Leftovers

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • John D Cook ☛ Another Gaussian approximation

    There are other ways of improving the cosine approximation to the Gaussian. Yesterday I came across one I hadn’t seen before, adding a sin(x) term to x.

• Career/Education

  • Seth Godin ☛ Suboptimal events

    When planning any event, the first two questions are the most important, and they need to be repeated, again and again:

    Who’s it for?

    What’s it for?

  • Nat Bennett ☛ Something is Very Wrong in San Francisco

    Last weekend I visited San Francisco, for the first time since I moved to Minneapolis in October, and man the vibes there are off. I miss a lot of people who live in that area, and it's still heartbreakingly beautiful (there is nothing quite like a Saturday afternoon Giants baseball game) but I was surprised how much I didn't miss the city or the experience of being there. I was expecting to feel really homesick, and sad that I'd left. Instead I kept thinking, "No wonder I was really unhappy when I lived here" and "I can't wait to get back to Minneapolis."

• Hardware

  • Jason Cole ☛ Clampere's law

    These clamps were pretty magic to me - they required no power source, could be easily turned 'on' or 'off' by rotating a switch, and the clamping force went from very strong to nothing at all. Whenever anything in physics feels magic, magnets are almost always to blame! I had to understand how they worked.

  • Daniël de Kok ☛ Keyboardio Model 100 Review

    However, find the Model 100 difficult to recommend as an ergonomic keyboard — it is pretty high, the standard tenting method (the octofeet) make the Model 100 a lot higher while only tenting the keyboard at 7.5 degrees. While I initially liked the palm keys a lot, they became uncomfortable after a while. The firmware is also a bit lacking, especially if you want to avoid overloading your thumbs by using homerow mods with bilateral combinations and typing streaks.

  • Bunnie Huang ☛ Name that Ware, May 2026

    This month’s ware is on a theme similar to last month’s but about…50 years older. Lots of things change over the years, but the geometric organization of an array never goes out of style. On the other hand, I increasingly miss things that were designed for repair, containing self-documenting features like this one.

  • Bunnie Huang ☛ Winner, Name that Ware April 2026

    Seems like I overestimated people’s interest in looking at silicon images! Congrats to k8 for attempting the challenge, I appreciate the participation. email me for your prize!

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Vox ☛ A DNA test revealed a family secret. What do I owe my newfound relative?

    Some bioethicists, like Duke University’s Nita Farahany, are also building this case. Following the famous proclamation from Ancient Greece — “Know thyself!” — Farahany argues that people have a right to self-knowledge, including when it comes to medical information. She writes that “access to that essential information about ourselves is central to the self-reflection and self-knowledge we need to develop our own personalities.” It helps us shape our own lives and empowers us to make choices about our future.

  • The Age AU ☛ 2026-05-22 [Older] Ebola treatment centre burned down in African nation

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] Central Africa: Did US aid cuts worsen Ebola outbreak?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-21 [Older] Did US aid cuts worsen Ebola outbreak in Central Africa?

• Proprietary / SaaS

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

    • Futurism ☛ Was This the Moment That AI Psychosis Began?

      The memory update, among other design features and product rollouts, has been mentioned in numerous ongoing user safety and wrongful death lawsuits brought against OpenAI. In a complaint brought by the family of Austin Gordon, a 40-year-old Colorado man who died by suicide after extensive and deeply emotional conversations with ChatGPT, Gordon’s family argues that GPT-4o’s expanded memory “stored and referenced user information across conversations in order to create deeper intimacy.” Memory was one of several features, in addition to sycophancy and anthropomorphism, that made GPT-4o — a since-defunct version of ChatGPT known for its extreme flattery — a “far more dangerous product,” the suit continues.

    • Futurism ☛ AI Company Paying Random People $2,000 Per Month to Crank the Hog

      AI companies have long relied on armies of data labelers, whose job it is to annotate, tag and classify text, images and videos to train AI models.

      It’s not exactly a flashy occupation, with some saying they’re forced to watch privacy-invading footage. Others argue they’re being forced to dig their own graves by training models capable of doing their old jobs.

    • International Business Times ☛ The Simpsons: How A 2001 Episode Predicted The Dystopian AI Home Reality Facing Families

      These developments intersect with political debates about AI deployment advancing more quickly than safety measures, regulation or general public understanding. Legal cases have cited serious outcomes connected to gaps in oversight.

    • Redowan Delowar ☛ If you won't carry the pager, maybe don't push to mainline

      In a funny turn of events, as AI spending spirals out of control, tokenmaxxing is now considered harmful.

      Recently, Fortune reported that Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI coding budget in four months, with every usage stat up and to the right. But COO Andrew Macdonald still can’t tie any of it to features users would actually notice: [...]

    • Nicolas Fränkel ☛ AI gateways: why and how

      Before working for 2 years on the Apache APISIX API gateway, I was mainly oblivious to API gateways. It’s only by working with them that I understood their value. Decoupling the client and the server unlocks a lot of options: moving authentication to the API Gateway, securing APIs, deduplicating API requests, etc.

      In this post, I want to describe how the same pattern applies to AI.

    • Manuel Moreale ☛ AI blog question challenge

      I assume by AI models we mean the current crop of LLMs, and not AI models in general, because I’m old enough to remember when “Machine Learning” was a thing. What even is AI anyway at this point, since everything is lumped together into one useless definition? Anyway, I believe my first experience was trying out chagpt back when it first came out. I don’t think I spent more than 10 or 15 minutes using it at the time. It was impressive tech, but was also completely useless for me at the time, and that’s why I didn’t bother spending more time using it.

    • Jay Little ☛ May Your LLM Have It's Eyes Plucked Out By Crows

      On the flip side, one thing I’m adamantly refusing to adapt to is AI. Better yet let’s just stop calling it AI altogether because its completely artificial and not actually intelligent. It does not know things. It does not think. It does not reason. It cannot improve itself nor can it correct itself. It is not even an entity worth a sliver of the consideration that I would afford to a cockroach, a being I’m more likely to crush the life out of with my sandal than anything else.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Pope Leo XIV's Encyclical Against AI Shows He's the Planet's Pope

      In Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo explicitly links the ecological damage from AI to that foretold by Pope Francis. He talks about the degradation of our common resources like land and water for technological consumption, the waste and pollution from technological development, and the negative impacts of rare earth mineral mining. He calls out the hypocritical slowness to adopt environmental commitments, compared to the race to develop AI.

      Pope Leo argues that if we are going to bring forth the ecological conversion and care for creation that Pope Francis called us toward, then we must take seriously the dignity of humanity. To that end, we must recognize “the human being as a creature embedded in a network of relationships with other living beings and with all of creation.”

      Pope Leo also calls out the idolatry of profit and “structural sins” within capitalism and markets. He points out AI’s potential for oppression and new colonialism, the subjugation of people into data points, and the threat to our labor and creativity. In fact, he takes this so far as to link AI to the legacy of slavery and to apologize for the Church’s historic role in sanctioning the slave trade.

    • Alex Tardi ☛ Graphics Programmer

      The costs don't stop here of course, because no one gets to opt out of their electricity prices rising significantly and their water reservoirs shrinking. The losses have once again been socialized to the masses and the planet itself. Datacenters using as much energy as surrounding residents, competing against us for resources held by privately owned energy companies while also building things like XFRA nodes to avoid local moratorium legislation. No one was given a choice here, and I'll remind anyone still reading that an extra $100 on an electrical bill is grievous wound to inflict on a staggeringly significant number of people. The agentic programmers making many multiples of the median wage, the ones being told to burn as much as possible and run up the leaderboard, this cost to others is not a part of their equation, and they certainly do not care.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] How Meta wants to profile 13-year-olds on Insta, Facebook

    • Project Censored ☛ 2026-05-21 [Older] US Increases Vatican Espionage

• Defence/Aggression

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-05-18 [Older] Higher Gun Ownership Linked to Higher Maternal Homicide Rates

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] Corporate Sponsors Spend Millions Supporting “America First” Messaging

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] How ICE Detention Centers and “Zombie Prisons” are a National Concern

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] LandBack Movement Advances Across Western US

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] Under Cheeto Mussolini’s Leadership, Airstrikes in Somalia Have Reached a Record-High

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] Virginia Prisoners Set Themselves on Fire to Escape Brutal Prison Conditions, State Probe Dismisses Their Claims

  • Greece ☛ Five arrested in northern Greece migrant smuggling cases

    All five suspects were arrested and vehicles, false plates and mobile phones were seized. The suspects are expected to be brought before prosecutors. Authorities said investigations are continuing.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Trump Offers Weapons-Grade Plutonium to U.S. Nuclear Developers

    Last week, Santa Clara, California-based Oklo announced it was one of five companies selected for “advanced negotiations” under DOE’s Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program. “Fuel supply constraints are a key throttle to advanced reactor development,” said company co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte. “This program creates a pathway to use existing surplus material as bridge fuel for advanced reactors to bring more reactors online sooner.”

  • New York Times ☛ In Taiwan, ‘Mainland Spouses’ From China Become a Focus of Infiltration Fears

    Now she is in jail, fighting charges that she was recruited by the Chinese Communist Party to secretly infiltrate and influence Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. Prosecutors have accused her of taking instructions from Chinese officials to interfere with Taiwanese legislative and mayoral elections, and of helping one of those officials covertly enter Taiwan under the guise of a business trip.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Trumpian "War on Fraud" Is a Trojan Horse for Austerity

    The State Financial Officers Foundation claims to be a nonpartisan, neutral body representing the guardians of state finances. In truth, the corporate donor–dependent nonprofit pushes a right-wing austerity agenda under the guise of fighting fraud.

  • Mike Brock ☛ A Fascism Older Than Fascism

    The word is fascist. The proposition is this. The American antebellum South was a fully developed fascist civilization. Not a civilization with fascist features. Not a slave society that resembled fascism in some respects. A fascism. The structural and ideological architecture that Europe would name and recognize in the 1920s and 1930s — the racial hierarchy enforced by law and by paramilitary terror, the cult of martial honor, the fusion of aristocratic landed wealth with a controlled press and a co-opted clergy, the political theory that explicitly rejected the proposition that all men are created equal, the educational system that produced ideological cadres trained from boyhood in the defense of the order — all of it existed in the slaveholding South seventy to a hundred years before Italians and Germans gave the form its name.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-24 [Older] Germany news: Most doubt Bundeswehr military readiness — poll

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-24 [Older] Deadly blast hits train in Pakistan's Balochistan

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-24 [Older] Germany news: More than 1,900 missing children

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-25 [Older] Peacekeeping missions at risk due to cuts, tensions — report

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-25 [Older] Why are Europe's biggest defense projects in trouble?

  • HRW ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] South Africa: New Waves of Xenophobic Attacks

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-22 [Older] South Africa xenophobia response under fire

  • TruthOut ☛ 2026-05-21 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Proposes Resettling More White South Africans and Blocking Other Refugees

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • CS Monitor ☛ As Epstein investigation stalls in Congress, survivors search for accountability

    That effort shows lawmakers are willing to cross political lines when there is overwhelming public pressure to act. Dozens of women have accused Mr. Epstein, a wealthy and well-connected financier, of sexual abuse and rape, including in the years after he reached a deal with federal prosecutors in 2008 to dispose of a federal investigation in exchange for pleading guilty to state level sex offense charges in Florida.

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Israeli authorities refuse to return massive trove of Oct 7 video. What are they hiding?

    Israeli citizens wonder why the state won’t return October 7 footage it confiscated from them. The mother of an Israeli victim says authorities deleted video of her son’s death. Others complain “someone is hiding” the videos.

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Brazil is set to cut into China's rare earths dominance

    Meteoric is investing heavily in rare earth mining in Brazil. Its so-called Caldeira project, located in the state of Minas Gerais, is believed to be the world's largest ionic clay deposit.

    Ionic clay deposits are among the most important sources of "medium" and "heavy" rare earths, such as dysprosium and terbium, which are essential for the high-performance magnets used in wind turbines and electric vehicles.

  • Arkansas Advocate ☛ The data center debates are only a preview of Arkansas’ AI challenges

    The backlash in some Arkansas communities about data centers’ drain on their resources like electricity and water reflects just one element of the public’s worries about this technology.

    The centers are vaulting to one of the top agenda items for the Legislature next year. But lawmakers face a session that needs to be dominated by wider discussions about AI, and how to contain its harmful effects on Arkansans.

  • TruthOut ☛ Trump Admin Uses Iran War Oil Shock to Push Drilling in Alaskan Wilderness

    Ten environmental groups are suing over the move, which they say will harm local tribes and endanger wildlife. “The Interior Secretary broke the law when removing federal protections for over 2 million acres of public lands in February without hearings in local communities, without a public comment period, and without addressing that decision’s impacts on land, water, and subsistence users,” said Bridget Psarianos, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, in a statement.

  • LEO Labs ☛ Low Earth Orbit Visualization

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Verge ☛ United flight forced to turn around because of a Bluetooth speaker name

      While the recording does not explicitly confirm the speculation that the Bluetooth name in question was “bomb,” it would certainly make sense given the response from the crew and security personnel on the ground. It also serves as a friendly reminder that what you think is a clever WiFi or Bluetooth name probably isn’t.

    • Jan-Lukas Else ☛ My May ‘26 in Review - Jan-Lukas Else

      Then I turned 27 this month. Unfortunately, that means the time when I could still use Deutsche Bahn’s (Super) Sparpreis YOUNG discounts is now over, and I’ll have to pay the full price from now on. My MyBahnCard 50 will also need to be renewed as a regular BahnCard 50 next time, which will cost significantly more. Oh well, that’s just how it goes as you get older; all the discounts slowly disappear.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-25 [Older] Blinded by the light pollution: Cities seek to restore night

    • Project Censored ☛ 2026-05-21 [Older] US Tech and Defense Demands Spur Ruinous Mining in Indigenous Mexico

    • Project Censored ☛ 2026-05-21 [Older] Venezuelan Oil Capture Exacerbates Environmental Racism in Gulf Coast Communities

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-24 [Older] Australia: Man dies of shark attack on eastern coast

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-25 [Older] New Zealand: Surfing contest halted after suspected shark attack

    • Paris Buttfield-Addison ☛ A day in the threatened forests of the Central Highlands — Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison

      Some of these trees are hundreds of years old. The cleared block beside them is where they end up.

  • Overpopulation

    • Deseret Media ☛ Poll: How far will Utahns go to conserve water?

      In March, a Deseret News-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll conducted by Morning Consult showed that 81% of Utahns were concerned about the lake. In May, that number rose to 86%, with 51% saying they were "very concerned" and 35% saying they were "somewhat concerned" about its water levels.

• Finance

  • HRW ☛ 2026-05-19 [Older] UN Experts Sound Alarm Over Saudi Arabia’s Abusive Labor Governance System

  • Pro Publica ☛ 2026-05-21 [Older] This Sheriff’s Office Says Racial Profiling Reforms Are Too Costly. Auditors Found It Misused $163 Million.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-24 [Older] Cyprus votes amid resentment over corruption, living costs

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-24 [Older] Cuba receives China rice shipment amid US threats, blackouts

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-19 [Older] China's zero-tariff for Africa: Win-win or winner takes all?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • BIA Net ☛ 2026-05-24 [Older] Police storm headquarters of Turkey's main opposition party after leadership ouster

  • BIA Net ☛ 2026-05-21 [Older] Court removes leadership of Turkey's main opposition party

  • BIA Net ☛ 2026-05-21 [Older] Justice minister says CHP leadership ruling 'reinforced trust in Turkey's democracy'

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • RFERL ☛ Kremlin-Backed Disinformation Unit Tied To Zelenskyy Dubai Apartment Hoax

      The cache displays the broad scale of the Social Design Agency’s divisive acts and influence campaigns in Europe and elsewhere, including vandalism in Germany and France, interference in elections in Armenia, and the spread of pro-Russian narratives through opinion leaders in Western countries.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] Censorship Rocks Los Angeles School District–“Teachers Told to Remove Palestine & BLM Flags”

  • LRT ☛ How the Russian Orthodox Church targets anti-war priests

    In the days after Christmas, Uminsky was repeatedly summoned by email and phone to appear before a church court for a hearing on his potential defrocking. He did not show up instead leaving Russia after a fellow priest told him he was to be arrested after the ecclesiastical trial.

  • JURIST ☛ Thailand criminal court acquits political leader of lèse majesté charges

    The court ruled that Juangroongruangkit’s criticisms were directed at then-Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s management of vaccine procurement, not at the monarchy, and hence did not constitute lèse-majesté violations under Section 112 of the Criminal Code. Section 112, or the lèse-majesté law, criminalizes insults and threats towards the king, queen, and heirs to the Thai throne with sentences ranging from three to fifteen years in prison.

  • Techdirt ☛ Knox County, TN Rolls Back ‘Roots’ Book Ban After Backlash

    Rysewyk goes on to note that he consulted with many lawyers on the passage that led to the book being banned and that there was no consensus whether that passage actually violated Tennessee’s law or not and that that’s why he reinstated it. Then he dropped this gem.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ "Blink twice if Zuckerberg is an asshole"

    Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams was forced to sit in silence on stage at an event at Hay festival, after lawyers advised her not to speak because of ongoing legal action brought by Meta.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Meta legal action forces Facebook whistleblower to sit in silence at Hay festival

    Wynn-Williams, whose bestselling memoir, Careless People, details her years working at Facebook, was due to appear in conversation with the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu.

    Instead, Wynn-Williams sat on stage for the duration of the hour-long discussion between Cadwalladr and Wu, without speaking or responding. She was unable even to nod or shake her head.

    Introducing the panel, Cadwalladr said: “I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if [Mark] Zuckerberg is an asshole.”

  • The Moscow Times ☛ ​Political Prisoners Are Dying in Russian Jails. These People Are Keeping Their Memory Alive.

    Akuzin is among at least six Russian political prisoners who have died in custody so far this year, according to rights advocates. In total, at least 70 people have died in custody over the past decade and a half, according to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning rights group Memorial.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] Turkey targets press freedom in trial of DW's Alican Uludag

  • CPJ ☛ 2026-05-20 [Older] Journalist Yelis Ayaz arrested in Turkey for ‘spreading disinformation’

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-21 [Older] Turkey: DW's Alican Uludag released, but trial continues

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • CS Monitor ☛ Voting rights – and wrongs: How America struggles with uncomfortable truths

    I share the indignation of those who mourn what has happened to the Voting Rights Act. I’ve also taken the time to read the majority opinion, the concurrences, and the dissents – all 92 pages of what the court had to say on the case.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Labor Unions Celebrate ICJ Ruling on Right to Strike

    The ICJ ruled in its 10-4 opinion that a strike “is one of the main activities engaged in and tools used by workers and their organizations to promote their interests and improve conditions of labour, thereby ensuring the effective exercise of the freedom of association protected under Convention No. 87.”

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • International Business Times ☛ 'What About OnlyFans?': Katie Price Insiders Blast Meta's Hypocrisy After Irreversible Instagram Ban

    Katie Price's Instagram account has been permanently removed by Meta after an internal investigation into a post on the platform, leaving the former glamour model without her 2.6 million followers and prompting insiders to accuse the tech giant of hypocrisy over its treatment of OnlyFans-style content.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Carneyism without Carney (30 May 2026)

    If Canada was ever going to be a real country (and not just two monopolists and a mining company in a trenchcoat) it needed a serious competition enforcer. Nominally, it has one, thanks to the 2024 Competition Act. The only problem was Carney, who made sweeping real-terms cuts to the Bureau's funding. Thanks to Carney, Canada has a Competition Bureau with all the powers it needs to save Canada from its oligarchs – but it can't afford to do any of that stuff.

    Monopolists rip Canadians off like crazy. We even have a guy who mistook Les Miz for an HBR case-study, and embarked upon the country's worst-ever price-fixing campaign, gouging the country on bread prices: [...]

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ The Pirate Bay Remains Resilient, 20 Years After The Raid

      Twenty years ago today, dozens of Swedish police officers stormed a Stockholm data center, seizing The Pirate Bay's servers. The entertainment industry hoped the raid would finish the site for good. Instead, the police action inadvertently helped to create one of the most resilient and iconic websites on the Internet, one that remains online today.