Leftovers

• The Dissenter ☛ 'Three Days of The Condor' At 50: The Classic CIA Thriller

  In fact, “Condor” holds the distinction of being the first Hollywood thriller to focus solely on the CIA. The film also contains a sensational whistleblower narrative that starkly portrays how far officials in the national security state will go to keep their shadowy operations hidden from the public.

• Los Angeles Times ☛ Contributor: He DJ'd radio for 79 years. The late Art Laboe's fans are still tuning in

  I am one of those someones. I was a teenager when I first started listening to Laboe in the 1970s. I spent nights with him on the radio for the rest of his life, until he died Oct. 7, 2022. By then I’d already discovered Rodriguez, who took over the Laboe tribute broadcast in 2023, with his own old school “radio voice” and an oldies playlist suitable for dance parties, house parties, long-haul travel and anyone burning the candle at both ends.

• Sebastian Tronto ☛ When I say "alphabetical order", I mean "alphabetical order" | Sebastiano Tronto

  Now that I know what the issue is, I can solve it by renaming the files with a consistent scheme. I have also found a setting to fix Dolphin’s behavior, but it was very much buried into its many configuration options. And I would rather not have to change this setting in every application I use, assuming they even allow it.

  I miss the time when computers did what you told them to, instead of trying to read your mind.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ 6,100-Qubit Processor Shatters Quantum Computing Record

    It's the work of scientists from the California Institute of Technology, who used cesium atoms as their qubits, trapping them in place with a complex system of lasers that acted as tweezers to keep the atoms as stable as possible.

    Qubits differ from the classical bits of traditional computers by exploiting what's known as a superposition: not just binary states of 1 or 0, but a spread of probabilities that allows for algorithms that can solve problems considered out of reach of conventional computing methods.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Physicists demonstrate 3,000 quantum-bit system capable of continuous operation

    In a paper published in the journal Nature, the team demonstrated a system of more than 3,000 quantum bits (or qubits) that could run for more than two hours, surmounting a series of technical challenges and representing a significant step toward building the super computers, which could revolutionize science, medicine, finance, and other fields.

  • Philip Zucker ☛ Proving the Infinitude of Primes in Knuckledragger

    Cody challenged me to prove that there are an infinitely many primes in Knuckledragger, saying it’s the minimum thing to do to demonstrate you have a proof assistant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid%27s_theorem It’s one of the older proofs out there, appearing famously in Euclid’s elements. This is number 11 in the formalizing 100 theorems list https://www.cs.ru.nl/~freek/100/ . Maybe it’d be fun to start chasing down the other easy ones and copy them out of Isabelle or whatever

    By staying very close to the isabelle proof https://isabelle.in.tum.de/dist/library/HOL/HOL-Computational_Algebra/Primes.html , it took me about 3-4 hours to do this, some of which was at a groggy 11pm. I went top down through this proof to see the basic definitions and lemmas I needed on demand.

• Hardware

  • The Register UK ☛ Datacenter fire downs 647 South Korean government services

    The fire struck on Friday night at a datacenter operated by South Korea’s National Information Resources Service. Korean media report that technicians replacing a lithium-ion battery inadvertently sparked a blaze. As is often the case with battery fires, firefighters struggled to control the blaze, which reached 234 batteries.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ The flaw that nearly killed Leica's digital dream (and how Leica fixed It)

    Leica, as most will know, started the 35mm revolution 100 years ago, back in 1925. But the digital revolution seemed to catch it off-guard. Eventually, the company decided to catch up and develop its first digital rangefinder camera, the Leica M8, which was introduced to the world in September 2006 and available in stores that November.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ Two modes of Internet use

    Do you want the Internet to be an extension of your existing offline relationships, or to be separate from your offline life? I think these are two totally different modes for using the Internet, and most people are in the first group.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Gen Z Is Being Crushed by Anxiety. One Teen Started an Org to Help

    I met a couple of CSC instructors that day and asked them about their Compassionate Schools Project. They explained that it was a syllabus for grade-school students, derived from a decade of working with public schools in Louisville, Kentucky. Its aims were threefold: to teach kids social and emotional skills from kindergarten through fifth grade; give them mindfulness tools and breathing techniques to manage stress and setbacks; and ingrain good habits around diet and exercise as a passport to healthy lives. CSC was in the process of adapting the program and offering it to thousands of school kids in other states.

  • [Old] Forbes ☛ Too Much Internet Use Is Changing Teenage Brains, Study Finds

    Scans show that the brains of teenagers who are addicted to the [Internet] undergo changes in the parts of the brain involved in active thinking.

    These were found to lead to additional addictive behavior, as well as changes associated with intellectual ability, physical co-ordination, mental health and development, according to researchers at University College London, who carried out the study.

  • [Old] The Guardian UK ☛ Internet addiction alters brain chemistry in young people, study finds

    At the same time, there was an overall decrease in the functional connectivity in parts of the brain involved in active thinking, which is the executive control network of the brain responsible for memory and decision-making.

    The research found that these changes resulted in addictive behaviours and tendencies in adolescents, as well as behavioural changes linked to mental health, development, intellectual ability and physical coordination.

  • [Old] CNN ☛ Internet addiction may harm the teen brain, MRI study finds

    A new study has possibly captured that objectively, finding that for teens diagnosed with internet addiction, signaling between brain regions important for controlling attention, working memory and more was disrupted.

  • uni College London ☛ Internet addiction affects the behaviour and development of adolescents

    Lead author, MSc student, Max Chang (UCL Great Ormond Street Institute for Child Health) said: “Adolescence is a crucial developmental stage during which people go through significant changes in their biology, cognition, and personalities. As a result, the brain is particularly vulnerable to [Internet] addiction related urges during this time, such as compulsive internet usage, cravings towards usage of the mouse or keyboard and consuming media.

• Proprietary

  • XDA ☛ I set up a remote Linux VM on Proxmox I can use from Windows, and it's almost as good as native

    I've talked before about how I wish I could use Linux as a daily driver on my computer, but there are several blockers to me doing so that have prevented me from being able to make the switch. However, I recently built a rather overpowered Proxmox-based machine, and I've been migrating some of my older services while adding new ones to it. Among those services is a full-fledged Ubuntu Server install, with 400 GB of storage, 16GB of RAM, and about half of the Intel Core i7-14700K's cores assigned to it. With the magic of remote desktop technology, I can use it as if it were a native machine.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ YouTube Removes Disturbing AI Slop YouTube Channel Filled With Videos of Women Being Murdered

      The videos all adhered to a general formula, according to 404: a photo-realistic depiction of a woman begging for her life while she was being held at gunpoint by a man who loomed over her in the foreground.

    • Linuxiac ☛ Fedora Council Proposes Policy on AI-Assisted Contributions

      In light of this, the Fedora Project is taking a clear step toward defining how artificial intelligence should be utilized within its community, aiming to strike a balance between enabling contributors to benefit [sic] from AI tools and protecting the community’s core values.

    • PC Mag ☛ AI 'Workslop' Is Plaguing American Companies, Says Stanford Research

      Over 40% of US-based full-time employees reported receiving “workslop” in the last month, defined as AI-generated content that "masquerades as good work but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task."

    • Tim Kellogg ☛ Does AI Get Bored?

      Things. There’s a thing I call “collapse” that’s like boredom. There’s also something akin to “meditation”. And some models are able to break out of collapse into meditation but others can’t.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ The finance press finally starts talking about the ‘AI bubble’

      We’re finally seeing signs of the mainstream financial press admitting the AI bubble might not be robot heaven, and all the AI pumpers telling them everything was fine just might be full of it.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Why I gave the world wide web away for free

      I coded the world wide web on a single computer in a small room. But that small room didn’t belong to me, it was at [CERN]. [CERN] was created in the aftermath of the second world war by the UN and European governments who identified a historic, scientific turning point that required international collaboration. It is hard to imagine a big tech company agreeing to share the world wide web for no commercial reward like [CERN] allowed me to. That’s why we need a [CERN]-like not-for-profit body driving forward international AI research.

    • India Times ☛ 'Technology a tool, not teacher': Experts stress the need to be vigilant on AI usage by children

      All India Council for Technical Education chairman T G Sitharam, who was honoured with the Shiksha Garima Award at the conference, said that technologies will come and go but their usage should always be in the right manner.

    • Futurism ☛ In Situations Where Most Humans Think You're Being a Jerk, ChatGPT Will Assure You You're Behaving Like an Angel

      In practice, that can be dangerous. When people share paranoid or delusional beliefs with ChatGPT, the bot often agrees with the unbalanced thoughts, sending users into severe mental health crises that have led to involuntary commitment and even death.

    • Futurism ☛ AI Coding Is Massively Overhyped, Report Finds

      In a new report, management consultants Bain & Company found that despite being “one of the first areas to deploy generative AI,” the “savings have been unremarkable” in programming.

    • Rodney Brooks ☛ Why Today’s Humanoids Won’t Learn Dexterity

      In this post I explain why today’s humanoid robots will not learn how to be dexterous despite the hundreds of millions, or perhaps many billions of dollars, being donated by VCs and major tech companies to pay for their training.

      At the end of the post, after I have completed my argument on this point, I have included two more short pieces. The first is on the problems still to be solved for two legged humanoid robots to be safe for humans to be near them when they walk. The second is how we will have plenty of humanoid robots fifteen years from now, but they will look like neither today’s humanoid robots nor humans. [...]

  • Social Control Media

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The GOP Is Refusing to Interrogate Trump’s Big Tech Allies

      The four social media companies called to testify are far less popular than Facebook and Instagram, which together boast more than five billion monthly active users. Reddit, a forum posting site, has 1.1 billion monthly active users, while Twitch, a livestreaming platform, has about 240 million monthly active users, and is frequently used by progressive political commentator Hasan Piker, who’s known for his hours-long streams on political issues.

    • Wired ☛ How a Travel YouTuber Captured Nepal’s Revolution for the World

      Anger had been simmering in Nepal for months, much of it driven by widespread corruption among politicians. Many of those politicians’ children also flaunted their wealth, often on social media. They in turn were called out online by Nepali people, and on September 4, the government banned 26 social media platforms. Protests started, and large demonstrations broke out on September 8, with police using tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition on crowds of largely young demonstrators. That’s when Jackson arrived, filming his way through marches and capturing the sounds of gunshots.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Security Week ☛ British Department Store Harrods Warns Customers That Some Personal Details Taken in Data Breach

      The Metropolitan Police force said that inquiries about “a ransomware attack on a London-based organization” were ongoing and no arrests have been made.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • NYOB ☛ Whitebridge.ai: your personal data is for sale to you and anyone

      Lithuania-based Whitebridge AI sells “reputation reports” on everyone with an online presence. These reports compile large amounts of scraped personal information about unsuspecting people, which is then sold to anyone willing to pay for it. Some data is not factual, but AI generated and includes suggested conversation topics, a list of alleged personality traits and a background check to see if you have shared adult, political, or religious content. Despite the legal right of free access to your own data, Whitebridge.ai only sells “reports” to the affected people. It seems the business model is largely based on scared users that want to review their own data that was previously unlawfully compiled. noyb has now filed a complaint with the Lithuanian DPA.

    • Nicolas Fränkel ☛ Privacy for subdomains: the solution

      Last week, I described a gloomy situation: all public TLS certificate providers log your requests. By browsing through the subdomains, one can get their respective IP addresses. If one of them points to your home route, they know your general location.

      I analyzed several solutions and decided to use wildcard certificates, which don’t leak subdomain information, while continuing to use Let’s Encrypt. My solution caters to my Synology NAS, as it’s the one I’m using.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Oregon sues to block Trump from sending National Guard to Portland

    A 19th-century law, the Posse Comitatus Act, generally forbids military members from conducting domestic law enforcement. Oregon lawmakers considered but did not pass a bill this year to reinforce prohibitions on the National Guard being used for domestic law enforcement.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Unlimited Political Spending Could Soon Be Legal

    Republicans are bringing a case before the Supreme Court that has the potential to eviscerate what few remaining restrictions on campaign finance we have left.

  • The Register UK ☛ Dutch teens arrested over Wi-Fi 'sniffing' for Russia

    According to Dutch media, on August 16 authorities observed one of the teenagers carrying a "Wi-Fi sniffer" near the headquarters of Europol and the EU criminal investigation agency Eurojust, and near the Canadian embassy. The National Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed the arrests but declined to provide further details, citing the age of the defendants.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Moldovans Vote in Tense Polls, Torn Between EU and Russia

    Pro-EU President Maia Sandu of PAS warned of the "massive interference of Russia" after casting her vote, saying Moldova was "in danger."

    "If Moldovans will not mobilize enough and if Russia's interference will impact significantly our elections, then Moldova might lose everything it has won and this could be a significant risk also for other countries like Ukraine," she told reporters outside a polling station in Chisinau.

  • Truthdig ☛ Corporate Influence Is at the Heart of Political Polarization - Truthdig

    That conventional view is way too simple. Follow the money. The underlying cause is the tsunami of legal bribes flowing from huge, wealthy corporations (and their oligarchic CEOs and major investors) into American politics.

    That tsunami has grown dramatically over the last 40 years. It underlies the crisis of democracy. It is fueling polarization. Democracy and social cohesion are impossible to sustain when big money is dictating political outcomes.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ US' new unmanned attack boat to offer 67,000-pound payload capacity

    The vessel offers 3,000 nm range at 10 knots and extended self-deploying range of 10,000 nm.

• Environment

  • France24 ☛ EU climate watchdog urges Europe to step up environmental protections

    Europe remains a leader in tackling climate change but must step up efforts to protect the environment and adapt to warming, the EU’s environment agency warned on Monday. The warning follows member states’ failure at a UN summit to agree a 2035 emissions-cutting plan amid internal divisions.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Futurism ☛ Residents Shut Down Google Data Center Before It Can Be Built

      Google nixed plans for a gigantic $1 billion data center on more than 460 acres of land in Indiana after residents hotly protested the proposal due to concerns that the complex would jack up electricity prices for neighbors and suck away untold gallons of water in an area already plagued with drought.

  • Overpopulation

    • Sabine Hossenfelder ☛ Why People Aren’t Having Kids & How To Fix It

      People in Western countries are having fewer kids, making politicians worried about the future of their nations’ populations. Let’s take a look at how bad the problem is, what governments are doing to fix it, and why it’s happening.

• Finance

  • Pro Publica ☛ Millions Could Lose Housing Aid Under Trump Plan

    Some 4 million people could lose federal housing assistance under new plans from the Trump administration, according to experts who reviewed drafts of two unpublished rules obtained by ProPublica. The rules would pave the way for a host of restrictions long sought by conservatives, including time limits on living in public housing, work requirements for many people receiving federal housing assistance and the stripping of aid from entire families if one member of the household is in the country illegally.

    The first Trump administration tried and failed to implement similar policies, and renewed efforts have been in the works since early in the president’s second term. Now, the documents obtained by ProPublica lay out how the administration intends to overhaul major housing programs that serve some of the nation’s poorest residents, with sweeping reforms that experts and advocates warn will weaken the social safety net amid historically high rents, home prices and homelessness.

  • Fabian Beuke ☛ K8s on Hetzner vs. AWS Fargate

    For simplicity, the cost calculations include only compute usage and exclude storage, bandwidth, and other components. We assume that fewer employees are needed to operate and maintain a highly managed service compared to a traditional setup, with the least operational effort required for SaaS offerings. The following illustration highlights the different levels of management.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Register UK ☛ Trump demands Microsoft fire its head of global affairs

    The CEO quickly visited the White House, after which Trump praised his leadership qualities, before landing a deal that saw Uncle Sam take a ten percent stake in Intel in return for grants previously authorized under the CHIPS Act.

  • Julik Tarkhanov ☛ The boss of it all

    Without going into much detail, let’s just say that so far my experience has been the opposite. The impact was significant enough that I am now cautious about placing any open source projects I create under any organization that I don’t directly control. To put things in perspective, at one company alone my legacy consists of 30+ libraries. Some of those were built by my colleagues, but the majority - mostly by me. I no longer have the ability to maintain, expand, improve or derive benefit from any of them.

    All by organizational decisions made by leadership, with impressive professional profiles. They have built careers out of a range of achievements - one of which has, as it turns out, been “sunsetting” the work of builders like me.

  • NDTV ☛ What's 'Clog The Toilet' Campaign That Blocked Flights For Indian H-1B Visa Holders

    After Trump's announcement on September 21, panic spread among Indian tech workers, who rushed to return to the US to avoid the new fee. Far-right trolls on forums like 4chan coordinated a campaign to block flights, bragging about holding over 100 seats to "wreck Jeets", a derogatory term for people of South Asian origin.

    Trolls would search for popular India-US flights and start the checkout process without paying. This temporarily held seats, making them unavailable for real passengers. After the hold expired, they would do it again, keeping flights blocked and driving up ticket prices.

  • India Times ☛ Trump demands Microsoft fire ex-Biden DOJ official Lisa Monaco over national security concerns

    President Donald Trump demanded Microsoft fire Lisa Monaco. Monaco serves as the company's President of Global Affairs. Trump labeled her a national security menace. He claimed her security clearance was revoked earlier this year. Monaco previously served as Deputy Attorney General. Microsoft has government contracts. The company declined to comment on Trump's demand. This event follows other disputes.

  • Rik Huijzer ☛ The Real Enemy Isn't Who You Think It is - Rik's Weblog

    Transcript from a video from Chase Hughes: [...]

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Trump and Epstein statue reinstallation denied after its removal

    A 12-foot statue depicting President Trump holding hands with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein appeared on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Tuesday morning and was removed by the National Park Service less than 24 hours later.

    The saga, which made the rounds on late-night TV this week, did not stop there.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ We’re all afraid of political violence and retribution. But don’t be drawn into remaining silent.

    When bullets silence speech, democracy is in grave peril. It was already in trouble, considering the rush to authoritarianism and the repeated stumbles of Democrats, but on this month an American tradition was made new again. Political violence is a habit we must break, or it will surely break us.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Atlantic ☛ Nexstar and Sinclair Lost Their Game of Chicken

    Local TV stations used to be owned by small independent companies or by the networks themselves. But today, about 40 percent of all local stations are owned by the three biggest broadcast-station groups, Nexstar, Sinclair, and Gray. That consolidation has given them more leverage over the networks than local stations once had. So when ABC acceded to their desire to take Kimmel off the air, it might well have seemed to them like evidence that the balance of power had shifted permanently in their favor.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Futurism ☛ Delivery Robot Torments Disabled Man

    When Chaney tries to pass, the bot swerves directly into his path, even brake checking him a few times. Before the video ends, it cuts him off, continues driving for half a second, then slams the brakes again. It happened so quickly that Chaney ends up rear-ending the machine.

    “The way that it moved just seemed really intentional,” Chaney, a disability advocate, told the Los Angeles Times. “Everywhere that I moved, it blocks, and then it literally went across the sidewalk to cut me off.”

  • Futurism ☛ Exec: Get Ready to Be Fired Because of AI

    Asam is one of many businesses executives who’ve been startlingly candid about their intentions to displace human labor with AI tools or agents. From their point of view, you can directly replace your overpaid, calling-in-sick grunts with ever-dependable AI agents. Or you can whittle your workforce down to a skeleton crew that are super efficient thanks to the magical abilities of AI.

  • YLE ☛ Iranian TV censors Finnish FM's legs

    Valtonen wrote on the National Coalition Party's Instagram account on Sunday that she does not change her attire based on whom she meets, and that she will not attend events where covering her face or hair is required.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Semafor Inc ☛ Former FTC Chair Khan questions Amazon’s $2.5B settlement

  Amazon, which brings in more than $150 billion in revenue per quarter, won’t have any problem paying the fine, and admitted no wrongdoing. For big tech companies, such penalties have become part of the price of doing business (remember Facebook’s $5 billion FTC hit?) That could bode relatively well for Amazon in a second, unrelated FTC lawsuit over alleged antitrust violations scheduled to go to trial in 2027.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Streameast Reclaimed Domain Name Previously Seized By the U.S. Government

    Pirate sports streaming site Streameast has quietly reclaimed one of the domain names the U.S. authorities seized last year. No legal battle was required, as the U.S. government apparently let the domain expire. The quiet re-registration of Streameast.xyz marks a major symbolic win for the site, which continues to challenge the authorities who tried to shut it down.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Politics and World Events

    • ID cards are back. No2ID will be back too.

      Anyone in the UK will have seen the announcement on Thursday that the government is proposing to bring in a digital ID system. Even usually apolitical people are talking about it.

      [...]

      There are perfectly good dialectic arguments for this, but, like the arguments for the other Blairite projects of European integration and euthanising the poor, they can't be uttered in polite society.

      So what we're left with is rhetorical arguments that are supposed to communicate "I am on board with the establishment's pet projects" dressed up as "here is a logical / factual / scientific / ethical case for the establishment's pet projects".

  • Technology and Free Software

    • BlueSCSI v2 on an A590's external SCSI port

      I have a BlueSCSI v2 external DB25 version and as the Commodore A590 sidecar hard drive for my Amiga 500 also has a DB25 port on it's back, I thought it would be good to use it as a backup of the internal SCSI drive and maybe as a means of file transfer too. It turned out to be very easy, even though not without some inconveniences.

    • BRG MK27 portable cassette player and recorder

      I found this absolute gem in my father's garage. I remember using this when I was like 6 or 7 years old. I thought it will be a fun project to make it work again, but then, I plugged it in and it works just fine! Amazing. It's from 1977 and must have been in storage for more than 30 years, but it still plays perfectly. I gave it a clean and now I have a portable cassette player too!

      BRG stands for Budapesti Radiotechnikai Gyar (Budapest Radiotechnic Factory), one of the major radio equipment manufacturers on the Soviet market. The MK series was intended as a portable boombox for camping, weekend houses, etc. The MK27 was designed in 1975 and first available for consumers in 1977. Featuring a funky, youngful, but slightly militaristic design, with rubber buttons. Even though it's look was controversial (some called it a "diver" or a "space" magnetofon), it's unique for sure and it became rather popular and widespread in Hungary after it's release.