Leftovers

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Why the upcoming 'Wuthering Heights' film is accused of whitewashing

• Matthew Weber ☛ Blogging Makes Me Feel Like A Worse Writer

  So, I don’t think blogging has made me a worse writer, but it has challenged me to write differently than I do anywhere else.

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ About writing and audience

  To answer Richard’s original question: 100%. For most of the time I’ve had a blog, I’ve written to a basically non-existent audience. These days, my readership is way bigger than I can comprehend. I even have a second blog out there that I haven’t shared with anyone yet but I still enjoy using it as a creative outlet.

  The readers of this blog are people who like to read my stuff. Plain and simple. I don’t have a prescribed audience that I analyse and write what I think they want to read. I write what I have to share and people who like those things, join to read.

• Daniel De Laney ☛ I built a timer I can’t fail to set—Daniel De Laney

  Unfortunately, if you use timers a lot, you learn to dismiss them reflexively. And it’s really easy to forget to set the next timer. A week later, I’d realize: “Hey, that timer idea really worked, I should get back to that.” And then I didn’t.

  So I built a new kind of timer. It does 2 unique things:

  1. It asks what I’ll focus on.
  2. It gradually blurs my screen if I don’t set a new timer.

• Alexandra Wolfe ☛ Rocking the 60s

  I can remember being in and around all these young up and coming rock stars of the day, dressed in my Sunday best, following my sister around as, star struck, she got autographs and propositioned to come on tour with them. I remember shaking hands and, at the very grown up age of 8, talking to various members of these bands like they were my older brother, asking about their mothers and family like we were all visiting together.

• Career/Education

  • The Cyber Show ☛ Bum education

    Technology as spiralling mass hysteria has the unsettling potential to draw even rational sceptics like myself into disaffection. One must not merely reject duff technology, but also those other people who have been hypnotised and now see anyone reluctant to join them as a threat. Nothing angers the pathological neophyte more than a rejection of his "solutions". So "AI" is splitting society. The typical non-thinker sees only two options, those who are "racing to embrace the future", and sour Luddites living in woodland shacks who will be "left behind".

    This causes the most reasonable voices to be shut down, or simply drowned out in the noise. Voices like those of psychologists and education experts who point to the massive harms already emerging from the use of "AI". The problem with the "narrative" of progress is that there is none, just an undignified clamour like a Black Friday feeding frenzy.

    Thus I am compelled to write more on this topic, because if anything we experts are not nearly vocal enough at this very serious juncture.

  • Matthew Brunelle ☛ NeurIPS 2025 - Wednesday

    I work on software products that use machine learning under the hood. However, I am squarely on the applications side in the org chart. I get to work closely with the ML side though and I enjoy that a lot. Last year I went to EMNLP 2024 in Miami with the goal of reducing my unknown unknowns. Ultimately, I want to understand the different choices that go into the ML side so I can better collaborate on projects.

  • Kev Quirk ☛ The Fisherman and The Businessman

    Since stepping down as an executive I’ve become happier, got far more job satisfaction, and I spend more time with my family. I’ve also realised that a lot of what was driving me was ego. I wanted to be important. I wanted the fancy title, the corner office, the prestige.

  • Kelly Hayes ☛ You Can’t Fight Fascism While Defunding Libraries

    We are living through a coordinated assault on knowledge. In a moment when Big Tech is waging war on complex thought, a fascist government is targeting higher education, and the media landscape is being demolished by the same oligarchs driving this era of smash-and-grab politics, libraries are under-appreciated outposts of struggle, sharing and survival. They are sites of refuge, where curiosity is nurtured, where people find shelter, education, entertainment, job assistance, skill-building programs, and access to resources that would otherwise be out of reach. “We do it all at the library,” Sara Heymann, a library associate in the Chicago Public Library (CPL) system, recently told me. “We do a lot of arts, science, and literacy programming. We host movie nights. We have programs for helping people with their taxes, small businesses, and mental health. We help people.”

    As models of the kind of community care, education, and learning infrastructure we need not only to fight fascism but to build the world we want, public libraries should be fortified and expanded. Instead, they are often targeted during budget battles — and that is precisely what’s happening in Chicago right now. The proposed budget put forward by Mayor Brandon Johnson includes catastrophic cuts to an already underfunded library system.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ The Pub at the End of the University

    I heard a rumour that London IT professionals have selected the pub where they will meet when the internet goes down.

    It is apocalyptic thinking, perhaps, but it also feels plausible. Though the internet feels permanent, stable and sufficiently distributed to seem impervious to target, this infrastructure that underpins our daily work and life is strikingly vulnerable. Undersea cables get damaged; phone and cable systems go down; and software is frequently corrupted or hacked.

    A backup plan is sensible. It matters because they might be the only ones who know how to rebuild the internet – and they need a way to contact one another.

    Perhaps we also need a pub at the end of the university?

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ Fundamentals Of Hypercomplex Numbers | UCLA Extension

    The course should appeal to those seeking a better understanding of the arithmetical underpinnings of our number system.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-25 [Older] Zimbabwe: Looming crisis as 14,000 workers missing across public health system

  • The Hindu ☛ Health dept. plans delivery of medicines via drones to remote places

    Presently, medicines are being transported from Paderu to the rest of ASR district by vehicles. The department is planning to make Paderu as the central hub to ensure faster delivery of medicines and blood units to Primary and Communtity Health Centres and Area Hospitals which are located 60-80 km away.

  • Futurism ☛ Alarming Research Finds People Hooked on AI Far Are More Likely to Experience Mental Distress

    Now, new research has provided an important clue. As PsyPost reports, scientists have found that people who use AI chatbots tend to experience higher levels of psychological distress compared to individuals who don’t. It doesn’t quite establish causation, but it’s a glaring sign of correlation — and the implications could be deep.

  • Seth Godin ☛ The red zone, wasted

    If you’re going into the red zone, be clear about what the outcome is supposed to be.

  • Ava ☛ i need more rest [everything i did in 2025]

    A while ago, I wrote about intentional times of boredom for easier task switching, because I noticed there was an inner resistance when I had let go of a task in favor of another. In response, I gave myself the space and time to just sit there doing nothing. That meant a proper pause between activities, and it also bored my brain into complying, because at some point, even doing the dishes or doing the hard part in your studies is better than just sitting around.

    I've slowly, without realizing, dropped this habit and piled a lot on my plate in general.

• Proprietary

  • OpenRightsGroup ☛ The ICO Fails to Take Action over the Post Office Horizon Scandal

    “The ICO assessment that the Post Office data breach would not qualify as “egregious” is ludicrous. The Horizon scandal was a human tragedy where thousands of innocent people faced unjust convictions, imprisonments and bankruptcies, leading at least thirteen people to commit suicide. The Post Office failure to protect the identities of these victims adds insult to that injury.”

    “This reprimand is a go ahead for public organisations in the UK to keep inflicting harm, knowing that the ICO will leave them off the hook. As reprimands lack the force of law, the Post Office can rest assured that they will not face consequences if they fail to address their shortcomings, and another data breach happens in the future. The ICO should have, at the bare minimum, issued an enforcement notice that legally binds the Post Office to take action.”

    “The behaviour of the ICO is unacceptable, and an insult to the human cost that victims of the Horizon scandal have suffered. We reiterate our call to the Select Committee for Science, Innovation and Technology to open an inquiry into the Information Commissioner’s Office.”

  • Louie Mantia ☛ And Stay Out

    Not to put too fine a point on it, but they started making products that appealed to themselves. Because since Steve Jobs died, Apple, its executives, and its corporate employees got significantly wealthier. It wasn’t just Jony who took an interest in luxury. The whole company did. Anyone with even a little bit of power in the company started to dress more expensively. They all look like they could walk right out of a fashion advertisement.

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ Why doesn't Apple make a standalone Touch ID?

    I finally upgraded to a mechanical keyboard. But because Apple's so protective of their Touch ID hardware, there aren't any mechanical keyboards with that feature built in.

  • Dedoimedo ☛ Mom, Windows 11 made me buy a Macbook!

    Uh oh. Bring out your popcorn. Strap in and get ready for a spectacle. For today's article can only have two possible outcomes: utter genius or total failure. There is no middle ground, I'm afraid. When a curmudgeon, a Linux nerd and an embittered long-time Windows user, ergo me, decided to splurge money on an expensive posh laptop that will elevate him from the status of peasantry to sweet nobility, there can be no other option. My actions will either vindicate me, or I shall become a total idiot for wasting hard-earned dough on an over-expensive slab of metal and plastic.

    To wit, a Macbook Pro! So, this is a review. But there's a lengthy introduction. If you need context and understanding as to why I chose to buy this gadget, you will need to read the first few paragraphs. If you only care about the spec and the use, feel free to skip the why part. Still, for pure entertainment value, I suggest you do savor all the bits and pieces. Let us commence then, most gingerly, forward.

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-24 [Older] Are Europe's fashion brands as green as they say?

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-11-27 [Older] Beyond black and white: the EPO’s new rules for colour drawings [Ed: EPO claims to have rules, but EPO breaks laws]

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-11-29 [Older] Can infringement be avoided by performing part of a diagnostic method claim in another jurisdiction?

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-11-28 [Older] How the new EU Design Regulation can kill your infringement claim

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-12-01 [Older] [Guest post] The Commission’s Proposal for a Regulation on EU Designs (codified text) – Disconcerting news from Brussels [Ed: Disconcerting news from Brussels? Who for? Lawyers?]

• Copyrights

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-11-29 [Older] ‘AI becomes pro-artist’ according to Warner’s licensing agreement with Suno, but can it compete with the divine feminine? [Ed: No, plagiarism BS artists try to twist things]