Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Vintage Everyday ☛ Women Selling “Wine Bricks” in New York, 1931

    Vineyards sold dehydrated, concentrated grape bricks (about the size of a pound of butter) that contained pulp, skins, and stems. The packaging was notoriously ironic. It usually included a set of instructions listing what not to do, which acted as a perfect recipe: [...]

  • Hackaday ☛ Know Your Food: Our Daily Bread

    Perhaps there are few foods with as much cultural significance as bread. If your distant ancestors took the path of growing grain as their major subsistence carbohydrate, the chances are there will be some form of bread woven into your identity. Where this is being written for example were I to head for the cathedral of a Sunday morning I would recite the Lord’s Prayer as part of the service, Give us this day our daily bread. Whether your culture leavens its bread or not, or whatever grain it uses, the chances are that there will be something similar about the humble foodstuff within it.

  • Jeroen Sangers ☛ Train when your chronotype peaks, but never let the perfect hour stop you from training

    Even so, consistency outweighs timing. Pushing a clear evening type into early morning workouts can backfire, but training at a non ideal hour still beats not moving at all. Your chronotype is largely genetic and does not shift radically. An owl does not turn into a lark by getting up early for a few weeks. Light exposure and a consistent daily rhythm can nudge it, but only gently.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • Sean Conner ☛ Alarm clocks

    At which point, the alarm clock said “enough of this silliness,” and shut the alarm off itself. I am not proud to have learned this.

    So yes, I still use the iPhone for an alarm clock, as when (and I think it's a matter of when) I become conditioned to the current alarm sound, I can change it.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Benchmarking all the Macs I have around for fun

    Just for fun, I've use quicksubs' benchmark mode to see how fast the 4 Macs I have access to are and how they heat up when under load.

  • BobDaHacker ☛ tl;dv (Too Lazy; Didn't Validate): 181,874 Meetings Left Wide Open

    On January 28th I messaged Raphael Allstadt on LinkedIn and told him I'd found a huge vulnerability that leaks user data. He responded within minutes: "thank you! can you report it to our CTO and we will look at it immediately?" I sent the email. He said "thank you!" I asked about a reward. "My CTO will come back to you," he said.

    The CTO never came back to me.

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

    • India Times ☛ OpenAI, Anthropic model tests reveal more ‘unsanctioned’ actions

      Artificial intelligence models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic PBC carried out “unsanctioned” actions — including hacking a website and attempting to inject harmful code into software during safety testing — reinforcing fears that neither the creators nor seasoned researchers of these systems can predict their actions in testing.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Someone Is Mysteriously Snapping Up Used Books Around the World

      Lost in the outrage, however, are several unanswered questions. The 404 Media story said ISBNdb had advertised bulk buying of books for AI companies, but acknowledged that no evidence directly connects the company to the recent wave of purchases that booksellers have described. And although the story calls out rare-book sellers, it’s unclear how rare most of the books being bought actually are, or whether they’re of great value.

      Despite that, the conversation rapidly intensified into a panic. So what is actually going on? And who is actually responsible?

    • Dark Reading ☛ AI Browsers Vulnerable to 'PleaseFix' Zero-Click Agent Hijacking

      The problem stems from how the AI agents pull information from multiple sources, such as emails and webpages, while working on a task without reliably distinguishing between trusted and untrusted content. An adversary who can slip malicious instructions into that content can weaponize the agent and use its access to act on the user's behalf, potentially reaching sensitive data, accounts, and other connected services.

    • Wired ☛ OpenAI Didn’t Notice Its AI Agents Using a Message Board to Plan Their [Cracking] Spree

      In a talk that was a last-minute addition to the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, employees from OpenAI presented new details about a recent, high-profile incident of rogue AI [cracking] that has created a maelstrom within the AI and cybersecurity industries.

    • Game Production Alchemist ☛ I Have Never Seen a Game Fail Because the Artists Were Too Slow

      Every studio I have worked in could tell you the cost of an artist day. None of them could tell me the cost of a decision that got reversed six months later.

      That gap explains most of what is currently happening with AI in game production.

  • Social Control Media

    • Bhaskar English ☛ Mark Zuckerberg Apologises to Indian Govt Over Deepfake Controversy

      The meeting follows the Centre's recent summons to Meta after a Facebook post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefly restricted on the platform. Although the company later restored the post and attributed the incident to a technical glitch, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had termed the explanation ‘inadequate’.

    • Wired ☛ OpenAI’s Browser Could Be Hijacked to Spam Your WhatsApp Contacts

      The Atlas findings, from researchers at security firm Zenity, are part of a broad series of flaws the company discovered in leading AI-enabled web browsers and browser extensions, including products from Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Perplexity. The researchers found around 20 flaws, which allowed them to access local machines, grab files, take over a password manager, and leak someone’s entire browsing history.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Children using social media at younger age appear to do worse in school tests

      Children who open social media accounts at the start of secondary school appear to perform worse in tests than those who delay, with researchers suspecting that the constant checking for updates is a major distraction for many students.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Google ☛ NOAA Selects Google Cloud for Weather Supercomputing | Google Cloud Blog

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is embarking on a transformative journey to redefine how we understand and predict patterns in the Earth’s atmosphere that affect the weather we face every day. Today, we are proud to announce that Google Cloud was selected as the primary provider of high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure for the Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System (WCOSS).

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Atlantic ☛ Trump Should Need a Warrant to See Your Phone

      It was with this in mind that the Supreme Court ruled in a 2014 case, Riley v. California, that police need a warrant to search a cellphone. “It is no exaggeration to say that many of the more than 90% of American adults who own a cell phone keep on their person a digital record of nearly every aspect of their lives—from the mundane to the intimate,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought.”

    • Wired ☛ DHS Wants Protesters’ Signal Group Chats

      A lawsuit accuses Homeland Security of violating protesters’ free-speech rights—but the agency is using it to try to get access to the plaintiffs’ encrypted communications.

  • Confidentiality

    • 404 Media ☛ Apple's ‘Private Relay’ Is Exposing Users’ Real IP Addresses

      Researchers found a group of issues that mean Private Relay isn't actually protecting users' real IP addresses. 404 Media verified the issues do expose IP addresses.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Mississippi Journalism and Education Group ☛ Judge Criticizes Justice Department in Dismissing Jan. 6 Case

    U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who oversaw the Oath Keepers’ trials, criticized the department’s move, writing in his ruling that the government “asks to absolve these Defendants of crimes against the United States itself.” But Mehta wrote that he had no choice but to grant the administration’s request.

    “This is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of Jan. 6. That book is now closed,” wrote Mehta, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama.

  • TruthOut ☛ Faith Leaders Collectively Raise Alarm as AI and Nuclear Weapons Systems Merge

    Politicians and policy makers from nuclear-armed nations and their allies continuously fail to pursue nuclear diplomacy and arms control, but religious leaders and faith groups are increasingly calling for nuclear risk reduction and disarmament, and warning against the rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into nuclear weapon systems.

  • TruthOut ☛ Abdul El-Sayed Triumphs Over Haley Stevens in $60M Loss for AIPAC, Corporations

    AIPAC, through an affiliated super PAC, poured over $30 million into backing Stevens and opposing El-Sayed — a record amount of spending for the pro-Israel group in a single race.

  • Associated Press ☛ Hiroshima marks 81st anniversary of US atomic bombing

    “Downplaying the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and accepting the use of force to pursue one’s own prosperity risk cycles of violent retaliation that could ultimately result in another Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” Mayor Kazumi Matsui said.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Hiroshima survivors warn against Japan's rearmament

    "Japan's recent military buildup is no different from recreating the arms race that led the country toward World War II," said 84-year-old Masashi Ieshima, who survived the Hiroshima bombing at the age of 3.

  • Japan ☛ Remembering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at Lok Sabha | Embassy of Japan in India

    81 years ago from today, on August 6 and 9, 1945 respectively, atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this tragic disaster, lakhs of innocent people lost their lives and countless people were severely affected. This event made the world aware of the destructive impact of nuclear weapons for the first time.

    This House reaffirms its commitment to free the world from weapons of mass destruction, and expresses its firm resolve to ensure the elimination of nuclear weapons and pledges its firm commitment to fostering global peace and harmony in the world.

  • UN ☛ Hiroshima fosters hope, 81 years on from nuclear catastrophe | UN News

    “Nuclear sabres are being rattled once again in the name of power and coercion,” the UN disarmament chief said, noting that the UN was founded to rid the world of the scourge of war, with the General Assembly’s very first resolution in 1946 aiming at eliminating nuclear weapons.

  • ABC ☛ Hiroshima marks 81st atomic bomb anniversary as mayor deplores the pursuit of nuclear weapons

    Too many political leaders still consider nuclear deterrence a realistic approach and legitimize violence, which “simply pushes a world without nuclear weapons further into the distance,” Matsui said in his peace declaration at the ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. He also called on each citizen to learn lessons from the past and take action.

  • Japan Today ☛ Hiroshima urges leaders to abolish nuclear weapons on 81st A-bomb anniversary - Japan Today

    A moment of silence was observed at 8:15 a.m., the exact time when the uranium bomb was dropped by the U.S. bomber Enola Gay and detonated over the city on Aug 6, 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people by the end of the year.

  • Engelsberg Ideas ☛ John Hersey and the horrors of Hiroshima

    The American journalist's account of the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath, told through the eyes of Japanese survivors, forced the world to reckon with the terrifying power of nuclear weapons.

  • [Old] United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan ☛ UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk addresses Human Rights Council on Afghanistan

    “A new decree, signed by the Taliban leader last month, defines several crimes and punishments that contravene Afghanistan’s international legal obligations,” he said.

    “The decree, which is expected to come into effect soon, extends the number of offences that carry the death penalty. It provides for the use of corporal punishment for numerous offences, including in the home, legitimizing violence against women and children. And it criminalizes criticism of the de facto leadership and their policies, in violation of freedom of expression and assembly.”

  • Yle ☛ Border Gurad says East African smuggling network used Finland as transit route

    Most of those transported had previously sought asylum in Latvia before moving onwards, either by air from Latvia or, later, via Estonia by sea.

    Investigators say both the smuggled migrants and the suspected members of the criminal organisation are from East Africa.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Sailors on USS Lincoln outside Iran are exhausted and suffering from poor morale on ship, families warn

    Crew members are also worn out by working long, grueling shifts, with some rarely getting a day off, and described broken toilets, moldy showers without hot water and no laundry service for weeks at a time, relatives said.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • CS Monitor ☛ Blanche, DOJ become a focus of New Mexico Epstein investigations

    The Survivors’ Truth Commission, which began its work in February, said in an interim report that it has identified 30 other potential victims. But a challenge to confirming those reports, it says, is U.S. Justice Department redactions in public records, such as those released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

    The New Mexico Department of Justice, which is conducting a separate investigation into Mr. Epstein’s activities in the state, is also seeking records from the federal Justice Department. On Wednesday, it sued the DOJ, claiming that the agency and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche are withholding information. State Attorney General Raúl Torrez said 10 separate requests for information were either denied or ignored.

  • New Republic ☛ New Mexico Sues Trump DOJ for Blocking Epstein Ranch Investigation

    New Mexico sued the Department of Justice and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche Wednesday for “stonewalling” its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch.

    In a 40-page filing, New Mexico asked for access to unredacted documents from the Epstein files that it claimed the DOJ has been intentionally withholding.

  • CNN ☛ Investigations into Epstein’s mysterious New Mexico ranch add pressure on the Justice Department

    “New Mexico is one of few jurisdictions that still may have an opportunity to hold Epstein’s associates accountable or otherwise provide some sense of justice to survivors,” Torrez wrote in Wednesday’s lawsuit. He added: “Federal inaction does not merely stall the investigation; it prolongs and compounds the suffering of survivors.”

• Environment

  • Sal ☛ Smoke in Portland

    It’s smoky in Portland right now. For the moment, we’ve got the worst AQI of any “major” city in the world.

  • Sang-Ki Lee ☛ How Super El Niño Could Shift the Planet into a New Climate Reality

    Research published in late 2025 demonstrates that super El Niño events serve as powerful catalysts for climate regime shifts, which are sudden and lasting changes in environmental states. By analyzing observational data and computer simulations, scientists found that these intense weather phenomena significantly increase the probability of abrupt transitions in sea surface temperatures, air temperatures, and soil moisture levels. These shifts often persist long after the initial event due to feedback loops and climate memory, potentially reorganizing regional baselines for years. The study warns that global warming will likely intensify this relationship, making such disruptive climate transitions more frequent and widespread. Consequently, the authors emphasize that understanding these extreme events is vital for improving early warning systems and protecting vulnerable ecosystems and economies. This research underscores a deeper, more enduring environmental footprint left by super El Niño events than previously recognized.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • El País ☛ A $116 million bitcoin theft: hackers break into one of the safest places to store cryptocurrencies

      Forty-one minutes is all the time it took for hackers to steal millions of dollars worth of bitcoin from one of the systems considered the safest in the world to store cryptocurrency: cold wallets (a crypto wallet that does not connect to the internet and keeps user keys offline). In under an hour last Thursday, attackers used a vulnerability in a system called Coldcard and took the equivalent of $70 million. But the cybercriminals continued their attack, and so far have stolen an additional $46 million, according to data from blockchain intelligence firm Galaxy Research.

    • Hackaday ☛ 3D Printing A Usable Airless Tire

      For decades now, companies like Michelin have been teasing us with futuristic-looking automobile tires that don’t use air. Instead, they use a polymer mesh of sorts which maintains the same pressure on the travel surface that a pneumatic tire does, with much less maintenance than their pneumatic counterparts. At least, in theory. There’s a reason that these tires live in the same mythical realm that Half Life 3 and the modern affordable Volkswagen do, and [Berm Peak] decided to discover those reasons for himself.

    • The Climate Brink ☛ The real energy use of agentic AI

      AI energy use is a huge and controversial topic at the moment. Credible estimates have AI data centers accounting for around 12% US electricity use by 2030. But at the same time consumers have been given reassuringly small numbers about the impact of their own AI use, numbers that seem on their face somewhat inconsistent with the staggering size of their aggregate usage.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • RTL ☛ DeepMind: Google-parent Alphabet shakes up AI division

    Hassabis will take on two new titles, Alphabet announced on Wednesday: chair of DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Roblox is Losing Billions As States Mount Investigations

    Roblox has lost a staggering $70 billion in value as the gaming platform matures and plateaus in growth. The company blames this on a lack of viral games on its platform, saying that a “lack of breakout hit games” contributed to its disappointing quarter.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Saudi fund leads buyout of video game giant EA

    The $55 billion deal — part-funded with $20 billion borrowed against EA itself — buys Riyadh a profitable business and control of some of the biggest franchises in the world’s biggest entertainment industry.

    But the move is “not purely economic,” one expert told the BBC. The soccer franchise EA Sports FC alone gives the PIF a relationship with 20,000 players and 750 teams worldwide, a useful soft-power asset.

  • The Verge ☛ Google just announced a major shakeup of its top AI leadership

    Google is making some significant AI leadership changes, including a major shift for Google DeepMind leader Demis Hassabis.

    Hassabis will become the chair of Google DeepMind and the chief scientist at Alphabet, CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Wednesday. Hassabis will continue to lead Alphabet’s Isomorphic Labs, which aims to use AI to develop drugs. Koray Kavukcuoglu, formerly DeepMind’s CTO, is stepping up to become Google’s SVP of DeepMind and will report to Pichai. Kavukcuoglu will remain Google’s chief AI architect as well.

  • Wired ☛ Google’s Top AI Brains Are Leaving to Launch Discovery Loop

    Jeff Dean and other high-profile Google executives have founded Discovery Loop, a startup that will seek AI-powered breakthroughs in everything from drug discovery to chip design.

  • SQ Magazine ☛ Reddit vs X Statistics 2026: Users and Revenue

    xAI acquired X in an all-stock deal valuing the platform at $33 billion in March 2025, with the combined entity valuing xAI at $80 billion.

  • [Old] Fortune ☛ A giant OpenAI-Oracle data center was voted down by a Michigan farm town. Weeks later, construction began

    The speed of the project’s approval—and the township’s seeming inability to stop it—left residents shocked and angry. Some locals who oppose the project argue that township officials did not do enough to fight it, that they caved too easily. That frustration has now turned into political action: One resident, E. Frederick Gall, has launched a recall effort targeting three members of the township board, including Kelly Marion, the lone official who voted in favor of the proposal. “My issue is that I don’t think they fought hard enough for us,” Gall said in local reporting. “We need someone different.”

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Inside Abdul El-Sayed's Improbable Michigan Senate Primary Win

    This is The Barn — an Orwellian euphemism if there ever was one — where Oracle is constructing a massive data center for its OpenAI empire. It is being built against the wishes of the locals — both citizens and the town board, which voted against the building plan. Oracle essentially said fuck off and sued the board into capitulating. A groundbreaking ceremony occurred on June 1 and was attended by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

    [...]

    This might not be a metaphor. In 2022, AIPAC spent millions helping Stevens defeat fellow Democratic incumbent Andy Levin, the president of his synagogue. (Stevens thanked AIPAC that night in a cringey video.) Four years later Levin was campaigning for El-Sayed. I asked him what had changed. He gave a succinct answer: “Gaza.”

    El-Sayed recognized something Stevens didn’t. Previous generations of Democrats treated AIPAC’s support as a credential. He treated it as Stevens’ millstone. El-Sayed’s campaign slogan is “money out of politics, money in your pockets, Medicare for All.” AIPAC’s decision to spend at least $30 million against him suggested he wasn’t bullshitting. Most campaigns ignore AIPAC intervention, but El-Sayed leaned in, comparing himself to David battling Goliath.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • BoingBoing ☛ Grokipedia already an abandoned slagheap of slop

      Grokipedia, representing Elon Musk's committment and dedication to countering Wikipedia's supposedly leftist bias, stopped reviewing edits in April. Lawfare Media writes that "as far as we can tell, no entry has changed in more than three months," and that it has become "a case study in how an AI-generated reference system governs its own content." It countered wokeness the easy way, by falling into a coma.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Bhaskar English ☛ Nishikant Dubey Demands Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Apology | IT Ministry

    The Chief Executive Officer of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, has apologised for the temporary removal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Facebook post. According to a report by PTI, officials of Meta had met with Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

  • New Republic ☛ Judges Rip Trump Apart 75 Times for Violating First Amendment

    A Reuters investigation found 75 rulings from federal judges that Trump infringed on constitutional freedoms such as religion, freedom, and the press. Many had to do with the Trump administration’s attacks on pro-Palestine advocacy, and the rulings came from judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents. In September, for example, a Reagan-appointed federal judge found that the administration illegally revoked visas and deported foreign faculty and students over their stance on Palestine and Israel.

  • The Verge ☛ Reddit is introducing a new moderator: AI

    The company calls the suite of tools “Rules Hub,” and the tools let mods decide what rules should be automatically enforced and what should happen when a rule is triggered. Rules Hub relies on LLMs to evaluate “whether a post or comment matches the intent of a rule,” which “allows Rules Hub to better handle nuance, natural language, and edge cases while preserving moderator control,” Reddit says in a blog post. Right now, many subreddits use tools from a feature called Automoderator (aka Automod) to take action on rules, but Automod’s tools “depend on exact keyword and pattern matching.”

  • Meduza ☛ Russia appears to be carrying out one of its biggest VPN blocking campaigns in recent memory. Here’s what we know.

    SecurityLab reported that several VPN services experienced outages and connection problems on August 4. According to the outlet’s journalists, the new restrictions hit IP addresses and entire subnets belonging to major hosting providers, though SecurityLab did not name the services affected.

  • Meduza ☛ Kommersant: Only one-third of mobile [Internet] traffic in central Russia was unrestricted. Nearly 90% in border regions went through ‘whitelists.’

    The figures vary widely by region. As of July 31, Moscow and the surrounding Moscow region recorded about 49% of sessions without restrictions and 51% under “whitelists,” while St. Petersburg had 43.9% of sessions without limits and the Leningrad region had 58.9%. The Jewish Autonomous region posted the best numbers, with 75.7% of sessions free of “whitelists,” followed by Tyva at 72.3% and the Magadan region at 69%.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Robert Kingett ☛ The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and you.

    I don’t need a stair-climbing wheelchair that costs $30,000 and requires a maintenance crew. I need better doorknobs and or a ramp.

    But a ramp is boring. You can't make investors have a hard on for a ramp that doesn't connect to the cloud. You can’t give a TED Talk about a ramp. You can’t get venture capital funding for a slightly wider doorframe. Concrete is not "disruptive." But a ramp works. It doesn’t run out of battery. It doesn’t require a software update. And crucially, it works for the parent with a stroller, the delivery guy with a hand truck, and the old man with bad knees. It is a universal solution.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Q2 '26 Financials Reveal 300M Subs, Small Adverts Bump

    All told, Spotify pointed to an average of 777 million monthly active users (MAUs) for Q2 2026, reflecting a 12% year-over-year (YoY) improvement. Therein, the aforementioned Premium customer base grew 9% YoY, with 494 million ad-supported users (up 14% YoY) rounding out the total, according to the report.

  • The Autopian ☛ BMW Is Showing Commercials On Their Car's Dash Screens And They Want You To Think It's A Treat

    You know what would be terrible? Terrible in a sort of dystopian, capitalism-run-amok sort of way? Imagine buying a brand-new, fancy, premium-grade car. From an automaker with a respected name. Like, say, BMW. This is a machine with some status! Let’s say it costs, oh, $61,500, and you’re paying, what, about $1300 a month? Something like that.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Patents

    • Software Patents

      • Interesting Engineering ☛ Patented machine vision gives drones automatic target recognition

        Autonomous drones can recognize objects with increasing accuracy, but confirming exactly what they are looking at remains difficult. Sodyo Ltd. says its new RangeMark technology aims to solve that problem. The Tel Aviv-based company says the system identifies passive visual markers from as far as 0.6 miles (one kilometer) away using only a standard camera, eliminating the need for GPS, radio frequency links, cellular connectivity, or external networks.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Broadcaster Wins Broad U.S. Blocking Injunction Covering Pirate Sites That Don't Exist Yet

      Mexican broadcaster TelevisaUnivision has obtained one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions ever issued by a U.S. federal court. After initially targeting five pirate IPTV streaming operations, the case expanded to cover well over 500 domain names, requiring intermediaries including Cloudflare, GitHub, and a Mexican bank to comply. In addition, the injunction also covers pirate services and content that hasn't been created yet.