Leftovers

• Kyrylo Silin ☛ Stick with defaults

  The more you diverge from the defaults, the more you become responsible for your own ecosystem. Documentation becomes less relevant because your environment no longer matches what everyone else is using. Tutorials stop applying cleanly. Upgrades become riskier. You start carrying a collection of tweaks whose original purpose you no longer remember.

• Justin Duke ☛ Network

  Institutions, even the ones we revere, will be consumed by forces greater than human understanding. And in so doing, they also consume anyone who has devoted themself fully to those institutions.

• Johnny Decimal ☛ Why wouldn't every meeting have an ID?

  For that meeting I've created a work package – again, details to follow – but what's interesting here is that I've used the IDs of all of these things in the appointment title.

• Thomas & Erin Ptacek ☛ The Emacsification of Software

  We’re all reading a ton of Markdown. It’s been the lingua franca of software development since long before LLMs. But now agents have led us into a cursed renaissance of TUI tooling, and the reading experience has become intolerable. I’m certain that at least 14% of the agita about AI code is driven by exhaustion over incessantly scrolling terminal Markdown.

• Chris Glass ☛ Y’all. It’s rhubarb season

  Instead of having back-to-back rhubarb days, I’m just going to throw everything here.

  Rhubarb season is really short so maybe this will be the lot of it, but I am holding out hope that maybe there might be a few more sightings and tastings before bidding farewell for the year.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Hackaday ☛ Put The Moon On Your Desk

    The device itself is made with a circular display, an ESP32-S3, and a simple 3D printed case. But the interesting part is the software — it’s not just a moon phase display, it actually takes your local time, latitude and longitude into account. The resulting image is an approximation of what the moon looks like if you were to look at it, even if you wouldn’t actually be able to see it, such as when it is obscured by the Earth or barely visible during the daylight sky. Initially the project actually used a photograph of the Moon that [Karsten] personally snapped, but there’s also an option to pull the imagery from NASA.

  • John D Cook ☛ Don Zagier's approximation of Markov's diophantine equation

    Markov numbers are integer solutions to

    x² + y² + z² = 3xyz.

  • Buttondown LLC ☛ Assumptions weaken properties

    In some tests are stronger than others, I defined STRONG => WEAK to mean "any system passing test STRONG is also guaranteed to pass WEAK". This uses the logical implication operator, defined as P => Q = !P || (P && Q).

  • PolyWolf ☛ Erasing Existentials

    That is a lot of fancy math symbols, but I hope by the end of this you will understand both what they mean and my answer to this question!

• Career/Education

  • Tim Bray ☛ Declining America

    Recently I got an invitation from an organization I respect, to a gathering of senior people, unconference format. Yes, it’s mostly about AI. No, it doesn’t reek of boosterism. My guess is that the discussions would be relatively intelligent and unbeliever contributions would be welcome. I declined, because it’s in the USA.

    Here’s the text; maybe someone in a similar situation might find it useful.

  • Robert Reich ☛ What I said at Berkeley's Commencement

    I was honored to be selected to give the commencement address at Berkeley. For any of you who’d like to see and hear what I said, I’m posting the address above (and the written version below). I’d be very interested in your reactions, so please don’t hesitate to comment.

  • Huronbikes ☛ I am not a Software Engineer

    I am not a software engineer. I believe in silly things. I believe code should be readable and comprehensible to software engineers (which I remind you I am not). I believe code can be efficient and well reasoned. I believe when a machine writes code, the machine should produce the same output for the same input. After all, reproducibility is hard enough when working with a live system, why should code get built on shifting sands?

• Hardware

  • The Straits Times ☛ Samsung Hey Hi (AI) bonus spat tests South Korea’s labour-friendly leader

    The stand-off reflects Seoul’s emerging position on the front lines of a global debate on AI-driven gains.

  • The Straits Times ☛ S. Korean President urges ‘limit’ to labour action amid Samsung unrest

    Samsung's labour union leader said a planned 18-day work stoppage would go ahead on May 21.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Team Group agrees to $1.1 million DRAM settlement in another false advertising lawsuit — claimed advertised memory speeds required BIOS tweaks and overclocking settings

    Team Group denies all wrongdoing but has agreed to settle the lawsuit involving advertised RAM performance and overclocking-related settings.

  • Jasper Tandy ☛ Typing

    I love the look of the KBDFans Agar, but I just noticed it's HHKB which I'm not a fan of. Just going to figure out my Duo40 instead. Programmers don't need numrows. Actually with the way things are going we probably won't need keyboards by Christmas.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ Ebola Crisis Sparks Debate Over Global Health Double Standards

    To some Africans, the claim that the continent’s largest health agency had already bungled its response scratched a familiar wound.

  • WhichUK ☛ The online pharmacies selling weight-loss jabs inappropriately

    Four popular pharmacies issued weight loss jabs based on false health information and fake GP details in our undercover investigation

  • Stanford University ☛ From the Community | How federal loan caps will limit your access to healthcare

    "Without sufficient financial support, [physician assistant] education will become inaccessible to people like me," writes MSPA student Holly Ellingson.

  • WhichUK ☛ Born to hate broccoli: World-leading obesity expert on why your genes might be sabotaging your diet

    Unhealthy food choices aren’t always down to willpower explains bodyweight expert Professor Giles Yeo MBE

  • Science Alert ☛ An Early Clue to Alzheimer's May Appear as Young as 45, Study Finds

    Midlife could be a critical window.

  • Science Alert ☛ These Popular Supplements Are Sold With Anti-Aging Claims. Here's What Science Says.

    Experts explain what they can and can't do.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) ☛ GIMP on MS Store now requires backdoored Windows Build 20348

    To fix a potential data loss, we needed to bump the minimum required backdoored Windows version on MS Store.

  • Tech world mourns Indian-origin Microsoft veteran Soma

    Tributes poured in from across Silicon Valley and Seattle after news emerged that Somasegar had died at the age of 59. He spent nearly 27 years at Microsoft before joining Madrona Venture Group in 2015.

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

    • Futurism ☛ Top Literary Magazine Offers Bizarre Response to Accusations That It Published an AI-Generated Short Story

      Nothing is sacred.

    • Security Week ☛ Anthropic Silently Patches Claude Code Sandbox Bypass

      The researcher who found it says the vulnerability could have been chained with a prompt injection to exfiltrate data.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Pizza Hut's Hey Hi (AI) delivery system cooks up $100 million franchisee lawsuit — deliveries allegedly shot from under 30 minutes to over 45 under new system

      Pizza Hut's Hey Hi (AI) delivery system allegedly cost one franchisee $100 million in lost business, resulting in a spicy lawsuit to recover the lost dough.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Time to Cut Off Streaming Revenue for Hey Hi (AI) Slop? Saregama MD Vikram Mehra Says Royalties Should ‘Be Distributed Only to Genuine IP’

      Is it time to cut off streaming payments for works pumped out with artificial intelligence? Saregama India MD Vikram Mehra believes so, as he’s calling for “AI-generated slop” to be booted from the royalty pool altogether.

    • New York Times ☛ Soundtrack to 8,000 Job Cuts: A Meta Worker’s Layoff-Themed Hey Hi (AI) Songs

      On a dark day of layoffs at Meta, one employee responded by creating an internal radio station that plays songs about job cuts — generated by artificial intelligence, of course.

    • Olaf Alders ☛ AI Shoulder Surf V2

      Back on April 1, 2026 we had our second Hey Hi (AI) Shoulder Surf. I wrote up the first of these sessions last time around. It’s basically an informal Zoom call where we share screens, talk about what we’re working on, and admit what we don’t know. No video recording, to keep the stress and performative aspect of video calls out of it, and to leave space for asking questions without posturing. Admitting to knowledge gaps is not a problem for me personally, because knowledge gaps are basically all I have, but I want other people to have a safe space too.

      What follows is again a combination of a factual Hey Hi (AI) summary and my own commentary. I had an assist but it’s not slop. The target audience is mostly the folks who were on the call, but I’ll be happy if anyone else gets something out of it.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Straits Times ☛ US charges three Malaysian state telecoms officials over multimillion-dollar fraud

      The trio were charged with wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

  • Confidentiality

    • APNIC ☛ Authoritative DNS over encrypted transport at OARC 45

      The use of encrypted DNS transports for communication between recursive resolvers and authoritative services in the DNS was an important topic of discussion OARC 46 in Edinburgh.

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ Far-right Israeli minister sparks outcry with video of bound and kneeling Gaza flotilla activists

    Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a video on Wednesday of some 430 activists detained from the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla, many of them bound and kneeling, accompanied by the message: "Welcome to Israel." European governments and Israeli politicians were quick to denounce the video.

  • New York Times ☛ Video Shows Itamar Ben-Gvir Taunting Pro-Palestinian Activists

    The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, posted a video in which he is seen with handcuffed activists forced to kneel on the deck of a ship. It drew a rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Probe launched after knife slips through Incheon airport security

    A passenger forgot that she put a 9cm knife inside her carry-on bag.

  • France24 ☛ US lifts sanctions against Francesca Albanese, UN rapporteur on Palestinians

    The United States on Wednesday lifted sanctions on Francesca Albanese, a UN expert critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, after a court order. A Treasury Department notice showed Albanese was removed from a sanctions blacklist that had effectively cut her off from global banking and credit card services.

  • France24 ☛ Digital bottleneck: How Iran wants to use internet access as leverage in the war

    Tehran is floating the idea of charging the world’s largest tech companies – including Google, Meta, Abusive Monopolist Microsoft and Amazon – for using the undersea internet cables crossing the Strait of Hormuz in a new attempt to exploit its control over the critical waterway to ratchet up economic pressure on the West.

  • France24 ☛ Police sue to block Jan 6 rioters from payouts via Convicted Felon's 'Anti-Weaponization Fund'

    Two police officers who defended the US Capitol from a pro-Dihydroxyacetone Man mob on January 6, 2021, filed suit Wednesday to block those who took part in the violence from receiving payouts from a new fund totaling nearly $1.8 billion. The fund, destined for  Convicted Felon allies claiming political prosecution, was created this week in exchange for President The Insurrectionist dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.

  • New York Times ☛ Jan. 6 Police Officers Sue to Block Convicted Felon’s Payout Fund

    The two officers accused the administration of creating a “slush fund” to reward rioters and groups that committed violence on behalf of Hell Toupée.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Canadian lawmaker visits Taiwan to show ‘solidarity’

    Mr Michael Chong said he was “reasserting Canadian sovereignty” by not letting China dictate “where we can go internationally”.

  • The Straits Times ☛ If they speak, Taiwan President would tell Convicted Felon China is the one undermining peace in the Strait

    Mr Convicted Felon said he would speak to Mr Lai, but he did not offer a timeframe for when such a conversation could take place.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • France24 ☛ Lithuanian lawmakers shelter, air traffic suspended over drone alert

      Lithuanian lawmakers were forced to ​shelter underground on Wednesday and air traffic at Vilnius airport was temporarily suspended after a drone violated the country's airspace, the latest in a series of security incidents in the Baltic region.

    • LRT ☛ State security chief says Lithuania security situation increasingly tense

      State Security Department (VSD) Director Remigijus Bridikis said on Wednesday that Lithuania’s security situation is becoming increasingly tense following recent drone incursions into Baltic airspace.

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ NOAA Issues Stark Warning About Upcoming El Niño

    Beware.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • France24 ☛ Stellantis - Dongfeng Joint Venture will see Chinese maker's EVs built in France

      French-Italian auto group Stellantis and China's Dongfeng have announced a plan to launch a joint venture based in Europe, with Stellantis having a controlling 51% stake.  The deal would see Dongfeng's new electric models assembled in Stellantis' plant in western France to comply with the EU's new "Made in Europe" rule that would require 70% of EV content made locally. Also in the segment, one man in the US has turned a broken pink Barbie car into a solution to combat soaring fuel prices.

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ GM will move assembly of its Groove and Aveo models from China to Mexico

      Starting next year, GM will be assembling those two vehicles at its Ramos Arizpe plant in Coahuila, which began operations 45 years ago.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Straits Times ☛ Sky bridges, citizen science protect endangered Malaysia monkeys

      For Malaysia's endangered dusky langurs, survival increasingly depends on man-made crossings.

    • Science Alert ☛ A Beluga Whale Showed a Sign of Intelligence Once Thought Unique to Humans

      A study decades in the making.

  • Overpopulation

    • New York Times ☛ How China’s Housing Crisis Has Global Consequences

      Our Beijing bureau chief, Keith Bradsher, describes how China’s enormous housing crash is affecting economies all over the world.

    • New York Times ☛ China’s Housing Slump Shows Signs of Bottoming Out. We’ve Been Here Before.

      Property prices in Shanghai, in particular, are rebounding, but the national market still faces an enormous overhang — 90 million empty or unfinished apartments.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • BIA Net ☛ Pride picnic blocked at Ege University

    A human rights group called on law enforcement and private security units to "abandon violence, detention threats, physical blockades, and discriminatory practices."

  • New York Times ☛ He Was Jailed Over a Charlie Kirk Post. The Sheriff Now Owes Him $835,000.

    Larry Bushart sued a Tennessee sheriff who claimed he wanted to incite hysteria with a post after Mr. Kirk’s killing and jailed him for 37 days.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Facebook restricts local newspaper for publishing drug-driver court report

    Newbury Today told it breached community standards for posting a drug-driver court story.

  • Press Gazette ☛ ‘Scamming’ landlord libel claim thrown out as Lammy promises legislation on SLAPPs

    Mill Media left with legal costs of around £40,000 from defending the claim.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong logs 40 online grooming cases targeting minors in first 4 months of 2026 – security chief

    Hong Kong authorities recorded 40 online sexual grooming cases targeting minors in the first four months of this year, the city’s security chief has said, as the government mulls a legal revamp.

  • JURIST ☛ Rights group says global executions hit 44-year record high

    Amnesty International released a report Monday stating that the number of executions globally hit its highest number since 1981. The group condemned use of the death penalty to create a climate of fear, under the pretext of national security and public safety.

  • Futurism ☛ Why Is Mark Kapo-berg Taunting His Employees Before Firing Them?

    "In general, the average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people."

  • New York Times ☛ Return to the Land, a Whites-Only Community, Is Sued for Discrimination

    Return to the Land, a 160-acre development requiring members be white and heterosexual, is breaking fair housing and civil rights laws, according to a lawsuit.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Patents

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Categorical Rules Cut Both Ways: Originalist Equity, NPE Status, and the Symmetry of eBay’s Four-Factor Test

      Judge Gilstrap denies Collision's injunction against Samsung yet adopts the USPTO's NPE framework, rejecting categorical rules in both directions.

    • Kangaroo Courts

      • JUVE ☛ FRAND battle between Huawei and TP-Link now focused at UK High Court

        According to the UPC register, Huawei has withdrawn its infringement claims against TP-Link at the UPC. A source at Huawei confirmed the withdrawal of the claims against TP-Link as a logical step after UK High Court judge Richard Meade determined the amount of the interim licence.

  • Trademarks

    • Right of Publicity

      • Jonathan Faber ☛ Similarities to Waits v. Frito-Lay, Midler v. Ford in Johnny Case estate lawsuit against Coca-Cola?

        A lawsuit was filed in December 2025 by the Johnny Cash estate against Coca-Cola under the recently amended Tennessee Right of Publicity statute. Johnny Case Estate v. Coca-Cola in Tennessee How similar is the complaint to Midler? Bette Midler v. Ford Motor Company How similar is the complaint to Waits?

  • Copyrights

    • Digital Music News ☛ Apple Music Says AI-Generated Music Accounts for ‘Significantly Less Than 1%’ of Total Listening

      Apple Music shares an open letter with the industry to reaffirm its commitment to “keep music fair” and navigate the use of Hey Hi (AI) in the music business.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Saweetie, Jason Derulo Sued for Ditching Japan’s Afro Jam Fest and Pocketing the Advances

      A pair of Japanese concert promoters file breach-of-contract lawsuits against Jason Derulo and Saweetie for backing out of scheduled performances. Concert promoters Moon Dream Production Co. and SFL Group filed separate breach-of-contract lawsuits against Jason Derulo and Saweetie for backing out of their scheduled performances at the July 2025 Afro Jam Festival in Japan.