Leftovers

• Haley Nahman ☛ #172: Trick questions - by Haley Nahman - Maybe Baby

  I still want it, just a little. I often forget my anxiety isn’t caused by a lack of answers to my swirl of questions, but the swirl itself. I frequently operate as if one more Google search will solve everything, circling around and around the [Internet], mercifully sedated by information I probably don’t need and will forget next week. Sometimes, I really do find the answer I’m looking for, and then I’ll stop, smug and satisfied. The problem with feeding the beast is it’s not the same as killing it. Soon enough, I’m hungry again.

• Kevin Wammer ☛ A reasonable amount of overkill

  But obsessions like these also tend to lead to burnout. So far I have been lucky to mostly dance around it, but there have been some hobbies that I went all-in only to put them aside because I basically used everything up said hobby had to offer.

• Atharva Raykar ☛ Likejunkies

  [...] It will go away in a blink of an eye. You gotta turn it to a perfect series of like-after-like. Do you want to waste your short, sisyphean life on this planet just sitting there, not reacting to what's passing through you? Are you really going to waste your life being a loser who meets with reality as it is?

• Bix Frankonis ☛ The ‘Serialized’ Series • BIX dot BLOG

  Re-reading them just now as a set, I’m not sure if I entirely made clear the idea that because such creators insist that while their storytelling comes in parts the audience must wait until the end to react in part is the things that creates the blinkered takes on the morality of their stories in the first place. They want to be able to shock you but then insist there’s no real provocation because in the end—if you’ll just shut up and keep reading until you find out what happens in the end—everything comes out just fine.

• Cassidy Williams ☛ Improving my newsletter's open rate the hard(er) way

  A friend of mine suggested I ask people to respond to the email on occasion to help improve its reputation with Gmail/spam filters. When I did that this past month, my inbox was flooded with responses. I lost count of them if I’m being honest, but there were hundreds of them (possibly over a thousand)!

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Tiny Supernova Error Could Make The Dark Energy 'Crisis' Vanish, New Paper Suggests

    A simple measurement problem?

  • Science Alert ☛ The Link Between Air Pollution And Alzheimer's Is Now Clearer Than Ever

    The air we breathe is harming us.

  • Science Alert ☛ Common Diabetes Drug Linked With 'Exceptional Longevity' in Women

    Hidden anti-aging powers?

  • Science Alert ☛ Huge Web of Hidden Electromagnetic Waves Discovered Around Tiny Ice World

    Extending over 500,000 kilometers.

  • Science Alert ☛ NASA Restarts Countdown After Fixing Hydrogen Leaks on Its Moon Rocket

    Artemis II astronauts are watching from afar.

  • Science Alert ☛ First-of-Its-Kind Map of Alzheimer's Reveals Hidden Gene Activity

    It suggests where to target treatments, and why.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ How 1.5 million km of undersea internet cables can double up as an earthquake and tsunami warning system

    The FOCUS project worked by deploying a specially designed strain cable across the newly mapped fault in hopes of detecting tectonic movement. Any movement, however small, would tug on the cable and elongate the optical fibers inside. This can be detected by analyzing laser light fired into the optical fibers.

  • Quanta Magazine ☛ A New Complexity Theory for the Quantum Age | Quanta Magazine

    For over 30 years, complexity theorists have used this theoretical framework to identify problems where quantum computers surpass classical ones. But there’s a broader class of problems that they’ve barely begun to study, whose inputs and outputs aren’t ordinary strings of bits. These are the problems that most interest the complexity theorist Henry Yuen. How do you make sense of problems whose inputs and outputs are themselves inherently quantum?

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Archaeologists Unearthed a 2,200-Year-Old Bone. They Say It Could Be the First Direct Evidence of Hannibal's Legendary War Elephants

    Along with stone artillery and coins, researchers unearthed a “short, cube-shaped bone,” measuring nearly four inches long. Eventually, they determined that the bone likely came from the right leg of an African or Asian elephant.

    “It could belong to the period of the Punic Wars,” Martínez Sánchez told El Pais’ Vicente G. Olaya in 2023. “It could be the first of Hannibal’s elephants to be discovered. We can’t know for sure, but it was certainly a sizable beast.”

  • Max Bernstein ☛ Type-based alias analysis in the Toy Optimizer

    Last time, we did load-store forwarding in the context of our Toy Optimizer. We managed to cache the results of both reads from and writes to the heap—at compile-time!

    We were careful to mind object aliasing: we separated our heap information into alias classes based on what offset the reads/writes referenced. This way, if we didn’t know if object a and b aliased, we could at least know that different offsets would never alias (assuming our objects don’t overlap and memory accesses are on word-sized slots). This is a coarse-grained heuristic.

    Fortunately, we often have much more information available at compile-time than just the offset, so we should use it. I mentioned in a footnote that we could use type information, for example, to improve our alias analysis. We’ll add a lightweight form of type-based alias analysis (TBAA) (PDF) in this post.

  • 00f ☛ Fast sorting, branchless by design

    Sorting is one of the most studied problems in computer science. Every language ships a built-in sort, and for most applications, picking the right one is a matter of performance. Quicksort, mergesort, pdqsort. They all produce the correct output. The main question is how fast they get there.

    But there’s a class of applications where correctness and speed aren’t enough. When the data being sorted is sensitive, the sort itself can become a security vulnerability. Not because it produces the wrong result, but because an attacker who observes execution time can learn something about the data.

    This is not theoretical. Post-quantum cryptosystems like Classic McEliece and NTRU Prime use sorting as a core subroutine, and if the sort leaks timing information, the entire cryptosystem is compromised.

    There is, however, a family of algorithms that eliminates this problem entirely, and when implemented well, can even outperform traditional sorts.

• Career/Education

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Full Sail's new Drone Innovation Center: Is a drone degree worth it?

    Full Sail University just opened its Drone Innovation Center on its Winter Park, Florida campus — a 7,870-square-foot facility complete with indoor flight zones, 3D printing labs, simulation rooms and direct ties to the U.S. National Drone Association. But as someone who doesn’t have a degree in drones myself (I studied journalism and German in college), it left me wondering – do you actually need a university program to break into the drone industry?

    I’ve covered the drone sector for over a decade, and I’ve watched this industry evolve from hobbyists and self-taught pilots (that’s me!) to a complex ecosystem that increasingly demands cross-functional expertise in fields behind drones, such as advanced mapping or agriculture.

  • Lefred ☛ I joined the MariaDB Foundation

    Last Friday was my last day at Oracle. Today is my first day at MariaDB.org!

    Of course, this move is a big surprise for many people, but not for me, and it might not be for those following the MySQL ecosystem closely.

  • Lorin Hochstein ☛ Poor Deming never stood a chance

    An organization is a big, hairy, complex mess, and the bigger the organization is, the hairier and more complex it gets. Managers, on the other hand, have a very finite amount of bandwidth. There are only so many hours in a day, and this number does not increase with the complexity of an organization. And, let’s face it, they’re spending something close to 100% of that bandwidth attending meetings.

    How is a manger to make sense of this mess?

• Hardware

  • Small Cypress ☛ first impressions of my MP3 player (Innioasis Y1)

    I could go into pros and cons but honestly it's mostly pros at this point since it's turned out to be a great little device for my use case. It has a clickwheel, good battery life, and takes an aux cable. People complain about the bluetooth range being so weak it can't connect to headphones from your pocket, but my bluetooth speaker connects to it from my pocket around the house and in different rooms so far.

  • Chris ☛ Learning KeyBee

    The problem with Qwerty keyboards on small touchscreen devices is that they are designed for ten-finger typing, and we typically only use two thumbs to type. Surely there must be ways input can be optimised for two thumbs beyond the Qwerty keyboard.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ A 3-year-old girl asked a simple question – and sparked a US$600 million camera revolution

    Polaroid originally manufactured 60 units of this first camera, with 57 demonstrated at the Jordan Marsh department store in Boston before the 1948 Christmas holiday. Its marketers incorrectly guessed that the camera and film would remain in stock long enough to manufacture a second run based on customer demand, but all 57 cameras and all the film sold on the first day

    That’s remarkable, given that the camera sold for $89.95 – or about $970 / £710 / AU$1,370 in today's money. A roll of Type 40 film, which produced 8 sepia-toned black-and-white images, sold for $1.75, or about $23.00 / £17 / AU$33 in 2026 money.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ Height Surgery for Men Can Add Inches But Has Risks

    Limb-lengthening can add inches to a person’s stature. But its risks have made it controversial.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Got raw milk? Michigan proposal would legalize wider sales

    Republican-backed bills would allow Michigan farmers to sell unpasteurized milk directly to consumers. Critics contend there would be health risks, but supporters say consumers should be able to decide.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Oakland County diverts mental health patients to ERs amid crisis center takeover

    Critics fear service disruptions as Oakland County’s community mental health agency asks law enforcement to divert crisis cases to local emergency departments.

  • NYPost ☛ The rise in transgender killers proves that we have a major mental health crisis unfolding

    In what is becoming a regular occurrence, someone trans-identifying is accused of committing a mass murder, this time during a high school hockey game, in suburban Rhode Island.

  • Science Alert ☛ Simple Lifelong Habits Can Cut Your Alzheimer's Risk by 38%, Study Finds

    To the library!

  • The Straits Times ☛ 85% of TB cases in Malaysia involve locals, says health minister

    Dr Dzulkefly said TB is not a new phenomenon in Malaysia’s public health landscape.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ How the Kakistocracy Became a Quackistocracy

    Childhood vaccination is one of public policy’s greatest success stories. People who view the 1950s through rose-colored glasses, seeing them as an era of American greatness, miss many ways in which life was much worse then than now, ranging from gross racism and sexism to high poverty rates among the elderly. One often-overlooked feature of the “good old days” was that many children contracted, and some died from, infectious diseases that have now been almost eliminated — or had been almost eliminated, until today’s right-wing anti-vaccine agitators set the stage for their comeback.

  • Science Alert ☛ New Light Therapy Can Suppress a Key Marker of Hair Loss by 92%

    A new solution emerges.

  • Science Alert ☛ Do Positive Affirmations Really Work? A Psychologist Explains The Science

    There are some risks.

  • Science Alert ☛ Beating 'Heart-on-a-Chip' Could Help Fight The World's Leading Cause of Death

    "This breakthrough brings us even closer to true precision health."

  • New York Times ☛ Boneless Wings Are Still Wings, Judge Rules

    A Chicago man filed a lawsuit in 2023 against Buffalo Wild Wings, arguing that it had engaged in false advertising of its boneless wings. A judge said the claim “has no meat on its bones.”

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ AI Delusions Are Leading to Domestic Abuse, Harassment, and Stalking

      "I couldn't leave my house for months... people were messaging me all over my social control media, like, 'Are you safe? Are your kids safe?'"

    • Futurism ☛ Pentagon Issues Threat to Anthropic

      "Everything's on the table."

    • New York Times ☛ Question of True Remorse When Hey Hi (AI) Helps Write Your Court Apology

      The use of artificial intelligence gave a New Zealand judge pause about the genuineness of the remorse expressed in the apology. It reflects a wider discussion about using Hey Hi (AI) for personal communication.

  • Social Control Media

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Spain launches probe into social control media giants as European regulation starts to boil

      Spanish authorities will investigate the social control media companies Meta Platforms Inc., X Corp. and Fentanylware (CheeTok) to determine if they’ve spread child sexual abuse material generated by artificial intelligence. The investigation follows a broader push by European countries to regulate what has often been called the “Wild West” of social control media platforms.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Straits Times ☛ Seoul eases curbs on North Korea’s top daily Rodong Sinmun, but few South Koreans are reading it

      It is part of a broader approach to ease tensions with the North by allowing public access to materials from there

• Defence/Aggression

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Latvia ☛ NGO: Some Latvian employers exploit Ukrainians

      At least several dozen entrepreneurs have reportedly taken advantage of Ukrainian refugees, according to the association "Patvērums "Drošā māja"" (Safe House Shelter), which provides support to those in need, Latvian Television reported on 16th February.

    • Latvia ☛ Baltics, Nordics, Poland and Ukraine are 'Europe's shield'

      Poland allocated 4.5% to defense, Lithuania – 4%, Latvia – 3.7%, Estonia and Norway – 3.4%, Denmark – 3.2%, and Finland and Sweden – just under 3%.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvia to give another 10 million euros to support Ukraine's military

      The Latvian government decided on Tuesday, February 17th, to allocate 10 million euros to support Ukraine under NATO's Prioritized Ukraine Requirement List (PURL) programme, under which European countries purchase military equipment from the United States, which then delivers it to Ukraine, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa (New Unity) announced on social control media.

    • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Said He’d End the War in Ukraine in a Day. It’s Harder Than He Thought.

      Russian attacks and Ukrainian civilian deaths rose as Hell Toupée’s peace talks dragged on during his first year back in the White House.

    • LRT ☛ ‘Belarus in isolation only benefits Putin’: released activist starts over in Germany

      Maria Kolesnikova was a leading figure in the 2020 protests against Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko. She reflects on this turbulent time, and her new life in German exile.

    • France24 ☛ Putin, women, favours: DOJ files reveal Jeffrey Epstein’s efforts to build Russian ties

      Convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sought to cultivate ties with Russia’s political elite and repeatedly pressed for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, according to US Justice Department files released on Tuesday. The documents detail Epstein’s travel to Russia and efforts to recruit young Russian women through senior intermediaries.

    • New York Times ☛ A Road Trip from Kandahar to Kabul on Highway 1 in Afghanistan

      Life and business are back along a road once defined by war damage. But even with improved security, Afghans are desperate for jobs and development.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Militants kill 11 Pakistani security personnel, one child near Afghan border, army says

      PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 17 - Militants rammed a vehicle filled with explosives into an army checkpoint in northwestern Pakistan, killing 11 security personnel and a child, the military said on Tuesday, as the South Asian nation battles a surge in violence.

    • New Yorker ☛ How Legal Immigration Became a Deportation Trap

      Under Convicted Felon, the Homeland Security agency responsible for processing visas and green cards has become a site for easy arrests.

    • LRT ☛ Sons of sanctioned Belarusian oligarch held Lithuanian citizenship – media

      The sons of Belarusian oligarch Yury Chyzh received Lithuanian citizenship in 2013, a year after the European Union imposed sanctions on their father, and held it until last year, the investigative journalism centre Siena reported Tuesday.

    • RFERL ☛ State Department: No 'Gentleman's Agreement' Between US, Russia On Expired Nuclear Treaty

      A senior US State Department official has flatly rejected suggestions that Washington and Moscow are informally continuing to observe the limits of the now-expired, nuclear-weapon-limiting New START treaty, saying there is no “gentlemen’s agreement” in place.

    • Latvia ☛ Buying pets in Russia, Belarus unsafe, says Latvian authority

      The Food and Veterinary Service (PVD) is urging Latvian residents not to purchase dogs, cats, and domestic ferrets in Russia and Belarus, as it is not safe, the service said on 17th February.

    • New York Times ☛ Talks on Russia-Ukraine War Enter 2nd Day in Geneva

      The talks in Geneva, Switzerland, were expected to focus on Ukrainian-held territory in the east that Russia wants to control as the price of peace. Kyiv has said that demand is a nonstarter.

    • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Bets on Diplomacy Without Diplomats

      Hell Toupée’s most trusted envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, are at the center of the Iran and Ukraine negotiations.

    • CS Monitor ☛ With Russia grinding closer, Ukrainians weigh the cost of land for peace

      For the Ukrainian public, the idea of giving up territory for peace is anathema – unless security against future Russian aggression is guaranteed.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Foreign cars flow to Russia through China, skirting Ukraine war sanctions

      Feb 12 - Tens of thousands of cars are being exported from China to Russia under gray-market schemes that often circumvent Western and Asian government sanctions and automakers' commitments to exit the Russian market, according to registration data reviewed by Reuters and interviews with five people involved in the trade.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine, Russia Wrap First Day Of US-Brokered Talks Amid Fresh Strikes

      Ukrainian and Russian negotiators were set to meet for the latest round of US-brokered peace talks following another round of Russian overnight strikes on targets across Ukraine with hundreds of drones and missiles.

    • RFERL ☛ EU Pushes Ukraine On Repair Of Druzhba Pipeline Carrying Russian Oil To Hungary, Slovakia

      A European Commission spokeswoman on February 17 confirmed that Brussels was in touch with Ukraine regarding the Druzhba pipeline that has been damaged since late January, preventing Russian oil from flowing to Hungary and Slovakia.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuanian agency to run international fund for Ukraine transport rebuild

      Lithuania, Sweden, Canada and Ukraine have established a new International Transport Forum fund to support the reconstruction of Ukraine’s transport infrastructure, the Lithuanian Transport Ministry said Tuesday. The decision was taken at a meeting in Stockholm.

    • France24 ☛ Russians, Belarusians to compete under own flags at Paralympics: IPC tells AFP

      Russian and Belarusian athletes will be allowed to compete under their own national flags at the 2026 Paralympics in Milan-Cortina, the Games' governing body confirmed to AFP on Tuesday. Valeriy Sushkevych, president of the Ukrainian Paralympic Committee, denounced the move, saying "I am very, very angry and outraged by the decision to allow six Russian athletes to compete under their national flag". FRANCE 24's Selina Sykes reports.

    • France24 ☛ Russia, Ukraine seem to be 'putting up a performance for president Convicted Felon', analyst says

      Ukrainian and Russian negotiators concluded the first of two days of US-mediated peace talks in Geneva on Tuesday, though neither side signalled they were any closer to ending Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II. Speaking with FRANCE 24's Mark Owen, John Lough, Head of Foreign Policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, explains that both Ukraine and Russia give the impression they are 'putting up a performance for president Convicted Felon'.

    • France24 ☛ Who is Vladimir Medinsky, the nationalist historian leading Russia’s peace talks delegation?

      Russia’s delegation to the latest round of US-brokered peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow in Geneva is once again being led by ultraconservative historian and presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky – a man who rewrote Russia’s history textbooks to justify Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine.

    • France24 ☛ First day of Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Geneva ends with no breakthroughs

      Ukrainian and Russian negotiators wrapped up a first day of US-mediated peace talks in Geneva on Tuesday with no sign of a breakthrough. The nearly four-year war, Europe’s deadliest since World War II, grinds on as both sides signalled that they remain far apart on key issues like territory.

    • France24 ☛ LIVE: Ukraine war talks to resume in Geneva with no sign of breakthrough

      Ukrainian and Russian negotiators were to resume a second round of US-mediated peace talks in Geneva on Wednesday, though neither side signalled they were any closer to ending Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II. Follow our liveblog for the latest updates.

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • New York Times ☛ A Deadly Medieval Path in England Claims a Modern Victim: An Amazon Van

      The Broomway in Essex is notoriously treacherous because of the quick-moving waters surrounding it. One delivery vehicle didn’t make it.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • JURIST ☛ Coalition sues to block removal of history, science displays from US national parks

      A coalition of six conservation and education organizations sued the US Department of the Interior on Tuesday, challenging a policy that has led to the removal of exhibits about slavery, climate change, and Indigenous history from national parks across the country.

• Finance

  • New York Times ☛ Mamdani Threatens 9.5% Property Tax Increase if Wealth Tax Is Not Passed

    Mayor Zohran Mamdani said his proposal to raise New York City property taxes was a “last resort” to close a budget gap.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Daily Mail’s Stephen Wright ‘devastated’ by Doreen Lawrence hacking claims

    Wright says all illegal newsgathering allegations against him are false.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Radio Free Asia says it has resumed broadcasts to China

    Funding cuts by the Convicted Felon administration led to RFA’s initial shutdown.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia drops defamation case against Australian writer in Thailand

    The charge of criminal defamation carried a maximum prison sentence of two years and a fine.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico, Canada announce joint economic action plan for a post-USMCA future

      "Robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, vaccines, new technologies and medicine, everything can be done," said Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who described Canada as a "very reliable partner for Mexico."

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Despite a Court-Ordered Injunction, Anna’s Archive Releases Millions of Spotify Tracks Online—With More Likely On the Way

    Anna’s Archive releases millions of actual music files from its Spotify archive despite being actively sued by Spotify and several record labels. Notorious shadow library Anna’s Archive has quietly released even more torrents from its massive Spotify scrape, this time releasing the actual music files too.

  • Digital Music News ☛ California Judge Delivers a Major Setback for Global Piracy Crackdowns — The DMCA Suddenly Has a Lot Less Bite

    A federal judge has set clear-cut limits on DMCA subpoenas – at least when it comes to ascertaining alleged infringers’ identities en route to spearheading litigation in foreign countries.