Leftovers

• Matt Langford ☛ Making My Blog Fully My Own

  I realized I was trying to do too much with one blog. I was mixing long-form posts with microposts (as is the Micro.blog practice), and neither format was thriving. With this transition, I made a key decision: eliminate microposts entirely from the blog.

• Matthew Weber ☛ I Have A Thing For Fidget Spinners

  I’ve bought three of these things now, and they all provide some sort of magic that lets my brain stay on task. It’s not foolproof. If my attention gets grabbed by a notification somewhere, there’s not much that can be done. But a lot of the time, I can get more work done if I can play with this silly little toy.

• Oregon Public Broadcasting ☛ Model rockets soar thousands of feet in Oregon’s high desert

  Rockets at the weekend launches range from small-scale models to custom-designed, high-power creations capable of reaching up to 40,000 feet. They can tower up to 12 feet tall and weigh up to 100 pounds. The next launch event will take place Oct. 16-19.

• Terence Eden ☛ Every Theatre Show is “Immersive”

  All theatre is immersive because you are there - with actual people in front of you. Theatre needs to capitalise on the fact that it is different to being sat at home watching the telly. And that means putting a little effort into treating the audience like valued guests rather than treating them like cattle.

• Robert Birming ☛ Blogging in stereo

  The new setup with two blogs — this one for shorter posts and robertbirming.com for the longer ones — still feels good. We’ll see if it lasts, but I kind of hope it does.

• Science

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Scientists mimic blood formation with lab-grown human hematoids

    The team used human stem cells to create three-dimensional, embryo-like structures that replicate early human development, including the formation of blood stem cells.

• Career/Education

  • Raymond Camden ☛ Upcoming Speaking Engagements, and Code Break

    Next, and this is somewhat new for me, but I'll be giving a presentation on something near and dear to my heart, developer relations and advocacy. I'll be presenting to the Tech Academy online on one of my favorite days of the year, Halloween. You can find the details, and RSVP, here: Tech Talk | Developer Relations and Advocacy: A Career in Explaining.

  • Michael Burkhardt ☛ We lied to our kids and guess what?

    Of course it was never true, it was never going to be true, it isn’t true now, and it will never be true. There is no tech “golden ticket” to a lucrative six-figure career. The tech bros (as we now call them) lied, as they are wont to do.

    Herding kids into tech, and in particular the study of Computer Science, is just as wrong as it would be to urge kids in large numbers to study any particular discipline. We need kids who are literate and numerate, and have basic skills, so they can go out in all directions, doing great things, each in their own way, along a path of their choosing based upon their individual interests, gifts, and priorities. It’s also wrong-headed to build curricula around the high-paying jobs of the day. Our kids will be good ten years behind every single time.

    So that’s what we should stop doing. What should we be doing instead?

  • La Prensa Latina ☛ More than a million people will be taught to read and write in Haiti

    Mozart Clerisson, the new Secretary of State for Literacy, confirmed October as the start date for a plan to teach 1.5 million people to read and write. This program will culminate in September 2026.

    The allocated budget is US$20.8 million, according to the online newspaper Haiti Libre.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Generation AI: Why Tech Graduates Are At a Disadvantage

    But according to Jessica Sica, CISO at Weave Communications, when reflecting on her personal experience while hiring entry-level professionals, the field is already getting increasingly harder to break into, and this may be regardless of AI's influence.

    "Everybody says the security industry is growing rapidly, but it's getting harder and harder to get in," she says. "And I think part of that is maybe more and more people want to get into security, but the entry level jobs I think are getting more difficult. Companies are getting more demanding."

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Build what makes you special. Buy the rest.

    You have a problem that needs to be solved using software of some kind. The question is, do you build it yourself, or do you buy it from a vendor?

    Every technical team encounters this at some point. It’s a decision that seems simple on the surface but regularly destroys engineering roadmaps and budgets.

  • Niels Provos ☛ The Need To Do Good

    We all die eventually. This isn’t morbid; it’s clarifying. When you accept the finite nature of our time, you’re forced to ask harder questions about how you spend it. And since most of our waking hours are spent at work, the question is simply: Is this work worth my life?

  • Brandon ☛ Companies Are Not Your Friends

    Despite the reassurances, all the talk about this simply being a merger and not a buyout, and how our jobs were safe, several of us received our final checks that day. It was a gut punch and I learned an important life lesson that day. Companies lie, and companies don’t have morals. They don’t care about you, and you are dispensable the moment it benefits the bottom line.

  • YLE ☛ Government cuts to vocational schools having dramatic effects, Yle investigation finds

    According to the survey, many companies said that an excessive amount of the responsibility for vocational training has been left for them to deal with. Some of the firms said that extra work was eating into their productivity and hindering their business operations.

    In the worst case, the specific on-the-job training risks limiting the young workers' skills. If their training is job-specific to the needs of a single firm, then they could have difficulty finding new employment if the job they trained for ends.

  • Joel J Miller ☛ How Long Till Death Revokes Your Library Card?

    “Even if we read a book a day,” Eco said, “we would read only 365 a year, around 3,600 in ten years, and between the ages of ten and eighty we’ll have read only 25,200. A trifle.” By way of comparison, he said, “Good libraries hold several millions of books. . . .”

    But most of us will never come close to reaching Eco’s trifle either. Finishing a book a day is doable. An average adult can read roughly 250 words per minute. That’s about one page every minute or so, depending on the book. At that rate, you can put away a 300-page book in five hours, give or take some trips to the coffeepot and bathroom.

    But doable and done are very different. For most of us five hours a day is more time and mental energy than we can dedicate. I only manage that much in a straight sprint once every few months—and I read a lot.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 'No smoking' in Southeast Asia: A region quits tobacco

    In 2010, the WHO set its own target of reducing tobacco use by 30% within 15 years. Only Southeast Asia, Africa and the Americas are likely to achieve that.

• Proprietary

  • Edinburgh Games Developers Launch Legal Action Over Layoffs

    Build A Rocket Boy current and former staff have singed a letter slamming the firm’s treatment of workers following its MindsEye flop.

    After more than 250 developers were laid off from Build A Rocket Boy after the disappointing launch of the MindsEye video game, 90 current and former staff have slammed the studio’s management team over poor working conditions and a layoff process that was allegedly illegal.

    The highly-anticipated release of MindsEye was met with a poor critical response and sales, despite the long hours Build a Rocket Boy required from its workers prior to its launch.

    Instead of building a foundation for a new gaming universe, the notoriously painful launch of the game lead to layoffs for the startup, which has offices in Scotland and other places in Europe.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Oracle Fixes New E-Business Suite Flaw As CL0P Hits Harvard

    “Easily exploitable vulnerability allows unauthenticated attacker with network access via HTTP to compromise Oracle Configurator,” reads the National Vulnerability Database description of CVE-2025-61884. “Successful attacks of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized access to critical data or complete access to all Oracle Configurator accessible data.”

  • The Verge ☛ Google will let you hide sponsored results in search

    Currently, Google labels paid results on search pages individually with a “sponsored” tag on each one. This change groups them all into a collapsable section at the top of the page with a single, larger label that remains in view as you scroll. At the bottom of the section you’ll see a button to hide sponsored results, so you’ll have to scroll by them first. Tap the button to hide them and they’ll remain collapsed under that sponsored heading; tapping again to show sponsored results unfurls them. Google says the update is rolling out now on both desktop and mobile.

  • Oracle ANZ comms lead exits amid global layoffs

    Global tech giant Oracle has parted ways with its local communications lead, Aurora Sassone, amid a wave of global layoffs driven by increased investment in generative AI.

    Sassone, who joined the Larry Ellison-owned software company four years ago, announced her departure on Linkedin, noting she was “proud to have played a part in how much the Oracle brand has transformed in ANZ”.

    Mumbrella understands that communications for Australia and New Zealand will now be led from Oracle’s regional headquarters in Singapore.

  • Beta News ☛ Privacy-focused email provider Fastmail launches desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux [Ed: Proprietary = NO assumption of privacy]

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ The More Scientists Work With AI, the Less They Trust It

      In a preview of its 2025 report on the impact of the tech on research, the academic publisher Wiley released preliminary findings on attitudes toward AI. One startling takeaway: the report found that scientists expressed less trust in AI than they did in 2024, when it was decidedly less advanced.

    • New Yorker ☛ The A.I. Boom and the Spectre of 1929

      Perhaps the most alarming feature of the 1929 crash was that it wasn’t a one-off. After peaking in September, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average entered a downward trend that lasted nearly three years; by July of 1932, it had sunk by about ninety per cent. The crash’s giddy prequel, dramatic unfolding, and shattering aftermath—the Great Depression—has long provided compelling material for writers. In 1931, Frederick Lewis Allen, of Harper’s Magazine, described in his book “Only Yesterday” the speculative frenzy that preceded the crash: “Stories of fortunes made overnight were on everybody’s lips. . . . Wives were asking their husbands why they were so slow, why they weren’t getting in on all this, only to hear that their husbands had bought a hundred shares of American Linseed that very morning.” Almost a quarter century later, John Kenneth Galbraith brought an economist’s eye and a dry wit to the subject with “The Great Crash 1929.” The book detailed how, in the summer of that year, when stock prices were already sky-high, the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation, in partnership with the utility baron Harrison Williams, launched two huge investment trusts, the Shenandoah Corporation and the Blue Ridge Corporation, which employed leverage—that is, borrowed money—and a pyramid structure to magnify investors’ gains (or, as it turned out, their losses). “If there must be madness something may be said for having it on a heroic scale,” Galbraith wrote.

    • The Verge ☛ New California law requires AI to tell you it’s AI

      California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 243, billed as “first-in-the-nation AI chatbot safeguards” by state senator Anthony Padilla. The new law requires that companion chatbot developers implement new safeguards — for instance, “if a reasonable person interacting with a companion chatbot would be misled to believe that the person is interacting with a human,” then the new law requires the chatbot maker to “issue a clear and conspicuous notification” that the product is strictly AI and not human.

    • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ The fashion industry that is tech

      This is why I’ve been struggling for a while now to write constructively about tech and “AI” specifically. Constructive criticism has a purpose, but we’re at a point in the current iteration of “irrational exuberance” where the stakes for the pro- side are so high that nothing constructive registers and what we’re left with are anger and the expert chroniclers of “just how bad is it anyway?”

      Academics and researchers who specialise in machine learning and related fields catalogue the hype and promises. The few genuinely numerate journalists, such as Ed Zitron, do the maths on just how big and potentially catastrophic the bubble is. We’re at a point where the finances, environmental impact (which is currently expressing itself mostly on a community level), workplace dysfunction, and outright debasement of the entire software industry’s user experience mean that there is simply no reasonable justification for supporting these tools. They are obviously destructive.

    • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Three Years After the Launch of ChatGPT, Do We Know Where This Is Heading?

      While I’m still not sure when all this AI excitement will turn in on itself, or how deep the disillusionment will go, I find myself wondering whether, a year later, we know any more about what this technology will eventually do for us?

    • 404 Media ☛ What Happened When AI Came for Craft Beer

      Best Beer also threatened legal action against one judge who wrote an open letter criticizing the use of AI in beer tasting and judging, according to multiple judges and text messages reviewed by 404 Media.

    "Slop is a symptom of capitalism" ☛ https://tracydurnell.com/2025/10/12/slop-is-a-symptom-of-capitalism/ | Source: Tracy Durnell

    • Tracy Durnell ☛ Slop is a symptom of capitalism

  • Social Control Media

    • Wired ☛ ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team

      Federal contracting records reviewed by WIRED show that the agency is seeking private vendors to run a multiyear surveillance program out of two of its little-known targeting centers. The program envisions stationing nearly 30 private analysts at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Vermont and Southern California. Their job: Scour Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms, converting posts and profiles into fresh leads for enforcement raids.

    • The New Stack ☛ Everything Big Starts Small: Building Open Social Web Apps

      It’s now almost three years since Elon Musk acquired Twitter. Since then the fediverse — a collection of decentralized web products powered by the W3C standard, ActivityPub — has continued to grow. Bluesky’s AT Protocol also has some intriguing new apps. But overall, app development on these protocols is still in a nascent phase. Let’s be frank here: the open social web hasn’t gotten the developer attention it deserves.

      This week I attended FediForum, a two-day virtual event, to find out what’s new in open social web development.

    • [Old] Cal Newport ☛ On Charlie Kirk and Saving Civil Society - Cal Newport

      Those of us who study online culture like to use the phrase, “Twitter is not real life.” But as we saw yet again this week, when the digital discourses fostered on services like Twitter (and Bluesky, and TikTok) do intersect with the real world, whether they originate from the left or the right, the results are often horrific.

      This should tell us all we need to know about these platforms: they are toxic and dehumanizing. They are responsible, as much as any other force, for the unravelling of civil society that seems to be accelerating.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ UK hit by record number of ‘nationally significant’ cyberattacks

      The cyber agency will reveal its staff were scrambled to assist with the response to 429 attacks between the beginning of September 2024 and the end of August this year. Of these, 204 were considered “nationally significant” — more than double the 89 in that category handled in the twelve months prior.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • SBS ☛ The common way Australians have their data stolen — and what it's costing

      Although she notes that the way they are gaining access to organisations, critical infrastructure, and businesses is changing.

      "Networks are increasingly not being hacked, but are being breached through compromised or stolen credentials to gain unauthorised access," she said.

    • [Old] War History Online ☛ Amazon Prime Facing Backlash for Removing 'Born To Kill' From 'Full Metal Jacket' Movie Poster

      Since its release in 1987, the film has garnered a cult following, largely thanks to its realistic portrayal of the combat conditions in Vietnam. As such, fans were excited to see the release appear on Amazon Prime. However, upon closer inspection of the entry, an unusual change was noted as having been made to the movie poster.

      “Born to Kill,” which had been scrawled on the helmet, was absent; it had been erased from the graphic.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EDRI ☛ Mass surveillance of telecommunications document pool

      In the law enforcement context, “data retention” refers to the mandatory retention by providers of electronic communications services (email, private messaging, internet access providers, etc.) of metadata of all their users only for law enforcement purposes. Because it is applied to everyone indiscriminately, it constitutes a mass surveillance measure. After the former Data Retention Directive was struck down by the CJEU in 2014 as it violated fundamental rights, the Commission is seeking to adopt new rules at EU level, posing a clear threat to everyone’s digital rights.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft 'illegally' tracked students via 365 Education

      noyb said the ruling [PDF] by the Austrian Data Protection Authority also confirmed that Microsoft had tried to shift responsibility for access requests to local schools, and the software and cloud giant would have to explain how it used user data.

      The ruling could have far-reaching effects for Microsoft and its obligations to inform Microsoft 365 users across Europe about what it is doing with their data, noyb argues.

    • The Verge ☛ Facebook is adding job listings, again

      This update actually marks a return for jobs on Facebook. The company first introduced job listings in 2017 in the US and Canada, expanding to more than 40 countries in 2018. In 2022, Facebook reverted to supporting only the US and Canada, and finally shut down the program in 2023. The platform still allowed people to post listings in the form of ads — which didn’t go great for Facebook when organizations advertising jobs used targeting to exclude groups based on gender and religious background from seeing them. This conduct is prohibited by the discrimination policy that applies to anyone using the new job posting tool, thankfully. Facebook’s re-launched jobs feature is available starting today, and only in the US.

    • The Verge ☛ California enacts its own [Internet] age-gating law

      California joins a growing group of states with a new [Internet] age-gating law after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed AB 1043, the Digital Age Assurance Act.

      The law mandates that device operating systems and app stores require users to enter their age or date of birth when setting up a new phone or computer. The new rules are slated to take effect on January 1st, 2027, and for devices set up prior to that date, the OS provider — like Apple or Google — must come up with a way for users to enter their ages by July 1st that year. Negligent violations of the law could cost such companies up to $2,500 per child impacted, and intentional violations could go up to $7,500 per child. The law still shields the companies from liability for “erroneous” age signals as long as they make a good faith effort to comply.

    • Neritam ☛ Showed Aadhaar, voter ID, still detained

      [Aadhaar pr work actually helping to build a fascist society. at that time even the Aadhaar will not help you.]

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Microsoft tracks your Copilot AI usage in its workplace spyware

      You can even get “external benchmarks,” where your boss can compare your company’s Copilot usage to other companies! Can’t fall behind!

      The numbers track Copilot in Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Copilot Chat. Micrsosoft will be adding numbers on total meetings summarised, total hours summarised, and various classes of prompts.

    • Privacy International ☛ Tribunal Confirms Clearview AI Bound by GDPR | Privacy International

      Clearview have been told that the EU and UK GDPRs apply to their indefensible business of selling your face to foreign law enforcement agencies, after PI intervened in a recent legal case.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Microsoft OneDrive lets you disable AI face recognition three times in a year!

      Why is it opt-out and not opt-in? Especially since the opt-out doesn’t actually work?

    • YLE ☛ Finland joins new EU border entry/exit system

      EES is an automated IT system that will eventually replace the traditional stamping of passports at EU border checkpoints as it is rolled out across the bloc over the coming six months.

    • European Commission ☛ Entry-Exit System - Migration and Home Affairs - European Commission

      As of 10 April 2026, EES will replace the current system of manual stamping of passports, which does not allow an automatic detection of over-stayers (travellers who have exceeded the maximum duration of their authorised stay).

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Local DK ☛ Danish police to stop using social media platform X

    Local and national police forces in Denmark are to issue “operational messages” via news wire service Ritzau and on their own websites as part of a transition away from social media X.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Democratic Question That Expertise Cannot Answer

    But that’s not what I’m doing. And the confusion itself reveals something crucial about how deeply we’ve internalized a category error that makes democratic breakdown almost inevitable.

  • No Kings ☛ No Kings

    On October 18, millions of us are rising again to show the world: America has no kings, and the power belongs to the people.

  • Kieran Healy ☛ Parking Signs - kieranhealy.org

    If you want to print out a poster for October 18th, here are two; fully-guaranteed countrywide but maybe especially suitable for in and around New York.

  • The Independent UK ☛ TikTok accused of ‘sacrificing online safety’ amid AI-driven job cuts

    Organisers said the cuts, which would vastly reduce the platform’s trust and safety team in the country, risk leaving users exposed to harmful online content - including deepfakes and abuse.

  • Reuters ☛ Google says Australian law on teen social media use 'extremely difficult' to enforce

    Social media platforms will not be required to conduct age verification procedures; instead, they will be asked to use artificial intelligence and behavioural data to reliably infer age. In a parliamentary hearing on online safety rules on Monday, YouTube's senior manager of government affairs in Australia, Rachel Lord, said the government's programme was well-intentioned, but it could have "unintended consequences." "The legislation will not only be extremely difficult to enforce, it also does not fulfil its promise of making kids safer online," Lord said.

  • ABC ☛ Constitutional challenge to social media ban is on the cards, and teen activists could be the key

    YouTube emerged as the most likely source of a challenge to the ban in July, when parent company Google first raised the prospect.

    But experts in constitutional and media law told the ABC that doubts about the ban's constitutional validity extended well beyond the board rooms of the companies that would stand to gain from a victory.

  • Inside Towers ☛ More Cell Tower Attacks in New Zealand

    The New Zealand town of Wānaka, a resort town on the South Island of New Zealand, suffered its second cell tower fire in three weeks. Local press reports police are making enquiries after a cell phone tower fire on Upton Street. The incident took place the night of Tuesday, October 7, reports Datacenter Digest.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Telecom Industry Unites to Combat Rising Attacks on Communications Networks

    Two new reports released at Tuesday’s Third Telecom Industry Summit: Protecting Critical Communications Infrastructure, reveal a rise in attacks on domestic communications networks. According to industry experts, the data shows 15,540 incidents between June 2024 and June 2025, disrupting service for more than 9.5 million customers nationwide. The latest data show 9,770 incidents in the first half of 2025, a marked increase from the previous six months and a sign the threat is accelerating.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Michigan’s Slotkin raises alarm in Senate over secret Trump-era terrorist group designation list

    According to Slotkin, a letter from the Trump administration said that the United States is in “a non-international armed conflict” against “designated terrorist organizations,” she said in her speech. After asking for a list of those organizations from the Department of Defense, Slotkin added, she was told that no such list could be provided.

    “If this administration is not telling us who’s on their secret designated terrorist list for groups in the Caribbean, they’re definitely not going to tell us who’s on their list of domestic terrorist organizations,” she continued.

  • Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Analyzing the domains (and sites) of an authoritarian regime

    If you've ever wondered what domains the US federal government has registered, there's a rather exhaustive list over in the dotgov-data repository on GitHub, which is maintained by CISA. You can see the raw CSV here. They don't include the registration date, but you can derive that from public WHOIS records or by examining the repository's git history.

• Environment

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Michigan township sued by AI data center builder and disgruntled residents over opposition to the site — mounting concerns about rising power bills and water usage fuel growing skepticism

    In the latter case, CRG wanted to build a 440-acre data center near multiple wells, backed by an unnamed tech company. The township reportedly didn't get straight answers from the developers about the water usage and noise pollution, with one constituent remarking the companies seemed to want to "shove [the project] down the people’s throats". After drawing strong criticism, CRG withdrew its application, and the city council called a special meeting to ban data centers for one year, passing it unanimously.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Europe’s e-waste could yield over 1 million tons of critical materials

    The report was released on International E-Waste Day on October 14 and published by the European Union-funded FutuRaM consortium.

    It provides the most comprehensive data yet on the flow of electronic and electrical equipment (EEE) from sale to end-of-life across the EU27+4 region (EU, UK, Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway).

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Who is setting fire to the Amazon?

    But Red John is a worker who cannot be controlled—and an unprecedented drought in 2024 linked to climate change sent fires blazing out of control, scorching nearly 18 million hectares (44.5 million acres) of the Brazilian Amazon.

    The resulting loss of trees caused deforestation to rise 4% in the 12 months to July, reversing a 30% decline achieved the previous year.

  • The Register UK ☛ Cali governor derails bill to monitor datacenter water use

    Assembly Bill 93 would have mandated that data center operators provide water suppliers with estimates of expected usage before obtaining business licenses, followed by annual reports of actual consumption when renewing permits. However, in an October 11 letter [PDF] to the California State Assembly, Newsom declined to sign the bill.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Wired ☛ New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds

      Drivers alleged the handles have gotten stuck or malfunctioned, especially when cars’ low-voltage batteries failed. Government filings highlight parents’ reports that their children were trapped inside their vehicles, unable to find or activate rear-door mechanical releases, after their adults exited the car. At least four alleged the need to “break a window to regain entry into the vehicle,” according to the agency. Tesla has since promised to redesign the handles.

      On Friday, the family members of two California teenagers who died after the Cybertruck they were riding in caught fire in a crash sued the automaker, alleging that Tesla knew about the difficulties of manually opening its doors before the teenagers were trapped inside.

    • The Verge ☛ Tesla Cybertruck sales are flatlining

      Tesla only sold 5,385 Cybertrucks in the third quarter, down 63 percent compared to the same period in 2024, when the automaker delivered over 14,000. The company has sold a little more than 16,000 Cybertrucks so far in 2025 — a far cry from the 250,000 that Elon Musk once predicted would be sold annually. Tesla is now expected to deliver around 20,000 Cybertrucks this year, a steep drop from the estimated 50,000 sold in 2024.

    • Low Tech Mag ☛ How to Build a Solar Powered Electric Oven

      You can overcome this problem by storing solar power in lead-acid or lithium-ion batteries. If these batteries are powerful enough, they can temporarily provide you with a higher power supply than your solar array can deliver. Batteries are also necessary if you want to cook after sunset or in bad weather, which is likely the case. Unfortunately, batteries account for 70-90% of the costs and the energy invested in a solar PV system. 2

    • Herman Õunapuu ☛ Comparing the power consumption of a 30 year old refrigerator to a brand new one

      I shopped around for a new refrigerator and got a decent one that’s about the same size, except newer. I won’t mention the brand here because they didn’t pay me anything and this post really isn’t a refrigerator review, but it was in the low-to-midrange class, sporting a “no frost” feature, and could be bought for about 369 EUR in Estonia in the summer of 2025. Based on some napkin math, I assumed that within a few years, the electricity savings will cover the upfront cost of buying the new refrigerator, assuming that it doesn’t break down.

      After letting it run for a while, I had some data!

      Turns out that the old one consumed 3.7x more electricity compared to the new one.

    • YLE ☛ Finland's 'sand battery' listed among Time Magazine's best inventions of 2025

      "A sand battery is a high-temperature thermal energy storage system that stores clean, affordable electricity as heat in sand or other solid materials. It provides a sustainable solution to many challenges of the global energy transition, helping to cut emissions and reduce costs across various industrial applications," the company's release read.

    • CBC ☛ Canada eyes putting nuclear reactors on the moon

      This isn’t just about planting a flag and collecting some rocks, as it was during the space race in the 1960s. NASA’s ambitious Artemis program has the long-term goal of exploring the moon, with a continuous human presence. And from there, on to Mars.

      In order to maintain a presence on the moon, there’s going to be a need for energy. So how do you maintain a colony of people in a place that has roughly 14 days of sunlight followed by 14 days of darkness?

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ The reality of residential solar

      TJ Rodgers, the CEO of SunPower, has led an illustrious career in the solar and semiconductor space. An outspoken free-market evangelist, Rodgers possesses a clear vision of what he believes an American home solar company should be.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • La Prensa Latina ☛ Election processes in Colombia will include technological advances

    The official stated in an interview with Caracol Radio that the entity is working on incorporating new digital tools such as voter identification applications, facial biometrics, automated data transmission, and real-time election monitoring platforms.

  • Matt Webb ☛ Cyborgs vs rooms, two visions for the future of computing

    Loosely I can see two visions for the future of how we interact with computers: cyborgs and rooms.

    The first is where the industry is going today; I’m more interested in the latter.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Fragility Is Getting Scary

    A remarkable thing about the Trump administration’s management of our country is the extent to which they are practicing the opposite of this maxim. Always and everywhere, they are introducing more fragility into our systems. They are making us more vulnerable on virtually every front. Their reign is chaotic, and being unable to know exactly what the worst crisis will be can leave us feeling adrift. But the most important—and disturbing—conclusion about our time is, in fact, perfectly knowable: When you make a system increasingly fragile, it is sure to break when the test does arrive.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Google won’t reveal if it is lobbying Trump about YouTube’s inclus Australia’s under-16s ban

    On Monday, Google and Microsoft appeared before a Senate inquiry on a range of age assurance and verification requirements being applied to social media and other aspects of the [Internet] including search.

  • The Register UK ☛ CISA law may be rescued amid shutdown if Senate bill clears

    Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) introduced the Protecting America from Cyber Threats (PACT) Act in the upper legislative chamber on Thursday. The brief bill would extend the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA) by ten years - from September 30, 2025, to September 30, 2035 - and proposes renaming it as the PACT Act throughout the US code.

    The CISA law was due for renewal along with the federal government's continuing funding resolution, but given the Senate's inability to pass it and the government shutdown that followed, Peters and Rounds want it extended without having to wait for the government to reopen in order to do so.

  • The Verge ☛ UK fines 4Chan over online safety compliance

    The United Kingdom has slapped 4Chan with a £20,000 (around $26,000) fine in a bid to clamp down on platforms that are hindering Online Safety Act (OSA) investigations. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom says the fine was issued after the controversial social media site ignored “legally-binding information requests” related to global revenue and its illegal harms risk assessment.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ AI and the Future of American Politics

    Two years ago, Americans anxious about the forthcoming 2024 presidential election were considering the malevolent force of an election influencer: artificial intelligence. Over the past several years, we have seen plenty of warning signs from elections worldwide demonstrating how AI can be used to propagate misinformation and alter the political landscape, whether by trolls on social media, foreign influencers, or even a street magician. AI is poised to play a more volatile role than ever before in America’s next federal election in 2026. We can already see how different groups of political actors are approaching AI. Professional campaigners are using AI to accelerate the traditional tactics of electioneering; organizers are using it to reinvent how movements are built; and citizens are using it both to express themselves and amplify their side’s messaging. Because there are so few rules, and so little prospect of regulatory action, around AI’s role in politics, there is no oversight of these activities, and no safeguards against the dramatic potential impacts for our democracy.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • LRT ☛ Russian propaganda exploits NATO airspace violations, Lithuanian analysts say

      In recent months, Russian aircraft have breached the airspace of NATO members Poland, Estonia, and Romania.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFA ☛ China arrests underground church founder, pastors

    The founder of one of China’s most prominent underground churches and dozens of its pastors and members have been arrested, the founder’s family and a church spokesperson said, part of a multi-city crackdown in recent days.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ EU parliament urges China to release Swedish bookseller, 10 years on

    This Friday marks a decade since the Hong Kong-based publisher was taken from his apartment in Pattaya, Thailand, by unknown men. He was among four men who went missing – each were associated with Causeway Bay Books which sold titles banned in mainland China. He is the only one still detained.

  • JURIST ☛ Human rights experts condemn new Taliban [Internet] restrictions

    The experts warn that restricting [Internet] and telecommunications services worsens Afghanistan’s humanitarian and economic crisis, increasing poverty, unemployment and food insecurity. These measures also hinder the delivery of critical humanitarian aid to vulnerable communities, including those affected by natural disasters and individuals forcibly returned from neighboring countries.

  • The Register UK ☛ Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for pretending UK's Online Safety Act doesn't exist

    Ofcom, the UK's Online Safety Act regulator, has fined online message board 4chan £20,000 ($26,680) for failing to protect children from harmful content.

    The fine could rise by a further £6,000 – £100 per day for a maximum 60 days – if it continues to ignore its duties to comply with the regulator's request for information regarding two separate matters.

    4chan can stop the additional fines by providing copies of its illegal content risk assessments and information about its qualifying worldwide revenue to Ofcom.

    The enforcement action announced today is months in the making after Ofcom first opened an investigation into the notorious image board on June 10.

    It requested the aforementioned risk assessments on April 14, and to this day 4chan still has not complied, the regulator said.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • US News And World Report ☛ New York Times, AP, Newsmax Among News Outlets Who Say They Won't Sign New Pentagon Rules

    Those outlets say the policy threatens to punish them for routine news gathering protected by the First Amendment. The Washington Post, The Atlantic and Reuters on Monday also publicly joined the group that says it will not be signing. AP confirmed Monday afternoon that it would not sign.

  • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ News Orgs Refuse to Sign New Pentagon Press Policy Ahead of Hegseth’s Deadline

    As of Monday evening, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, Newsmax, The Atlantic, The Guardian and The Washington Times have said they will not sign the new agreement. Fox News has yet to announce whether or not it would meet the deadline.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: How to fix the UK housing crisis

    Keen unpacks just how dramatic this change is: since the Thatcher years, house prices have doubled every 23 years. Before 1960, the house prices rose so slowly that they would have taken 280 years to double (which is to say, the fate of most houses was to turn to rubble, not to double).

    So what did Thatcher do to make homes so eye-wateringly expensive? The high-level explanation is that the UK – like much of the world – transformed its housing stock: not a way provide the basic human right to shelter, but rather, an asset: [...]

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Alexandru Nedelcu ☛ Outsourced Voices, Outsourced Minds

    It’s 2025, and you’re still posting and commenting on links, but you’re most likely doing it on social media. Facebook, 𝕏/Twitter, LinkedIn are deprioritizing links, which means that posts containing links will have a lower reach. Let me repeat that — social media silos are fighting against web links, the foundation of the open web. They do so to “encourage” content and discussions on their own platforms, noble goals a stakeholder would say, except that now these platforms are filled with politics, rage, and AI slop.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Register UK ☛ Bose kills SoundTouch: Smart speakers go dumb in Feb

    The company is pulling cloud support for all SoundTouch products from February 18, 2026. After that date, streaming services like Spotify, TuneIn, along with multi-room playback will cease functioning. Connection to sources via Bluetooth and AUX on standalone speakers should continue to work, although Bose said it couldn't guarantee long-term performance.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Why Non-Transferable Tickets Don’t Stop Scalpers & Speculators

    Non-transferable tickets are marketed as a form of consumer protection—meant to tighten access, prevent scalping, and ensure tickets remain in the hands of fans. In reality, tech-savvy ticket brokers have already found sophisticated workarounds. One of the most widely used tools for bypassing this particular restriction is called SecureMyPass.

  • PC World ☛ Broadcasters bungled free antenna TV. Now they want a bailout?

    ATSC 3.0--aka NextGen TV--has become a pariah, thanks largely to its DRM scheme, but the FCC might force it on people anyway.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Tom's Hardware ☛ China probes Qualcomm with antitrust investigation in the latest asymmetric trade negotiation salvo — Autotalks acquisition risks fouling anti-monopoly laws

  China's regulatory body for business, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMD), has announced an antitrust investigation is now under, looking into the purchase of Israeli connected-vehicle technology company, Autotalks, by Qualcomm earlier this year, according to Bloomberg. With the deal now months old and having cleared all regulatory approval in the U.S., this move is largely seen as a punitive measure towards America as part of the ongoing trade negotiations and ahead of the proposed meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping at the end of October.

• Michael Tsai ☛ Eyes Up Removed From the App Store

  I’ve not seen an official statement from either Apple or the government. Perhaps there was a direct government request/demand about Eyes Up, but it’s also possible that there was a copyright concern (since the app collected content already uploaded to other platforms) or that Apple just took down everything related to ICE without specifically considering Eyes Up.

• Migrant Insider LLC ☛ SCOOP: Apple Quietly Made ICE Agents a Protected Class

  The decision effectively treats federal immigration agents as a protected class — a novel interpretation of Apple’s hate-speech policy that shields one of the most powerful arms of government from public scrutiny.

• Trademarks

  • Thomas Rigby ☛ Brands! Brands! Brands!

    But, like trying to explain water to a fish, this advertising is meaningless. It is the tuned-out background hum of marketing.

  • Right of Publicity

    • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Says It Will Move to Allow Smut

      To users who have spent months begging OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman to relax restrictions around AI-generated smut, it was a welcome change. Yet as some noted, the model itself wasn’t so quick to adjust.

• Copyrights

  • JURIST ☛ Computer scientist petitions US Supreme Court to reconsider AI-generated copyright

    The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia later affirmed that reasoning, concluding that the Copyright Office acted properly because “As a matter of statutory law, the Copyright Act requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being,” and Thaler had “listed the Creativity Machine as the sole author.” The appellate panel emphasized that the AI system “is undeniably a machine, not a human being. The appellate opinion reinforced a long line of precedent defining authorship as a uniquely human endeavor.