U.S. ride-hailing firm Lyft Inc. announced today that it’s teaming up with the Chinese tech giant, Baidu, Inc., to deploy driverless taxis across Europe, starting with the U.K. and Germany in 2026.

• Defence/Aggression

  • RTL ☛ Echoes of the past: Hiroshima marks 80 years as US-Russia nuclear tensions rise

    A silent prayer was held at 8:15 am (2315 GMT), the moment when US aircraft Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy" over the western Japanese city on August 6, 1945.

  • Reuters ☛ The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    Wednesday marks the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Following are some facts about the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima and a second attack on Nagasaki three days later -- the only times nuclear weapons have been used in war. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, ending its role in World War Two.

  • The National Security Archive ☛ The Atomic Bombings of Japan and the End of World War II, 80 Years Later | National Security Archive

    Eighty years later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain emblematic of the dangers and human costs of warfare, specifically the use of nuclear weapons, but there is continuing disagreement over what brought World War II in the Pacific to an end. Since these issues will be subjects of hot debate for many years, the Archive has updated and reposted one of its most popular e-books: a growing compilation of declassified U.S. government documents and translated Japanese records about the bombings that first appeared in these pages 20 years ago in 2005.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Japan marks 80 years since the Hiroshima atomic bombing

    Hiroshima marked 80 years since the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city, holding a ceremony reminding the world of the horrors unleashed.

  • France24 ☛ Hiroshima marks 80 years since atomic bombing amid escalating nuclear tensions

    Against the backdrop of rising Russia-US tensions, Japan held a ceremony on Wednesday morning commemorating 80 years since the United States' atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Speakers warned the representatives of 120 countries and regions in attendance that escalating threats of nuclear warfare "blatantly disregard" the horrifying legacy of the 1945 attacks that killed over 240,000 people.

  • Macau Daily Times ☛ MACAU DAILY TIMES 澳門每日時報1945 US drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima | MACAU DAILY TIMES 澳門每日時報

    Official Japanese figures at the time put the death toll at 118,661 civilians. But later estimates suggest the final toll was about 140,000, of Hiroshima’s 350,000 population, including military personnel and those who died later from radiation. Many have also suffered long-term sickness and disability.

  • The Straits Times ☛ 80 years since atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    At 8.15am on Aug 6, 1945, an American B-29 Superfortress bomber named Enola Gay dropped a 10,000-pound uranium 235 bomb, instantly killing about 78,000 people.

    By the end of that year, the death toll reached about 140,000.

  • SBS ☛ Foreign interference: Police have warned of a 'serious crime', but what is it?

    Foreign interference charges are rarely seen in Australia, but fresh allegations against a Chinese national have prompted authorities to issue a warning, particularly for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities.

  • Futurism ☛ Expert Says a Specific Group of People Is Leading to the Collapse of Human Civilization

    Kemp warned of narcissistic and psychopathic leaders — a powerful but small "oligarchy" working against the interests of the rest of us — who turn a blind eye to existential threats like global warming, nuclear weapons, and AI.

    Scientists have long warned that escalating global temperatures caused by human activities could eventually tip us over the edge, leading to food shortages, unbearable heat, and droughts — not to mention the strain and instability that all those problems place on everything else.

  • The Atlantic ☛ A revealing new history of the Iranian Revolution

    How was it that, of all countries, Iran became this Islamic Republic? It boggles the mind, especially if you get to hang out with Iranians. On average, we are less religious than many peoples of the Muslim world, and patriotic to the point of narcissism. How did we become the building block of globally messianic Islamism? In other words, how did the Islamic Revolution of 1979 come to be, and why did its leaders endure?

  • The Nation ☛ The Danes Resisted Fascism, and So Can We

    This was a myth, popularized by a Swedish cartoon at the time, depicting Stauning and the king discussing what action to take if such a demand were made. But the myth led me to discover an even greater truth about Danish resistance to Nazism.

  • Watts Martin ☛ It's the heat and the humidity; also, the fascism

    But, I know this year it’s not just the heat or the humidity. It’s the sense of helplessness. Fascism is here, a third of the country is greeting it with thunderous applause, and neither the legislative nor judicial branches seem motivated to provide either check or balance. The industry I fell into thirty years ago is in the midst of another bubble, and its leaders are more insistent than ever that it is not a bubble, it is in fact either the greatest invention since fire or an existential threat, while they’re also either providing direct support for American fascism or just sucking up to it. The Venn diagram of “techbros who have gone MAGA” and “techbros preaching the gospel of AI” is more or less a perfect circle, and this is something we, as a society, need to face in a way we’ve been doing our damnedest not to.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Not just pushbacks: the controversial deforestation at the Lithuanian-Belarusian border

    Illegal migration remains a key problem along the traditionally quiet border between Lithuania and Belarus. While Vilnius continues to push back migrants, it has also felled many ancient trees along the frontier. A delicate balance of rights concerns has subsequently emerged in the area.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ US House panel subpoenas DOJ’s Epstein files, Bill and Hillary Clinton

    Epstein, who pleaded guilty to sex crimes in Florida in 2008, died in a New York City jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges. Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of a wealthy media mogul, is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for her role in the sex trafficking scheme.

    The former financier had surrounded himself with wealthy and powerful figures, including Trump and the Clintons, among many other influential people.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Foot bone found at Fish Lake belongs to fisherman missing since 1997, DNA confirms

    "This case has been on the mind of every one of the (search and rescue) members who were involved in the search 28 years ago," said Sevier County Sheriff Nathan J. Curtis. "It is good to finally have some closure for the family and the searchers."

• Environment

  • [Old] IMF ☛ Fossil Fuel Subsidies Surged to Record $7 Trillion

    Fossil-fuel subsidies surged to a record $7 trillion last year as governments supported consumers and businesses during the global spike in energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the economic recovery from the pandemic.

    As the world struggles to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and parts of Asia, Europe and the United States swelter in extreme heat, subsidies for oil, coal and natural gas are costing the equivalent of 7.1 percent of global gross domestic product. That’s more than governments spend annually on education (4.3 percent of global income) and about two thirds of what they spend on healthcare (10.9 percent).

  • YLE ☛ Environmental organisations criticise Finland's proposed "cash-for-clunkers" scheme

    The 140-gram limit means that the vast majority of all new cars would qualify for support, the environment ministry noted.

    The ministry argued that this weakens the scheme's ability to steer consumers towards genuinely low-emission vehicles.

  • teleSUR ☛ Italy Fines Shein €1 Million for Misleading Environmental Claims

    On Monday, Italy’s Competition Authority (AGCM) fined Infinite Styles Services — the company that operates Shein’s e-commerce websites in Europe — €1 million (about US$1.1 million) for using misleading environmental information to promote the brand’s clothing.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Task And Purpose ☛ The Navy flew a solar-powered drone for 73 hours straight

      In all, the Skydweller flew 220 hours, including one 73-hour flight. Built for long-duration surveillance, engineers think it could in the air longer on solar power alone.

    • Vox ☛ Why can’t the US build high-speed rail?

      If you’re traveling in America, there are plenty of ways to get to where you want to go. Interstate highways make road trips possible. Planes let you go from one side of the country to the other in a matter of hours. But there’s one mode of transportation that still eludes the US: high-speed rail. Countries in Europe and Asia have safe high-speed trains that can take you from city to city as fast as 200 miles per hour, while a little more than half of Amtrak trains reach speeds up to 100 miles per hour. So what is the state of high-speed rail in the US?

    • Vintage Everyday ☛ Here’s How George Lucas Made Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder Floating in “Star Wars” (1977)

      Designed by noted special effects artist John Stears and manufactured by Ogle Design, the landspeeder prop was built on a real vehicle chassis. Specifically, it was a three-wheeled car called a Bond Bug. This allowed it to be driven and controlled in the desert, but it also presented the main challenge: how to hide the wheels.

      To conceal the wheels, the special effects team mounted angled mirrors on the sides of the car. These mirrors reflected the desert ground, creating the illusion that the vehicle was hovering. When a person or object was in the reflection, it would appear to be underneath the vehicle.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Do elephants make deliberate gestures to ask for things? Our study says yes

      Elephants are known for their intelligence, strong social bonds, and good memories. But do they communicate to show real intention? A new study suggests they do. The research showed that elephants gestured to ask for food when a person was around and that they kept gesturing when they didn't receive all the food. These are signs that the elephants are trying to communicate with intention.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse

      “The key thing is this is not about all of humanity creating these threats. It is not about human nature. It is about small groups who bring out the worst in us, competing for profit and power and covering all [the risks] up.”

      The global Goliath is the endgame for humanity, Kemp says, like the final moves in a chess match that determine the result. He sees two outcomes: self-destruction or a fundamental transformation of society.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Papers Please ☛ Higher fees for visitors to the US

    Tourists and business visitors to the US from most of the world will have to pay additional fees or post bonds of from $250 to $15,000 per person — over and above the current $185 per person visa fee — under provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act enacted last month  and separate regulations under a preexisting law published today in the Federal Register.

    The consequences for inbound international tourism as well as travel to meetings and conventions in the US from most of the world are likely to be devastating. Nobody is going to hold a meeting — conference, trade show, academic symposium, etc. —  in the US under these rules if they want global participation. If other countries reciprocate, as some probably will, US travelers could be hit with much higher fees when they travel abroad.

    The biggest beneficiary of these changes to US laws and regulations is likely to be Mexico, where Cancun is by far the most obvious choice for meeting and convention planners looking for an alternative venue close to the US with more hotel rooms than anywhere in the Americas except Las Vegas, the busiest international airport in Latin America, and more welcoming entry and visa policies than the US for visitors from around the world.

  • Site36 ☛ Despite ongoing proceedings: Kurdish activist Mehmet Çakas faces rushed deportation to Turkey

  • [Repeat] Zimbabwe ☛ Free Cybersecurity Training Launches in Zim with $100m Russian Backing

    Cyberus, a company with deep ties to the Russian cybersecurity industry, is running the training. The instructors are working professionals in the field, and you can find their profiles and credentials on zimcyber.com.

    Interestingly, the top 100 learners in the programme will intern in Russia for a year. At least that’s the promise. This would be a rare opportunity for Zimbos looking to break into the global cybersecurity space.

  • India Times ☛ OpenAI in talks for share sale valuing startup at $500 billion: Bloomberg

    According to a report by Bloomberg News on Tuesday, ChatGPT creator OpenAI is in the early stages of discussions regarding a potential secondary share sale for current and former employees, which could value the company at around $500 billion.

  • Axios ☛ Palantir's $10 billion Army contract continues its D.C. win streak

    1. The ascendancy of Palantir in Washington and at the Pentagon, in particular. (At an AI summit last month, President Trump remarked, "We buy a lot of things from Palantir.")

    2. The changing ways militaries are trying and buying products, especially software.

  • India Times ☛ Palantir lifts annual revenue forecast again as AI demand accelerates

    The data analytics and defense software firm is getting a boost from U.S. President Donald Trump's focus on national security and a shift in the Pentagon's software-buying process towards commercial and "non-traditional" providers.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Growth of the Nazi Bar lndustry [UPDATE-1]

    The platform offered a tepid apology.

    Unfortunately this is lip service. The platform has been a publisher of far-right white supremacist, white nationalist, racist and antisemitic content – and literally Nazi content, as you can see from the screenshot above – from its inception.

    It has refused to remove this hateful content in spite of being asked repeatedly to do so.

  • [Old] ABC ☛ Why do societies collapse and what does it mean for us?

    Dr Kemp and his colleagues have crunched the numbers and found the average life span of a state throughout much of history has been 326 years.

    But there is a big range on either side of this number. For example, the Byzantine Empire lasted for 1,000 years, while China's Qin Dynasty lasted for just 15 years.

    And the largest states, or "mega-empires covering over a million square kilometres", were more fragile, with an average life span of 155 years.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Philz founders serve their loyal workers a steaming cup of betrayal with notes of greed

    According to Mission Local, Los Angeles private equity firm Freeman Spogli & Co. is buying Philz for $145 million, and guess what's not included in that hefty price tag? The common stock owned by employees who believed in the company enough to invest their own money. Those workers who watched the company grow from three stores to twenty, who smiled through endless mint-mojito orders, who bought into the whole "we're a family" schtick? Their stock options are being "canceled and extinguished for no consideration." That's corporate-speak for "sucks to be a poor!"

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact check: Are X's community notes fueling misinformation?

      Their findings raised concerns. Out of all fact-checkable posts analyzed, only 29% carried a community note rated as "helpful." In X's system, a note is rated "helpful" when it is upvoted by a diverse group of contributors and prioritized for public display.

      But of these "helpful" notes, only 67% actually addressed content that was fact-checkable. In other words, nearly a third of the notes that appeared as helpful were attached to posts that didn't contain factual claims at all.

      The researchers saw this as a problem of low precision and recall: too few misleading posts were getting corrected, and even when notes appeared, many weren't targeting actual misinformation.

    • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Russia's Useful Idiom, John Ratcliffe: Lost in Two Translations

      John Ratcliffe keeps going on propaganda channels to parrot Russian idioms (and make false claims) shamelessly. Whichever Russian spy wrote that disinformation package years ago must have gotten a new dacha to reward him for how he has turned America’s CIA Director into an unabashed useful idiom for Russia.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Meduza ☛ Train passenger fined for shouting ‘That’s what you deserve, Russians!’ during drone attack

    A Russian court fined a train passenger 30,000 rubles (about $375) for shouting an anti-Russian slogan during a Ukrainian drone attack. According to local court records, “M.E. Reutt” was traveling from Samara to the Black Sea resort of Adler on July 18. She allegedly yelled, “That’s what you deserve, Russians!” as drones struck railway infrastructure outside Rostov. She was later convicted of “discrediting” Russia’s army.

  • Irish Examiner ☛ Denmark to remove 'ugly and pornographic' mermaid statue, reports say

    Others have said the criticism reflects society’s attitudes to women’s bodies more generally — and not in a good way. For Aminata Corr Thrane, Berlingske’s debate editor, the scrutiny of the mermaid’s breasts was tantamount to body shaming.

    “Do naked female breasts have to have a specific academic shape and size to be allowed to appear in public?” she wrote.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ UCLA will negotiate with Trump over $339 million in medical and science grant freezes

    UCLA will negotiate with the Trump administration in hopes of reinstating $339 million in federal grants.
    Leaders are also considering legal options.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • ANF News ☛ Kurdish journalist Serkan Demirel writes about its deportation from Germany

    On 1 August, Kurdish journalist Serkan Demirel was stopped by German police at the German-Dutch border, detained, and ultimately deported to Switzerland under dubious circumstances, despite having valid travel documents, a legal residence permit, and an international press card.

    In a detailed personal statement, Demirel now recounts the sequence of events and makes serious allegations against the German authorities. He sees the actions not only as a violation of his individual rights but as a targeted attack on press freedom.

    Demirel's full statement reads as follows: [...]

  • The Washington Post ☛ American climate journalist Alec Luhn missing on hike in Norway national park

    Award-winning climate journalist Alec Luhn didn’t return as planned from a four-day solo hike in a Norwegian national park known for its glaciers. A search is underway.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Youtuber Mohammed Hijab's libel case against Spectator dismissed

    Judge also ruled Mohammed Hegab had lied to the court.

  • Open Caucasus Media ☛ French photojournalist denied entry to Georgia

    French photojournalist Hicham El Bouhmidi has been denied entry to Georgia, making him one of the latest among Western journalists to be denied entry to the country in the last few months.

    El Bouhmidi told OC Media that he was barred from entering the country on 2 August, following a visit to Armenia. A member of photojournalism agency Collectif DR, he had been based in the country since October 2024.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ 'He Played a Colossal Role': Moscow Times Alumni Share Memories of Derk Sauer

    We asked alumni of The Moscow Times, from its earliest days on Ulitsa Pravdy to its present-day life as a digital news outlet, to share their memories of working with him: [...]

  • The Verge ☛ IGN hit by layoffs as parent company Ziff Davis cuts costs

    Ziff Davis-owned IGN Entertainment has laid off staff, including eight members of the IGN Creators Guild. Those cuts represent 12 percent of the bargaining unit. The layoffs are the latest shift in the turbulent gaming media landscape. Earlier this year, Verge parent company Vox Media sold Polygon to GameRant owner Valnet, Giant Bomb went independent, and Game Informer returned after being shut down by GameStop. Last week, Ziff Davis also laid off staff at CNET.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • 404 Media ☛ ICE Is About To Go on a Social Media and TV Ad Recruiting Blitz

    Contracting records reviewed by 404 Media show that ICE wants to target Gen Z, including with ads on Hulu and HBO Max.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ Take Back Our Digital Infrastructure To Save Democracy

    The concentration of digital power wasn’t an accident—it was the inevitable result of Wall Street incentives that rewarded greater centralized control over user empowerment.

    Here’s how it happened: investor demands required tool builders to seek ever-greater returns, which meant transitioning from building user-empowering tools to controlling infrastructure. The most successful companies stopped building ever more useful services and started focusing on how to better extract rents from digital chokepoints—the equivalent of privatizing roads, then charging tolls.

    These companies colonized the open [Internet], turning their services into necessary but proprietary infrastructure. They erected barriers to entry, barriers to exit, and tollbooths for everyone else, with your attention as the price of admission.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Michael Tsai ☛ Google Loses Appeal Against Epic

  This seems to go much further than what Apple’s been ordered to do.

• MacRumors ☛ Epic Games Wins 'Total Victory' in Google Play Store Dispute

  While Apple largely won the lawsuit that Epic Games levied against it back in 2020, Google hasn't been as lucky. Google today failed to win an appeal in the ongoing ‌Epic Games‌ v. Google case, handing another victory to Epic.

• Copyrights

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Disney fears public backlash, copyright issues over AI ‘Moana’, ‘Tron’

    Disney couldn’t get Johnson for all the filming days they’d need him. So they were going to get in Johnson’s equally large cousin Tanoai Reed as a body double, then AI-face-swap Johnson’s face onto Reed.

    Johnson signed off on this plan — but it fell at the Disney lawyers. Specifically, they worried that AI-generated images might not be entirely copyrightable. So none of the AI-tweaked Johnson footage will be in the release version.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Piracy Shield Widens Scope to Protect Movie & TV Premieres & Live Music

    After focusing on IPTV services offering pirated live football matches from Italy's Serie A, legal amendments adopted by telecoms regulator AGCOM last week will widen the scope of the Piracy Shield blocking platform. The now-infamous claim, that pirate streams will be blocked inside 30 minutes, now applies to movie and TV premieres, and other events broadcast live. The more serious issues concern VPNs, DNS providers and whoever AGCOM decides to pursue next.