Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ Problem exists between printer and chair

  I was about ready to wheel out the printer-sized hearse when I glanced down at the currently chaotic table of crap in our study, and realised… a pile of said crap had finagled its way atop the paper in the printer input tray. The moment I lifted this stuff away, the printer cheerfully slurped up its A4 goodness and began printing documents.

• V H Belvadi ☛ V.H. Belvadi — Looking beyond collective blogging • (Venkatram Harish Belvadi)

  On this website the closest I have come to collaborating in any sense is when I allowed guest blogging. (Back in the ’00s guest blogging was all the rage.) Those entries no longer exist, having been permanently archived along with hundreds of my own posts over the years.

• Piya Gehi ☛ Being intentional about engaging with other's blogs

  I think this quote might be one of the reasons why previous attempts at blogging regularly didn’t stick. I have a tendency to look inwards when creating. The focus is always on “where I could improve my writing” or “how I could make my work reach better”.

• Logikal Solutions ☛ Avoid ALKU like AIDS

  Do you know what C2C is?

  It’s C2C.

  Legitimate firms work 1099 to an EIN (Employer Identification Number). You need to issue a 1099 at end of year to an EIN stating what you paid them. Bottom feeders don’t. Here’s what happens with C2C when you don’t issue 1099. The entity getting paid doesn’t report the income. The IRS will come looking for both of you.

• Andre Franca ☛ Curating the Web

  There's something curiously nostalgic about maintaining a blogroll these days. It's like tending a garden in a world where everyone consumes ultra-processed food delivered by algorithmic drones. While Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok feeds push content at you based on what you theoretically want to see, a blogroll is a deliberate statement about what you actually value. It's slow, quiet, and deeply personal.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Thought a Quantum Satellite Uplink Was Impossible – Until Now

    It's already possible to send entangled particles of light from satellites down to ground stations, but the idea of being able to transfer photons in the other direction – from Earth up to space – had been considered impossible, due to difficulties keeping the signal stable.

  • Quanta Magazine ☛ To Have Machines Make Math Proofs, Turn Them Into a Puzzle

    Marijn Heule turns mathematical statements into something like Sudoku puzzles, then has computers go to work on them. His proofs have been called “disgusting,” but they go beyond what any human can do.

  • Wired ☛ The First Radio Signal From Comet 3I/Atlas Ends the Debate About Its Nature

    The hydroxyl radical (OH) can absorb or emit radiation at specific frequencies (such as the 1665 and 1667 MHz lines) due to transitions in its energy levels. These OH spectral lines have been detected in nebulae, comets, and star-forming regions. OH helps astronomers map the star- and water-born regions of the universe because it can "glow" brightly at radio frequencies under certain conditions.

  • Stephen Kell ☛ Reversing abstractions: an existential crisis

    Computer science in general, and language implementation in particular, are founded on the idea of realising abstractions in a way I'll call “forwards” and also “existential”. This post is about how these aren't the only way to think about programming infrastructure and abstractions.

• Career/Education

  • Crooked Timber ☛ What should academics wear? Musings on regalia

    If you’ve ever been at a Dutch PhD ceremony, you’ve come across the toga – which is, unfortunately not a Greek or Roman toga as pictured here. Instead, it’s a kind of black gown, made from heavy cloth, with velvet facings, accompanied by a white collar and a velvet hat that resembles the mortarboards that students around the world wear (and throw) at graduation. This outfit is worn not only at doctoral defenses, but also at inaugural lectures or the official opening of the academic year (here you get an impression of what this looks like in Groningen). Other countries and universities have their own versions of academic regalia, probably with Oxford and Cambridge leading the crowd.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • MAHA: Its antivax mask has been dropped

    Well, I’m back. I realize that it’s been a month and a half since the last time I wrote anything here. I also realize that I said I’d try to resurrect this blog from its state of hibernation. Obviously, I failed, at least until now. In fairness, there were significant technical difficulties with the back end of the blog that took some effort to resolve, although it has been a couple of weeks since I finally resolved them. Excuses aside, leave it to longtime antivax propagandist Del Bigtree to—shall we say?—motivate me crack open my laptop, given the stories about him and his MAHA Institute over the weekend reporting under headlines like: Emboldened, Kennedy Allies Embrace a Label They Once Rejected: ‘Anti-Vax’, ‘God is an anti-vaxxer’: Inside the conference celebrating RFK Jr.’s rise, and The anti-vaccine movement isn’t satisfied with winning over the GOP.

  • The Revelator ☛ Biodegradable Plastics: Help or Hype?

  • Science Alert ☛ Sweeping Tooth Fillings Ban Will Change Dentistry Around The World

    At a conference in Geneva, signatories to a treaty aimed at protecting human health and the environment from mercury pollution called time on mercury amalgams.

    Nations agreed "to end the use of dental amalgam by 2034, marking a historic milestone in reducing mercury pollution", the conference announced in its closing statement.

• Proprietary

  • Michael Tsai ☛ FSF EU Notarization Complaint

    I continue to have problems with even the automated notarization for Mac apps. Seemingly every other build these days, I get an error like this: [...]

  • Doc Searls ☛ Hose cleaning

    Many of those half million emails just recently moved to my IMAP server yesterday. They were recovered mails that had been lost in the 2022 ransomware attack against Rackspace, which had hosted all Searls.com mail since the last millennium. See, when the lost mail was finally recovered by Rackspace, it was sent to me in a form only Microsoft Outlook, which I had never used, could read. So I got the Mac version of Outlook, imported all the recovered email, but then it all disappeared before I could move it elsewhere, such as to my IMAP server at Hover. This weekend, however, a friend familiar with the problem told me that mail disappeared for lots of people when Microsoft came out with a new version of Outlook. To fix that, he said, I needed to select Legacy Outlook in Settings. So I did, and all the mail reappeared. Then I connected Outlook to my Hover server, and all those lost emails went up there. I assume.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Register UK ☛ AI country artist hits #1 on Billboard digital songs chart

      Breaking Rust, an AI "band" that appeared on the [Internet] in the middle of October based on its presence on Instagram, topped the chart last week with a song called Walk My Walk. Look at Breaking Rust's social media pages and you'll find nothing to indicate there's an actual human involved in the music-making portion of the band's songs – just a chiseled-jawed, clearly AI-generated cowboy, and video clips featuring folksy people doing folksy things or slow-walking away from the camera. To say the various songs are similar would be an understatement: They're practically identical down to their bland, hollow lyrics.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ The AI backlash is loud, but it’s also tiny… and it turns out most clients simply don’t care | Digital Camera World

      Except, at some point, I realised these tiny conveniences had stacked up. I was using AI dozens of times a week. And it just became… normal.

      The truth is, AI adoption isn’t happening with a big neon sign. It’s more like being like a frog in warming water. Things are subtly shifting, one degree at a time, entirely unremarkably. Until you look back and realise you’ve been boiled alive.

    • Lars-Christian Simonsen ☛ Dead [Internet]

      Maybe it's just all AI generated slop to capture my attention. To what end? Who knows. But they got me and I've watched this video at least five times.

    • Herman Õunapuu ☛ I found the best use case for AI

      Now, when your coworker returns from vacation, see how long it will take until they catch on. In our team, it took about 3 working days until they discovered what was causing that.

    • Robert OCallahan ☛ AI And Jesus In Late 2025: A Road Trip Report

      Three things: I work for Google Deepmind; I believe AI will most likely be disastrous for humanity; and I believe Jesus rose from the dead. That combination possibly makes me unique. It certainly is awkward.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Rightmove discovers AI is no excuse for profit warnings

      I don’t know if you ever actually could get away with taking a profit hit and using “AI” as the excuse. Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook didn’t. They have huge profitable businesses and can afford to set quite a lot of money on fire without hurting their numbers. A Rightmove-sized business can’t quite do that.

      As FT Alphaville says: AI’s awfully exciting until companies want to use it.

  • Social Control Media

    • MB ☛ Mastodon Year 3 in Review

      Today is the third anniversary of joining Mastodon. I wanted to take a moment to answer the same questions I posed to myself in my year 1 and year 2 reviews.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Bank of America sued over not paying workers for PC boot up time in proposed class action lawsuit

      Bank of America is facing a proposed class and collective action lawsuit that accuses the company of failing to pay hundreds of hourly workers for time spent booting their computers, logging in, and launching required software before officially starting their shifts.

    • The Register UK ☛ Russian broker pleads guilty to assisting US cyberattacks

      A Russian national will likely face several years in US prison after pleading guilty to a range of offenses related to his work with ransomware crews.

      Aleksei Olegovich Volkov, 25, worked as an initial access broker (IAB) and was tied to at least seven ransomware attacks on US organizations, all carried out by the Yanluowang crew.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Nick Heer ☛ Meta to Discontinue Like and Comment Buttons on Third-Party Websites

      After then, Meta says, these buttons will display as a 0 × 0 box. As far as I can tell, the Facebook SDK will continue to run in the background doing all sorts privacy-hostile things. The best time to remove that JavaScript package from your website or app was, like, at least ten years ago; the next best time is right now.

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Time to start de-Appling

      For now, Signal remains an excellent option for messaging, although the Signal Foundation has indicated that it will leave the UK if it is asked to compromise its security. For other use cases, Proton may be a decent provider, although its CEO praising the Trump administration earlier this year certainly raised my eyebrows.

    • Heather Burns ☛ Time to start de-Appling – Hi, I'm Heather Burns

      You need to start that because, as we recently learned, at some point in the very near future Apple is withdrawing its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature from the UK altogether as a result of the Home Office TCN through the Investigatory Powers Act.

      Users who already had ADP enabled when the first TCN became public in February will be required to manually switch it off or lose their iCloud account.

      I am not going to explain the chapter and verse of the legal saga today, because I prefer to do that for people who pay me to explain them the chapter and verse.

  • Confidentiality

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ New Attacks Against Secure Enclaves - Schneier on Security

      Yes, these attacks require physical access. But that’s exactly the threat model secure enclaves are supposed to secure against.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Vox ☛ The Supreme Court will decide whether to toss out thousands of ballots, in Watson v. RNC

    In recent elections, Democrats have been more likely to mail their ballots than Republicans, and President Donald Trump has tried to restrict mail voting in an apparent effort to make it harder for Democrats to vote.

  • Mike Brock ☛ Chuck Schumer Doesn’t Know What Time It Is

    Chuck Schumer just taught Donald Trump that hostage-taking works.

    Not because he had to. Because the framework he operates within cannot imagine doing what this moment requires: actually fighting power instead of managing accommodation to it.

  • Mike Brock ☛ A Letter to America

    Our nation must be defended, of course. China and Russia are real threats. But in meeting those threats, we cannot lose the very thing that makes us different from them. The reason there is a line in the sand. The reason an American soldier would lay down their life. For freedom. For liberty. For the preposterous idea that ordinary people can govern themselves.

    Not so some fucking oligarch can tell us that hierarchy is inevitable. Not so feudalism with Wi-Fi can replace the Constitution with terms of service. Not so the “cognitive elite” can optimize us into subjects.

  • The Next Move ☛ Democrats Blinked. What Comes After the Shutdown Deal?

    But when you are in the opposition, your options are limited. And when you face a demagogue, each concession fuels his next demand. Every compromise emboldens him. It’s a question of severe pain now or even more severe pain later.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Armistice Day

    107 years ago*, the guns fell silent on the Western Front, marking a temporary and partial end to the Great War which began in 1914, and has continued, in one form or another, ever since. I once hoped that I would live to see a peaceful world, but that hope has faded away.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ I Want You to Understand Chicago

    The lawlessness of this moment — the oppression, and, let’s be super-clear, the fascism of it all — should not be ignored. We can’t let this become some kind of new normal.

    I worry a lot about the PATRIOT Act. In the aftermath of 9/11, there was a bipartisan effort to pass what in effect was a draconian security bill that vastly eroded American civil rights. It was supposed to be a temporary measure, but, of course, almost everything it brought about is still with us decades later. It permanently ratcheted down American freedom. This year’s activities — which represent not so much a ratchet down as a fall into deep, dark precipice — must not establish a new baseline.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • BoingBoing ☛ Epstein's sidekick Maxwell files for sentence commutation from President Trump

    Could it have something to do with Maxwell's meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche? We don't know because the softball interview transcript is so redacted as to be useless.

• Environment

  • Wired ☛ If the US Has to Build Data Centers, Here’s Where They Should Go

    A new analysis tries to calculate the coming environmental footprint of AI in the US and finds that the ideal sites for data centers aren’t where they’re being built.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Truthdig ☛ The Ecological Cost of AI Is Much Higher Than You Think

      Fab 25 will also require a staggering amount of energy, at least 1 gigawatt, equivalent to the annual power demand of 750,000 urban households. In Taiwan, most electricity is generated with high-carbon emitting coal and gas. Worse, many of the gases used in semiconductor factories have far greater climate consequences, or climate forcing, than carbon dioxide. For example, sulfur hexaflouride, which can escape factories and settle in the atmosphere, has a heating effect 23,500 times that of CO2.

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ Engineers close in on 40% efficiency with next-gen solar cells

      Among the emerging contenders, perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells (TSCs) have garnered attention for their potential to outperform traditional silicon cells; however, scaling them up for commercial use remains a challenge.

  • Overpopulation

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Trump administration presses Western states to find consensus on shrinking Colorado River

      A spokesperson for the Interior Department said in an email that "we remain focused on achieving a seven-state agreement" that would "maximize flexibility and cooperation in managing the Colorado River and best serve the 40 million people who depend on it."

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Register UK ☛ Scam Altman wants to extend CHIPS Act tax breaks to AI infra

    Free money is always better than a loan! OpenAI CEO Scam Altman recently said he doesn't want government-backed loans to fuel his AI ambitions, but he's more than okay with the idea of Uncle Sam handing out tax credits under the US CHIPS Act to subsidize AI server production, bit barns, and grid components.

  • Heise ☛ Microsoft quarterly report reveals double-digit billion loss at OpenAI

    AI manufacturer OpenAI has apparently recorded a loss in the double-digit billions in the third quarter. This is suggested by Microsoft's current quarterly report. The loss at OpenAI could amount to up to 12.1 billion US dollars.

    Although OpenAI itself is not listed on the stock exchange and therefore does not publish financial reports. This is different for listed investors like Microsoft. The company holds 27 percent of OpenAI; in the current quarterly report, Microsoft therefore also communicates publicly about the status of its OpenAI investment.

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ Has OpenAI become too big to fail ?

    The executive quickly backtracked, saying she had misspoken. “We don’t want government guarantees,” added Sam Altman. While OpenAI’s CEO insists that “taxpayers should not bail out companies that make bad business decisions,” the episode raises a deeper question: has the AI giant become too big to fail ? In other words, would Washington be forced to step in if OpenAI ran into trouble, just as it did to rescue the banks in 2008 ?

  • Michael Geist ☛ The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 249: The Debate Over Canada’s AI Strategy - My Consultation Submission and Appearance at the Canadian Heritage Committee

    The government’s AI consultation concluded at the end of October with expectations that a strategy will emerge before the end of the year. I participated in the consultation with a brief submission and in an appearance as a witness before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage for its study on the effectiveness of technological advances in artificial intelligence on the creative sector. [...]

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Kyle Kingsbury ☛ The Future of Fact-Checking is Lies, I Guess

      Last weekend I was trying to pull together sources for an essay and kept finding “fact check” pages from factually.co. For instance, a Kagi search for “pepper ball Chicago pastor” returned this Factually article as the second result: [...]

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Wired ☛ Apple Pulls China’s Top Gay Dating Apps After Government Order

    “We follow the laws in the countries where we operate. Based on an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China, we have removed these two apps from the China storefront only,” an Apple spokesperson said in an email. Apple clarified that the apps have not been available in other countries for some time. “Earlier this year, the developer of Finka elected to remove the app from storefronts outside of China, and Blued was available only in China.”

  • NDTV ☛ Mali Woman TikToker Mariam Cisse Kidnapped, Executed Over 'Collaboration With Army'

    Suspected jihadists in northern Mali kidnapped a young woman who had been posting on TikTok and then publicly executed her, her family and local officials said Sunday.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Northwestern University ☛ Baltimore bucks the trend

    Coverage of the IG story – vast, varied, detailed – says a lot about the state of Baltimore’s media landscape: namely, that it’s vibrant, despite years of cutbacks at legacy news sources. The Sun, long the state’s largest daily publication, for decades boasted a mighty newsroom, replete with foreign bureaus and a 400-person staff. Today its newsroom is less than a quarter of that size. But Baltimore retains far more journalistic muscle and vigor than many comparably sized or even larger markets. A 2024 University of Maryland study of the state’s local news ecosystem found that Baltimore and its immediate environs had 33 news outlets of various sizes and types, offering more local coverage than the District of Columbia. That’s remarkable given that D.C. has a larger population (roughly 700,000 to Baltimore’s 570,000) and is home to thousands of journalists (though most cover the federal government, not the city).

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Inside Towers ☛ Amazon Web Services to Build Underground Sea Cable Between Ireland and Maryland

    With a design capacity exceeding 320 terabits-per-second, the cable will integrate directly into AWS’s global network, supporting real-time traffic optimization and redundancy for uninterrupted operations. “Its durable construction ensures long-term reliability, even in challenging nearshore environments,” states AWS.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ 25 years ago today, Microsoft released DirectX 8 and changed PC graphics forever — How programmable shaders laid the groundwork for the future of modern GPU rendering

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ Five Years of Apple silicon Macs

    Sitting here today, I couldn’t be happier about where the platform is. Yes, there are some areas where Apple should push harder, but comparing where the Mac is today to where it was in the 2015-2020 era is breathtaking.

  • Macworld ☛ How Apple's M1 chip gave the Mac a second life

    No amount of in-person theatrics would have upstaged the star of that show, the M1 processor. Five years later, it’s clear that the arrival of Apple silicon has utterly changed the trajectory of the Mac.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: “Flexible labor” is a euphemism for “derisking capital”

  Corporations aren't people, but people and corporations do share some characteristics. Whether you're a human being or an immortal sinister colony organism that uses humans as gut flora (e.g. a corporation), most of us need to pay the rent and cover our other expenses.