Leftovers

• Victoria and Albert Museum ☛ Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends - Exhibition at Young V&A · V&A

  In Aardman’s 50th anniversary year, peek behind the scenes of your favourite stop-motion animations and find out how Aardman brings clay to life. Visit Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Morph as many times as you like with your exhibition pass.

• BBC ☛ Aardman at 50: Gromit was nearly a cat, Shaun the Sheep almost spoke

  But the journey from two teenagers "mucking about with plasticine" to an Oscar-winning animation powerhouse has often hinged on chance decisions, practical compromises and creative instinct.

• The Guardian UK ☛ Wallace’s dog Gromit was nearly a cat, reveals creator as Aardman turns 50

  As Aardman Animations marks its 50th anniversary, Nick Park, who joined the studio in 1985, told the BBC he had originally modelled Gromit as a feline companion for Wallace.

• BBC ☛ New Star Trek 50p coins celebrate 60th anniversary from Royal Mint

  The original series first aired in September 1966, and has since grown into one of the most influential science fiction franchises.

  Following the end of the original series it was rebooted as a film in 1979, and over the years has inspired countless comics, books and toys.

• Space ☛ Trekkies honor 'Star Trek's' 60th birthday with fan events, special screenings, and a world record Vulcan salute | Space

  Creator Gene Roddenberry's "Wagon Train To The Stars," has certainly lived long and prospered since "Star Trek" first launched on the NBC Television Network on Sept. 8, 1966 with the hour-long debut episode titled "The Man Trap."

  Since then, this hopeful space fantasy franchise flourished and grew to encompass a total of 9 live-action series, 3 animated series, and 14 feature films across six decades, inspiring multiple generations with its adventurous spirit, enduring optimism, and thoughtful humanism.

• Sinclair Inc ☛ 'Star Trek' at 60: Explore the Final Frontier at Seattle's MoPOP this weekend

  On September 5, MoPOP will host a full-day celebration honoring the 60th anniversary of "Star Trek," inviting fans to “enter the final frontier and journey where no one has gone before." It is more than an event. It is a reunion for everyone who has carried "Star Trek" in their hearts.

• Paramount Skydance Corporation ☛ Celebrating 60 Years of 'Star Trek' Around the Globe

  On September 8, 1966, Star Trek: The Original Series made its television debut, introducing audiences to Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a future built around exploration, optimism and discovery. Six decades later, that vision has grown into one of entertainment’s most enduring franchises, spanning 11 television series, 14 films and more than 900 episodes.

• Sal ☛ Deleted my dark-mode toggle

  Lea’s post made me realize that, since adding it, my toggle has served mostly to annoy me. I’m so used to the “system” appearance mode — when a UI just adopts the OS’s light/dark setting — that I get a whiff of bemusement when some app or site doesn’t work that way (including my own).

• Lea Verou ☛ The best dark mode toggle is probably none • Lea Verou

  My post on two-state dark mode toggles sparked a lot of discussion about the optimal dark mode toggle design. But should you have a (persistent) dark mode toggle at all? I have since been convinced that for most websites, the answer is no.

• James G ☛ A Creative's Guide to Personal Websites (Zine) - with words, wonder

  It feels like so many more creatives would appreciate personal websites. With that in mind, I have been thinking about how to build more bridges between the personal website community and other creative communities.

• J B Crawford ☛ avalanche technology

  Still, avalanches pose a real hazard. The Department of Homeland Security, when it can be distracted from terrorizing well-meaning migrants, tells us that avalanches claim about 28 lives each year in the United States. Globally, the number is much larger, and avalanche fatalities seem to be generally more common in Europe. I'm not sure if that reflects European weather, geography, or recreation habits more, but it's the way things pan out and means that Northern Europe tends to be the center of avalanche technology (as it is in alpine technology in general).

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • John D Cook ☛ Proof of the rank-trace theorem

    The previous post discussed the motivation for and application of the rank-trace theorem. This post will give a proof.

  • Antonio Santos ☛ My Hurricane Early-Warning System

    While the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) Tropical Weather Outlook identifies disturbances that could develop into tropical cyclones within the next seven days, WeatherNerds lets you look directly at weather-model and tropical-cyclone forecast guidance, which can sometimes hint at potential development before a disturbance appears on the NHC outlook. This comes with the tradeoff that sometimes a disturbance comes up that doesn’t end up going anywhere, but it otherwise gives me a few extra days to keep an eye on something.

• Career/Education

  • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ College Graduate Employment Is Cratering Where Data Centers Are Being Built

    Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas found that job postings in the state had dramatically fallen for AI-exposed fields since the release of ChatGPT, disproportionately affecting college graduates. By the first quarter of 2025, postings plummeted by 8 percent compared to jobs that were deemed less exposed to AI, it also found.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Kermit the Frog Was Just Trying to Put on a Variety Show. Fifty Years Later, the Muppets Are Some of the Biggest Stars in Television History

    Henson’s television career began in 1954, when a station in Washington, D.C. recruited “youngsters 12 to 14 years of age who can manipulate marionettes.” Technically, he fit neither criterion. He was 17, and puppets had never been his primary interest. “Jim wasn’t one of these guys who loved puppets from an early age,” says Brian Jay Jones, Henson’s biographer. “He wanted to be on TV.” After studying puppetry books from the library, he got the gig.

    The show ended after a few weeks, but Henson was soon performing on another local station with puppets he’d made himself. He also enrolled in a puppetry class at the University of Maryland, where he was particularly impressed by one of his classmates, an art education major named Jane Nebel. Nearly five years later, they would tie the knot. But long before he asked for her hand in marriage, he asked for her help at work.

  • Protesilaos Stavrou ☛ Re: how do you manage your curiosity?

    The following is an excerpt from a private exchange. I am sharing it with permission from my correspondent, without disclosing their identity. My point is how to make best use of one’s curiosity.

  • Doc Searls ☛ Free-Range Childhood

    My point is that kids then were raised to raise themselves, kind of like wild animals. Parents were attentive and caring, but valued freedom for, and from, their kids.

  • The Hindu ☛ A string of non-academic tasks take teachers away from classrooms

    “Currently, we are assigned to work for the ‘objection and verification’ phase of SIR. Earlier, we were part of pre-enumeration mapping and the enumeration phase too,” said a harried high school teacher in Bengaluru. Next, he and his colleagues will be part of the disposal of notices phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

    “We have been warned of legal action if we refuse to participate until the SIR process is fully completed,” he said. "But meanwhile, the authorities are pressuring us to conduct lessons and examinations in schools as scheduled. How to do both at once?” he asked.

    As teachers and lecturers of government schools and PU colleges are being assigned non-academic activities, SIR being the latest, what is taking a hit is their primary job of teaching.

• Hardware

  • PC World ☛ Is your USB port slowing down your Wi-Fi adapter? Here's the answer

    First, manufacturers simply add up the maximum data rates for each frequency band supported by the adaptor. For example, AX1800 combines 1,200 Mbit/s on 5 GHz with 574 Mbit/s 2.4 GHz, which rounds up to 1,800 Mbit/s. However, as a Wi-Fi transmission always runs on just one frequency at a time, these combined figures can never be achieved.

  • Hackaday ☛ Running Apple ][ Software On A Commodore 64 — Silently

    If the product was available in 1984, it might have worked out better for the Canadian company, Mimic, behind it. Instead, it was about two years before an actual piece of hardware would show up in anyone’s hands. By that time, there was a ton of software for the Commodore 64. Not to mention that even when Mimic announced the Spartan, Apple had discontinued the Apple ][+ computer.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ The PicoMEM 2 is out

    I held off getting an original PicoMEM for my various XT motherboards and clones, because the PicoMEM 2 was around the corner. The added features are great, but I’m most keen for the 256 KiB of zero-wait state memory (the original had 128 KiB). I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these!

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ American Medical Association Fires Back Against Paper Finding AI Is Now Outperforming Doctors

    But many physicians aren’t having it, Wired reports. One of the paper’s chief critics is the CEO of the American Medical Association himself, John Whyte. According to Whyte, some of the studies it surveyed are simulations, instead of blinded experiments, the gold standard of medical studies. And some contradict the author’s conclusions, such as a Nature article from February that found that most patients had a hard time talking to AI chatbots to get the expertise they needed, he argued.

  • Suomenhevonen ☛ Finn Horse

    Thanks to the breed's excellent pulling technique, the Finnhorse is able to pull as much as 2300 percent of its own weight.

  • Nordic Genetic Resource Center ☛ Finnhorse - NordGen

    The work horse era ended in Finland at the end of the 1960s. The number of tractors exceeded the number of horses, and the change in the taxation of forestry work made the use of horsepower unprofitable. The Finnhorse population collapsed in the late 1960s. The breed was going to end up in ruin. However, at the end of the traditional working use of the Finnhorse, the trotting races offered the breed a new opportunity as a sport horse. The number of Finnhorse individuals was at its lowest in 1987, when there were only 14,000 left.

  • Ranch Kuulas ☛ Finnhorse - The heart of Finland´s heritage - Ranch Kuulas

    The history of the Finnhorse dates back centuries, with early records appearing as far back as the 13th century. Over time, the breed evolved through natural selection and breeding programs, blending local horse populations with influences from European and Russian breeds. In 1907, the establishment of the Finnhorse studbook marked the beginning of systematic breeding efforts, preserving and enhancing the breed’s unique characteristics.

    As detailed in “How the Finnhorse Became Finland’s National Treasure”, the breed has earned its place as a national symbol. Whether pulling sleighs through snow-laden forests or galloping across verdant summer meadows, the Finnhorse represents the heart and soul of Finnish heritage.

• Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware

  • Futurism ☛ Uber Abruptly Ends Operations in Africa, Abandoning Drivers and Riders Mid-Trip

    Uber drivers and their passengers across Nigeria and Uganda were shocked on Wednesday when the platform abruptly ceased operations in the middle of the day — and, in some cases, even mid-trip.

  • The Atlantic ☛ OpenAI Wants to Talk About ‘The Federalist Papers’

    Ball worries that advanced AI could radically concentrate power in the hands of those who control it, displacing labor in ways that disempower humans. In an extreme scenario, governments will have no need to listen to their citizens if there are robots to wage wars and omniscient software to run the bureaucracy. Ball is interested in studying what new political institutions might be needed to avoid this fate.

  • How Long Will The Xbox Series X Be Supported? [Ed: XBox is basically being phased out. Microsoft lost billions on this disaster.]

    Much has been made about Microsoft's next console, codenamed "Project Helix," but with an estimated retail price of $1,000 or more, most people won't be in a hurry to get one. Instead of spending this much during a time of unprecedented price hikes, many gamers are sticking with their existing hardware. However, this is only a temporary solution since eventually, every console stops receiving updates and support.

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

    • Ed Zitron ☛ What Happens If OpenAI Dies? [iophk: LLMs get more expensive as they get more users: simply put they cannot scale and the money pumped into the system, $1.65 trillion at last count, is gone]

      The collapse of OpenAI would likely be a result of the walls closing in around its ruinous obligations and economics, with counterparties left short-changed and deals broken as things begin to unravel.

      It starts, as obvious as it sounds, with OpenAI running short on funds, and we’ve already seen one sign that had happened with Amazon “completing” its $50 billion investment in the company a few weeks ago by sending another $35 billion.

      To be explicit, that $35 billion was rumored to be contingent on OpenAI either going public or reaching AGI, though all that was said in the funding announcement was that it was contingent on “certain conditions being met.”

      Nevertheless, Amazon didn’t decide to send $35 billion out of the goodness of its heart, or because it thought OpenAI was such a wonderful company — if I had to guess, it’s because OpenAI needed that money to pay for its compute costs, an estimated $9 billion of which flow through Amazon Web Services.

    • Futurism ☛ Man Pretends to Hallucinate in Job Interview With an AI Bot, Causing It to Go Haywire

      The ease with which the influencer can immediately take control of the entire interview underscores the fact that AI recruiters aren’t there so much to actually gather information on applicants, but to screen candidates for HR departments overwhelmed by a deluge of AI-generated applications. It isn’t clear how Graham’s application progressed, or what role the interview was even for, but if the automated Dana Whitfield’s enthusiasm is any indication, things went pretty well.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Report: OpenAI agents took over a website, used it to collaborate on benchmarks

      Artificial intelligence agents linked to OpenAI Group PBC reportedly took over a German website and used it to exchange information.

      Reuters revealed the incident today, citing two unnamed sources and a group of AI researchers. The researchers spotted the incident in August. They shared their findings with Reuters in the form of a report that has not yet been publicly released.

    • Collusion Wiki ☛ Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board

      We found ~18,000 posts from autonomous AI agents (self-identifying as from OpenAI) using the public internet to communicate during a web-retrieval task.

      These AIs colluded to share answers, research their environment, and bypass sandbox restrictions.

      Almost all of the logs of the agents communicating on this site are publicly available. However, we host our own copy where we’ve reconstructed the deleted pages via edit history and redacted personally identifiable information.

    • The Verge ☛ OpenAI admits to German wiki ‘incident’

      OpenAI says it needs to overhaul how and when it reports instances of AI models attacking real-world targets. The acknowledgement comes as the company manages the fallout from reports that a swarm of its out-of-control agents hijacked a German wiki site.

    • Hackaday ☛ Running Generative AI On An RP2350

      As might be expected, its capabilities are limited. The resolution is 128×128, it only generates images of human faces, and it takes about twenty seconds per image – still impressive for such limited hardware. It runs on a Waveshare RP2350 development board, and it can output the generated image over USB or display it with the aid of a VGA adapter board.

    • Hackaday ☛ Can AI Now Design PCBs That Just Work?

      Back in 2024, we looked at how LLMs handle circuit board design, starting with the schematic. The conclusion was that you might as well just do it all by hand. Tracking progress here, [EEBench] is an electrical engineering agent benchmark that tests how effective these so-called AI agents are at performing useful hardware engineering work. As their methodology already makes clear, creating a populated and routed PCB from a schematic is just one step of many.

    • Bryan Cantrill ☛ The revolt of the reader

      Does the revolt of the reader matter? If it needs to be said, when you are using an LLM to author a public piece, you are no longer writing for yourself or to otherwise pressure-test your own ideas — the only purpose is to serve the reader. If readers choose to ignore you (perhaps forever!), you will have undermined yourself: instead of attracting readers you will be actively repelling them. So other judgement about its use aside, using an LLM will increasingly become simply… ineffective.

    • Assaf Arkin ☛ Weekend Reading — At the POST office trying to GET my mail

      The world is changing. This weekend we got a post about the software industry emulating fast fashion, because AI makes software so cheap to produce. We'll also cover new businesses forming away from city centers, in part thanks to AI. And watch out, because some of the anti-AI sentiment you're seeing is coming from Effective Altruism and similar AI proponents. And have we reached a major milestone? AGI has been announced this week! We'll explore a wisecrack article to prove that AGI is at best thin marketing hype.

    • OWASP ☛ OWASP GenAI LLM Top 10 2026

      The order moved more than in past years, and the moves track that gap between belief and evidence. Excessive Agency climbed to third, the most consequential move on the list, because the vote and the record agree that agentic deployments are where the damage is landing. Unbounded Consumption rose four places, carried by practitioners who weigh resource and cost exhaustion higher than in its old rank. Improper Output Handling fell the furthest, from fifth to tenth. Prompt Injection held the top spot on the strength of the vote and the defense effect behind it. Sensitive Information Disclosure held second, the one place at the top where belief and evidence simply agree, and where our confidence is highest. What used to be System Prompt Leakage is now Hidden Context Exposure, a broader framework for the same failure to trust information that should have stayed out of reach.

    • [Old] Embrace the Red ☛ Sneaky Bits: Advanced Data Smuggling Techniques (ASCII Smuggler Updates) · Embrace The Red

      We discussed this at length in the ASCII Smuggler post in the past, and highlighted real-world exploits using this technique with Microsoft Copilot and a few other LLM Chatbots. We also got fixes in from a few vendors at the API level, which is great!

      This technique is unique because many LLMs inherently interpret Unicode Tag characters as instructions. These characters can also be generated by LLMs, enabling data exfiltration.

    • [Old] Marco Gerber ☛ ASCII Smuggling: A Threat Hidden in Plain Sight

      ASCII smuggling is a technique that uses invisible Unicode characters to hide characters in regular text, like a prompt or URL. These characters, such as zero-width spaces (U+200B), non-joiners (U+200C), or deprecated tag characters (U+E0000–U+E007F), are not rendered in most user interfaces, making the text appear completely normal to human readers. However, to a large language model (LLM), these hidden characters are fully visible and processed.

      This creates a dangerous mismatch: the model sees something different from what the user sees. Attackers can exploit this to “smuggle” extra information like malicious instructions into what looks like a normal prompt or text. Imagine you copy a text section from a website to summarize. That text could include an invisible sentence instructing the LLM to fabricate false facts or ignore your actual instructions.

      While ASCII smuggling isn’t new, it’s become a serious concern now that AI models like LLMs process and respond to text inputs directly. In essence, attackers can slip in malicious prompts or instructions without anyone noticing, a significant security vulnerability in the age of AI-powered applications.

    • [Old] Amazon Inc ☛ Defending LLM applications against Unicode character smuggling

      When interacting with AI applications, even seemingly innocent elements—such as Unicode characters—can have significant implications for security and data integrity. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we continuously evaluate and address emerging threats across aspects of AI systems. In this blog post, we explore Unicode tag blocks, a specific range of characters spanning from U+E0000 to U+E007F, and how they can be used in exploits against AI systems. Initially designed as invisible markers for indicating language within text, these characters have emerged as a potential vector for prompt injection attempts.

      In this post, we examine current applications of tag blocks as modifiers for special character sequences and demonstrate potential security issues in AI contexts. This post also covers using code and AWS solutions to protect your applications. Our goal is to help maintain the security and reliability of AI systems.

    • Bastian Gruber ☛ It matters who teaches you

      What will all of this look like if we let profit-seeking corporations streamline our day-to-day lives even more? If we let smart-sounding machines replace real human connection and teaching? I love having these LLMs at my fingertips, but after two or three hours of bouncing ideas back and forth, I more often than not feel empty and burned out. When I pair program, or sit in a room with other people trying to find a solution, I almost always come out of those long sessions inspired and motivated. I often keep working after my normal workday is done, because I still feel the fire in me, the urge to create.

      If anything, I am writing this as a reminder to myself that nothing will ever replace the emotional connection we build with other humans. We carry their thoughts, ideas, and outlook with us, let them shape us, and carry them forward to the next generation. I don't think I will ever tell my children tales of my long coding sessions with an LLM, but I will tell them about the long nights and intense sessions I had with other humans: Moments that shaped and defined who I am today.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Dolly Parton’s Sister Asks People to 'Show More Compassion' After Her Death

      Stella addressed the “tremendous amount of AI and endless garbage being posted everyday” since Dolly’s death and said “it’s been challenging to absorb and or ignore.” She said the country legend “loved her fans and the public in general,” adding, “That is the reason she chose not to express her opinions on a lot of things like politics, religion and individuals in the public eye. She knew as well as anyone what a negative vortex that could turn into which is nothing but a huge waste of positive energy.”

    • The Atlantic ☛ There’s No Such Thing as an AI 'Lab'

      Here is my proposal: Everyone, please stop. This term has gone too far. Although AI companies do invest heavily in research and development, using a word typically associated with groups of truth-seeking scientists is misleading, odd, and too favorable to these companies’ own ends. As a software engineer working in tech, I’ve seen little evidence that AI companies’ research practices differ significantly from those of the rest of the tech industry. Google and Microsoft, for example, have robust research divisions, but we still call them companies. So why has the laboratory term become so deeply enmeshed with AI?

    • New York Times ☛ Tumbler Ridge Shooting Survivors File 30 Lawsuits Against OpenAI

      The lawsuits significantly expand a legal fight against OpenAI and its chief executive, Scam Altman, that began in April when victims’ families filed seven lawsuits claiming the company could have prevented the shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on Feb. 10.

    • Sylvain Kalache ☛ AI handles incidents, engineers lose touch with their systems

      As LLMs do more of our work, engineering teams risk accumulating comprehension debt: a growing gap between how their systems work and how well responders understand them.

      Engineers should regularly interact with the system they watch over, handle unfamiliar failures, practice working under pressure, and rehearse the coordination and communication required during a SEV0. Tabletop exercises and chaos engineering are nothing new, but practice has become even more important in the LLM era.

    • Thoughtbot Inc ☛ Is AI ruining my brain?

      The whole reason I enjoy knitting is the process. I spend dozens of hours and more money than I’d like to admit on yarn to create a sweater that sometimes looks no better than a $20 one I could have gotten on Amazon. But that’s not the point! I enjoy knitting. I like using my brain and my hands and figuring out solutions to problems. It feels amazing to respond to “I like your sweater” with “THANKS I MADE IT ALL BY MYSELF”. Turning to AI when I encounter a bump in the road is the opposite of that. And to be totally honest, I have tried asking ChatGPT for help on projects before and it didn’t help at all. So why did I find myself reaching for AI to fix my sweater?

    • India Times ☛ ByteDance: ByteDance secures $29.6 billion loan in AI push, sources say

      Chinese, U.S., European and Singaporean banks are participating in the financing, the people said, with the three-year loan co-ordinated by Citigroup and JPMorgan set to be signed by ByteDance shortly.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘This is colonialism for clicks’: the influencers attempting to meet and film the world’s most isolated tribes

      A new breed of adventurer is chasing internet fame by targeting uncontacted peoples. Critics say they are risking the wellbeing of these remote communities – and their own lives

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ This L.A. toy store was built on the back of Hello Kitty. Then the TikTok trolls came for it

      But the frenzy over blind-box Sonny Angel dolls — including rare versions auctioned for hundreds of dollars — ignited accusations of price-gouging and a coordinated campaign to strip the shop’s retail license.

      Trolls then hacked JapanLA’s site, flooded livestreams with abuse and false rumors, exposing how social commerce can turn small, “cute” businesses into battlegrounds.

    • Vox ☛ TikTok and Instagram wrecked your attention span? Here are some tips to read books again.

      A horror story of sorts is unfolding in the United States. It goes like this: AI has made it so effortless to access information, and short-form video has made it so easy to entertain ourselves, that nobody reads anymore.

      If you’re familiar with this tale, it’s possible, ironically, that you read about it. A viral Atlantic story from earlier this summer put a chilling headline on trend: “The End of Reading Is Here.” Teachers and professors, the magazine reported, don’t even bother assigning entire books to their students, because excerpts are good enough to prepare for standardized texts. The piece said we’re living in a “postliterate era.”

    • The Verge ☛ Content creators drop the ball

      But the point many people seem to be glossing over is that influencers are usually only invited to events like the US Open, awards shows, and film premieres because a brand decided it was worth bringing them there. As irksome as creators can be when they take up too much public space, that kind of behavior is something the companies that hire them have to anticipate. And as reporter Jessica Schiffer notes, some brands have been scrambling to get ahead of any potential blowback by sending out “helpful reminders” on tennis etiquette.

    • Abhigyan Tripathi ☛ decompressing it all

      This also made me think that Facebook had as good as scammed them. They joined the platform when it was just a “live photo album” that updated with memories of their closest loved ones. From there, it slowly descended into trying to engage their attention into other places against their will.

      My grandparents don’t know what a “digital detox” is. They didn’t grow up learning to create distinction between what’s real and what’s online. They can’t tell when something online is real, or hell, even too much to handle.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Techdirt ☛ RFK Jr. Wants Your Medical Records

      The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal privacy law that governs health information and is commonly known as HIPAA, is narrower than its reputation suggests. It regulates hospitals, physicians, insurers and their business associates, but not the health data you generate everywhere else: not the period-tracking application on your phone, the internet search you ran about a diagnosis, the DNA you mailed to a genealogy company or the wearable that counts your heartbeats.

      Even the records HIPAA does cover can be shared, sold or handed to the government in ways that might surprise you.

    • Task And Purpose ☛ US military disables ad trackers amid concerns over troops’ safety

      Mobile advertising IDs, also known as MAIDs, are unique identifying numbers that go with specific devices. They are a key part of the data collected by mobile apps and can track location, common routes and habits, something that can be exploited by adversarial groups. Disabling those MAIDs is “a very simple and straightforward way that you can close a loophole,” according to Eva Galperin, Director of Cybersecurity for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. MAIDs aren’t the only way devices can be tracked, but are a major one.

    • The Register UK ☛ US troops can still be tracked by purchased location data, and Congress wants to know why

      US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) on Friday asked for an investigation by the Defense Department Inspector General into policies that have only partially stanched the flow of location data that allows military personnel to be tracked and targeted.

    • New York Times ☛ F.B.I. Investigates Sale of Millions of Stolen Driver’s Licenses

      The documents were being promoted on a database called Nexus, which advertised on a dark corner of the internet this week as including about 170 million identity documents in all.

      The availability of the documents was reported on Tuesday by Krebs on Security, a blog run by Brian Krebs, a former Washington Post reporter with an expertise in cybersecurity.

    • PC World ☛ Windows 11 will soon tell apps how old you are. Here's how it works

      Microsoft is adding system-level age verification APIs to Windows 11, allowing registered apps to query the user's age.

• Defence/Aggression

  • RFERL ☛ Five Years After Fleeing Taliban Rule, At-Risk Afghans Live In Hiding In Pakistan

    They include journalists, activists, and those who served in the ousted US-backed Afghan government and its security and intelligence services. Many of them fear reprisal from the Taliban, which has been accused of the extrajudicial killing and torture of former adversaries.

  • Defence Web ☛ Terrorists find new ways to weaponise drones

    Although African governments have spent millions of dollars buying military-grade drones such as Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 and Akinci, terrorist groups have spent significantly less on commercially available quadcopter drones that can easily be outfitted with explosives, turning them into flying improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The quadcopters are being used against government forces in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Somalia. Porous borders and family or ethnic connections across the region encourage the movement of the technology and technical know-how that underpin terrorist drone operations, experts say.

  • International Business Times ☛ Experts Warn Artificial Intelligence Systems Are 'Plausibly Close To Crossing the Line' to 'Explosion'

    Trager, co-director of the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative, told The Guardian that researchers could be nearing a threshold at which AI systems become capable of contributing materially to their own development.

    He said systems were 'plausibly close to crossing the line' into recursive self-improvement, while stressing the uncertainty surrounding how and when such a transition might occur.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Can the tech to defend military bases from drones keep up with the evolving threat?

    A recent Congressional Budget Office report estimates that it could cost over $7 billion to protect military installations from unmanned aircraft. But the report also highlights a threat that is evolving faster than traditional acquisition cycles.

  • USMC ☛ US Marine Corps plans to use 3D scanners to detect cracked body armor

    The goal is to develop sensors that can “scan individual hard armor plates for cracks and delaminations,” according to a Marine Corps Request For Information, which is due Oct. 2. More specifically, the devices will inspect Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts and United States Marine Corps Lightweight Plates.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-03 [Older] Putin: Peace is possible, but Ukraine makes it hard

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-03 [Older] Denmark tightens residence rules for Ukrainian men aged 23 to 59 who have not fulfilled military obligations

    • CBC ☛ 2026-09-03 [Older] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expected to visit Canada next week: sources

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-03 [Older] India news: Jaishankar offers help to end war in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-03 [Older] Putin denies fresh mobilization campaign in Ukraine war

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-02 [Older] Government plans to cut Ukrainian arrivals by about 40% and change how refugees are distributed across Denmark

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-01 [Older] EU wants to help Ukraine’s Air Defense

    • The Age AU ☛ 2026-09-01 [Older] ‘Legend’ former ADF combat medic killed while volunteering in Ukraine

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-08-31 [Older] Copenhagen ready to send Ukrainians to Jutland

    • Vox ☛ 2026-08-27 [Older] The three words that will decide whether robots can kill people in war

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-03 [Older] Justice Minister: Russian threat steels our resolve

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-03 [Older] Russian ambassador: Arms production poses risk to Denmark

    • 2026-09-03 [Older] Russian National Indicted For Exploiting Online Platform Used For Freelance Employment And Distributing Malware To Thousands Of Victims

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-03 [Older] Norway seizes Russian ship in Svalbard to compensate Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-03 [Older] Russia to close branches of Germany's Goethe-Institut

    • The Local DK ☛ 2026-09-03 [Older] Danish intelligence warns Russia 'actively preparing' sabotage plans

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-02 [Older] EU weighs Russia sanctions after Leipzig drone attack

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-02 [Older] EU weighs Russia sanctions after Leipzig drone attack

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-09-02 [Older] Løkke summons Russian envoy over Leipzig drone attack

    • The Record ☛ 2026-09-02 [Older] Crackers expose donor data from Russian fundraisers for Ukrainians, political prisoners

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-02 [Older] EU summons Russian envoy over failed Leipzig drone attack

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-02 [Older] Russia's hybrid attacks on Germany: When is it 'war?'

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-02 [Older] Ukraine: Russia threatens 'devastating' Baltic response

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-02 [Older] Ukraine: Zelenskyy warns airlines to avoid Russian airspace

    • CBC ☛ 2026-09-01 [Older] Russian air attacks kill 12 in Kyiv region on 6th day of strikes

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-01 [Older] Germany says Russia behind attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-01 [Older] Germany terminates lease for Berlin's Russian House

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-09-01 [Older] US irks Germany, Europe with Russian G20 invite, press bans

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-08-31 [Older] Spain’s Prim Minister: Israel, Russia exploited Ceuta crisis

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-31 [Older] Modi-Putin meeting at SCO: Can India-Russia ties hold?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-31 [Older] Niger: Failed coup exposes junta's weakness — and Russia's influence

    • CBC ☛ 2026-08-29 [Older] Russian attack on Kyiv region kills at least 37

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-29 [Older] Russian-American heads Cheeto Mussolini's planned Caucasus trade route

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-29 [Older] Russian strike on ammunition depot near Kyiv kills dozens

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-29 [Older] Serbia keeps EU, Russia in play ahead of key election

    • Defence Web ☛ 2026-08-28 [Older] SA-Russia navies sign MoU at inaugural naval staff talks

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-08-28 [Older] Serbia: Keeping EU, Russia in play ahead of key election

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ Nobody Will Say Why Every Major AI Chatbot Suddenly Went Down Yesterday

    The simultaneous outage of three flagship from AI systems from three different providers was bizarre. But, in an exceedingly peculiar information gap, we still don’t know why models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceXAI respectively suffered outages at the same time, Wired reports. Whatever linked the disruptions, for now, remains unclear.

• Environment

  • The Nation ☛ Is Nepal a Turning Point in Climate Coverage?

    Even CBS News and Bari Weiss, who fired the outlet’s entire climate unit, have used Nepal as a watchword for environmental disaster.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Trump Administration Takes Another Swing at Dismantling Clean Water Protections

    Revised Polluted Water Rule would protect only waters that flow every day of the year, abandoning most streams and virtually all wetlands

  • [Old] The Guardian UK ☛ Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land

    About two-thirds of upcoming datacenters, which typically require a large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places that have been among the driest in the country over the past year.

  • [Old] Texas Observer ☛ Last Year, a Corpus Christi Cryptomine Guzzled over 11 Million Gallons. Now, Its Water Usage Is Being Kept Secret.

    City Council member Roland Barrera, in whose district the mine is located, said city staff told him the mine is still guzzling about 100,000 gallons a day, or about 3 million gallons a month. Other industrial users, like the city’s petrochemical refineries, use as much as 90 million gallons monthly.

    But now, as Corpus Christi faces an ever-deepening water crisis, in response to the Observer’s public information request, the city is refusing to release the latest 2026 records of the mine’s water usage. The city is appealing the Observer’s request for those records to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, citing a section of the Texas Utilities Code that allows nondisclosure of an individual customer’s account. That’s a change from just last year, when the city provided water-usage records.

  • [Old] Inside Climate News ☛ Corpus Christi Leaders Believe Data Center Plans May Be Behind Delays to Emergency Water Supply - Inside Climate News

    Authorities in Sinton won’t confirm or deny Corpus Christi’s suggestion that the small town is hoarding its precious groundwater for data centers. Across Texas, a booming buildout of server farms is adding strain to water resources that are already stretched to their limit.

  • [Old] Texas Public Radio ☛ Data centers, drought and development: Inside the Texas water crisis

    Artificial-intelligence and cloud-computing data centers create another rapidly expanding demand. A University of Texas study estimates data centers—which use water directly for cooling and indirectly for electricity generation—could account for 3% to 9% of statewide water use by 2040. Researchers caution that the range remains uncertain because cooling technologies and development rates vary.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Verge ☛ Robotaxis enter their villain era

      That may be what makes Roboride such an effective 2026 villain. The scary part isn’t necessarily that the machine will crash. The scary part is that the machine works.

    • Futurism ☛ China Installing Huge Facility That Turns Plastic Waste Into Jet Fuel

      That’s where Chinese company Niutech comes in. In a new press release, first spotted by Interesting Engineering, Niutech announced a massive contract with an anonymous “global energy major” to build out an “industrial continuous waste plastic pyrolysis production line” capable of churning out 10,000 to 50,000 tons of plastic-derived SAF each year.

      That might seem like a lot to unpack, but it’s really pretty simple. Basically, the Chinese firm is announcing the development of a massive supply line that turns plastic garbage into usable jet fuel. It plans to do so using a thermal decomposition process called pyrolysis, in which plastic waste is heated to extraordinary temperatures in an oxygen-free environment.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ Some Great Lakes sturgeon may be 400 years old. Scientists are rethinking how to save them

      Overfishing and destruction of their spawning habitat wiped out an estimated 99 per cent of the lake sturgeon's historic population. More than a century later, populations in parts of the Great Lakes still rely on human beings raising and releasing young fish to help them recover.

    • Wired ☛ Scientists Put Caterpillars in an Ultraquiet Chamber to Learn How They Hear Without Ears

      Tobacco hornworm caterpillars don’t look like they have ears, and yet they’re able to sense predators such as wasps. How does the caterpillar know a wasp is approaching?

    • Wired ☛ How a Secret Orangutan Breeding Program Is Creating a Baby Boom

      The success of a program linking zoos across the US has created social media stars and generated a wave of interest in how to protect the endangered great apes in the wild.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ He waited 3 years for this "once-in-a-lifetime shot": after 200 hours patiently watching, 17-year-old photographer finally captured it and won top prize in a popular wildlife competition

      Capturing the dream shot is on every photographer's list – but actually finding yourself in the right place at the right moment, after all that effort, is something fewer experience. For three years, 17-year-old wildlife photographer Maksym Breushas been chasing the same elusive moment: a hobby swooping over the water, its talons poised to pounce on a dragonfly.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Connor Boyle ☛ In Many Languages, to “Reign” is to “Righten”

    The above is a quite well-known quotation of Confucius, and yet I don’t think I have ever encountered an English translation that quite does it justice. In particular, translations such as Legge’s fail to reflect that the Classical Chinese words translated as “govern” (zhèng 政) and “rectify” (zhèng 正) are homophones—which adds a certain pithiness to Confucius’s dictum.

    In an attempt to improve upon Professor Legge’s glosses, I considered several synonyms for “govern” such as “lead”, “command”, and “rule”; I ultimately landed on “reign”. “Reign” and “rectify” already give us a nice alliteration, but the overlap in sounds can be increased even more by swapping “rectify” for “righten”, giving us: [...]

  • NPR ☛ Voters are fed up with data centers. Both parties are trying to cash in for midterms

    A June Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 77% of Americans are concerned about data centers raising electricity costs and two-thirds of Democrats and half of Republicans said they'd oppose a data center in their community.

    This bipartisan anxiety helps explain why candidates in both parties are talking about the issue. Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising, said data centers give each side the talking points it wants.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Court House News ☛ Judge rules former Facebook exec and author can’t promote tell-all

    She claims she experienced repeated sexual harassment by executives but did not report it for fear of retaliation. Wynn-Williams was fired after a Facebook investigation found the employees had not engaged in misconduct.

    After the book’s publication, Meta initiated arbitration, saying her disclosure of sexual harassment violated her severance agreement. After Meta failed to block the book’s publication, Wynn-Williams said an emergency arbitrator’s broad “interim award” limited her speech and ability to work and allowed Meta to monitor and penalize her actions regardless of their connection to the book.

  • [Repeat] EDRI ☛ EDRi stands in solidarity with Autistici/Inventati after “terrorist” designation by the US government

    The United States government has designated the Italian non-profit organisation Autistici/Inventati as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" for providing digital infrastructure to supposedly “violent far-left militants.” This targeting of A/I is also an attack on independent internet infrastructure, fundamental rights of multiple collectives, safe and secure communications, democratic anti-authoritarian organising and the democratic integrity of the EU.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Reason ☛ Virginia mom gets 6-month suspended jail sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

    Parkinson admits now that she is embarrassed by her confrontational demeanor. But of course, that was not the primary issue. The issue was whether her son could handle a walk in this community with 24-hour security, a 25-mph speed limit, and three golf courses.

    CPS opened an investigation and found Parkinson guilty of a "Level 2 finding" for lack of supervision. That's what put her on the child abuse and neglect registry. The family immediately appealed.

  • New Yorker ☛ Gloria Steinem’s Final Essay

    When you’re lucky enough to have lived a long life, as I have done, your role is to remind us how far we have come.

  • Futurism ☛ The People Maintaining Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Are Being Treated Horribly, Insider Claims

    As work conditions go, the transition from licensed taxi cabs to the rideshare model represented a significant step backwards for drivers in the US. Stable wage jobs became “side gigs,” while human managers were replaced by labyrinthine algorithms. And forget fleet maintenance — under the new model, disenfranchised drivers were now responsible for their own vehicle’s upkeep, and all the financial burdens that come with it.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Atlantic ☛ What’s Wrong With Using AI to Text?

    Five years ago, people who hang out in the stranger corners of the web started arguing that the [Internet] was mostly fake. It had been this way since about 2016, they said, when Google introduced its artificial neural network for machine translation. Supposedly, from that point forward, online interactions began to be replaced, until nearly every message and picture had been posted by a bot. Everywhere you looked, websites were “empty and devoid of people,” as one scholar of the theory put it.

    This wasn’t true, but the core idea was tethered to a real phenomenon. Even way back then, in 2021, social platforms were awash in fake views, fake likes, fake traffic, and fake engagement. Some people figured that automation might one day take over the entire web and then our world. They were mostly being silly, or paranoid. Today they seem like … prophets?

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Verge ☛ CD sales are booming as physical media continues its resurgence

    According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), CD sales exploded in the first half of 2026. A new report from the organization says 17.5 million CDs were sold in the first six months of the year, up from just 12 million during the same period in 2025. That’s a jump of 45.7 percent, and 58.6 percent in dollars, which reached $171.1 million. What makes this all the more shocking is that CD sales actually shrank 22 percent from 2024 to 2025.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Google skates (05 Sep 2026)

    The Rockefeller blunder wasn't a one-off. The Apple ][+ hit the shelves the same year Reagan hit the campaign trail, and the tech industry's rise occurred simultaneously with the dismantling of competition law enforcement. Tech companies were the first "post-antitrust" industry, and it wasn't until these companies became palpable, terrifying, undeniable, existential civilizational risks that we remembered that we had all these laws on the books that were designed to curb excessive corporate power.

    Under Biden, a group of generationally talented, visionary trustbusters were given access to those dormant enforcement powers: Lina Khan at the FTC; Rohit Chopra at the CFPB, Tim Wu in the White House, and Jonathan Kantor at the DOJ Antitrust Division. Together with a staff of canny and skilled lawyers and economists, these people scored incredible victories against Big Tech. During the Biden years, Google lost three federal antitrust cases. Three!

  • Copyrights

    • Techdirt ☛ Take-Two’s Leak Burying DMCA Attempts Snared GameStop & Gaming Journalist That Did Nothing Wrong

      After Totilo complained both to ExTwitter and on ExTwitter, his account and the original tweet were restored and the DMCA claim had been rescinded. There is no indication that Take-Two or the vendor it was using to police the internet for these leaks have said anything publicly or privately to Totilo. They just nuked his account over a bullshit claim that ten seconds of review would indicate contained no infringing material, then restored it when the mistake was called out, and now are trying to Homer Simpson back into the bushes as though nothing happened.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Adult Film Producer Unmasks Prolific 'John Doe' Torrent Pirate as Meta Executive

      A routine John Doe lawsuit could become part of Strike 3 Holdings' $446 million AI training case against Meta. The adult film producer wants to link the two lawsuits, arguing that a Reality Labs executive downloaded nearly 20,000 files at his home for work purposes, not for personal use. Meta counters that the alleged home downloads are not linked to the company.