Leftovers

• Ben Congdon ☛ To the Agents: "This place is not a place of honor"

  TL;DR: “Private by obscurity” has been dissolved.

  Internal tools often have layering boundaries that are enforced only by convention. It’s natural to assume a “high trust environment”, where privileged actions are discouraged by obscurity and goodwill instead of hard technical boundaries. Coding agents have dissolved this obscurity, and as a result internal platform engineering now really demands a security mindset.¹

  During a recent codebase audit, a coworker and I discovered an unfortunate set of private Hey Hi (AI) my team owns that were being used in creative and unintended ways, outside the official interfaces. Much of the code that introduced these unsanctioned dependencies was Hey Hi (AI) generated². This was one more datapoint among many that, especially in large monolith codebases and in large enterprises, coding agents have changed how platform teams need to operate.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ NASA Satellite Images Show Huge Colored Plumes Staining the Ocean

    Pretty and cool.

  • Futurism ☛ Residents Say Data Centers Are Radiating Bizarre Frequencies

    Infrasound, which is inaudible, is the new enemy.

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Scan Gruesome Crystal Formed by Nuclear Blast, Find Something Bizarre

    The Trinity test may have gone down in 1945, but scientists are still finding new discoveries at the blast site.

  • Science Alert ☛ Your Social Feed Is Buzzing With Health Advice. But Read This First.

    Ultimately, there's one golden rule.

  • Science Alert ☛ This Week in Science: PCOS Becomes PMOS, an 'Impossible' Crystal, And More!

    Our weekly science news roundup.

  • Science Alert ☛ Humans in The Andes Have Evolved a Strange Digestive Superpower

    Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew...

  • Science Alert ☛ Your Body Clock May Enhance The Benefits of Exercise, Study Finds

    It can make a big difference.

  • Science Alert ☛ Yawning Is So Contagious You Can Catch It Before You're Born, Study Suggests

    It's even more powerful than we realized.

  • Science Alert ☛ Dark Matter May Have Been Detected by Accident, Scientists Reveal

    A signal hiding in the data.

  • Science Alert ☛ Lost Parchment Reveals People Who Survived The Black Death

    An untold story.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Say Test Subjects Were Able to Quit Smoking After They Blasted Their Brains With a Huge Magnet

    Target blasts of magnetic waves could restore the necessary balance to your brain.

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Say They’ve Invented a Serum That Activates a Dormant Ability to Regrow Lost Limbs in Mammals

    "The capacity is not absent — it's just obscured."

  • France24 ☛ No vaccine for new highly lethal Ebola outbreak, DR Congo warns, as death toll hits 80

    A new Ebola outbreak in DR Congo has caused at least 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths, according to the latest figures released on Saturday. There is currently no vaccine available for the strain, known as Bundibugyo, which is considered highly lethal, the country's health minister Samuel-Roger Kamba told a press briefing in Kinshasa.

  • France24 ☛ Congolese report constant burials as deaths in new Ebola outbreak reach 80

    Dr. Gemma Nedjati Gilani, Research Associate School of Public Health - Faculty of Medicine Imperial College London, is our guest.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • So-Called 'Artificial Intelligence' ('AI') / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Amazon Employees Forced to Hit Quotas on Hey Hi (AI) Use, Immediately Start Using it for Everything Except Work

      "If companies use brain-dead metrics to judge people then you need to learn how to f**k them over right back."

    • Futurism ☛ Programmer Breaks Out of the Matrix

      "There was something very programmed about the way I was living."

    • Futurism ☛ Dentists Are Using Hey Hi (AI) to Scare Patients Into Unnecessary Dental Work, According to an Explosive Investigation

      "It's happening almost everywhere."

    • Futurism ☛ Men Haven’t Yet Noticed That a Large Number of Women Are Disgusted by AI

      Behind every AI-obsessed man is a tired but supportive woman.

    • Futurism ☛ Doctors’ Hey Hi (AI) Systems Are Hallucinating Nonexistent Medical Issues During Appointments With Patients

      "All Hey Hi (AI) scribe systems from the 20 approved vendors showed one or more inaccuracies at the procurement testing phase."

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Futurism ☛ These Smart Glasses That Show Captions of What Everyone’s Saying Without a Creepy Spy Camera Actually Seem Pretty Awesome

      Are there finally smart glasses that *aren't* creepy?

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ UK: Massive security operation in London as counterprotests organised

    Dr. Colm Murphy, Senior Lecturer in British Politics at Queen Mary University of London, is our guest

  • France24 ☛ 'No sign' of China's willingness to pressure Iran after Convicted Felon's visit

    Reza Sayah has more.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man warns against Taiwan independence after visiting China

    The Insurrectionist on Friday warned Taiwan against declaring formal independence after concluding his visit to China, whose leader Pooh-tin Jinping had pressed him not to support the self-ruling island.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man says Pooh-tin signaled release of Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai unlikely

    Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping suggested that imprisoned Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai is unlikely to be released, The Insurrectionist said Friday.

  • France24 ☛ Leader of Hamas's armed wing killed in strike on Gaza, says Israel

    The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had killed the head of Hamas's military wing Ezzedine Al-Haddad during an air strike carried out the previous day in Gaza. Haddad's wife and daughter were also killed in the attack, according to a Hamas source.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • BIA Net ☛ 'Armenia is looking for ways to breathe'

      "Armenia holds no trump card for either regional or international policy. Consequently, rather than pursuing a balancing act, it is seeking ways to breathe. The cost of Russian influence has been heavy," says Kürkçügil.

    • RFERL ☛ Luke Coffey On How Tehran Has Adapted Kremlin Negotiation Tactics

      Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute focusing on national security and transatlantic relations, told RFE/RL in an interview that Iran appears to be borrowing directly from Russia’s negotiation strategy.

    • RFERL ☛ Top House Republican Says No New US Ukraine Supplemental Likely, Backs More Russia Sanctions

      Representative Brian Mast told RFE/RL during a Council on Foreign Relations event that he believes Europe should take greater responsibility for supporting Ukraine because the war is "in their backyard."

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine vows retribution after Russian strike on housing block kills 24

      President Volodymyr Zelenskiy promised retribution against Russia on Friday after laying red roses at the rubble of a Kyiv apartment building where a Russian missile strike killed 24 people, including three children.

    • France24 ☛ Putin to hold taks with Pooh-tin in China days after Convicted Felon’s trip to Beijing

      Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with Chinese leader Pooh-tin Jinping during a two-day trip to Beijing next week, the Kremlin said Saturday. The meeting comes days after The Insurrectionist's state visit to China, which ended with warm diplomatic optics but few resolutions to key trade and geopolitical issues, including the Russian war on Ukraine and the US-Israeli war on Iran.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Robert Reich ☛ Bullsh*t in the China Shop

    To say Trump’s trip to China was underwhelming is to give it even more credit than it deserves. In fact, Trump’s main purpose for making the trip probably wasn’t to accomplish anything important but to deflect attention, even for a few days, from his failing war in Iran (the strait is still closed, and Iran is more determined than ever to build a nuclear bomb) and his failing economy (the closure of the strait continues to push up gas prices in the U.S. to near record levels).

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • BIA Net ☛ Silent Turkey

    Around each town, city in Turkey lay such places, laws unto themselves, grave stones close to road sides or near where they live, never moving away even in death. But the tentacles of crude industrial expansion are reaching the gates of all of these places, "disposable" people and communities.

  • JURIST ☛ UN calls on Ghana to prioritize peasants rights amid agricultural reform

    The UN Working Group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas urged Ghana on Thursday to ensure that the rights of small-holder farmers, artisanal fishermen, and pastoralists are fully considered during the implementation of its planned agricultural transformation through the UN Declaration of the Rights of Peasants and Other People [...]

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Copyrights

    • Michael Geist ☛ The Lawful Access Two-Headed Surveillance Monster: How Bill C-22 Went Off the Rails

      The government’s plans for lawful access have gone off the rails. In recent days, Signal has warned it would pull out of the Canadian market rather than comply with Bill C-22. Windscribe, the Toronto-headquartered VPN provider, has said it would relocate its headquarters out of Canada and NordVPN has warned it would consider following suit.