Leftovers

• Kev Quirk ☛ Small Web, Big Voice

  Having a place on the web that I’m 100% in control of, where I can share my own thoughts, feelings, and opinions is very powerful for me. Over time this blog has evolved from me sharing technical posts most of the time, to a legit personal blog with a technical twist.

• Ignacio Brasca ☛ Accepting who you are

  Each instinct, each behavioral tendency, gives you an advantage in one area and a disadvantage in another. Trying to force yourself into situations that don’t match how your mind works—competition, physical intensity, high-exposure environments—can feel like frustraiting, like pushing against a wall every time but you are simply a blow of air.

• Benny Siegert ☛ San Francisco, 2025 · benzblog

  The prevailing narrative in the media about SF is that it’s somehow “dead” and a crime-ridden hellhole, and that there are homeless people everywhere. And I can kind of see how you would get this impression if all you do is drive a car and spend time in the financial district.

  But in this bus, I saw a different kind of San Francisco. I saw a city that is busy and thriving. I saw a slice of normal people living normal lives.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Some People Never Forget a Face, And Now We Know Their Secret

    "Their skill isn't something you can learn like a trick," explains lead author James Dunn, a psychology researcher at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney. "It's an automatic, dynamic way of picking up what makes each face unique."

• Career/Education

  • Sean Voisen ☛ Not a hobby: Reflections on life habit experiment №2

    As any parent knows, when you have kids and you work full-time, you are lucky to have enough spare time for one hobby. Or, at least, you probably should have only one hobby at a time, lest you choose to neglect household chores, parental responsibilities, school volunteer activities, time with your spouse, or any number of the myriad other things life demands of you in your particular familial role and its attendant duties. For the past few months, my hobby—or at least what I’ve elected to do with my scant spare time—has been so new, so fragile in its infancy, I’ve been reluctant to call it a “hobby” at all.

  • Guy LeCharles Gonzalez ☛ Why did I leave the publishing industry? (aka My Villain Origin Story)

    Record scratch; freeze frame…

    Spoiler Alert / tldr: I didn’t, technically — although it depends on how you define the industry — but I sometimes think the book side never really considered me part of the industry to begin with.

    Read on for the full story, or scroll to the end for the brief interview. You do you.

• Hardware

  • The Register UK ☛ Samsung reportedly jacked memory prices 60% last month

    If you haven't noticed, DRAM memory has gotten a lot more expensive in recent weeks.

    Amid a shortage broadly attributed to a surge in demand for AI infrastructure, Reuters reports that memory giant Samsung has hiked prices 60 percent since September, citing two persons familiar with the matter.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ TechWoven vs FineWoven

    The sides of the FineWoven are flat and not overly comfortable. It’s the same material as on the back but coated in some kind of plastic. They have worn well and still look like new.

  • Greg Morris ☛ The Best Camera Has A Habit

    Both have their place. iPhone for life as it happens. Camera for when photography is the point.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Chris O'Donnnell ☛ NPR likes me - health insurance edition

    I used to occasionally wonder what it was like to live through the fall of an empire. Did the average Roman know the empire was falling? I guess I'm going to get an answer to that the question the hard way, by living through it myself.

• Proprietary

  • The Washington Post ☛ Trying to cancel Dropbox subscriptions leads to frustration

    Some people are frustrated over trying to quit Dropbox subscriptions. Why is fighting unwanted subscriptions such a pervasive problem?

  • The Gamer ☛ Gender And Race Factor Heavily Into Average Pay Rates In The US Games Industry [Ed: But this might mean that some races and males are, on average, performing better at the job (even for the same roles)]

    GDC Festival of Gaming's 2025 Game Industry Salary Report took the pulse on average salaries among 562 professionals across a plethora of undisclosed studios, and to no one's genuine surprise, there are some literally unfortunate disparities in play here. The results speak volumes, so I'll dig into them in full, but the overall gap between genders, and between white-identifying developers and people of colour, is... not great.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Tit-For-Tat: Porn Producers Counter Meta's "Personal Use" Piracy Defense

      In July, adult content producers Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta.

      The complaint accused the tech company of using adult films to assist its AI model training. Similar claims have been made by other rightsholders, including many book authors.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ The Role of Humans in an AI-Powered World - Schneier on Security

      Chess provides a useful analogy for this evolution. For most of history, humans were best. Then, in the 1990s, Deep Blue beat the best human. For a while after that, a good human paired with a good computer could beat either one alone. But a few years ago, that changed again, and now the best computer simply wins. There will be an intermediate period for many applications where the human-AI combination is optimal, but eventually, for fact-based tasks, the best AI will likely surpass both.

    • [Old] Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, NL ☛ AP warns: chatbots give biased voting advice

      More and more voters are using AI chatbots to decide which party to vote for in the general elections on 29 October. But this advice is unreliable and clearly biased. This is shown by research conducted by the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP), the Dutch data protection authority.

  • Social Control Media

    • New Yorker ☛ Is “Six Seven” Really Brain Rot?

      If you’re attentive to language, you might notice that the meaning of “brain rot” has shifted since 2024, when Oxford University Press named it Word of the Year. Back then, it was described as a state of mental deterioration brought on by immersion in “trivial or unchallenging” online information. Now brain rot is a content category: in the wildly popular video game Steal a Brainrot, for example, players buy or capture “Brainrots,” which are surreal A.I.-generated characters with—for some reason—Italianesque names. When Peter and his friends aren’t saying “six seven” sotto voce, so as to avoid teacherly detection, they’re talking about “Chimpanzini Bananini!” or “Ballerina Cappuccina!”

    • Andy Wingo ☛ fedi is for losers

      Fedi is freedom, in the sense of “feel free to send a patch”, which is also hacker-speak for “go fuck yourself”. We split; that’s our thing! Which, you know, no-platform the nazis and terfs, of course. It can be good and even necessary to cut ties with the bad. And yet, this is not a strategy for winning. What’s worse, it risks creating a feedback loop with losing, which is the topic of this screed.

    • NYPost ☛ YouTubers accused of swiping donations from West Virginia’s ‘inbred’ Whittaker clan

      West Virginia’s Whittaker family say two YouTubers who cashed in on their viral notoriety never passed along donations meant to help them. State police are probing the creators over a suspected scheme tied to money and merchandise sent to the clan.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Site36 ☛ Frontex launches aerial surveillance in West Africa – its fundamental rights officer raises concerns

    • JURIST ☛ Rights groups claim 2,700 NYPD documents disclosed in lawsuit reveal 'surveillance abuses'

      Amnesty International and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) released on Thursday more than 2,700 New York Police Department (NYPD) documents obtained after a five-year lawsuit. The groups say that the documents reveal extensive and discriminatory surveillance practices.

      The records, ordered to be disclosed by a New York state court in 2022, show repeated uses of facial recognition technology (FRT) against individuals engaged in everyday activity as well as political expression. According to the organizations, the disclosures detail how the NYPD relied on FRT to identify people flagged by public reports that labeled them “suspicious” for speaking a foreign language or wearing culturally distinctive clothing. Advocates say these reports demonstrate that racial and cultural profiling frequently served as the basis for surveillance queries.

    • EFF ☛ A Surveillance Mandate Disguised As Child Safety: Why the GUARD Act Won't Keep Us Safe

      The GUARD Act may look like a child-safety bill, but in practice it’s an age-gating mandate that could be imposed on nearly every public-facing AI chatbot—from customer-service bots to search-engine assistants. The GUARD Act could force countless AI companies to collect sensitive identity data, chill online speech, and block teens from using the digital tools that they rely on every day.

    • European Commission ☛ European Digital Identity Wallets – user onboarding

      This implementing act sets out a list of reference standards for onboarding users to the European Digital Identity Wallets.

      Given the importance of seamless onboarding procedures, the reference standards set out the requirements that must be met when relying on remote identity proofing for user onboarding.

  • Confidentiality

    • SequoiaPGP ☛ Post Quantum Cryptography in Sequoia PGP

      Post-quantum cryptography is coming to OpenPGP. Over the past three years, several parties have collaborated on a new specification within the IETF OpenPGP working group. That document, Post-Quantum Cryptography in OpenPGP, is making its final steps towards ratification. During the last year, we’ve implemented the standard in Sequoia, and exposed the functionality in various components. In this blog post, I’ll explain what post-quantum cryptography is, why we’ve implemented it, and how to use it.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ Carlson–Fuentes controversy reveals the antisemitism embedded in Christian nationalism

    Fuentes targets not only Jewish people but anyone outside his narrow religious framework. In 2023, Fuentes called for the death penalty for all non-Christians: “There is an occult element at the high levels of society, and specifically among the Jews, and you know, whenever I see that stuff that just makes me want to proclaim louder and more firmly and more rigidly that it is nothing other than Jesus Christ. No, no pagan stuff, no false gods, no deities, no demons. It is Jesus Christ and we need to start saying that name.”

    Fuentes went on to declare that those who “worship false gods” or “practice magic or rituals” should be executed “when we take power.” He later expanded on his vision of a theocratic America: “We need to put up a crucifix in every home, in every room, in every school and every government office to signal Christ’s reign over our country. … This is not the domain of atheists or devil worshipers or perfidious Jews. This is Christ’s country. … You must be a Christian. And you must submit to Christianity.”

    Notably, Donald Trump invited Fuentes to dine with him in 2022.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Five convicted for helping North Korean IT workers pose as Americans and secure jobs at U.S. firms — over 240 companies were victimized by the scam

    The North Korean regime has been using the direct labor of its people to make money for the state. But because Pyongyang faces heavy sanctions from various nations, including the U.S., its workers need false identities to gain employment, especially in the U.S. Despite many seeing the DPRK as a state where most citizens lack access to the latest technology, it actually has an elite group of hackers. In fact, the FBI identified it as the source of the biggest crypto hack in history, and it’s already using artificial intelligence to help its agents get remote freelance jobs. Despite doing the remote work, the North Korean workers do not get the bulk of their wages; instead, the state uses the proceeds to help fund its various weapons programs.

  • The Record ☛ Multiple US citizens plead guilty to helping North Korean IT workers earn $2 million

    The Justice Department announced five guilty pleas on Friday related to North Korea’s long-running IT worker scam. In addition to the convictions, the DOJ said it was able to seize more than $15 million obtained by North Korean facilitators through cryptocurrency thefts in 2023.

    In total, the IT worker schemes affected about 136 U.S. companies and allowed North Korea to earn $2.2 million, the department said. More than 18 U.S. citizens had their identities stolen and used as part of the scam.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Modern American Conservative Movement is Bankrupt and Anti-American

    This is moral and intellectual bankruptcy. You cannot simultaneously revere the Constitution and excuse its systematic violation. You cannot invoke the Founders while rejecting the framework they created. You cannot claim to defend American principles while supporting exactly what those principles were designed to prevent.

    The Founders built constitutional constraints to bind government power especially when officials claim urgent necessity. They knew that every violation would be justified by claiming serious problems. That’s precisely why they created a framework that says: No. Find constitutional means or accept that some problems cannot be addressed through government power.

  • Mike Brock ☛ A Short, Victorious War

    No serious person disputes Maduro’s brutality. His regime has brutalized Venezuela for years, driving millions into exile and crushing democratic opposition. But brutality abroad does not authorize unconstitutional war at home.

  • New York Times ☛ Displaced Gazans Face More Misery as Torrential Rain Lashes Enclave

    Heavy rainfall and chilling winds have added to the challenges facing people still forced to live in tents in the devastated territory.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Atlantic ☛ Michael Wolff’s Unsatisfying Explanation for Cozying Up to Epstein

    When I emailed Wolff yesterday, he was more forthright. “You ingratiate yourself so that people—your subject—will talk to you,” he wrote. To some degree, this is unquestionable. Journalists work to get sources to talk to them, including by suggesting what’s in it for the source. To what degree, though? Here, Wolff was coaching a sexual offender on how to look good. Surely, I suggested to him, there is a point at which currying favor simply goes too far. “I think you draw the line at what you write—ingratiation stops there,” he replied, citing his damning reporting on Epstein in an essay in his book Too Famous. “That’s what the ingratiation earned me.” In a video on Instagram this week, he lamented that his release of tapes of Epstein talking about Trump before the 2024 election had little impact.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Most states don’t disclose which companies get data center incentives, report finds

    Despite data centers’ significant energy requirements, states frequently compete heavily to land the projects, which invest millions or even billions into new construction. But the study noted those projects often employ nondisclosure agreements, project code names and subsidiary names that hide the firms behind the new server farms.

    “Only when governments disclose information on which companies get public money and what they do with it can there be meaningful analysis, greater public participation, and wiser use of public financial resources,” the report says.

  • Good Jobs First ☛ Cloudy Data, Costly Deals: How Poorly States Disclose Data Center Subsidies [PDF]

    At least 36 states have economic development subsidies specifically crafted for data center projects, but only 11 disclose which companies receive them: Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.

    Even where there is some disclosure, it is often fragmentary and confusing. Consider: [...]

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Missing pieces of legendary Stone of Scone recovered: Report

    After tracking down letters, photographs, and records, she verified the existence and lineage of 17 out of the 34 missing pieces. Her research brought together the political and the personal as the fragments were passed down through families. She even consulted the public to help her identify where they might be lurking.

  • International Business Times ☛ Jeffrey Epstein Pushes To Elevate Prince Andrew's Image Even After His Conviction In Leaked Emails

    This wasn't casual praise. Epstein appeared to be managing Andrew's image, positioning him as a charismatic, relatable figure, rather than a distant royal.

    The timing is especially notable. Epstein had only recently been released from jail, having served time for procuring a minor for prostitution. Rather than retreating, Epstein doubled down on maintaining his elite network by using contacts like Andrew to rebuild influence.

  • International Business Times ☛ Donald Trump Looks Suspicious? POTUS Refuses To Release Epstein's Files, Declassifies Amelia Earhart's

    For years, thousands of people have been urging Trump's government to share details about Trump's real relationship with the late Epstein. However, they have been mum about it all.

  • CNN ☛ The political danger of the Epstein files for Trump

    But also notable on Wednesday was Trump’s reaction.

    As all this was going down, he and his White House seemed preoccupied with what appeared to an 11th-hour campaign to thwart a House discharge petition that would force a vote on releasing the full Epstein files.

• Environment

  • Wired ☛ An Invasive Disease-Carrying Mosquito Has Spread to the Rocky Mountains

    The Aedes aegypti is a species of mosquito that people like Tim Moore, district manager of a mosquito control district on the Western Slope of Colorado, really don’t want to see.

    “Boy, they are locked into humans,” Moore said. “That’s their blood meal.”

    This mosquito species is native to tropical and subtropical climates, but as climate change pushes up temperatures and warps precipitation patterns, the Aedes aegypti—which can spread Zika, dengue, chikungunya and other potentially deadly viruses—is on the move.

  • Thomas Rigby ☛ #TIL: Dust Suppression

    Water mixes with the dust in the air and the weight of the liquid pulls the harmful dust down to the floor when it causes less damage and is easier to clean up meaning work can conclude quicker.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • ABC ☛ Australians to get three hours of free electricity every day under solar scheme

      Australian households will be able to access free electricity for three hours every day, in an effort to encourage energy use when excess solar power is being fed into the grid.

      The federal government scheme will require retailers to offer free electricity to households for at least three hours in the middle of the day, when there is often more electricity generated than is being used, leading to very cheap or even negative wholesale prices.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Digital Music News ☛ Spotify and Apple Music Fire Back Against Quebec's Bill 109

    As for where Bill 109 goes from here, the legislation has made its way to the Committee on Culture and Education for a “clause-by-clause consideration.”

  • Montreal Gazette ☛ Apple and Spotify warn Quebec against French music streaming quotas

    It would make apps default to French, set quotas for French video and audio content, require smart TVs to spotlight French programming, and entrench access to French content into the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Article content

    Quebec’s arts sector and the province’s French-language commissioner said the law is long overdue, citing challenges for Quebec artists.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Tech Capitalists Don’t Care About Humans. Literally.

    The earnest, in-depth answer to this question is just as bleak as the glib one. As moral philosopher Émile Torres argues, many Silicon Valley leaders embrace a vision of a transhumanist future in which biological humans will be replaced by digital beings endowed with superintelligence. This vision helps explain their obsession with artificial general intelligence (AGI) and sits at the core of what Torres describes as human extinctionist preferences.

    In 2023, Torres and his colleague Timnit Gebru coined the acronym TESCREAL to describe a constellation of ideologies — Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, Longtermism — that have become highly influential within Silicon Valley. Torres is a philosopher, intellectual historian, and journalist whose work focuses on the ethics of emerging technologies, particularly AI and human extinction.

    In this conversation with journalist Doug Henwood recorded for the Jacobin podcast Behind the News, Torres explains the TESCREAL worldview, its connections to eugenics and IQ realism, and why figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Sam Altman embrace visions of a post-human future.

  • Old VCR ☛ When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

    I try not to write anything even vaguely political on this blog because we have a variety of views on a variety of subjects and no one is here for that. We can all enjoy our geriatric little silicon artifacts together regardless of your electoral persuasion. But I was hopping mad this week, and the reason is actually on-topic, because I got hit with US Customs tariffs close to double the cost of the vintage items I was ordering and more than the items were worth. This eventually got straightened out, but it wouldn't have happened without my complaint and some time on the phone.

    Although we make regular trips down under, your humble author is based in California and so is the Floodgap computer lab. For newly manufactured items and parts it has generally been my policy to buy parts from United States sellers even prior to the tariffs, mostly because that gets around various irregularities and it arrives more quickly. If they're going to drop-ship then it's their problem, not mine, because they advertised it was already here. Since such items are typically newly produced, the current tariffs would logically apply and this policy thus has the additional benefit of me not having to deal with that directly: any tariff should already have been paid to get them States-side.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Financial Times: ‘Apple Intensifies Succession Planning for CEO Tim Cook’

    I do not doubt this story overall. It was published at an advantageous time for Apple, too, on a Friday after the stock market closed. The rumoured timeline is real weird, though. “As soon as next year” makes it sound like Cook’s retirement may still be far off, but a few paragraphs later, it is basically around the corner: [...]

  • ACM ☛ A Practical Guide to Transitioning to Memory-Safe Languages

    Even more concerning, memory-safety vulnerabilities continue to represent an even higher percentage of vulnerabilities exploited "in the wild" to target real victims. This endless cycle of finding and fixing the same kinds of flaws has felt like a battle of attrition that could never be won.

    Why has durable progress remained so elusive?

  • Jeezy ☛ Exposing Git Information in Rust Binaries Built With Nix

    When you have software out in the wild being used by lots of people, it's inevitable that there will be pretty large spread across the versions of your software being used.

    If that software is aimed towards technical folks and power users, or if you publish nightly releases, in addition to the spread across official version releases, you will also have many people running on any number of commit hashes.

  • European Commission ☛ Digital fitness check – testing the cumulative impact of the EU's digital rules

    The digital fitness check is the second stage of the Commission's plan to simplify the EU's digital rules, following the adjustments under the Digital Omnibus.

    To ensure that the EU's digital rules are effective, proportionate and fit for the future, the Digital Fitness Check will analyse the interplay between the different rules, their cumulative impact on businesses, and how effectively they support the EU’s competitiveness, values and fundamental rights.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ He's a Kansas journalism icon. He's written more than 2,000 stories for us. He's Tim Carpenter.

    I’m not asking for anyone’s pity. Journalists either enjoy or grudgingly accept this reality, depending on temperament. But it’s also why the induction of Kansas Reflector senior reporter Tim Carpenter into the Kansas Press Association’s Newspaper Hall of Fame on Thursday was so deeply jarring. You see, I don’t think of Tim as a Hall of Famer. I don’t think of him as a portrait on a wall alongside other Kansas journalism greats like William Allen White, Rolla Clymer, and four generations of Scotts and Lynns at The Iola Register.

  • The Dissenter ☛ My Censorship Battle Against A Suburban Chicago Library

    In fact, back in July, the Freedom of the Press Foundation's U.S. Press Freedom Tracker logged what was happening as an incident in Illinois.

    This fight has distracted me from the work that I typically do on press freedom, whistleblowers, and government secrecy. Now, I am finally able to sit down and share this story with international readers of The Dissenter.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Talking With Margaret Sullivan

    Margaret Sullivan has long been one of our best, clearest media critics. She’s probably best known for her stint as Public Editor — basically ombudsman — at the New York Times, a position the paper abolished. She has continued to keep a close eye on the media in an age of political intimidation, and this seemed like a good week to talk about where we stand. Transcript follows.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 campaign requires a constant online connection and has zero checkpoints — mission levels are designed for four, necessitating repetitive tasks if you play alone

    The latest title in the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops 7, just dropped, and players are complaining about its campaign mode. As reported by IGN, the “innovative Co-Op Campaign” that Activision has been flexing means an online-first experience. So, even if you’re playing solo, you still need to be connected to the [Internet].

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Zohran Mamdani’s world-class photocopier-kicker

  But under Biden, the trustbusters that had been chosen and fought for by the Warren-Sanders wing of the party proved themselves to be both a) incredibly principled; and b) incredibly skilled. They memorized the rulebook(s) and then figured out what they needed to do to mobilize those rules to makes Americans' lives better by shielding them from swindlers, predators and billionaires (often the same person, obvs).

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ New Investigation Unravels "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" Anti-Piracy PSA

    Following a two-year investigation, French journalists Nicolas Delage and Christophe Wilson have identified the creators of the iconic "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" PSA. In a deep-dive documentary on YouTube, they trace the filming location to a Paramount backlot in Los Angeles. The origins of the anti-piracy ad link back to the MPA, while Warner Bros. took the creative lead. The involvement of the UK's Piracyisacrime.com site, meanwhile, deserves some nuance.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ DISH Wins $42M Default Judgment Against "DMCA-Ignored" Host Virtual Systems

    A complaint coordinated by anti-piracy group IBCAP and filed at a Seattle court by DISH Network in 2024, saw Ukraine-based hosting provider Virtual Systems accused of inaction against pirate IPTV services, despite receiving over 500 DMCA notices. In a judgment handed down this week against Virtual Systems and its owner individually, ignoring DMCA notices and failing to appear came at a high price; $42 million, a significant but reasonable amount according to the judge.