Contents
- Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
- Leftovers
- Science / Mathematics / Computer Science
- Career/Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM)
- Monopolies/Monopsonies
Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
Programming/Development
Perl / Raku
Leftovers
☛Vintage EverydayThe Story of Gordon “Pawnee Bill” Lillie and May Lillie, One of the Old West’s Most Unique Romances and Enduring Business PartnershipsThe couple acquired land near Pawnee, Oklahoma (Blue Hawk Peak). They built a cabin, established a buffalo herd (one of the larger private herds of the era; May actively managed the ranch and advocated for buffalo conservation and the animals’ cultural importance), and in 1910 completed an Arts and Crafts-style home. May ran the ranch while Gordon toured. They experimented with “beefalo” crosses and promoted Oklahoma and the mythic West.
☛Protesilaos StavrouAbout idolsNow think again about money as a false idol. We realise that it too, qua idol, is as real as you and me. Dismissing it as “false” is a figure of speech, for we cannot affect its state, as aforementioned.
Which brings us to the exhortation against the false idol; an exhortation which itself employs an idol, else a symbol. The exhortation rests on the notion of an absolute value and, thus, of a ranking among values. For there to be a ranking, there has to be something that is common to all values which we can discern. The relationship between the lower values and the absolute value must then be one of reflection, else representation, else one facet versus multifacetedness. All the selfies of me and all the words used to describe me are symbols of me, yet neither individually nor collectively do they exhaust me and nor do they amount to me as such. The same for values: the lower values are idols of the absolute value insofar as they consist in indirectness.
☛Charalampos KardarisFront pageThis has not discouraged me from writing. My goal is to share projects that I am developing and to express some of my thoughts when I feel like it. I am glad if someone finds the content interesting and I am even happier to engage anyone who sends a comment my way. In any case, I think that the mere act of sitting down and writing your thoughts is beneficial by itself and it is worth doing, even if the audience is not there.
☛Avalink dump - catching up on my online readingWhile I am slowly getting back up on my feet after a tough time, I am catching up on emails (will still take a bit!), my RSS feed reader, and several newsletters that have accumulated in my inbox.
Science / Mathematics / Computer Science
☛The Conversation2026-08-25 [Older] The real reasons you procrastinate – and how to stop, according to science - ☛CBCNASA launches $4B Roman astronomical observatory to explore depths of spaceThe telescope, which will park itself in orbit beyond the moon, is designed to investigate cosmic enigmas such as dark energy and dark matter, while also testing gravity at vast scales and searching for exoplanets, as planets beyond our solar system are called.
☛Omicron LimitedTides can be mapped much more locally using a new method based on satellite imagesWhen high or low tide occurs, the water does not necessarily rise and fall uniformly along the entire coastline. In fact, the height of the tide in a bay can vary by up to one meter (3 feet) from one location to another just a few kilometers away.
This is shown in a new study published by researchers from DTU Space in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Oxford and the Technical University of Munich (TUM), as well as the German space technology company OHB. Together, they have analyzed satellite images taken over a period of more than 40 years by the U.S. Landsat program.
Career/Education
☛FuturismMIT Warns That AI Can Now Credibly Complete Pretty Much Any Undergrad Assignment, Considers Overhaul of Entire Educational Model[Ed: Yes, plagiarism does work, but how to tackle plagiarism is not a new problem. It's not "AI", it's better veiled plagiarism.]One of its most alarming conclusions: that AI is now able to credibly complete most undergraduate assignments.
AI “can produce credible solutions and provide reasonable responses to almost any written assignment in our undergraduate curriculum,” the report stated, “including essays, math and science problems, proofs, and coding assignments.”
☛MITReport: MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research TrainingThis report is a call to action.
Through five intense months of meetings, research, and outreach across the MIT community, the Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training sought to understand the role of generative AI in the life and educational mission of the Institute and recommend how to navigate its challenges and opportunities.
In January 2026, Chancellor Melissa Nobles, Provost Anantha Chandrakasan, and Faculty Chair Roger Levy charged us1 specifically to:
• Assess current AI use at MIT.
• Identify innovations in teaching and student assessment.
• Propose an AI use policy.However, what we learned as a group quickly convinced us that the Institute community, particularly the faculty, must tackle a set of deeper questions about the structure, meaning, and value of an MIT education in an era in which AI is one of several factors complicating the Institute’s mission.
☛Medievalists.net25 Greek Proverbs from the Middle Ages and BeyondThe proverb recommends finding a middle ground in dealing with other people. Be too harsh and people will reject you; be too accommodating and they may take advantage of you. The contrast between being bitter enough to be thrown away and sweet enough to be eaten turns a piece of practical advice about moderation into a memorable image.
Hardware
☛HackadayDissecting A Lethal Universal Travel AdapterThe first exciting discovery is that when you plug any of its three sets of connectors into an outlet, the others become live at the same voltage. This would suggest that they’re just wired together, a fact soon confirmed with a quick resistance check between the respective prongs. Though to the adapter’s credit, the prongs are not live when fully retracted into the enclosure. Yet as demonstrated in the video, the retracting of prongs is not enforced, so mistakes here are possible.
☛Martin AldersonWhat GLM-5.3 Flash running on Chinese hardware actually meansIn essence, this is substantially behind even the H100 from Nvidia, which is now 4 years old. These are around 60% as fast as the H100, and has various other footguns (no native FP8 support for example), which probably restrict efficiency further for many use cases.
The next generation 950-series doesn't meaningfully increase compute as far as I can see, but does use domestically produced HiZQ/HiBL HBM memory. Interestingly the cards are configured in two variants - the 950PR and 950DT, with the former focusing on prefill and the latter on decode. In reality, the two products are very similar, but the prefill variant using slower HiBL memory vs the decode HiZQ memory. It does however support more quantisation types, like FP8.
☛BinaryDigitBaby’s First Traveler’s NotebookI like the idea of having various tiny notebooks inside, so that I can swap them in and out as needed as I go about my day. I think I’ll start with a tiny sketch book, a tiny dotted book for notes and to-dos, and a “junk” book to add stickers, stamps and scribbles. I also bought a generic stamp kit with ink pad as well to see if stamping is a thing I’d enjoy or find useful.
Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
☛The Conversation2026-08-21 [Older] Can baby monitors protect children without - ☛Science AlertYour Body Has a 'Second Heart', And It's Crucial You Keep It PumpingEvery step, ankle flex, or rise onto your toes activates a remarkable pump below your knees.
Your calf muscles squeeze the veins in your lower legs, helping propel blood upward toward your heart. This mechanism is so important to circulation that the calves are sometimes described as the body's "second heart".
☛Omicron LimitedUsing data to help wheat growers adapt to unpredictable weatherAs historical weather data show a shifting climate, tools to determine ideal planting dates are vital for growers to ensure enough warm days for sufficient yield while minimizing the potential for late-spring freezes.
"Research shows that plant development in the fall contributes to almost 90% of grain yield," Oakes said. "Leaving time for that growth is one of the most important things you can do for high wheat yields."
Research led by Oakes and Virginia Cooperative Extension agents Robbie Longest and Turner Minx offers growers a clearer path forward.
☛Tracy DurnellMy emergency food supply is extra normal foodI used to stock emergency ration bars and cans of veggies that I never cook with (mushrooms, beets, green beans, peas), and then I would throw it all away when it hit its Best By date. Now I just keep extra normal food on hand. (Michael Harley calls this a “deep pantry.”)
This is easier for me to shop for because I’m simply buying extras of food I would buy anyway. Occasionally I am a bit too aggressive in stocking and don’t get around to eating something in time, but overall I think it’s less wasteful since I’m not buying special foods that get tossed every couple years.
☛Chris AldrichCook Books Published as Recipe CardsWhat I wouldn’t give to have some popular cookbooks like Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking, Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, Better Homes & Gardens’ New Cook Book, Brown’s Good Eats, America’s Test Kitchen books, or Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street published as recipe cards in 4 x 6 inch index card format.
☛Cemrehan ÇavdarMaking the [Internet] boringEverybody asks me why my phone is in grayscale. I tell them the story and show them my setup. At some point I got tired of repeating myself, so I wrote it down.
It starts with a failure. Once I overrode my own website blocker for 444 minutes. Not to check something important. Just to scroll. That day I accepted something I should have accepted much earlier: willpower cracks. Every time I relied on it, it eventually broke. So I stopped relying on self discipline and started building friction instead.
Proprietary / Vendor Lock-in / Malware
☛Rich TroutonChecking APNS communication on macOS TahoeWhat I did figure out was that you could check to see if the Mac in question is communicating properly with APNS. That is possible and you can use the information logged to the unified system log to do so. For more details, please see below the jump.
First, let’s talk about how macOS gets MDM commands from an MDM server. It receives them through a push-notification mechanism rather than by polling the MDM server directly. The sequence looks like this: [...]
☛Spotify IncThe End of Google Search—and the Internet—as We Know It - The RingerFor years now, Google has been tweaking its search formula to prop up AI and bury actual links. Now it’s rounding into its final form—and changing the [Internet] forever.
☛David FriedmanThe Mystery Of Why Uber Gave Me 77 Free RidesFor about two and a half years, Uber kept sending me free ride credits. I’d open my email and find I’ve been credited $15 to spend on a ride, or $20 towards a ride. It was all completely legit, and was actually sent to me from Uber. I just didn’t know why.
And then suddenly one day, they stopped sending me these ride credits. I counted my receipts and figured out that I got 77 rides for free, averaging one every couple weeks.
[Old]
☛Don Martihow to break up GoogleEverybody* is on about plans for how to break up Google, so here’s my version. I’m trying to keep two awkward considerations in mind.
So-Called 'Artificial Intelligence' ('AI') / LLM Slop / Plagiarism
☛El PaísAI swarms turn on their creators: ‘It’s the first incident that has made my stomach churn’This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that headlines have been dominated by the prospect of AI models “waking up” and rebelling against their human programmers. As on previous occasions, however, these systems did not “wake up.” They are simply becoming extremely good at doing what they were trained to do. However, that training has now become so intensive and competitive that the speed and capabilities of the models have begun to outpace even their creators. OpenAI recently announced that it is, for now, slowing those training efforts and hopes other companies will follow suit. The move came after the publication of an open letter in which 1,300 employees of AI companies urged both their employers and governments to halt the race.
☛Bhaskar EnglishHuman Touch vs AI Art: Why Authenticity Matters | CHI Conference 2026In tests involving 2,965 people across six different experiments, participants preferred art created by humans over art created by AI, even though both images looked identical. According to a 2015 study, people prefer handmade things because they believe the creator invested time, effort, and love in them. The tiny marks visible in real art indicate that the artist made numerous decisions while creating it.
☛FuturismTeslas Are Still Driving Into Oncoming Freight TrainsXing confirmed his car was running FSD 14.3.7, which is noteworthy. As Electrek explains, Tesla released FSD v14.3 earlier this year claiming that it improved handling “rare and unusual objects extending, hanging, or leaning into the vehicle path,” which should include a moving train. That was seven versions ago.
☛The NationConfessions of an AI EditorA recent study in the journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior found that those who relied heavily on large-language-model tools felt no sense of ownership over the output they created with them. This could explain why any compliment to my editing occasioned a headache, as if I had yanked out a fistful of hair. Although I was great at my work, I was no good at it. I couldn’t have done it without the thing.
☛HackadayLLM Moats Quickly EvaporatingKeep in mind that this is just the current state of affairs with open LLMs. Future versions of these models are likely to optimize the number of tokens produced per unit time, or otherwise increase quality of responses while requiring less computer resources. We don’t really think that the ease of running local models will be the sole reason that the AI bubble pops, though. The fact that not every computer user is running Linux is proof enough of that.
☛Jussi PakkanenStanisław Lem foretold the current LLM mania in 1964This book is a collection of short stories by the Polish author Stanisław Lem originally published in 1964. Its English title is The Cyberiad. One story, about Trurl's electronic troubadour, turned out to be surprisingly topical.
☛Fernando BorrettiOn InevitabilityFirst, let me try to pare down the notion of inevitability, and then address the factual content.
The word “inevitable” is rhetorically misleading, because it quantifies over the entire future of humanity, and on such a long timeframe almost anything will happen. Human extinction is “inevitable”, if nothing else, because of thermodynamics. And so this lets you equivocate between the present and the distant future. You might argue: “a million years from now, humans are unlikely to be the dominant intelligence in the universe”—and this may be true—“and so we should build superintelligent AI today!”— no, that does not follow. That is the fallacy: arguing that because something will happen eventually, then we might as well cut to the chase, and do it today. But of course this is absurd. It’s like saying: I’m going to die someday, so why not today?
We can’t control what the world looks like a million years from now. But AI is being built today, and we have some control over the present.
☛LinuxCreepy crawliesTL;DR: we spend more CPU cycles rendering commits for scrapers than we spend on all other kinds of legitimate access, including git clones. At any one time, across 5 geo-distributed nodes, there are 14 CPU cores doing nothing but rendering git commits as html.
Social Control Media
☛EPICMeta Reaches $18 Billion Settlement with States over Youth Social Media HarmsThe settlement, which still requires court approval, resolves the federal trial that had been underway in Oakland, California, and follows a nearly $1 billion judgment against Meta in a related New Mexico case earlier this month. The states’ claims relied heavily on Meta’s own internal research and communications, obtained through discovery, showing that the company understood the risks its design choices posed to minors. Notably, roughly 30% of the settlement amount is not guaranteed, and it will only be released if TikTok and YouTube adopt matching restrictions and make matching payments of their own.
Under the settlement, Meta will: [...] #
☛New YorkerMark Zuckerberg’s Social ReckoningThe settlement was quickly compared to the tobacco lawsuits of the nineties, a moment of public clarity during which a ubiquitous product came to be seen as a scourge. But Meta, a trillion-dollar company increasingly invested in artificial intelligence, is so much vaster than RJR Nabisco, and the current settlement applies to only a single facet of its sprawling operations. There has always been an element of denial in the focus on Instagram’s relationship with minors, when so many of the rest of us, of legal age, also scroll obsessively at weird hours. An unforgiving upcoming film about Meta, “The Social Reckoning,” written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, ends with the January 6th riot at the Capitol, an event that had a lot to do with social media but not so much to do with kids.
☛New York TimesInfluencers Have a Lot to Say About Politics. Many Are Quietly Paid for It.He has used that platform to support dozens of progressive candidates in the midterm elections, ranging from low-profile, down-ballot contests to some of the nation’s marquee Democratic primaries. In camera-facing videos, Mr. Greene informs his followers of his preferences, calling some candidates “the most viable” and, in other cases, declaring that “this is the candidate for you.”
Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets
☛Tom's HardwareGet up to $175 back for your pre-installed Windows 11 license — new portal provides legal forms, but warns buyers not to wipe storage firstThe majority of PCs are sold with Windows 11 licensed, paid-for, and pre-installed. This fact irks many folks, especially Linux aficionados who intend to wipe all traces of Microsoft’s OS while their shiny new machine is box fresh. The Refund4Freedom site was put together by the Italian Linux Society and the Free Software Foundation Europe to help address this unfairness. “Consumers should be able to buy laptops without any specific operating system, and should not have to pay the license price if they don't want to,” asserts the site, and they have information and forms to help you get your cash back.
Security
Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to RootA security issue in Omarchy’s default Docker configuration meant that essentially every program running in the user’s desktop session could escalate to root without a password, sudo, or a privilege prompt.
CISA
☛*CISA*[2026-08-27 [Older] CISA Adds Three Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/08/27/cisa-adds-three-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-27 [Older] Mitsubishi Electric Multiple FA Products (Update D)](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-25-128-03) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-27 [Older] Mitsubishi Electric CNC Series (Update A)](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-078-05) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-27 [Older] Xiiaozet LK100W](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-239-01) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-27 [Older] All-Line Equipment Company Fuel-Boss](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-239-02) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-27 [Older] Rockwell Automation OTTO Fleet Manager](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-239-03) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-27 [Older] Applied Systems Engineering ASE2000 V2 Communications Test Set](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-239-04) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-27 [Older] Ebyte NA111-M](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-239-05) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-26 [Older] CISA Adds Six Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/08/26/cisa-adds-six-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-25 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/08/25/cisa-adds-one-known-exploited-vulnerability-catalog) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-25 [Older] Rently Smart Home](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-237-01) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-25 [Older] Zoneminder](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-237-02) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-25 [Older] Siemens SIMATIC IoT2050 Advanced](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-237-03) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-25 [Older] PayRange API](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-237-04) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-25 [Older] Bendix EC80 Brake ECU](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-237-05) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-25 [Older] Ebyte NE2-D11](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-237-06) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-25 [Older] FURUNO FA-50 Class B AIS Transponder](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-237-07) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-24 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/08/24/cisa-adds-one-known-exploited-vulnerability-catalog) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-21 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/08/21/cisa-adds-one-known-exploited-vulnerability-catalog) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-20 [Older] CISA Adds Two Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/alerts/2026/08/20/cisa-adds-two-known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog) -
☛*CISA*[2026-08-20 [Older] Johnson Controls Simplex Incident Manager](https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-232-01)
Privacy/Surveillance
☛FuturismInstead of Using Opioid Settlement Money to Help Poor Communities, Police Are Buying Flock Cameras to Play WithDrug money, as it turns out, though it’s not exactly what you might think. A bombshell investigation by Mother Jones found that police departments across the US are using settlement money from the opioid crisis meant for struggling communities to instead fund Flock surveillance cameras.
All together, Mother Jones identified 19 agencies across ten different states which spent nearly $1 million of opioids settlement funds on ALPRs from companies like Flock and Axon (though the publication notes that’s almost certainly an undercount.)
☛Papers PleaseSFO evades criticism of its role in immigration enforcementAt the San Francisco Airport Commission meeting on August 15th, a dozen members of the public (video, Mission Local, SF Public Press) called on the Airport Commission to comply with San Francisco’s “Sanctuary City” ordinance, which prohibits use of S.F. City and County resources — including airport property and funds — for immigration enforcement.
Another 35 people sent written comments to the Airport Commission on the same subject.
☛Tracy DurnellI asked my city about their street camerasAs I’ve been reading about the misuse of Flock cameras / data in other places, I was curious about our school zone speed enforcement cameras. What data are collected, and what is the data retention policy? Who, internally, can access data / footage, and for what purposes? Are external agencies able to access those data?
Also, has the city considered / does the city intend to install Flock cameras or other ALPRs in the future?
☛Marcy WheelerThe Surveillance Crimes in the Cities Church Case Keep Stacking UpEven after the masked ICE goons wearing body armor left Minnesota, the dead enders from HSI appear to have kept breaking the law.
In a latter sent on July 2 (submitted as an exhibit to a joint objection to a continuance filed with Don Lemon almost three weeks later), Georgia Fort’s attorneys first disclosed that Harmeet Dhillon’s goons had sought her phone records from T-Mobile using a customs summons. At the time (again, sent on July 2, disclosed weeks later), they described seeing the summons to T-Mobile, but not the subpoena returns.
☛NYOBGone in one click: Assessing the socio-economic impact of browser-level consent in the EU[PDF]Browser-level consent cuts cookie consent rates by at least 60-65% and reduces ad effectivelness, consting European businesses a third of their ad revenue, or EUR 40-50 billion.
☛Tech Policy PressThe Quiet Erosion of Collective Action Under Digital SurveillanceBut the true turning point for me was seeing how surveillance trickled down into everyday spaces of youth activism. Watching university campuses rapidly deploy advanced surveillance networks to aggressively curtail student organizing, especially as the pro-Palestine solidarity movement gained momentum, made it clear that this was a coordinated global pattern. It extended far beyond police departments putting up more AI-powered CCTV cameras with facial recognition under the guise of enhanced security or data maximalization measures.
This realization led me to prepare an official report on how digital surveillance affects the rights to assemble and associate, which I am presenting today to the Human Rights Council. The research underpinning this report was guided by three objectives.
☛The Guardian UKInside the growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance camerasThese black cameras, which are hooked up to a rectangular solar panel and typically mounted on a pole, snap photos of passing vehicles and run the pictures against large databases. They have sparked nationwide backlash from pro-privacy critics, who point to public records suggesting that these devices can help law enforcement keep tabs on specific license plates and the people driving these cars. That they can sweep in so many people’s location from an innocent act in a public space – regardless of whether the target is a suspect in a crime, and without a warrant – has led to fears of mass surveillance.
Flock, based in Georgia and valued at $8.4bn, says its cameras scan license plates billions of times each month in about 6,000 communities in nearly every state in the US.
Confidentiality
[Old]
☛Charalampos KardarisThe P in PGP isn’t for pain: encrypting emails in the browserBased on the above proof of concept, I can say that, even without operating a “proper” backend server, it is still possible to guarantee a reasonable level of security. And you can do so without requiring any complicated setup on the user side.
Defence/Aggression
☛Jacobin MagazineCentrist Dems Are at War With Their Own Voters on IsraelPutting Jared Moskowitz in charge of Middle East policy isn’t just a slap in the face to Democratic voters — it’s an empowerment of a leading Democratic supporter of Trump’s disastrous Iran war and free speech crackdown.
Environment
☛Semafor IncNepal disaster highlights climate, geopolitical plightAccelerating snow and glacier melt likely caused a glacier to break off and slam into a valley more than 4,000 feet below, registering as a 5.2 magnitude quake on seismographs.
“Nepal is paying an extraordinarily disproportionate price for a crisis it did not create,” one of its lawmakers told The New Yorker.
☛FortuneEurope's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threatPersistent drought and scorching heat this summer have ravaged ecosystems and businesses across the region, from a lake in Slovenia and the side channel of the Danube in Serbia, to fish farms in Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary.
The fish industry has been hit especially hard, with damage estimated in the millions of euros (dollars). This is adding to the already high toll caused by problems with energy and water supplies, devastated crops, losses in river traffic and trade.
☛TruthOut2026-08-22 [Older] Fired Federal Employees Are Bringing Climate Change Info Back to the People - ☛TruthOut2026-08-22 [Older] Climate-Driven Droughts May Be Accelerating the Spread of Infectious Diseases - ☛The Local DK2026-08-24 [Older] Copenhagen climate mayor calls for 30 km/h speed limit across city - ☛The Local SE2026-08-24 [Older] IN PICTURES: Record-breaking climate march draws 50,000 to streets of Stockholm -
☛*The Local SE*[2026-08-23 [Older] Thousands expected at Sweden climate demo as election looms](https://www.thelocal.se/20260823/thousands-expected-at-sweden-climate-demo-as-election-looms) -
☛*Vox*[2026-08-24 [Older] Cage-free eggs are worse for the climate. Does it matter?](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/500005/cage-free-eggs-cruelty-climate-reductionism) -
☛*Scheerpost*[2026-08-23 [Older] White Supremacy And Climate Change: A Sinister Symbiosis](https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/23/white-supremacy-and-climate-change-a-sinister-symbiosis/) -
☛CBC2026-08-23 [Older] 'Super' El Niño didn't cause this year's fires and heat waves, but it's about to take us on a 'wild ride' - ☛Scheerpost2026-08-26 [Older] War and Climate Breakdown: We owe Children More - ☛Deutsche Welle2026-08-26 [Older] No, this wasn't a "completely normal summer", despite far-right climate denial - ☛The Local SE2026-08-25 [Older] 'We're heading for catastrophe': The summer climate change hit Europe -
☛*CBC*[2026-08-26 [Older] Peach trees in Ontario's Niagara region under threat due to recent historic flooding](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/niagara-peaches-floods-climate-9.7318259) -
☛*Deutsche Welle*[2026-08-26 [Older] India: Assam tea industry faces climate-driven labor crisis](https://www.dw.com/en/india-assam-tea-industry-faces-climate-driven-labor-crisis/a-78506414)
Energy/Transportation
☛CBC2026-08-27 [Older] Alberta expects $2B surplus instead of $9.4B deficit, due to Iran war bump to oil prices - ☛CBC2026-08-27 [Older] Enbridge signs deal with KKR and Apollo to fund Westcoast pipeline expansion - ☛Copenhagen Post2026-08-25 [Older] Climate minister distances herself from Lolland gas pipeline – project in jeopardy - ☛Atlantic CouncilAfrica's next technological leapfrog could lie in electric vehicles and solarIn the past two years, EV sales in Africa have surged. For example, electric car sales across the continent rose from four thousand units in 2023 to twenty-five thousand in 2025. The trend is particularly clear in East Africa. Ethiopia alone accounts for a third of the entire continent’s imports of EV parts from China. According to the Energy for Growth Hub (which maintains an Africa EV Readiness and Impact Index), Kenya and Ethiopia, as well as countries such as South Africa and Rwanda, are among the readiest for EV adoption. Electric motorbikes are being adopted the fastest. Spiro, a manufacturer, estimates it already has 114,000 electric motorbikes on African roads, which it says is a 68 percent increase since last December. Electric motorbikes will likely continue to outpace electric cars in the years to come, as both they and their charging stations are less expensive upfront than cars.
☛Atlantic CouncilElectricity demand is rising. How can the US secure energy for its dual military and civilian needs?The United States is becoming increasingly electrified to support rising demand from artificial intelligence (AI), supply chain reshoring, and reindustrialization. This rise in electrification has elevated the criticality of power generation, transmission, and distribution as essential enablers of societal resilience. But the commercial grid doesn’t merely serve civilian needs—it is shared with the US military’s domestic installations, meaning this criticality applies directly to the nation’s defense capabilities.
☛Futurism[Cryptocurrency] Bro Facing 280 Years in Prison Over Astonishing Range of CrimesThe US government continues to drag its feet on any meaningful cryptocurrency regulations, even as the industry remains overrun by fraud, theft, and money laundering schemes. The digital tokens are being used for human trafficking, extortion, and for-hire harassment.
The extent of some of these crimes is astonishing. Look no further than Nevada, where the state’s US Attorney’s Office alleged this week that Las Vegas native [cryptocurrency] bro Brent Kovar had fraudulently obtained $24 million from his victims through an extensive Ponzi scheme.
☛Interesting EngineeringNext-gen power chips top 3,400 volts in 5x voltage leap for future EVsNow, researchers at EPFL have found a way to make GaN handle more than 3.4 kilovolts by turning one of the material’s natural properties into a built-in defense against electrical breakdown.
☛BBCPlug-in solar panels are coming to a shop near you - what to knowPlug-in solar panels will be hitting the shelves of DIY shops and High Street retailers after the government changed the rules to allow them to be legally sold in the UK.
They are significantly cheaper than roof panels, can be installed without an electrician and are suitable for properties with outdoor space, including some balconies.
☛Mark LitwintschikHydropower Stations in China in 2026In May, a dataset was released documenting 2,918 hydropower stations across Mainland China's eleven major river basins. These cover stations from the early 20th century through to planned projects that may begin in the 2050s.
The data was sourced from several internationally maintained databases as well as Chinese government and archival records.
In this post, I'll explore the dataset and see what trends I can find.
☛Aigars MahinovsHalf a year with iX3And what if you want to drive at max speed a bit longer and you are still 20-30% short? Well, just stop at a 400kW charger (or 300kW+) at ~10 SOC for 5 minutes and you will get your missing range. The recharge speed is trully mind-bending.
During our long distance road trips we (experienced road-trippers!) already had to concede defeat a handful of times and stop for a bathroom break or coffee before the cars battery was empty. This car has more endurance than we do. It broke the barrier. We no longer wait on the car - it waits on us.
Wildlife/Nature
Finance
☛International Business Times2026-08-26 [Older] 500,000 US Retirees See Social Security Cheques Cut Each Year Because of This Little-Known Rule - ☛CBC2026-08-25 [Older] Canada's big banks are shrugging off Cheeto Mussolini's trade war - ☛The Local SE2026-08-25 [Older] Big banks split on Swedish economy's recovery and interest rate path
AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
☛FuturismPanicking Tech Execs Try to Pivot Message on AI Data CentersTech executives, as a result, are having to make a calculated decision to change their tune, from AI doomsaying to something more palatable to the everyman. But just like their proselytizing over the coming AI apocalypse — messaging meant to win over investors and scare everybody else into ceding regulatory power — they don’t seem to realize that the entire world is watching as they execute their cynical pivot out loud.
☛AxiosTech industry debates how to counter the data center backlashWhy it matters: Opposition to data centers crosses political, geographic and cultural lines as they become a stand-in for much larger anxieties over AI, jobs and economic inequality.
☛WiredGoogle Maps Now Shows ‘Lake America’ Instead of Lake OntarioGoogle, Apple, Microsoft, and other maps providers adopted the Gulf of America naming as soon as the US Department of the Interior updated its records, which came a couple of weeks after Trump’s order. So it was no surprise that when those records—which are used to determine names on roadway signs and in government literature—reflected Lake America, digital maps from Google also quickly took on the new name.
☛The Independent UKGoogle Maps accused of bending knee to Trump by changing name of Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’In a Saturday blog post, Google explained that U.S. users would see “Lake America” displayed over the Great Lake, which straddles the U.S.-Canada border.
☛Sean GoedeckeYou have to beat the models at somethingThis is a scary thought. But you’re not doing yourself any favors by pretending that LLMs can’t actually write code and it’s all just a scam, or that LLM-written code is inherently so bad as to cause companies using it to collapse next year. We are not going to wake up in 2027 to find that the AI craze is over and everyone is writing code by hand again. You ought to put some serious thought into what you can do better than the models in the medium and long term.
☛Paul KrugmanOligarchy and the Great EvasionWhich brings me to the following question: could or would the Feds do something comparable today? Would a defunded Internal Revenue Service — defunded in large part because the modern Republican Party is effectively pro-tax-evasion — have the resources to go after him? And even if the Feds tried to bring charges, would a tax evader escape justice by simply buying a sufficiently large quantity of Trump family crypto?
Today’s primer is the latest in a series on the rise of American oligarchy, which I define as the extreme concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of a small number of people — not the 1 percent, but the .01 percent or even the .0001 percent, the 300 billionaires who made 19 percent of all reported federal political donations in the 2024 election.
☛Mike BrockDeadnaming the LakeNone of it ran on its own. Someone wrote the post. Someone senior cleared it. A web team corrected the site on instruction, and then the institutional voice of United States foreign policy published an apology to a lake. Every name in that chain had a superior, and every superior watched the post go up and let it stand. That is the complicity: a chain of custody in which every link is a person and every person chose. A troll posting from a personal account is the internet’s oldest problem. A troll posting from the State Department’s account is a decision — made once, by the person who posted it, and remade every hour the post stays up, by everyone in the chain with the custody to end it.
Hannah Arendt gave this mechanism its name: evil that needs no monster, only clerks who process the order in front of them and never ask what it does next. The lake is a small thing to test that frame on, and the frame does not need a bigger one — the worst things on record were built the same way, out of people who each did one small, defensible piece of something indefensible. Orwell knew what the name itself was worth: control the word for a thing, and the thing changes shape. A government that can rename a lake by fiat, and make its own diplomats apologize for the old name, is rehearsing a muscle it may use on something that matters more than a lake.
☛Hamilton NolanYou Can Ignore the Bad PunditsYou can just ignore the bad pundits. You don’t have to read them. You can just carry right on with your life.
You don’t have to talk about the bad pundits. You don’t have to engage with them. You don’t have to craft painstaking responses to their vapid arguments. You don’t have to take them seriously. Their existence creates no obligation for you. Each new piece they produce generates no appointment on your calendar. The law does not accord them any reservation on your attention. They have no inherent power over you. Instead, they get their power from you. You give it to them, for free. You, who fancy yourself their enemy, provide the fuel for their careers.
Instead of doing that, you are free not to do it.
☛Don MartiWhen was Google’s heel turn?Somehow, the Old Google, which was respectable, has turned into New Google, which, well, not so much. But when did it happen? Can we assign a date to Google’s heel turn? It’s not going to be any of the current “AI” or “Epstein Ballroom” political stuff, it happened before that. Going whole hog for weird right-wing politics is the kind of thing an organization does when they have already crossed over.
I think we can narrow it down to some time before the Epstein Ballroom bribe and after Cory Doctorow’s “What if Google Were Evil?” That was saleable speculative fiction back in 2007, so the consensus date is going to be some time after that.
☛deadSimpleTechThere's no such thing as Just a ToolA common refrain when critiquing specific technologies in this way is that engineers will say that a given technology is "just a tool". You hear it when talking about all kinds of things: shells, containerisation, reactive frameworks and most recently it comes up a lot in discussions of LLM technology. What this response seems to mean is the following: [...]
☛Tech analysis and policy ideas for Europe eVAn operational framework for AI literacy in the workplace: Informing action plans under the EU AI Act[PDF]No evidence yet shows that these trainings work, and three gaps might explain the reason. The first is motive. Corporate training aims at productivity and teaches people to use the tools well, whereas the law cares whether operators understand how systems fail and cause harm. A workforce fluent in prompting can still be illiterate in the sense a regulator means: trained to produce good output, but not to recognise when a model misleads or to know its duties under data-protection and risk rules. The second is quality. Training is unaccredited by design, since the Commission requires no certificate and does not treat completion of any course as evidence of compliance. The resulting market has no quality floor, but does have every incentive to sell courses that look compliant without testing whether anyone has learned anything. The third is measurement. The most recent systematic review found that the validated instruments were built for students and general populations, that few were tested beyond basic validity, and that none were tested across cultures (Lintner, 2024). In the end, no published evidence shows that any AI literacy programme, corporate or public, does what Article 4 calls for.
☛Tech analysis and policy ideas for Europe eVAn operational framework for AI literacy in the workplaceThis brief proposes a three-tier framework based on the nature and consequences of an individual's interaction with AI. The framework helps organisations define proportionate literacy objectives, select appropriate measures, document their rationale and evaluate effectiveness. It supports implementation of Article 4 while advancing responsible AI adoption, workforce development and professional mobility.
This framework is keyed to how much and how consequentially the workers interact with AI. Instead of looking at peoples’ job titles, seniority or technical background, the framework proposes the following three tiers: [...]
☛Chris AdamsIs this really a good reason to triple datacentre capacity in Europe?First of all, some context – Europe, the AI Continent Action Plan, and tripling datacentre capacity in 5-7 years
In Europe, there is an ongoing public discussion about how the continent can keep up in global race to stay competitive with the other two next largest economic blocs: the US, and China. Against this background, we’ve seen the European Commission propose the AI Continent Action Plan, part of a multi year strategy to help Europe regain its perceived competitiveness, and close the technological lead the others have over it.
Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
☛RFERLHow Kremlin Propaganda Is Spreading Through SerbiaSerbia has become an oasis for Russian propaganda. Pro-Russian narratives are spread not only through official Russian media but also through a complex web of aggregator websites, which often serve the interests of the Serbian authorities.
☛The Guardian UKFake US thinktank set up and funded by Israel sought to game AI for propagandaA pro-Israel messaging website badged with the name of a thinktank that does not exist has published more than half a million words in nine days, built on a commercial platform that promises to optimize content so that AI chatbots will cite it.
The site gives Israel’s position on subjects including the torture of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli war crimes and whether Israel has deliberately starved Palestinians in Gaza, all presented as neutral research.
☛India TimesSocial media influencers don entrepreneurial hat; launch VC-backed consumer brandsBengaluru: Social media creators across beauty, fashion, food and supplements are increasingly turning their influence and expertise into consumer brands, attracting venture capital funding for their startups in a move that echoes the rise of celebrity-backed businesses.
Censorship/Free Speech
☛*Jacobin Magazine*[2026-08-21 [Older] If Woke 1 Was Crazy, MAGA Woke Is Absolutely Insane](https://jacobin.com/2026/08/woke-cancel-culture-maga-censorship) -
☛*BIA Net*[2026-08-27 [Older] Activist jailed in Turkey over anti-NATO summit in Barcelona](https://bianet.org/haber/activist-jailed-in-turkey-over-anti-nato-summit-in-barcelona-322869) -
☛*Deutsche Welle*[2026-08-25 [Older] Why Starlink won't open Vietnam's heavily censored internet](https://www.dw.com/en/why-starlink-won-t-open-vietnam-s-heavily-censored-internet/a-78494983) -
☛RTLZambia's opposition leader charged with treasonRights groups have warned that recent opposition arrests risk further narrowing political space in Zambia.
Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
☛Stanford UniversityStanford Daily wins free speech lawsuit against Trump adminOn Friday, U.S. District Judge Noël Wise ruled that statutes which Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the federal government used to deport legal immigrants on the basis of their speech were unconstitutional. The court ruled in favor of The Daily on six of its eight claims.
☛SalonTrump’s answer to bad press? “FCC TO THE RESCUE!”The FCC’s own guidelines, however, make clear that its authority over news coverage is extremely limited. The agency says it “does not intervene in a broadcaster’s selection and presentation of news or commentary” and can investigate news distortion only when there is evidence that a broadcaster deliberately distorted a factual news report. The FCC also notes that federal law prohibits the agency from censoring broadcast material.
Trump has attacked journalists and news organizations since his first presidential campaign, frequently labeling critical coverage “fake news” and singling out individual reporters by name.
But during his second term, those attacks have increasingly been accompanied by demands for government action against the outlets responsible.
Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility
☛Jacobin MagazineAI Isn’t Coming for Our Jobs. It’s Coming for Our Wages.As The Economist points out, the scenario today is different. The predicted mass destruction of jobs coincides, in fact, with historically high employment. Given the ongoing investment boom not only in data center infrastructure but also in upstream utilities such as water and electricity supply, the AI frenzy is now arguably creating more jobs than it is destroying. Another peculiarity is that the current narrative of the job-apocalypse story is driven by AI giants as a marketing strategy to sell their large language models (LLMs) to financial investors and, therefore, feed the ongoing financial euphoria. Nonetheless, the Left should not dismiss the potential systemic effects of AI in the labor process, notably its role in de-skilling and devaluing labor. AI needs to be historically understood and situated as a breakthrough born from concentration and centralization — and of capital’s struggle with labor.
☛Jacobin MagazineThe American Plutocracy Wants Workers Trapped in DebtThe US government wrote off almost all the money it lent businesses during the pandemic. Now it’s wrecking credit scores and threatening to garnish paychecks to collect student loans. Debt can be forgiven easily enough — just not for the working class.
☛Advance Local Media LLCTrump administration starts building border wall project in Arizona over tribe’s objectionsBut as building efforts have ramped up, the administration has run into opposition from landowners, environmental groups, and Native American tribes who say construction is violating property rights and desecrating sacred Indigenous sites.
Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
☛Christian Hofstede-KuhnI Wanted an IPv4 Toast and Accidentally Built an IP ServiceAt 10:15 this morning I added a small feature to hofstede.it, my static personal website. Visitors whose providers still cannot deliver IPv6 would get this toast in the lower-right corner: [...]
Digital Restrictions (DRM)
☛Digital Music NewsYour Next Fan May Never Search for YouThis is where it gets bigger. Music discovery is beginning to move outside music applications entirely. Someone can be having a conversation about a road trip, dinner party, workout, vacation, relationship, film, book, city, or completely unrelated subject and suddenly decide that music would improve the situation.
The conversation might go something like this: “I’m driving through New Mexico tomorrow morning. Give me something cinematic and spacious, preferably instrumental, that doesn’t sound like spa music.” An AI can connect that request with music, and notice what disappeared from the process: the Spotify search box.
Monopolies/Monopsonies
Patents
Software Patents
☛Alex ChanWhy can’t you combine .tar.gz files with cat?I’m working on a project that generates multiple .tar.gz archives, and I need to combine them into one final file. I thought I could just cat the bytes together, but that doesn’t work. This seemingly simple task exposed my flawed understanding of tar and gzip.
To my fix my code, I first had to fix my mental model – and that took me into tape drives, patent laws, and end-of-file markers.
Copyrights
☛Torrent FreakACE Targets Dozens of Streaming Pirates Through Cloudflare and Discord SubpoenasThrough the Motion Picture Association, anti-piracy coalition ACE has requested two DMCA subpoenas at California federal courts. One covers 49 Cloudflare-fronted domains including Miruro.to and Aniworld.to, while the other targets two Discord servers. How effective the requests will be is hard to say, but both Discord servers have already been deleted.