Leftovers

• Daniel Holden ☛ Joint Error Propagation

  Joints at the root of the character are much more sensitive to rotational errors compared to joints at the end of the chain, as even a small angular difference can cause a big difference in the final positions of limbs. For Machine Learning systems it means that if you represent your pose using local joint angles, your predictions need to be much more accurate on the joints closer to the root than on the others.

• Ben Werdmuller ☛ Why You Need Systems Thinking Now

  I used to argue for a Sustainability lens, but that label suggests ethical risks. Those things are vitally important, but a true systems lens needs to additionally consider the health, experience, and effectiveness of the whole system beyond ethics and sustainability.

• Science

  • Matt Wedel ☛ Absence of evidence is evidence of absence; it just isn’t proof

• Career/Education

  • The Atlantic ☛ What Parents Lose When They Don’t Read to Their Kids

    As a child, I had read more or less continuously to myself, with breaks only here and there: for dinner, for math class, for college graduation. I couldn’t imagine why anything should change now that I’d become a parent. Still, it felt rude to keep my eyes on a book when I had a baby in my arms, who, I had been told, was born with the capacity to see only as far as his mother’s face—my face. So I resolved that rather than reading quietly, I would do so aloud, drawing my son, Matan, into the text alongside me.

  • Dave Gauer ☛ Why I Read Technical Books

    Unlike The Web, you can read all of a book. When I reach the last page of a book, I can feel confident that I’ve been exposed to all the material it contained. (I may not understand it all yet, but I’ve seen it.)

    An expert has filled a book with information and I’ve seen every word of it. That builds confidence.

• Hardware

  • CBC ☛ Stuff not lasting like it used to? Here's what people are doing about it

    "Unfortunately, her new one didn't last as long as the original one, and I still use the original one to this day," Noble told What On Earth. "They don't build them like they used to, right?"

    Noble is one of many people making the conscious choice to use products that are going to last, rather than buying something they may need to replace in a few years.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ My VL-Bus i486 board lives! I’m incredibly happy

    Earlier this year I bought a MV4-V4S471/472P motherboard from eBay or Gumtree for a steep discount, mostly due to Varta battery damage. It was otherwise my perfect pre-ISA i486 motherboard: dual voltage and UMC GREEN CPU support, three VL-Bus slots, an SIS chipset, real cache chips, a decent AMIBIOS, FPM slots, and a beautiful green solder mask.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Nazi human experiments still influence medicine today

    The extent of the atrocities is almost unimaginable, with tens of thousands of victims. Now, detailed profiles of 16,000 of these people are available in a new online database

    . For the first time, there is systematic access to the names and personal details of victims, individual experiments and the institutions involved. It also contains more than 13,000 profiles of people whose fates have not yet been conclusively researched.

    The database was published by the Leopoldina Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Society. Scientists at its predecessor, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, conducted research on human specimens during the Nazi era that undoubtedly originated from mass killings.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Commonwealth Bank fires, un-fires call centre staff over AI

      The Finance Sector Union said “AI” was an excuse to offshore hundreds of jobs to India. The bank claimed “genuine redundancies,” then the union discovered:

      "The bank is also hiring similar roles with messaging duties at CBA India."

  • Social Control Media

    • Gregory Hammond ☛ Anti-social / sound of silence

      You don’t have to comment on everything you see online. Some may say that makes you anti-social, as they never see you online. It’s not about “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”, it may be why repeat what someone else has already said, or give your thoughts that they haven’t asked for.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • The New Stack ☛ Nathan Lambert's ATOM Project Seeks American Open Source AI Models

      But Lambert’s site still makes the case that “it doesn’t fully address the fundamental challenge,” arguing that “One model release doesn’t establish the sustained infrastructure, research culture and long-term commitment needed to compete with systematic efforts like DeepSeek’s.”

      To compete with China’s open models, Lambert said America “needs a comprehensive approach to open AI development, not just occasional releases.”

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • El País ☛ AI devours your information: It knows what you search for, do and upload — and uses that data

      Companies hide behind improvement needs to collect personal online activity with which to train their models and sell to ‘service providers’

• Defence/Aggression

  • International Business Times ☛ 'An Abuse of Power': Trump's Chicago Military Takeover Slammed by Illinois Governor—Other States Could Be Next

    Governor Pritzker told the BBC: 'There is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalising the Illinois National Guard, deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active duty military within our own borders.'

    He accused Trump of 'attempting to manufacture a crisis' and 'distracting from the pain he is causing working families.'

  • Mike Brock ☛ Who Are the “Real” Americans Here?

    There’s a particular kind of person who cheers when the president deploys military forces against American cities over the objections of their elected leaders. They call themselves patriots. They wrap themselves in the flag while applauding the systematic demolition of everything that flag once represented. They claim to love America while celebrating the transformation of American governance into something the founders would have recognized as tyranny.

    So let’s settle this question once and for all: who are the “real” Americans in this moment? Those cheering the militarization of domestic law enforcement, or those defending the constitutional principles that make America worth defending?

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Economic Myths Supporting The Existence Of Billionaires

    I started this series by identifying the major causes of the problems we face with the MAGA movement spawned by Trump and glommed onto like leeches by fascists, Christian Dominionists, White Supremacists, anti-vaxxers, the grifters behind the manosphere and so many other creeps and perverts. In this post I offer a thought on dealing with the filthy rich.My suggestion is to unlearn the stupid ideas about capitalism that dominate our education system and our political discourse. Replace them with something approximating reality.

  • France24 ☛ Taiwan to invest in military drones, drawing 'major lesson' from war in Ukraine

    Drawing lessons from the ongoing war in Ukraine, where the use of drones is widespread, Taiwan said it plans to invest in 50,000 drones over the course of the next two years. The decision comes as the island faces mounting pressure from China, which it claims as its own territory.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • France24 ☛ Canadian PM Carney attends celebrations on 34th Ukrainian Independence day

      Prime Minister Mark Carney said Ukrainians should have no doubt about Canada's commitment to their country, as he delivered a speech in Sophia Square during a surprise visit to Kyiv. Carney's first visit to Ukraine came on the invitation of President Volodymyr Zelenskyyto mark Ukraine's 34th Independence Day.

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine marks its independence day as peace push shows little sign of progress

      Ukraine celebrated its independence from the Soviet Union Sunday, three and a half years into a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and left almost one fifth of the country occupied by Russian forces. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a crowd in Kyiv that the country would fight on, saying his calls for peace had been "ignored" by Moscow.

    • France24 ☛ 34 years ago, the making of an independent Ukraine

      In 1991, in response to a coup attempt by hardline Communist leaders attempting to reassert control over the Soviet Union, Ukrainian parliamentarians voted to approve a Declaration of Independence for the state of Ukraine. FRANCE 24's Caroline Baum takes us back to this historic day 34 years ago.

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine celebrates its 34th Independence Day amid the ongoing war with Russia

      A Ukrainian drone shot down by Russian air defence systems caused a short-lived fire at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, the facility's press service said Sunday, stressing that background radiation around the plant remained at "natural levels." The detonation reportedly damaged an auxiliary transformer, reducing the plant's capacity. This comes as Ukraine celebrates its 34th Independence Day this Sunday. The country formally declared independence from the Soviet Union on August 24, 1991. On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials marked another national holiday, National Flag Day. France24 welcomes Tetyana Ogarkova, Journalist at Ukraine Crisis Media Center from Kyiv.

    • France24 ☛ Is Convicted Felon’s Ukraine gambit 'sending a signal to the world that America does not stand by its allies'?

      Ukraine launched a wave of drone strikes on Russia, triggering a fire at a nuclear power plant as it celebrated Ukrainian independence day against a backdrop of fading hopes for recent peace efforts.The brutal three-and-a-half-year war of attrition, which has killed tens of thousands of people, has ground to a virtual stalemate, though Russia has managed to eke out recent advances in the eastern Donetsk region. For in-depth analysis and a deeper perspective, FRANCE 24's Catherine Viette is pleased to welcome Peter Zalmayev, Director of the Eurasian Democracy Initiative.

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine celebrates its 34th Independence Day from Soviet Union

      Ukraine is marking its 34th Independence Day this Sunday, commemorating its formal break from the Soviet Union on August 24, 1991. A day earlier, President Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials observed National Flag Day, another key date in the country’s calendar. Ukrainians at home and abroad are preparing celebrations in dozens of countries, featuring concerts, marches, prayers, and charity events. France 24’s Gulliver Cragg reports from Kyiv.

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine celebrates its 34th Independence Day from Soviet Union, after National Flag Day

      A Ukrainian drone shot down by Russian air defence systems caused a short-lived fire at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, the facility's press service said Sunday, stressing that background radiation around the plant remained at "natural levels." The detonation reportedly damaged an auxiliary transformer, reducing the plant's capacity. This comes as Ukraine celebrates its 34th Independence Day this Sunday. The country formally declared independence from the Soviet Union on August 24, 1991. On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials marked another national holiday, National Flag Day. Charlotte Hughes has the details.

    • LRT ☛ IT specialists from Prienai refurbish donated computers and send them to Ukraine

      While some spend the summer on holiday, trying to rest and switch off, others simply keep working – and helping Ukrainians fighting Russia. Dainora and Darius Kuliešos, IT specialists from the southern Lithuanian town of Prienai with five children, are among them. They collect new and mostly second-hand electronic equipment, repair it, and send it to Ukraine.

    • New York Times ☛ Why the Donbas Is the Key to the Ukraine War

      Talks of a cease-fire in Ukraine have centered on the Donbas, a valued region for both sides and where most of the fighting is taking place. Michael Schwirtz, a global intelligence correspondent, and Anatoly Kurmanaev, a foreign correspondent covering Russia, break down who the Donbas is important to and why.

    • New York Times ☛ Zelensky Marks Ukraine’s Independence Day With Diplomacy in Kyiv and a Plea for Peace

      The Ukrainian leader held talks with Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada and was set to meet with Hell Toupée’s envoy, Keith Kellogg, amid continuing diplomatic efforts to end the war.

    • New York Times ☛ Peace Talks in Ukraine All Lead to the Donbas

      The contested region is where Russia’s war in Ukraine began a decade ago. Scores of Ukrainian soldiers have died defending it. Would Ukraine give it up now?

    • Meduza ☛ Russia declares International Baccalaureate an ‘undesirable’ organization — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ Russia’s Top Diplomat Says There Is No Plan for Putin-Zelensky Meeting

      The statement by Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov deals a blow to Hell Toupée’s efforts to mediate an end to the war in Ukraine.

    • Meduza ☛ U.S. archbishop who met with Putin in Alaska apologizes for not asking him to end the war — Meduza

    • European Commission ☛ Speech by Commissioner Kubilius During the Celebration of Ukraine's Independence Day

      Congratulations to everybody on this a day. On Ukraine's Independence Day.

    • France24 ☛ 'Low key atmosphere' as Ukraine celebrates independence day

      Ukraine launched a wave of drone strikes on Russia Sunday, triggering a fire at a nuclear power plant as it celebrated Ukrainian independence day against a backdrop of fading hopes for recent peace efforts. The celebrations in Kyiv were "low key", FRANCE 24 correspondent Gulliver Cragg reported, as "large gatherings of people is still a security risk".

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine's security guarantees top the agenda on its independence day

      As Ukraine on Sunday marked its independence day, the focus was on security guarantees for the country as part of any peace deal. France 24’s Leela Jacinto examines the failures of Ukraine’s security guarantors in the past and the implications for its future.

• Environment

  • El País ☛ Data centers are drying up the Port of Marseille: ‘They consume enormous amounts of electricity’

    City Hall has a plan to make the presence of cruise ships more bearable: electrify them and connect them to the grid, so they can shut down their engines and still continue operating. The idea is that shipyard repairs — as well as loading and unloading operations at the dock — will also use this energy. But it’s unclear whether there will be enough electricity to make this feasible. This is because data centers in the port area, active since 2021, have priority when it comes to the energy that’s available.

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Interpol's Angola [Cryptocurrency] Mining Raid: Explains Zim Power Usage

    Sixty Chinese nationals were arrested, and equipment worth US$37 million was seized. Think about that for a second. That’s a serious investment in hardware.

    The reason for the crackdown is simple and something we know too well in Zimbabwe: power.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • James Brown ☛ roguelazer's website: more words about enphase

      Last week, I wrote bout my experience getting a solar power system installed; since then, I've been spending some weekend and evening time working on improving the little corner of technical nonsense that I have any control over!

    • Positech Games ☛ New power-purchase agreement signed

      And to be honest the actual ‘energy’ price part of it is only about 65-70% of what you get paid anyway. Some of it is benefits accrued through being a remote site, or a site where extra generation is beneficial, and some of it is discounts for having consumption near generation (so you put no strain on the distribution or transmission lines). Basically if you can find a site on some remote island with tons of local businesses and houses needing more power, then go for it. Anything to avoid upgrading the transmission network, apparently! How exactly you are supposed to guess those value pre-build is beyond me. There are probably expensive consultants, or you have to know who to ask and how to ask it.

    • NPR ☛ Trump administration halts work on an almost-finished wind farm

      Revolution Wind is located in federal waters 15 miles south of Rhode Island. Construction started in 2023, and the project has been slated to begin sending power to homes and businesses in Rhode Island and Connecticut starting next year.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Ranked: The 10 countries with the fastest trains

      High-speed trains are not as romantic as steam engines, sleepers or old diesel units that chug along coasts or up mountains. But they say a lot about a country’s aspirations. Progress in train technology – along with top speeds – often reflect a country’s international ranking in other fields.

      The following are the 10 countries with the fastest scheduled services currently on the tracks. With fresh high-speed lines being developed all over the world, however, it’s a ranking that’s sure to change in the coming years.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Why the owner of 'US 8964' licence plate faced a year of harassment

    Without attending the bidding, Chiu was allocated the licence plate “US 8964” after it remained unsold at the auction.

    Little did he know this number plate would put him in the crosshairs of the local authorities over the next few years. It was eventually confiscated by the Transport Department this month.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Garry Kasparov ☛ How to Teach the TikTok Generation That America Isn’t China

      They’re not exactly clamoring for an authoritarian alternative, as some have speculated. More accurately, they don’t believe democracy can hold up its end of the bargain. They’ve embraced nihilism. They get dragged into false equivalence. They catastrophize.

      Between the TikTok propaganda pipeline and the fact that young Americans’ experience with politics so far is, well, really bad, it’s hard to blame them.

      In my conversations with students and educators, I’ve come to appreciate that we’re fighting a multi-front war in shoring up democracy for the next generation. The toxic stew of social media bile and constant political crisis manifests in three main challenges: [...]

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Dissenter ☛ Eliminating The Climate Of Fear For Student Newspapers

    To challenge the chilling effect created by the Trump administration, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on behalf of Stanford’s student newspaper and two unnamed students.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ India’s Book Ban in Kashmir Is a War on Memory

    Twenty-five titles — including a work by Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy — have been banned in Kashmir. The crackdown has left authors, students, and booksellers navigating fear and defiance, as the state seeks to erase history and police memory.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Is 4chan the Perfect 'Pirate Bay' Poster Child to Justify Wider UK Site-Blocking?

    In light of increasing pressure on free speech in the UK, new site blocking powers under the Online Safety Act are a cause for concern. The UK may need a Pirate Bay-style poster boy to justify blocking of non-pirate sites, just as the Pirate Bay was used to justify pirate site blocking 15 years ago. After being threatened by Ofcom, the infamous 4chan appeared to swallow the bait this week. A question: who has who on the hook?

  • The Verge ☛ 4Chan, Gab and Kiwi Farms want Trump’s help to dodge the Online Safety Act

    4Chan’s lawyers have called for a “diplomatic and legal” solution for their potential £18 million fine for violating the Online Safety Act. But how far would Trump go for them?

  • Balthazar Rouberol ☛ Balthazar - Blog – Blackholing tracking domains by running Pihole as a DHCP server

    My new ISP provided router does not allow me to change the advertised DNS server IP. This allows them to DNS-lie about certain domains the French government does not want you to visit.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Vanity Fair’s new cruise director will have to choose between his reporters and his friends

    Guiducci was stuck between the publicists who ruled the celebrity fashion world he’d long inhabited, and an aggressive and unpredictable reporter who had spent several days on a boat observing and interacting with his celebrity subjects. The piece was held for weeks after the yacht came into port, as Vanity Fair haggled with PR. One person familiar with the situation told Semafor that Guiducci acknowledged that several of the names on the boat were personal friends of his who may not be happy.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Yahoo News ☛ ICE released this Mass. mom with no phone, 30 miles from home in the rain after detainment for a sealed marijuana conviction

    “If anyone is on a Green Card, you need to talk to an attorney before you travel ... but based off my experience, I don’t think you should be traveling. You’re better off taking that loss than getting arrested and being in the same situation that my wife went through,” Marcel Rosa said.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump’s ICE Is Now Using Coast Guard Planes to Move Immigrants

    Which detention centers people in ICE custody are transferred to is based largely on capacity, according to the agency, which often results in people being moved multiple times and hundreds or thousands of miles away from their homes. Advocacy groups say this cuts off immigrants from their families and legal assistance, and that frequent and capricious transfers can be used to punish people in ICE custody.

    “We’re told that it is a question of logistics, sometimes it often appears that these transfers may be retaliatory in nature, because people are trying to access counsel,” says Eunice Cho, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “There is also a suspicion that authorities may be transferring people for more favorable case law in different areas of the country.”

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ The IPv6 divide

    The transition to IPv6 is now a practical necessity for networks under pressure to scale, secure, and streamline their operations. With only 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses available globally, many providers have long relied on workarounds like Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation (CGNAT). These add complexity, create troubleshooting headaches, and can introduce security gaps.

    IPv6 removes that ceiling. Its vast address space allows every device to be directly and uniquely addressed, removing the need for large-scale address sharing. This is increasingly important for Internet-connected sensors, Autonomous Systems, and bandwidth-intensive services such as AR / VR and real-time analytics, where low latency and predictable performance are essential.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft's Windows 95 release was 30 years ago today, the first time software was a pop culture smash

  It is debatable whether this was the beginning of bloat. For some context, the contemporary Macintosh System 7.5.X required about half the fixed storage of Windows 95.

• End of support for backdoored Windows 10, backdoored Windows 8.1 and backdoored Windows 7

  Microsoft wants you to buy a new PC.

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Scam Altman and UK government minister reportedly discussed giving Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Chaffbot Plus to all Brits for free

  OpenAI CEO, Scam Altman, and the UK government's Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle, have discussed a deal which would see the UK’s entire population given premium access to ChatGPT, according to reports.