Leftovers

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-08-27 [Older] How a ‘psychic’ horse named Clever Hans changed the way we do science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-08-27 [Older] Star Trek at 60: the secret of this pioneering series was its exploration of humanity, not aliens

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-08-26 [Older] We can’t quit smartphones, but we can manage digital junk food better

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-08-25 [Older] The brain isn’t hardwired to read – here’s how we pull it off and why some are better at it than others

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-08-24 [Older] The ‘wonder material’ graphene can be made using a kitchen blender, a mobile phone and a newspaper

• Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware

  • Doom: The Dark Ages Revelations DLC Reportedly Marked Worst Series Crunch To Date [Ed: Microsoft is 'Angel of Death' to Developers (Even Its Own), 'Voluntary' Layoffs Happening Again; Microsoft: Work Weekends Too; Essentiality of Rest and Killing Oneself for Vicious Companies]

    Some Devs Worked 80 Hours A Week To Ship The DLC!

    [...]

    Doom: The Dark Ages may have been one of id Software’s most recent releases, but following the title, the team has faced major layoffs under Microsoft. Despite the Revelations DLC also performing well, the team is now much worse off than it was only a few months back.

    [...]

    As per former producer Andrew Willis, the developer was clocking in 12 hours at work during this time. However, he even worked for 17 hours for a few days, leading to most of the DLC being made in just a few months.

    The developer noted that the crunch was so bad that many id Software employees were sometimes working up to 80 hours a week. He even went into the office at 5 AM on certain days as a result of this crunch.

  • "Doom: The Dark Ages Revelations" Devs Hit 17-Hour Days During Crunch Before Layoffs [Ed: Microsoft Workers Doing 80 Hours a Week After Microsoft Culled Their Colleagues]

    Doom: The Dark Ages Revelations is the only story expansion ever launched for The Dark Ages, and it was well-liked by the community, scoring a "Very Positive" review rating on Steam. However, as revealed in a new Insider Gaming interview, the expansion's quality came at a cost to its developers.

    According to former Id Software developer, Andrew Willis, "There were two months where I was working something like at least 12 hours every day. I know I hit 17 a couple of days. It was brutal, and the majority of the game got made in three or four months." He adds that the crunch affected everyone on the team, however, he explained that the crunch wasn't mandated by company policy, but that developers were given a workload that was impossible to complete without the crunch.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New Yorker ☛ 2026-08-27 [Older] What If Canada Joined the E.U.?

  • CBC ☛ 2026-08-27 [Older] The art of inflicting pain: How to select targets for Canada's counter-tariffs

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-19 [Older] Who really owns the Caspian Sea?

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Politico ☛ China will stop Russia from going nuclear, Finland’s Stubb says

    • Financial Times ☛ Don’t write off Russia’s defence industry yet

      Despite Ukraine’s recent battlefield successes, it is far too early to write off Russia, which is rebuilding its military in ways that many in the west have underestimated. Instead of simply replacing battlefield losses, it is creating a defence industry that combines Soviet-era industrial capacity with the demands of 21st-century warfare. The goal is not just to produce more tanks, but to reshape its military around the “asymmetric” advantages revealed by the war in Ukraine: drones, compact electronic warfare systems and other low-cost technologies that can be fielded at scale.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Kyiv suffers hours of daytime air raids as Russia deploys new jet-powered drones

      Kyiv is enduring hours of daytime air raids and air raid warnings as Russia has fired 800 jet-powered drones into Ukraine in four days, using the faster weapons to sustain prolonged waves of attacks

      The new-model Shahed drones have a cruising speed of 200mph to 250mph, about double the 115mph achieved by the piston-engine version and beyond the speed of Ukraine’s cheap interceptors, making them harder to stop.

    • BBC ☛ 'The forgotten empire': When Russia colonised California

      For nearly 30 years, part of Sonoma was ruled by Tsarist Russia, and it played a pivotal – if little-known – role in shaping the US.

      [...]

      While some Americans may recall that the US's largest state, Alaska, was part of Russia for nearly 70 years, the Russian Empire's only permanent overseas colony, known as Russian America, also extended into California from 1812-1842. In fact, Russians settled in California decades before newly independent Americans did.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Ukraine war briefing: Pressure stays on Russian economy until war is over, says Bessent

      US treasury secretary speaks with Russian counterpart who is controversially attending G20 talks; India’s Modi says war must end. What we know on day 1,651

    • The United Kingdom ☛ UK leads way in disrupting shadowy Russian sanctions evasion network

      Chancellor calls on allies to step up their pressure on Russia and sets out new action to stop Putin evading sanctions to fund his illegal war.

    • Politico LLC ☛ Trump welcomes Russia back to the G20. Europe isn’t having it.

      The Trump administration’s decision to bring Russia back into the fold at a gathering of the world’s leading economic officials is stirring fresh tensions with European allies who want to continue isolating Moscow over its war in Ukraine.

    • Al Jazeera ☛ US brings back Russia’s Siluanov to G20 finance talks, angering Europe

      Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has made a surprise appearance at United States-hosted G20 finance talks in North Carolina, sparking frustration and dismay among European ministers and officials.

      Siluanov’s appearance at the talks in Asheville on Monday marks the first time the minister, who was appointed in 2011, has attended a G20 meeting in person since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • 404 Media ☛ How Cyber Sleuths Tracked a Nigerian Scammer to His Doorstep

    West and Raffile are scam experts: West is the founder of Operation Shamrock, an organization that aims to disrupt scam operations, and Raffile is a long time cybercrime researcher, who focuses especially on sextortion. This is where scammers, like those in Nigeria, will assume the identity of a young person, approach teenagers in the U.S. on apps like Instagram, have them record explicit videos, then pull the mask away and threaten to release the videos to the victim’s friends and family unless they pay up. Sextortion is common across U.S. social media platforms; at least dozens of young boys have taken their own lives after being targeted.

• Environment

  • The Daily Memphian ☛ Memphis City Council talks data centers, votes on MATA board - Memphis Local, Sports, Business & Food News

    The one-year moratorium on new data centers would be to develop guidelines and regulations for the centers as part of the county’s Unified Development Code.

  • Court House News ☛ Feds sued over logging project in Washington's old-growth forests

    A trio of conservation groups sued the Trump administration Monday, asking a federal judge to halt a sweeping logging project set to clear-cut mature and old-growth forests in north-central Washington state.

    “This lawsuit challenges the false narrative that we have to choose between healthy forests or safe communities,” Kristine Akland, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ What Triggered the Devastating Floods in Nepal and Tibet, and Are We Due for More in the Future? Here's What Scientists Know So Far

    According to the U.S. Geological Survey’s August 27 update, an event in Nepal’s Lāṅṭāṇ National Park in the Himalayas triggered the flooding. The agency says that either a landslide carrying a glacier or a glacier collapse, in which part of it snaps off, may have generated the energy equivalent to a magnitude-5.2 earthquake. Then, debris tumbled downward and triggered the floods.

    Many scientists are heavily leaning toward the landslide explanation. The physics of the glacier collapse hypothesis didn’t hold up, according to some natural hazards researchers in a Slack group analyzing the event, reports Science’s Hannah Richter. What’s more, satellite images obtained the evening of August 26 show a bald mountain, hinting at a giant landslide.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Trump Administration Sued for Approving ‘Forever Chemical’ Pesticide Trifludimoxazin

    The Environmental Protection Agency has approved the use of trifludimoxazin on many crops, including corn, wheat, oats, soybeans, oranges, apples, peanuts and almonds, despite acknowledging the chemical’s potential harms to wildlife and human health.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-19 [Older] In drought-stricken France, tankers supply drinking water

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-19 [Older] Extreme heat feeds water conflict around Berlin

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-20 [Older] Drought in Germany and Europe are driving up costs

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-19 [Older] Germany news: Minister wants to help renters to install AC

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Solar pulled South Africa out of an energy crisis. Data centers now want preferential access to that grid

      While other countries are only now confronting the strain data centers put on their grids, South Africa has been here before. Customers, not the utility, solved a decade of rolling blackouts through solar, driving the most market-driven energy transition anywhere. Now the data center boom threatens to tax that resilience, creating a two-tier energy system that could unfold in other markets.

    • Molly White ☛ Issue 109 – Reg [Cryptocurrency]

      The SEC’s “Reg [Cryptocurrency]” aims to carve out exemptions, the CFTC wields emergency powers to shield prediction markets from state regulators, and a Trump family [cryptocurrency] firm gets a bank charter

    • Jasper Tandy ☛ Jasper is blogging: dnb bike ride

      A lot of people are not very stable on their bike at slow speed. Somehow managed to make it all the way through without getting hit by anyone, but it was close!

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-20 [Older] Why Germany's gas storage levels are so low

    • CBC ☛ 2026-08-26 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini's trade war: Fact-checking Canada's natural gas leverage over the U.S.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Norway ☛ Maelstroms - Lofoten.com

      When the sea floats or falls, rotating currents are produced in many places. Some of these have a downward pull and are called maelstroms.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A New Museum in Norway Is Bringing Visitors Into the World of Whales—From Life-Size Orcas to Immersive Underwater Exhibits

      Called The Whale, the new venue is under construction in Andenes, a village on the northern tip of the island of Andøya, roughly 190 miles above the Arctic Circle. It’s scheduled to begin welcoming visitors on June 4, 2027, inviting guests to explore the majestic marine mammals through science, art, storytelling, sound and architecture.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-20 [Older] How Europe can better protect against extreme wildfires

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-21 [Older] What to do when wildfires trigger trauma

    • CBC ☛ 2026-08-26 [Older] Marineland beluga moved to U.S. dies, dolphins and 2 more whales leave Niagara Falls park for Spain

    • CBC ☛ 2026-08-26 [Older] B.C. climber stung by wasps 100 times, rescued by helicopter

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2026-08-26 [Older] The struggle to find child care for parents whose working hours aren't the typical 9-5

  • Wired ☛ George Santos Just Got Hit With Kalshi’s First-Ever Lifetime Ban

    Former Republican congressman George Santos has received a first-of-its-kind lifetime ban from the prediction market platform Kalshi, which has also fined him $71,356 for violating its rules around insider trading and market manipulation.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ Building Trade Unions Now Threatening to Withhold Support for Anti-Data Center Politicians

    Given that unions have played a historically progressive role in US politics, the apparent pro-industry turn that sets them so starkly against those interests today may come as a shock to some. Yet after two red scares followed by decades of state repression and corporate collusion, organized labor has become increasingly short-sighted, showing itself willing to embrace unpopular and reactionary agenda items when the opportunities arise.

  • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ Republicans Are Urging SCOTUS to Give Them a Discount on TV Ads

    In an emergency application made public Monday, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee urged the justices to halt a lower court decision that blocked them from getting favorable advertising rates that go into effect Friday.

  • The Verge ☛ Read Tim Cook’s final message to Apple staff as CEO

    We’ll have a lot to say about new Apple CEO John Ternus as the change happens. For now, you can read Cook’s final letter to Apple staff below, as reported by Bloomberg and 9to5Mac: [...]

  • Sean Monahan ☛ the seven deadly sins of tech

    I want to preface the following by saying tech is by no means the only cause of America’s ongoing transition into a low-trust society, but it is the most legible cause. In light of recent polling on American attitudes towards both AI generally and data centers in particular, the tech industry should gird their egos and consider their role in normalizing, promoting, enabling, or profiting from the following.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ From Kakistocracy to Cheatistocracy

    At this point, it’s almost a commonplace to say that under DonaldTrump, America has become a kakistocracy, ruled by the worst. But I don’tthink it’s fully appreciated the extent to which we’ve also become a cheatistocracy, ruled by the most corrupt.

    Today’s commentary is a follow-upon yesterday’s primer, which was about the role of tax evasion both in leading to or contributing to our downward spiral into oligarchy and also as a surprisingly large factor in the budget deficit and therefore in America’s debt problem.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Independent UK ☛ Trump’s fake AI video of Kharg Island ‘attack’ leaves US military scrambling to explain

      The video, posted to the president’s Truth Social account, appears to show oil storage tanks and refineries erupting in flames from the perspective of someone filming from inside a helicopter above the carnage, with an accompanying message describing the scene as “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens” and signed as “President DJT.”

      But a U.S. official said no such attack had taken place, with Kharg Island not being among the locations targeted overnight in what has been the first exchange of fire between American and Iranian forces in weeks.

    • New Republic ☛ Trump Takes to Posting AI Slop as Iran War Reignites

      The president is posting AI slop about the Iran war as the two sides exchanged strikes for the first time in weeks.

    • The Independent UK ☛ Pete Hegseth reportedly hired MAGA influencers as ‘highly qualified experts’

      It’s unclear if Maness, Schlichter, and other influencers like them are being paid with taxpayer dollars or what work they are doing for the government.

    • New Republic ☛ Hegseth Builds Secret MAGA Influencer Army

      Neither of these government-funded influencers bothered to disclose their employment status during their ceaseless cheerleading of the Trump administration. Maness and Schlichter did not respond to the Post’s request for comment, but the former posted what appeared to be his own response to the report: “Don’t forget kids, regime media is still fake news.” Big words from an apparent state propagandist.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Trump says communities that reject data centers 'want to end up being backwards and poor' — President claims China 'could not be happier' with AI data center backlash in the US

      Donald Trump doesn't appear to be a fan of the data center backlash that has swept the nation. Posting on his Truth Social platform, the President said that communities that reject data centers only do so because "they want to end up being backwards and poor," and posited that China "could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement." The comment comes amid a wide, albeit unorganized, pushback to data center buildouts in the United States that's left local communities and municipalities reckoning with an unanticipated and rapid infrastructure buildout.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-21 [Older] Swiss tourist jailed in Bali for insulting Hindu holiday

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ How China buried Tibet flood images after Nepal disaster

    In Tibet, a digital crackdown followed the deadly flood that has devastated communities along the China-Nepal border. Censors erased viral footage while Chinese state media flooded platforms with official content.

  • Techdirt ☛ ICE Worked With Iran To Deport Iranians Back To A Country Trump Repeatedly Claimed Was Harming Iranians

    So, Trump knew things were dangerous for Iranian citizens who opposed the same government he was now threatening to wage war on. And for years, the United States government (no matter who’s been running it) has opened its doors to dissidents and others facing persecution and death by the hardline Islamic government.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Zambia opposition leader Brian Mundubile faces treason charge

    The arrests followed a raid on Mundubile’s Lusaka home during the vote, where police said they recovered weapons. Mundubile disputes the account, saying his aides were unarmed. He later sought refuge at a UN building before surrendering to authorities last week.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • La Prensa ☛ Exiled Nicaraguan Journalist Refuses to Give Up

    One way to explain the mass exodus of journalists from Nicaragua is to compare it to an emergency evacuation. We suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a catastrophe and had to flee the country just to survive. Abuse of power collided directly with our lives.

    Yet the spread of authoritarianism only adds to an increasingly hostile landscape for freedoms across the region. At times, the overwhelming number of crises makes you want to step off the ride entirely, much like the cartoon character Mafalda once famously mused. I chose to stay in the game.

  • The Dissenter ☛ DHS Seized Logs Of 10,000 Calls & Texts From Georgia Fort

    Defense lawyers for Fort filed a motion in U.S. court for the “return or impoundment of call and text logs” and requested a hearing. It revealed that the government had “issued a customs summons” to T-Mobile for logs, “without any notice to her.” This amounted to an “end-run around” Magistrate Judge John F. Docherty, who had denied requests for warrants sought by prosecutors.

  • New Republic ☛ Pentagon Erupts Over Report on Classified Warnings Against Iran War

    Fact check: While it’s against the law for government employees to leak sensitive or classified government details, the Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that the press’s ability to publicize that information is protected under the First Amendment. That was the outcome of New York Times Co. v. United States, which pitted the daily newspaper against the Nixon administration after the Times published a top-secret history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Irish Examiner ☛ A quarter of all Irish pubs have shut since 2005, with fears for 1,000 more

    The report compiled by DCU Economist and Associate Professor Emeritus at DCU, Anthony Foley, shows that 2,205 premises - or one in four - closing their doors since 2005. The decrease saw pub numbers fall from 8,617 to 6,412 - an average of 110 per year.

  • Court House News ☛ AI hallucinations [sic] derail debate over Mississippi's DEI ban in schools

    But Mississippi Center for Justice attorney Rob McDuff argued on behalf of the plaintiffs that the law, known as House Bill 1193, goes much further than that. He said the law could even prohibit discussion of slavery as a cause of the Civil War.

    The dispute centers around a portion of the law stating schools are not permitted to “engage in divisive concepts as defined in” two different sections of the law.

  • Court House News ☛ Canadian couple can proceed with due process claims after husband's wrongful US arrest

    The couple say Detective Michael Garcia and Deputy District Attorney Billie Gibson knew Richard Zilinskas did not match the description of the suspect, but still arrested him on suspicion of four felonies and held in jail for nearly two weeks. The pair are named as defendants, alongside the city and county, and its district attorney.

    The overzealousness of the police department ultimately resulted in an innocent man being arrested, Walker said.

  • Salon ☛ "Local control" of data centers is a Big Tech con

    But sterile, polluting data centers are no substitute for the common good, and they do not answer prayers. Even on paper, the promised taxed revenue — with no guarantee of how the government might actually spend it — pales in comparison to billions in increased utility bills, the potentially thousands of deaths caused by its poisonous residue and the millions of gallons of water it sucks from local aquifers every day. In practice, data center developers have aggressively pursued strategies that help them escape the full burden of taxation, while local governments themselves have often eagerly provided enormous tax breaks as a deal sweetener. The basic necessities for human survival and happiness should not be commodities sold to corporate developers, and yet that is also not even the complete reckoning of what would be lost. Marietta, Edgerton, Red Oak, Fort Worth and countless other places have shown that the democratic process is also eroded, and the local community yet more enslaved to the AI tech industry, with each approved permit.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ Texas Politicians Slowly Realize Elon Musk Hijacked Billions In Taxpayer Broadband Grants

    Originally, Congress set aside $42.5 billion in taxpayer money in the infrastructure bill to spend on broadband upgrades. But after shoveling a large chunk of that money to two billionaires for slower satellite networks they already planned to build without subsidization, Trump Republicans claimed they’d “saved” taxpayers $21.5 billion dollars in “non-deployment funds” that appear to have mysteriously fallen into a deep hole in the federal government.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Ruben Schade ☛ The freedom to organise music how we want

    As we’ve taken a more active role in curating and organising our music, we thought it was worth revisiting. Our new structure has this: [...]

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • India Times ☛ Meta defeats Instagram shopping monopoly lawsuit for now

    US Magistrate Judge Virginia DeMarchi in San Jose, California, on Friday dismissed claims brought by London-based Ollywan, which had alleged last year that Meta copied its concept for a "tag-based" shopping platform before launching Instagram Shopping ‌in 2016.

  • New York Times ☛ FTC and 22 States Sue Amazon Over Advertising Practices

    In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Seattle, Amazon’s hometown, the F.T.C. and the states said Amazon inflated the costs that brands and marketplace sellers had to pay to promote their products to consumers, including the prominent “Sponsored Product” ads that appear in search results on Amazon’s widely used website.

    “Amazon has millions of advertising customers who were misled into paying significantly higher prices,” Andrew N. Ferguson, the chairman of the F.T.C., said in a statement. “These higher costs were largely passed on to American consumers.”

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-08-25 [Older] UK eyes unitary plant variety right with the EU [Ed: Monopolies on nature]

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-08-25 [Older] The risk of unclear contract terms and evidentiary deficiencies to entitlement claims

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-08-27 [Older] Angry Birds crash into bad faith

  • Patents

    • Software Patents

      • John D Cook ☛ Patented application of linear algebra

        I just found out Brian Beckman and I got a patent on work we did for GSI Technology [1]. Nearly all the work I do is under an NDA, so I don’t often get a chance to talk about my projects. This work is public now that it’s in a patent; I suppose it has been public since the application was published.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Take-Two Says GTA 6 Leak Probe Is "Rapidly Evolving," Wants New Discord Demands Under Seal

      Take-Two has informed U.S. federal courts that its investigation into the GTA 6 leak is "rapidly evolving." On the heels of its Netflix preview, the gaming company filed a new DMCA subpoena request, asking the court to keep it sealed to prevent tipping off the alleged infringers. Meanwhile, Take-Two dropped its DMCA subpoena against YouTube, as it is no longer needed.

    • International Business Times ☛ Anthropic Accused of Pirating Beatles, Taylor Swift and Michael Jackson Songs for Claude, Faces $150K Per-Work Damages

      Anthropic is facing a federal copyright lawsuit in California from major music publishers Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell, which accuse the artificial intelligence company of illegally copying songs by artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift and Michael Jackson to train its Claude models.

      The publishers are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each copyrighted work they say was infringed.