Leftovers

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Science Alert ☛ A Hidden Cause of Aging May Spread From Deep Inside Your Bones

    Could bones become a target for reducing age-related inflammation?

  • Science Alert ☛ A Third Hidden Driver of High Blood Pressure Has Been Discovered – And a Potential Fix

    We're learning more and more about hypertension.

  • Science Alert ☛ After Half A Century, Physicists Find The Strongest Evidence Yet For An Exotic 'Glueball' Particle

    An "unprecedented form of matter".

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Wiggled a Fish's Earbones With Light – And Changed Its Heartbeat

    How do scientists even come up with this?

  • Science Alert ☛ Forget The 7-Year Rule – Scientists Found a Better Way to Calculate a Dog's Age

    We've been doing it wrong!

  • Science Alert ☛ 'Critical Transition': Earth's Chemistry Wobbled During Its 5 Biggest Mass Extinctions

    Hindsight is 20/20.

  • Science Alert ☛ Doctors Just Documented What Happens When You Quit High-Dose 7-OH Kratom Cold Turkey

    A big concern with the 'gas station' opioid.

  • Science Alert ☛ Saber-Toothed Cats Were A Diseased, Inbred Mess Before They Went Extinct, New Research Suggests

    A sad demise for a spectacular creature.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Digital Music News ☛ Roblox Under Investigation by the U.S. Senate Over Continued Child Safety Concerns

    The U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism has opened a bipartisan investigation into Roblox over child safety concerns. When it rains, it pours. Gaming platform Roblox is facing increased scrutiny over concerns regarding child safety as the U.S. Senate launched a bipartisan investigation into the platform on Friday.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico in Numbers: Mexico’s biodiversity and honey production

    Mexico is one of the world's top 10 exporters of honey, sourced from nearly 2,000 species of native bees that are also crucially important for pollination, writes Katy Alivraz.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Who will care for South Korea’s elderly? Foreign workers enter troubled market

    The country has begun creating routes for international students to train and work as caregivers there.

  • New York Times ☛ Cholera Outbreak Sickens Over 90 in Myanmar’s Biggest City

    Civil war and military rule have weakened Myanmar’s health care system, while heavy monsoon rains have increased the risk of waterborne disease.

• Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware

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

    • Futurism ☛ People Horrified That They’ll Be Busted Now That Anthropic Is Watermarking Hey Hi (AI) Content

      Here come the waterworks — er, watermarks.

    • Futurism ☛ Young People Hate Hey Hi (AI) CEOs So Passionately That It’s Almost Hard to Believe

      They're even more unpopular than data centers.

    • Futurism ☛ Experts Warn That Hey Hi (AI) Slop Is Corrupting Kids’ Brains

      "Violence-based Hey Hi (AI) slops reinforce a fascination with violence for violence's sake."

  • Social Control Media

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong police launch internal probe into officer over viral dog-ear dancing clip

      The police force has launched an internal investigation into an officer who appeared in a viral video dancing in uniform with a dog-ear filter. The clip gained traction on platforms in mainland China, including Douyin, the mainland’s version of TikTok. It was captioned “It’s too hot. Let me fan some wind.

    • Futurism ☛ Facebook Is Drowning In Islamophobic Hey Hi (AI) Slop Calling for Violence Against Muslim Americans

      "We are coming."

    • PAYWALL LIFTED: What happened to Jason Arday shows how social media has warped us all. Sadly, I have first-hand experience of this.

      In January 2022, my husband died by suicide. Seven months earlier, he had posted a tweet in which he intended to satirise what he saw as anti-Semitism on the part of Jeremy Corbyn and the far left of the Labour party. The tweet had involved an image of Corbyn reading from We’re All Going on a Bear Hunt, the front cover of which had been doctored - I don’t know by whom - into a copy of the anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Most of my late husband’s tweets had reached a tiny audience, but this one provoked widespread outrage, and was seen and retweeted millions of times. Details of Pete’s place of work were posted online and his line managers were bombarded with literal thousands of emails calling for his resignation.

      One journalist posted details online of what he thought was Pete’s home address, and I called the police, who sent a patrol car to sit outside our house overnight. My husband was put through a major institutional disciplinary procedure, which lasted months. The onslaught of tweets to him and about him, shaming him, ridiculing his academic work, calling for his total cancellation and disappearance from visibility, were incessant. National newspapers, including the Guardian, reported on the case. The shame and perceived unfairness of his loss of reputation consumed Pete, and impelled him to pursue redress through legal action. Over the following months, he lied and kept this - along with many other things - secret from me and his family, and when the legal action took a turn he hadn’t expected, and when all his lies started to come crashing down, he couldn’t endure it and took his own life.

• Security

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Critical macOS Screen Sharing flaw gives attackers remote root access — CISA bumps bug to 9.8 severity following active Monero cryptojacking attacks

    The Dutch National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NL) says that attackers are actively exploiting CVE-2026-65400, an authentication bypass in macOS Screen Sharing.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Vibing fitness tracking

      LLM assisted development, vibing, agentic coding – many names for the same thing. The technology has taken huge strides forward and it is interesting to see what it can do. In my mind, one-offs where a solved problem a while ago, and thin vertical applications without too much complexity is another one. To test the last hypothesis, I set out to create a fitness tracker app. Not a Strava competitor, but something that can track weight and other body measurements and correlate it to events (parties, dinners, etc), medication, and the cycle (if the user is a woman).

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Straits Times ☛ Myanmar confirms nearly 309,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh, says security issues delaying repatriation

    Myanmar says it has identified 4,241 people on Bangladesh’s repatriation list as involved in terrorist activities.

  • The Strategist ☛ When intelligence archives become political evidence

    Taiwan’s been opening its intelligence archives – with lamentable results. The opening of the records, which began in February 2026, has damaged the reputations of people named in the declassified files.

  • France24 ☛ Kushner, Hamas delegation in Egypt for talks on Gaza peace plan

    A Hamas delegation held talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Hassan Rashad in Egypt on Sunday, followed by talks with US envoy Jared Kushner. Kushner had met shortly before with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in an effort to break the deadlock over the US-brockered peace plan for Gaza.

  • France24 ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man orders Pentagon to scale back military drills with South Korea, hours before start

    President Donald Dihydroxyacetone Man on Sunday ordered the Pentagon to scale back "inappropriate and hostile" military drills with South Korea, claiming that the ally had failed to help with the war against Iran and citing his "good relationship" with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea says it fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers crossed demarcation line

    It is the first military demarcation line violation by the North Korean military in 2026.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Top military commander visits long-deployed aircraft carrier

    U.S. troops have been deployed on the USS Abraham Lincoln for a record 240 days. Adm. Brad Cooper visited the sailors amid reports of deteriorating mental health.

  • New York Times ☛ Top Admiral Praises Sailors but Concedes Hardships After Visit to U.S.S. Lincoln

    Admiral Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, acknowledged the difficulty of the carrier’s nearly nine-month deployment but said mental health issues were lower than on other vessels.

  • Futurism ☛ Cursed Startup Now Offering Buy-Now-Pay-Later Radiation Exposure Kits in Case of Nuclear Armageddon

    "Because when radiation is involved panic is optional, but preparation isn't."

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Latvia ☛ LSM launches charity drive for Ukrainian soldiers' rehabilitation

      To mark Ukraine’s Independence Day on 24 August, Latvian Public Media (LSM), in collaboration with “Ziedot.lv”, is organising a fundraising campaign from Monday, 17 August, until 13 September, to provide Ukrainian soldiers with comprehensive rehabilitation.

    • New York Times ☛ How a Ukrainian Bank Worker Came to Face Life in a Russian Prison

      Artem Murdid, his mother and his girlfriend are accused of terrorism. They say they did nothing wrong.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Ukrainian drone regiment ‘decimates’ 3,500-strong U.S. armored brigade combat team in war game — High drone kill-rate forced continuous 'respawns,' reveals shortcomings in American response as drones easily spotted and destroyed tanks and armored vehicles

      The 3rd Brigade Combat Team (3rd BCT) of the 1st Cavalry Division was defeated in military exercises by the opposing force, which included a regiment of Ukrainian drone operators. Even though the 3rd BCT had tanks, other armor, and anti-drone units, they were no match for Ukrainian drones that easily spotted and "destroyed" them.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Ukraine built a $48,000 long-range drone after covertly snapping Chinese factory photos, clone destroys Russian Tu-95 bomber — attack drone has 2,000 km range, country builds 6,000 flying-wing drones a year

      The drone that destroyed a Tupolev Tu-95MS strategic bomber at Russia's Engels-2 air base last month turns out to be the MICH 2000.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia, Ukraine Trade Major Overnight Air Attacks, At Least 11 Killed

      Russia and Ukraine traded overnight attacks into August 16, with Ukrainian officials reporting at least five killed in Russian strikes and damage to the country’s largest steel plant, while Russian officials said Ukrainian drones killed at least six and set warehouses ablaze.

    • LRT ☛ The 1991 treaty that still haunts the Kremlin

      As Russia wages war on Ukraine, denying its own history of aggression against its neighbours, a little-known treaty signed 35 years ago is quietly getting in the way of the Kremlin's narrative.

    • JURIST ☛ HRW warns Russia strike on Ukraine may constitute war crime

      Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday warned that Russia’s latest attack on Kyiv, which utilized cluster munitions in a crowded residential area, may constitute a war crime under international law, citing the weapon’s indiscriminate nature.

    • France24 ☛ 🔴 Live: Ukraine launches 600 drones at Russia, one of its largest aerial attacks of the war

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine: Russian strike destroys Kyiv book market

      Kyiv was hit by Russian strikes on Sunday, killing at least four people and injuring six, while a popular outdoor book market was destroyed. Vendors rushed to the scene to assess the damage, with some saying they had lost their shops and their livelihoods.

    • France24 ☛ Drone and missile strikes kill 19 in Russia and Ukraine

      At least 19 people were killed Sunday in drone and missile strikes in Russia and Ukraine which destroyed a book market in Kyiv while Moscow faced one of the most massive attacks since the start of the war. Ukraine and Russia have been escalating their long-range strikes for months, resulting in a growing number of civilian casualties, more than four years after the start of the Russian invasion.

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Chinese ship sets off for Europe through Arctic, halving travel time

      A Chinese container vessel has set sail for Europe through the Arctic, part of new weekly service on a route that cuts shipment times in half but which environmental groups warn could speed up the melting of polar ice.

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man’s H-1B crackdown is starting to drive tech talent back to India, China

    Layoffs and hiring freezes in the US are compounding the uncertainty and risks for skilled migrants.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korean trade minister ousted amid US tariff pressure

    The government did not disclose a specific reason for the decision.

  • New York Times ☛ Worker Pay Isn’t Keeping Up With Inflation Once Again

    When prices spiked in 2021-22, wages failed to keep up for many workers, new research shows. Now the pattern is repeating.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • France24 ☛ India: Modimir courts youth amid growing criticism

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modimir put young people at the heart of his development agenda in a speech marking India’s Independence Day on Saturday. He announced free online coaching for competitive exams and plans to train 10 million young people in artificial intelligence over the next year. The speech comes amid growing criticism of Modi’s Hindu nationalist policies and recent youth-led protests against his government, as analyzed by FRANCE 24's, Jamie Smith-Maillet.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ India’s Internet ecosystem in 2026: Growth, resilience, and the road ahead

    India has built one of the world's largest Internet ecosystems through affordable mobile broadband, digital infrastructure investment, and IPv6 leadership. As it prepares to host APNIC 62, the challenge is ensuring connectivity remains resilient, secure, and inclusive.

  • Make Use Of ☛ My ISP trapped me behind CGNAT — these 4 workarounds got me back in

    Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation, or CGNAT for short, is a well-known pain for anyone who self-hosts. I ran into it yet again when I needed to access a self-hosted IP camera monitoring my backyard via a 4G/5G modem. The connection handled browsing and streaming just fine, but inbound access stopped at my provider’s network.

    My carrier-supplied ZTE U30 Pro 5G modem came locked down and had no useful port-forwarding controls. It's private 10.x WAN address also meant those controls wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.

    Rather than experiment with the camera itself, I created a quick Ubuntu VM named ubuntu-lab and hosted a Nginx test page. I tried four ways to get back into my own network: Tailscale, Cloudflare tunnel, a fast reverse proxy (FRP), and a TOR online service.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Patents

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Can Harassment Risk Alone Support Obviousness-Type Double Patenting?

      In In re Ablynx, the Fed Cir tackles obviousness-type double patenting and separate-ownership harassment risk. Crouch weighs in.