2026-10-07

etc

• The Hidden Engineering of Pressure Regulators

Horseshit

• FIA to investigate software bug after Bahrain GP in Malaysia

  • What was going on with the FIA software bug causing F1 chaos

• Whisky to be aged in space inside a Cubesat for first time in university project

• The curious case of the bear in the Bayeux tapestry

• Voynich manuscript pages wrongly bound?

• Intoxicated woman allegedly masturbates on American Airlines flight.

• With parallel parking turning competitive, one producer gets a lesson

• Southern Olive Oil

  Though Spain reigns supreme as the world’s largest olive oil producer, a new player is emerging in the global industry: the American South. Farmers in Texas and Georgia in particular are trying their hands at nurturing trees to satiate the country’s ravenous appetite for olive oil. And in the right locales, they’re finding more success than Jefferson. While California remains the country’s forerunner in olive oil production, several Southern states are rising to the occasion.

• Experts Say This Is the Surprising Age When Sexual Fantasizing Peaks.

  While a male's sexual desire will hit peaks in their early twenties due to heightened testosterone levels, a woman will actually experience a life in libido a little later. And that doesn't just mean an increase in sex drive, but also heightened sexual fantasies and thoughts about having sex.

• Who owns 'brain rot'?: inside the international legal drama over a beloved meme

Epstein

• MPs call for investigation after Lutnick-Epstein whistleblower dies

Obit

• Jeffrey Archer, Novelist Whose Real Life Rivaled His Thrillers, Dies at 86

• Jim Bakker, disgraced televangelist who went to prison, dies at 86

  • Jim Bakker Scandals Explained as Televangelist Dies at 86

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• ‘Cornell 7’ frat bro claims he was too wasted to consent to sex with accuser — and that he’s the real victim: records, reports

• We are going to kill "unalive"

• Every country has its own Internet now

Musk

• Elon Musk's Exes Are the Most Damning Part of a New Documentary

• SpaceX looks to raise $40B to buy Nvidia chips in financing led by Apollo

Electric / Self Driving cars

• What Happens When We Give Up Control of Our Cars?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Nobel Prize in Physics Is Awarded to Francis Halzen

  • Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to Francis Halzen for Astronomy Breakthroughs

• US colleges slash tuition by tens of thousands as families balk at sky-high sticker prices.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Explaining Hall-effect, TMR, and other new types of "mechanical" switches

• Meta Developing Compressed RAM "Cram" for Linux: Better Than ZRAM and Zswap

• 'I'm a Twenty-Five-Year-Old Who Just Bought My Local Newspaper'

• AMD plans to substantially increase supply in 2027

• Seagate and Toshiba bid for TDK's HDD head unit amid AI storage boom

• The AI boom is making the cheapest smartphones disappear

• The End of Social Media

  Algorithms and short-form video drove engagement. They also made it easier to quit.

• The Internet Runs on Cats and Porn. It's About to Get Cattier and Pornier

• Spurred on by AI usage Google Docs and Drive now support Markdown files natively

• Hackers obtain counterfeit TLS certificates for Google and other large services

• Apple's Smart Home Push Includes Doorbell, Lock, Thermostat Codeveloped with LG

Panopticon / Surveiled State

• Lawmakers Introduce Multiple Laws to Curb Flock After 404 Media Coverage

• One Minnesotan's longshot plan to take down the company behind Flock cameras

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Astronomers catch a star slowly snacking on a brown dwarf, 300 light years away

• NASA chief Jared Isaacman wants to stay ‘open-minded’ about UFOs: ‘If it’s aliens, I think NASA should have a seat at the table.’

• First contact with aliens could end in colonization and genocide if we don’t learn from history.

• Why is NASA bringing 7,500 contractors back to work as civil servants?

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI admits response to Australian government hacks 'not good enough'

  • OpenAI Does Not Trust Its Own Models, and Rightly So

  • AI Solves a Major Unsolved Math Problem. Not Everyone Is Happy

  • OpenAI agents tried to hack Wikipedia tools and flooded it with traffic

  • AI doesn't need 'superintelligence' or evil intent to start a nuclear war

  • AI's race to transform the world before the money runs out

  • Why do tech CEOs sound like doomsday cult leaders?

  • Coxon's Media Rise Was Probably Orchestrated

  A prominent PR firm with ties to AI doomsayers worked for Jacob Coxon as the ex-Anthropic researcher made national headlines for sounding the knell of the apocalypse about artificial intelligence — even as he denied working with third parties in going public with his concerns

  • An Open Letter to Steven Pinker on AI

  I agree that in-person debates are confrontational and bad for truth-seeking. But I didn’t propose a debate in order to seek truth. I proposed it because, under California Penal Code § 415(1), it’s illegal for me to challenge you to a duel. I think your public writing on this topic has been dishonorable. Out of obligation, I will respond to the meaty arguments that you have set out for me. But what would be viscerally satisfying would be to make you get up on a stage where I read your own words to you in real time and ask “Really? Really?” after each sentence. Then I could watch you squirm as you try to square your output with your status as one of America’s top public intellectuals.

• Mistral debuts Large 4 'Le Chonk', a 1T parameter text output model

  • Mistral to Release New AI Model to Better Compete with U.S. Rivals

  • Mistral unveils new AI model it says rivals best open systems from China

• Meta's Muse Is an Adorable Privacy and Security Dumpster Fire

  • Meta's Muse AI agent is building a dossier on you

• Ada Lovelace Answered the Big Questions About A.I

• Drax datacentre could double annual emissions of all Gatwick flights

• A Texas Woman Is Fighting to Stop a Data Center from Replacing a Promised Park

• Is AI the End of Math as We Know It?

• Misuse of AI is brands' top reputational threat, new survey says

• OpenAI rolls out weak sauce watermarking for AI text

• ArXiv Is Rate Limiting Submissions Because It Can't Keep Up with AI Slop

• GitHub Slams the Brakes on Private Vulnerability Reports

• Peter Norvig on AI's Future and the Limits of Trust

• My New Course at UT Austin: AI Alignment Theory

• Regular AI users are more likely to hold quality jobs

• 'Pull the plug': protesters resort to direct action against AI firms

• Anthropic Subscriptions Offer 5x+ More Value Than OpenAI

• Our minds aren't equipped to handle AI

• DeepSeek to Raise at Least $12B in Tencent-Backed Funding

• Japan's entertainment robots diversify with AI, offer comfort

• The End of Software Secrecy

• Third conversation with Claude that Anthropic reported to police since August

• Teenager rescued from B.C. 'Widowmaker' after getting stranded using Claude

• AI training of copyrighted material not fair use: Third Circuit

• AI chatbots recommend shopping at Walmart over just about anywhere else

• McDonald's dragged to court for using AI to dynamically price burgers

• Should AI pay taxes? The debate is gaining traction in the US

• In race with U.S., China struggles to recruit foreign AI researchers

• If You Want to Understand AI, Get a Dog

• Utah to let AI examine patients and prescribe medication without human oversight

• OpenAI Is Pissing Off a Bunch of Mathematicians–Again

• Finland orders halt to work on two Google data centres

• Six Charts That Show Just How Much We Need A.I

• Record labels are in a spin over AI music

• Tumbler Ridge shooter's ChatGPT use "more disturbing" than known: reporter

• Mathematical manuscripts and supporting proof artifacts produced by OpenAI

• Italian PM files to trademark her voice against AI threats

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Maryland's Guinness Open Gate Brewery shutting down; company cites rising costs

  Guinness Open Gate brewery opened in 2018 as a destination for the Guinness brand. The company estimates that more than 2 million visitors from Maryland and across the United States visited during its time in operation.

• High Diesel Prices Bankrupted 16 Trucking Companies in Just 30 Days

  Four of those operators were based in Texas, where Governor Abbott just proclaimed a statewide disaster in order to ease restrictions on the use of untaxed diesel fuel on public highways. The move was largely intended to provide relief for agricultural transportation, as most untaxed (dyed) diesel is produced for farm use. But the issue is much bigger than just agricultural trucking. High fuel prices are contributing to inflation in other sectors too. One outfit that filed for Chap. 11 protection in September was a Florida-based Amazon delivery contractor.

  • I wonder if recent CDL enforcement actions also ate into profits or made it a good time to fold, to dodge possible legal repercussions of questionable staffing decisions.

• Global diesel crunch sends cost pressures down the supply chain

• Want Lower Gas Prices? Don’t Elect A Democrat

  When news reports talk about “record high” prices, they aren’t accounting for inflation. When you do that, today’s prices are far from the highest they’ve ever been.

• Paramount wraps up Warner Bros merger

  • Paramount and Warner Bros are now one Hollywood giant: Skydance

  • Judge allows Paramount to close $110B takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery

  • Paramount completes $111B Warner merger, creating "Skydance" behemoth

  • Paramount takes over Warner Bros in $110B Hollywood merger

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Section 230 Avoids the Mess of States Prosecuting Platforms for Being Platforms

• Here's How California Closed the Montana License Plate Loophole

  the old 50% test is out. If anyone running the business is a California resident (by the updated definition outlined above), then the whole business is a California resident, and any assets (including Lamborghinis and Bugattis) held in the state are subject to California taxation. And just in case you need it spelled out, that means you’re on the hook for that tax liability as a fellow partner/member:

• Court Pauses Minnesota's Nudify Law, Which Ignored State Supreme Court's Roadmap

Democrats

• S.F. supervisor looks to restrict when landlords can evict 'nuisance' tenants

Left Angst

• Iran Plans to Win the War by Helping Democrats Win

  Iran’s endgame became obvious when its IRGC terror bosses released a letter to American voters praising “the No Kings rallies that swept across the U.S. last year”, blasting President Trump and urging Americans to vote to “change the makeup of the government” to end the war.

• Leftist networks spent millions to target conservative lawyers across America.

• Disney, ABC battle Trump's FCC in court over free speech protections

• Cable lobby to sue Trump FCC over repeal of national TV ownership cap

• Trump Mobile's latest problem: Hackers just released customer information

• Big Oil asks Supreme Court to kill climate lawsuits before trial

• The Supreme Court Won’t Save ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ From the School Censors

  Two Michigan middle-school boys wore sweatshirts bearing three words that contained no profanity: “Let’s Go Brandon.” School administrators made them take the shirts off anyway because everybody knew what the phrase meant. The justices declined Monday to hear the students' First Amendment appeal, leaving intact a divided Sixth Circuit ruling that allowed Tri County Area Schools to treat the slogan as vulgar speech. A denial of review doesn’t mean the Supreme Court endorsed that reasoning. It does mean the two students lost their last chance to overturn it in their case.

• Naked Trump statue exhibited in the European Parliament

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Trump approves firing squad for Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan's execution after Pete Hegseth's recommendation

  “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on X. Hasan killed 12 US service members, one civilian and wounded 32 others during his November 2009 rampage at the Texas Army base.

• The Silent Electronic Battleground Shaping the Future of Warfare

• Anduril lands $2.9B Navy submarine shipyard contract

• F/A-18F Super Hornet Returns from Operation Epic Fury with Sub-Buster Marking

World

• Man Sentenced to Jail for Using Robot Vacuum to Catch a Cheating Wife

  The cheated husband saved the video to use as evidence when suing the wife for infringing on his marital rights. The judge sided with the man, but then the wife fired back. She sued her husband for recording her in a private situation without her consent. Following the letter of Taiwan’s privacy laws, the courts found the man guilty of illegally filming his wife’s sexual acts.

• India Cut 130M from Voter Roll, Fueling Protests Against Modi

• Investigation into Meta's compliance with illegal content risk assessment duties

• ASOS app users receive push notifications apparently sent by hackers

  Dozens of people have told the BBC about receiving a strange message from the clothing and beauty store's app, appearing on their phone screens. "Dear ASOS DPO and IT, we have fully compromised the Snowflake instance. Engage with us, or we will leak it," the message reads.

  • Hackers sent push notifications to ASOS users

• Former German spy chief arrested for treason and espionage

  An allegedly paid informant who held high positions inside the foreign intelligence agency, or BND, is accused of providing August Hanning — the former head of the agency from 1998 to 2005 — with nearly 2,000 documents, many of them classified, over a period of a dozen years up to 2022, according to the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office. Hanning is alleged to have used the information to profit as a private consultant, according to prosecutors. In at least one case, prosecutors say Hanning allegedly used classified information to create an assessment for an employee of a foreign intelligence service.

  • Germany: Ex-spy chief arrested for espionage

  • Former German spy chief arrested, suspected of trading state secrets and treason

  • Former German spy chief arrested for attempted treason

• German Military Deploys AI to Weed Out Nazis

• Europe is pouring billions into space. Can Glasgow's satellite industry keep up?

• Saudi Arabia urged to spare man sentenced to death over Facebook post

• Alleged NATO spy case brings 'some serious lessons' for Canada, says minister

• British Army Brings Cavalry Back – Like with Horses

• Kabul, Afghanistan is on track to run out of water by 2030

• Horn of Africa fears spillover effect of renewed fighting

• UBS CEO warns 'hard measures' are needed to tackle French debt crisis

• Denmark's ID register spills more people's details than the country has residents

• Uber drivers in Europe challenge opaque algorithms for pay and ride assignments

• 'No more Viktor Orbán': EU plans 15-year probation period for new member states

  Under the plans Kos published on Tuesday, any new EU member state would face a 15-year probation period, during which they could be stripped of voting rights or EU funds for breaching basic democratic values or loyalty to the EU, the principle of sincere cooperation. The plans would have to be agreed by EU member states.

Iran / Houthi

• 100 warplanes join Operation Dawn of Yemen as coalition destroys 324 high-value targets

• Houthis bombed in Yemen; injuries as Saudi airports attacked

• Yemeni government forces seize strategic strait from Houthis

• Five Hormuz Incidents Reported Monday as Tanker Attacks Mount.

Israel

• The Flydubai attacker’s motive was even darker than we thought

  Hammami reportedly told investigators that after killing the captain, he had intended to continue towards Israel as though making a normal landing approach, then divert at the last possible moment and crash into Ben Gurion airport. He also considered high-rise buildings in Tel Aviv. His calculation was straightforward and chilling: get close enough before revealing his intention that Israeli fighter aircraft would have no time to intervene.

• Exclusive | Crew of hijacked flydubai plane fought with Israeli passengers to free the terrorist

  “They were asking us to untie the terrorist — we had no idea why,” said banking executive Tzvika Manes, one of the three civilians who took down the would-be hijacker. “They were saying to free the terrorist — we got instantly suspicious of them,” said real estate professional Daniel Schlichter, who was sitting in the second row, close to the cockpit.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Bulgarian prime minister says 2 commercial vessels hit by drones

  Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said two commercial vessels were struck by drones on Tuesday in the first attack on shipping in the NATO member’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea. The attacks came a day after a Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying corn caught fire following a drone attack and later sank in the Black Sea. Two people died and 11 crew members were rescued, Romanian authorities said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described that attack as “a horrific strike by two Russian drones on a civilian vessel” in neutral waters.

  • Drones hit two ships off coast of Bulgaria, sinking one

• Drones buzz overhead, troops hunker underground in Ukraine's hellish kill zone

China

• Almost half of China's workforce is now in the gig economy

• A New Crop of Solar Panels Is the U.S.'s Best Hope of Catching China

Health / Medicine

• Scientists Might Have Found a New Cause of High Blood Pressure

• Weight-loss drugs show signs of slowing biological aging, say drugmakers

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Trump administration closely monitoring reports of plague death, lab accident in Russia

  • The Russian Plague

  • Checklists, masks and mystery: What we know about the plague scare in Russia

  “They’re telling everyone that it wasn’t the plague but pneumonia. Yet hospitals are still under quarantine, and ambulance doctors are driving around in full Covid protective suits.”

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Nature's capacity to 'bounce back' when species are lost is vastly overestimated

• High school student develops membrane-free filter for microplastics from water

• 3D-Printed Filter Removes Most Microplastics From Water

• California Prepares to Ban Quartz Countertop Production

• 5k-Year-Old Arrowhead Emerges from Norway's Rapidly Melting Mountain Ice