Leftovers

• Tedium ☛ Terrible Stage Banter: Why Many Musicians Stink at Talking on Stage

  Pondering why, despite the fact that bands and musicians have to do it every single night, many suck at stage banter—particularly, but not limited to, Elvis.

• Seth Godin ☛ Optimizing the landing page

  The secret isn’t to optimize the landing page. It’s to optimize the reason people are coming to your site. You can’t convert people who don’t want what you have… you need to attract people who do.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Small and boring system updates

  In February I talked about boring being a feature, which ruffled more than a few feathers on the usual news aggregator sites; one of whom called me a “fedora-wearing netbsd idiot” which I still intend to print on a business card one day.

• Matthew Weber ☛ I Already Wrote About That

  So, when trying to come up with a topic for today, I had several in mind. One thing I’ve taught myself to do, however, is check my Archives page to ensure I haven’t written about a topic before.

  Now, I don’t see anything wrong with talking about a topic more than once. Goodness knows, I’ve talked about notes on this blog a lot. But I don’t want to basically write the same blog post over and over and over again. So I always check.

• Dan Q ☛ Send Me a Postcard!

  Last month I was on em’s personal site, where I discovered their contact page lists not only the usual methods (email addresses, socials, contact forms etc.) but also a postal address1: how cool is that‽ I could have written in their guestbook… but obviously I took the option to send a postcard instead!

• But she's a girl... ☛ The train seat incident

  I was therefore disconcerted to be met with the most serious and disapproving stare I think I have ever seen in one so young. It’s an expression that I find hard to describe precisely even now, but if I had to sum it up in two words it would be: ABSOLUTELY NOT.

• Computational Complexity ☛ A Presidential Trivia Question, how I tried to solve it

  I could look this up easily. However, by spending time thinking about it and exploring related questions, I might learn things I didn’t know before.

  Things I care about? Maybe.

  I now have a lot of white space, so you can think about the answer yourself and perhaps make a guess, then my reasoning process and the answer.

• Science

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ 400-year-old Swedish town unearthed with stunning tollhouse, defenses

    Nya Lödöse was an important precursor to modern-day Gothenburg, located in the city’s eastern part between 1473 and 1624. Between 2022 and 2023, a team from Arkeologerna conducted an intensive investigation in the southernmost area of the former city.

  • Wired ☛ The Hidden Math of Ocean Waves

    The equations that mathematicians use to study the flow of water and other fluids—which Leonhard Euler first wrote down nearly 300 years ago—look simple enough. If you know the location and velocity of each droplet of water, and simplify the math by assuming there’s no internal friction, or viscosity, then solving Euler’s equations will allow you to predict how the water will evolve over any time period. The rich menagerie of phenomena we see in the world’s oceans—tsunamis, whirlpools, riptides—are all solutions to Euler’s equations.

  • Rlang ☛ Distribution of p-values under the null hypothesis for discrete data by @ellis2013nz

    A few months back in a side skirmish during the great p-curve controversy, Richard McElreath mentioned that p-values under the null hypothesis are not always uniformly distributed, as is sometimes claimed. This prompted me to check out the phenomenon. I’ll admit I had in my head the basic idea that p-values are indeed uniformly distributed if the null hypothesis is true. It turns out this is only ‘often’ the case, not always.

    As is commonly the case for this blog, the main motivation was to make sure I understood something myself, so there’s nothing particularly new for the world in this blog. But it might be interesting for some. There were a few odd fishhooks.

  • ACM ☛ The Silent Scientist: When Software Research Fails to Reach Its Audience

    The good news is that researchers can do a lot to improve science communication without having to revamp the publication system or redesign research processes. If we follow Burns et al.4 in their definition of science communication “as the use of appropriate skills, media, activities, and dialogue to produce one or more of the following personal responses to science: Awareness, Enjoyment, Interest, Opinion-forming, and Understanding,” it is difficult to find a software research paper that cannot be brought to the target group with, at least, one of these intentions. Therefore, post-publication science communication is something every researcher can and should engage in.

• Career/Education

  • Digital Camera World ☛ The 26-year-old who designed a camera that sold over 17 million units

    Years later, Maitani told his version of the story. "In those days, a student who refused to work for the first company to offer him a position was regarded as a disgrace to his university. I had received a job offer from an automobile manufacturer, but I pretended that I hadn’t and went to work for Olympus, instead."

    Upon starting at Olympus, he was sent to the factory for practical training, where he was rotated through different departments every six months. After two years of this front-line training, he returned to the design department and was given a deceptively simple task: try designing something.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ 2025-10-28 [Older] Drug to slow early-stage Alzheimer's disease approved by Health Canada

  • The Hindu ☛ Teenagers have a ‘Ferrari brain with bicycle brakes’: Expert

    She said that teenagers are also impulsive because their brains have ‘bicycle brakes’. “So you got a Ferrari brain with a break that does not function and steering that does not work either, then it is a combination of poor brakes and poor steering,” she said.

    Ms. Shetty said that adults have to provide the brain power that teenagers lack, especially when it comes to thinking about the mental and physical health of teenagers.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Scam Altman Gets Served Subpoena Live Onstage

      “An investigator from the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office lawfully served a subpoena on Mr. Altman because he is a potential witness in a pending criminal case,” Valerie Ibarra, a spokesperson for the public law office, said in a statement provided to SFGATE. “Our investigators first made several prior attempts to serve the subpoena at Altman’s company headquarters and via its online portal.”

    • San Fancisco ☛ Three arrested in SF after protesting AI technology outside OpenAI

      AI systems “threaten societal stability and the existence of society,” said Guido Reichstadter, co-founder of the group that organized the protest, Stop AI. “It’s a real risk and acknowledged by experts, CEOs and founders (of AI companies). It’s real. There’s no roadmap for how to build this technology.”

  • Social Control Media

    • Android Police ☛ YouTube wants to be TikTok — and it's bad for business

      To understand what's being lost, we have to remember what made YouTube special in the first place. Before it became a feed, YouTube was a classroom.

      There are still millions who use it as an open library of tutorials, explainers, and deep dives made by people who know their craft.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Doc Searls ☛ I want an I Don’t Care card for CVS

      How much work is it to shop at CVS? Besides having to wait in line at the pharmacy, there is the extra labor of having to carry an Extra Care Card or key fob, maintaining an app that's more about promotion than service, and looking behind the zillion yellow discount cards that hang over every little thing on the aisles. I wrote about this a few months back in A simple plan to de-enshittify CVS. To no effect, but I didn't expect any.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Independent UK ☛ Teenager joins legal action to get phones banned in schools across England

    Flossie McShea, 17, and Katie Moore, 43, have added their support to Will Orr-Ewing and Pete Montgomery’s claim for a judicial review, which seeks to have smartphones completely banned in schools.

    Miss McShea, who has joined as a claimant, says she feels the Department for Education (DfE) has failed to protect her and other children from harm inflicted by phones during school hours.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ How countries can be held responsible for staying within new legal climate target of 1.5°C

    Global emissions need to peak this year to stay within 1.5°C of global temperature rise since pre-industrial levels. This means that starting now, countries need to emit less greenhouse gases. Emissions also need to be cut in half by 2030 to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Why I Am Leaving the Federal Bench

    My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom. President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment. This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Torpedo fired from autonomous submarine, delivers unmatched precision

    Known as KSOT (Kapal Selam Otomatis Tanpa Awak), the submarine fired a 324 mm lightweight ‘Piranha’ torpedo. Developed by the state-owned defense industry company PT PAL Indonesia, KSOT vessel enhances the country’s submarine warfare capabilities.

  • RFERL ☛ Anger In Russia Over Muslim Migrants Praying In Public

    Some worshippers pray on the streets and sidewalks in Russia, which is home to millions of Muslims, including migrants from Central Asia. But the practice of street praying has provoked growing resentment in Russia as hostility and violence toward Muslim migrants surge.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Denmark to ban social media for children under 15

    Most parties in the Danish parliament said they support implementing a 15-year-old minimum age requirement for social media. It is not yet known which social media platforms will be affected.

  • 2025-10-30 [Older] Peacekeepers face increased rebel aggression in eastern DR Congo

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-10-31 [Older] South African Government Criticizes Cheeto Mussolini's Refugee Policy Prioritizing White Afrikaner Minority

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-04 [Older] How Germany aims to increase the number of deportations

  • 2025-11-04 [Older] Cuban/South African defence relations strengthened

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-04 [Older] Tanzania's instability could harm trade in southern Africa

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-03 [Older] Africa’s Latest Elections End With Crackdowns on Opposition and Disputed Results

  • 2025-10-31 [Older] African countries choosing not to intervene in Sudan genocide – expert

  • 2025-10-31 [Older] Africa’s defence industry poised for growth amid global spending surge

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Deseret News ☛ Lady Electa was the recipient of the Bible letter 2 John – Deseret News

    Her name has been considered a mystery because scribes copying original Greek texts accidentally dropped two letters, says Lincoln Blumell, associate dean of research in the BYU Department of Ancient Scripture.

    Part of the problem was that every study of the past 150 years universally accepted the mistake without questioning the manuscript texts.

• Environment

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ The State of AI: Energy is king, and the US is falling behind

    In the age of AI, the biggest barrier to progress isn’t money but energy. That should be particularly worrying here in the US, where massive data centers are waiting to come online, and it doesn’t look as if the country will build the steady power supply or infrastructure needed to serve them all.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Depleted uranium: The forgotten legacy of the Kosovo War

    In 1999, NATO used uranium ammunition during the Kosovo War. Numerous soldiers subsequently developed cancer, and some were awarded compensation. In Kosovo, the soil remains poisonous to this day.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ 500 disposable vapes recycled into a powerwall to power a house and workshop — enough juice for up to eight hours of home usage or three days of work

      The UK has been facing an e-waste crisis caused by disposable vapes for the past few years. In fact, a report published by Material Focus in December 2024 estimates that around 8.2 million vapes, including single-use, pod, and big-puff models, are discarded or improperly recycled each week. Doel took this as an opportunity and has been working on repurposing batteries from discarded vapes since last year. His previous projects include a fast-charging power bank and an e-bike powered entirely by recycled batteries.

    • Low Tech Mag ☛ How to Brew Solar Powered Coffee

      Our coffee maker operates on the same principles as our solar-powered oven and runs on a 100W solar panel. We embedded an Italian coffee maker—a moka pot—in a mortar slab, surrounded by cork insulation and a layer of ceramic tiles.

    • Paul Krugman ☛ Why China will Rule Renewable Energy

      Last week I wrote about the demand side: consumption of renewable energy. On that front Europe still leads by some measures, China by others, while America is a distant third by any metric. Today I’ll tie up some loose ends from that discussion, then turn to the supply side: production of the equipment that harvests energy from sun and wind. At this point China completely dominates the solar power industry. Europe still produces a lot of wind turbines, but China produces almost everything else wind-related.

  • Overpopulation

    • New York Times ☛ As Aquifers Dry Up, Tehran Rations Water and Calls for Rain Prayers

      The country is facing the worst drought in six decades, and major dams are at critically low levels. Water authorities this week said the main dams feeding Tehran, on which more than 10 million people depend, were at 5 percent capacity.

    • France24 ☛ Iran plans water cuts for Tehran amid worst drought in decades

      Iran was laying plans on Saturday to cut off water supplies periodically to Tehran's 10-million-strong population as it battles its worst drought in many decades.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-04 [Older] India: Top 1% became really wealthy since 2000 — G20 report

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-31 [Older] German President Steinmeier Africa tour eyes business growth

  • Vox ☛ 2025-10-27 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini’s pettiest tariff, briefly explained

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-04 [Older] Germany news: China chides Berlin for 'microphone diplomacy'

  • CBC ☛ 2025-10-28 [Older] First Nation and Canada begin legal battle over ‘grossly underfunded’ on-reserve schools

  • CBC ☛ 2025-10-27 [Older] Ontario premier urges U.S. ambassador to ‘bury the hatchet,’ apologize after profane tirade

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-04 [Older] Germany's Olympic bid wins strong public support

  • Haaretz ☛ Ex-Trump Ambassador to Israel David Friedman Named NSO Chairman, as Spyware Firm Shifts to U.S. Ownership - National Security & Cyber

    Move comes after months of failed lobbying to lift U.S. sanctions

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Cycle Theory of Moral Cowardice

    The logic doesn’t just fail. It collapses into absurdity the moment you apply it to any historical example where we have the benefit of knowing what actually happened.

  • CBarrete ☛ Why I don't love Rust (either)

    First of all, I want to clarify that this is not a general "review" of Rust. Despite the authoritative tone, I'm not saying that Rust is a bad language or that the things I don't like should change/shouldn't have been this way to begin with, I'm just stating what I don't like about it. And guess what: that's to be expected from a tool that tries to appeal to a broad audience, it can't completely please everyone (and arguably anyone). The authoritative tone is merely used because it is easier to write and read in my opinion. I also want to highlight that I know that designing a language is hard. I'm simply substantiating why I don't think that rUsT iS a PeRfEcT LaNgUaGe, no matter what the Rust Evangelism Strike Force says.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • National Secular Society ☛ Success! Court upholds right to free speech in Quran burning appeal | National Secular Society

    A National Secular Society-backed appeal has seen a man's conviction for burning a copy of the Quran overturned.

    Hamit Coskun was convicted of a religiously aggravated public order offence by Westminster Magistrates' Court in June after setting fire to a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London.

  • BBC ☛ Man who burned Quran outside Turkish consulate wins appeal

    Turkish-born Mr Coskun said he had come to England "to be able to speak freely about the dangers of radical [sic] Islam" and was now "reassured that - despite many troubling developments - I will now be free to educate the British public about my beliefs".

    During Mr Coskun's Quran-burning protest, a man emerged from a nearby building and slashed at him with a large knife, later telling police he was protecting his religion. The attacker, Moussa Kadri, 59, was given a suspended jail sentence last month.

  • UK ☛ Rex v Hamit Coskun, Judgement on appeal, Southwark Crown Court Hearing on 9th and 10th October 2025 [PDF]

    2. There is no offence of blasphemy in our law. Burning a Koran may be an act that many Muslims find desperately upsetting and offensive. The criminal law, however, is not a mechanism that seeks to avoid people being upset, even grievously upset. The right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Guardian UK ☛ The BBC is facing a coordinated, politically motivated attack. With these resignations, it has given in

    The corporation should have stood up to the Telegraph, Trump and the Tories. Now, its enemies know how little it takes for it to fold

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Kyle Kingsbury ☛ I Want You to Understand Chicago

    The masked thugs who attack my neighbors, who point guns at elected officials and shoot pastors with pepper balls, who tear-gas neighborhoods, terrify children, and drag teachers and alderpeople away in handcuffs are not unprecedented. We knew this was coming a year ago, when Trump promised mass deportations. We knew it was coming, and seventy-seven million of us voted for it anyway.

    This weight presses on me every day. I am flooded with stories. There are so many I cannot remember them all; cannot keep straight who was gassed, beaten, abducted, or shot. I write to leave a record, to stare at the track of the tornado. I write to leave a warning. I write to call for help.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Register UK ☛ Europe deciding whether 6 GHz is Wi-Fi or cellular space

    The Wi-Fi Alliance and the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance (DSA) have published open letters addressed to "EU digital ministers," expressing concerns that the upper 6 GHz band (6425 to 7125 MHz) may be rendered off-limits to Wi-Fi networks in European Union countries.

    At the heart of the problem is that newer Wi-Fi standards such as Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 are capable of using frequencies in the entire 6 GHz band to provide greater performance. But mobile operators are also eyeing this band for 5G and 6G network services.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Technology and Free Software

    • Internet/Gemini

      • Delightful

        I just used my own Gemlog to remember what I did to update my own Gemlog.