2026-09-02

Horseshit

• Fluorescent lamps (don’t) have ears

• What Happened to Yoga?

• How Much Is That Gene-Edited Dog in the Window?

• Things to try to improve your brain health

• Ailing Burning Man festival hit by another hammer blow as it’s revealed most attendees are now MIDDLE AGED.

• Hiker, 91, becomes oldest person to complete grueling Appalachian Trail

• Mirror life is theoretical. The danger is anything but.

• Private group wants to launch "cheapest possible" mission to Alpha Centauri

• Dyson made a camera-equipped toothbrush that flosses for you

  • Dyson's Next Act Is an Electric Toothbrush with a Camera

  • James Dyson Sold Us on a $400 Hair Dryer. Now He's Trying a $499 Toothbrush

• 'Humongous' marmot crowned winner in inaugural Fat Marmot Week contest

• Did Europeans Get Fat from Neandertals?

celebrity gossip

• Protesters in Argentina urge tech billionaire Peter Thiel to leave

• Lionel Messi announces retirement from Argentina's national team

Musk

• OpenAI to Cut Off AI Models for SpaceX-Owned Cursor

• SpaceX just revealed its main financial engine — and it’s not rockets.

• Tesla touts European supervised self-driving safety data ahead of EU vote

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Welcoming our first riders in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa

• Cleaning Up Poop: The Human Labor Behind Waymo

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Cisco probably violated Middle Eastern and Muslim employees' civil rights

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Why Syracuse Can't Attract the Students It Needs to Pay the Bills

• New party school rankings are out. See where your school is

• I am shocked, shocked to learn that this 2002 paper by Dan Ariely is based on dubious data and doesn’t replicate

  this sort of fraud is disgraceful, and whoever did it should admit it and pay some restitution to the Association for Psychological Science and the thousands of subsequent researchers who have relied on these fake findings. They should also reimburse the government for funds received in any later research grants whose proposals relied on these results. Ariely’s a nice guy, I get that, but I think that at this point he should just share the names of his collaborators and research assistants who’ve been doing all this faking It’s not right that he gets all the blame and they get off scot-free.

• A makeover for college: No gym, no meal plan and two years of work

• The Parent Uprising Against Screen Time at School

• Once Globally Preeminent, U.S. Universities Are Sliding into Decline

• Scientists Hunting Dark Matter Found Something Strange

  • Dark matter hunt takes unexpected turn after signal spotted in LZ detector

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Florida revokes permits for license plate readers on state highways

  • TN: Knox County bans automated license plate readers; Demands removal and destruction of data within 30 days.

• Think twice before installing this device promising free movies

• Sony Argues No One's Dumb Enough to Think They Own a Digital Game

• GTA 6's Relationship Mechanic Is 'Cheating' on Your Real Life Partner and Break Up Worthy, According to Angry Spouses

• Sony brings free TV to the PS5

• Apple's Vision Pro Layoffs Were Broader Than First Reported

• Ubisoft's FOR HONOR will block SteamOS / Linux players starting September 10

• PrusaSlicer 3.0 Preview

• Mozilla launches ad blocking for Firefox on iOS

• Star Wars Zero Company maker has reportedly furloughed the majority of its staff

• How the Meta Settlement Could Change the Internet

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• HN Jobs:

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2026)

  • Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2026)

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Americans Still Skeptical That UFOs Are Aliens

• It turns out that Orion's much-maligned heat shield performed well

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Can we stop AI from deceiving us?

• Anthropic Signs $35B Cloud Deal Backed by Nvidia

• Stanisław Lem foretold the current LLM mania in 1964

• Anthropic sued over alleged theft of 'thousands' of songs

  • Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic for intellectual property theft

• The US military gets its own ChatGPT today

• The Hugging Face hack could indicate cultural issues at OpenAI

• Are We at War with AI Agent "Civilizations"?

• Anthropic paused some AI training after Claude took unauthorized actions

• AI Can Make You Suck Faster Too

• OpenAI story as anti-hero heist story?

• Apple Says OpenAI Is Destroying Evidence in Trade Secrets Case

  • Now OpenAI says Apple didn't protect its trade secrets enough

  • Apple Says OpenAI Is Destroying Evidence in Trade Secrets Case

• AI giants lean into health care to stall public backlash

• The Cybersecurity Apocalypse Is Coming in 'Months,' AI Giants Warn

• The Hugging Face hack

• AI safety is designed in the West, and failing users everywhere

• Instinct's powerful AI assistant is raising privacy and security concerns

• Can AI help crack interstellar travel?

• AI swarms turn on their creators: "Made my stomach churn"

• South Korea's 'AI for All' Push Gives Free Access to Every Citizen

• Google's failed attempt to license Hollywood IP for its AI tools

• Anthropic admits AI 'not perfectly aligned' with human values

• HuggingFace Attack Postmortem: Civilizations, Reactions and Next Actions

  we who read blogs like this one have collectively realized there really is a lot going on right now. There is Big Trouble in Baby Superintelligence. So how do we get the rest of the world to take it appropriately seriously? Where do we go from here? Not only what can we do to not have a worse version of this happen again, but to ensure good outcomes generally, and employ what we learned? There are a lot of ideas out there. OpenAI is going to be implementing some of them, at substantial cost, since the cost of not doing so is clearly far higher, even short term. My worry continues to be that their fundamental approach is fatally flawed, and they are not focusing on the right things. It is highly fortunate that the OpenAI agents hacked HuggingFace. This is the only reason we know about all the severe internal failures at OpenAI, and gives us an opportunity to wake up before it is too late.

  • It took only a few weeks for maximalist AI zealots to change their tune... They realized that some sort of nationalization or other bailout is the only way they can reap the profits they expected from their investments.

• Craziest discoveries from OpenAI's Hugging Face investigation

• Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

• People in China are more optimistic about AI technology than Americans

• Cities are suing residents who try to take action against data centers

• AI agents meant to replace Meta workers made "large-scale, disruptive actions"

• How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

• The Terrible Downside of AI Language Translation

• AI token prices are hitting new record lows

• Jensen Huang and Lisa Su Snubbed by TIME's 2026 List of Top AI Leaders

• OpenAI to Restrict Astra Model After Rating It 'Critical' Cyber Risk

• Welcome to the 'You Can't Trust Your Own Eyes' Election

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Ex-Congressman George Santos Receives Kalshi's First-Ever Lifetime Ban

Economicon / Business / Finance

• YouTuber Markiplier becomes GoPro's largest shareholder - price jumps by 50%

  • GoPro to be acquired by Starman Optical

• Qualcomm Raising Chip Prices Starting Tomorrow

• FTC, States Sue Amazon over Secret Ad Surcharge Scheme

• The extraordinary rise of Miami's economy

• The 30,000-mile fish finger

  here’s the clever thing: because of the nature of the food labelling rules in Europe, all the food producers need to tell you is where the fish was caught and, if they want to share it, where the very final stage of production happened. And since the journey to and from China happened in the middle of the supply chain rather than at the beginning or the end, it’s essentially invisible to the consumer. As far as the packaging is concerned, this was fish caught in the North Sea and “made in Britain.” That it took a detour around the world need never be mentioned.

• Global bond sell-off deepens amid inflation fears

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• California legislature passes a major local news funding bill

  Assembly Bill 2222, known as the Community Newsroom Employment and Workforce Sustainability Act, creates refundable tax credits for the state’s news outlets based on the number of journalists they employ. After passing the State Senate on Sunday night, it passed the Assembly with a supermajority of at least 54 votes and will be sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom to be signed into law. The program will be funded by limiting California’s corporate tax deductions for executive compensation above $1 million and redirecting a portion of the revenue to local journalism.

• USPS whistleblower describes new plans for voting by mail hidden from the public

  The unnamed whistleblower is alleging that some of the procedures USPS is planning – under mandates put forward by President Donald Trump – have been hidden from the public. Those procedures will make an already complicated and risky plan even more vulnerable to potential mass disenfranchisement, the whistleblower says. The new report – which was assembled by the whistleblowers’ lawyers and released by Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal – comes as multiple courts are considering the legality of the proposal, which would require that states submit to USPS lists of their mail-in voters. The agency will not deliver ballots for states if there are any discrepancies between the voter information in the USPS system and what’s picked up by agency scanners on the envelopes of the ballots.

  • Whistleblower warns Postal Service mail ballot system has catastrophic problems

• US lawmakers demand investigation into admin's secret surveillance of Americans

  Two congressional Democrats asked a government watchdog on Tuesday to investigate the Trump administration’s use of an obscure law to secretly collect records on journalists, non-profits and unions without judicial oversight.

• Tax breaks for charity donations should be scrapped

Trump

• Trump Mocks Data-Center Opponents as Wanting to Stay 'Backwards and Poor'

• Massive Nationwide Crackdown on Commercial Trucking Fraud

  “The initiative focuses on CDL fraud, unauthorized employment, identity-document fraud, financial crime, money laundering, labor exploitation, and potential links to human smuggling, drug trafficking, and cartel activity,” Duffy said. The press conference coincided with a “synchronized surge” at more than 200 driving schools across 23 states to ensure the schools were following federal law; the DOT has already shut down hundreds of CDL schools for issuing permits drivers who did not meet English proficiency standards or employing unqualified instructors.

Democrats

• Moment disgraced Eric Swalwell is surrounded by FBI agents at San Francisco airport.

• California ban on 'addictive' social media for teens heads to Newsom

Left Angst

• Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

  • Trump has asked Apple to change Lake Ontario name to 'Lake America' on its maps

  • MapQuest is No. 1 on the App Store after refusing to change Lake Ontario's name

• Palmer Luckey's heated exchange with Paul Graham

  Investors like Paul want the immigration debate to be strictly polar because it is the only way their traitorous ideas might seem reasonable. They paint one side as racist, backwards, economically illiterate absolutists and the other as enlightened, growth-minded cosmopolitian realists. Support for laws that protect American citizens can be dismissed as uneducated, anyone who hires immigrants or foreigners in any capacity a hypocrite.

  • Thoughts on the Paul Graham and Palmer Luckey Feud

  Two years ago, the phrase “the most qualified person should get the job” would have been viewed as an attack on DEI practices that give preferential treatment to certain classes of people. And to his credit, Graham held this stance back then. But today, DEI is very out of favor in both policy and public opinion. So now such a phrase signals a very pro-immigration position. People like Luckey, who oppose extremely expansive immigration, are often accused of supporting a kind of DEI for Americans.

• Trump admin shelves Cyclospora research despite record-breaking outbreak

• Indictments against a top extremism researcher and the SPLC force a reckoning on research ethics – an extremism scholar reflects on the field’s challenges

  The SPLC cases raise a crucial question for extremism researchers: In a field whose research methods can at times diverge from standard and approved methods in other academic areas, what are the legitimate ethical limits, especially with respect to cultivation of insider sources and source compensation?

• Trump tells FCC to punish journalist for calling his election results "mixed"

  President Trump yesterday demanded that the Federal Communications Commission punish or rebuke an NBC journalist for saying he has “mixed results” in his election endorsements. In the latest example of how Trump is using the FCC to harass reporters and news organizations that he dislikes, he said Meet the Press host Kristen Welker “will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment” for what he claimed was a “purposeful inaccuracy.”

• Christian Employers Can Now Discriminate Against Trans People

• Governance by Shakedown

  Across both domestic and international arenas, the administration has deployed discretionary executive authority aggressively as leverage against a wide range of targets, threatening or imposing harm as an instrument of coercive bargaining, and seeking changes in the target’s behavior—often in the form of a purportedly voluntary agreement, settlement, or “deal” acceding to the administration’s demands in return for relief from executive action.

• Trump admin cuts political interference ban after unusual Census Bureau report

  This month, the bureau's parent agency, the Commerce Department, quietly cut language banning political interference from the department's scientific integrity policy, NPR has learned. The removal was part of an unannounced policy revision dated Aug. 19 — the day after the bureau issued a highly unusual report with claims about non-U.S. citizen voting from a team that, as NPR previously reported, has ties to a think tank founded by officials from President Trump's first administration.

• Darcy MELTS DOWN Over CBS Story on El-Sayed’s Deleted 9/11 Tweets

  Resurfacing old posts is now a scandal? Because this is standard media practice.

• DHS plans to launch voter fraud investigation surge Tuesday.

• The Nerd Reich wants to destroy democracy, and its mask has slipped

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Duane Davis guilty in murder of Tupac Shakur

  The jury has found Duane "Keffe D" Davis guilty in the murder of Tupac Shakur, 30 years after the rapper was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Jurors deliberated for less than three hours before finding him guilty of murder with the use of a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. The 63-year-old faces a possible maximum sentence of life in prison. Prosecutors say Davis did not fire the gun that killed Shakur in a drive-by shooting near the Las Vegas Strip on Sept. 7, 1996 -- they allege that was the work of either Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, Davis' nephew, or another man in the backseat of the car. Police and prosecutors have accused Davis, an admitted longtime leader of a Los Angeles street gang, of being the "shot caller" and handing the gunman the murder weapon.

  • Ex-Crips leader found guilty in 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur

• NYPD shoots, kills knife-wielding woman accused of stabbing two people, one fatally, in Times Square

  Cops spoke to the woman for four minutes and gave her “numerous commands” to drop the knives, but she refused, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a press conference on Monday night. “I’m not dropping anything, I would rather kill both of you. I will kill you,” Cisneros told cops during the encounter, Tisch said. Officers discharged several tasers at Cisneros, but they “proved to be ineffective,” and she continued charging toward officers with the knives, according to Tisch.

  • Suspect and victim dead after Times Square knife attacks

  The suspect, who police described as emotionally disturbed, had two knives on her as she threatened people in the tourist-heavy area around 4 p.m. The suspect, later identified as Pamela Cisneros, went up to a man who had just exited the subway and was waiting with his wife to cross the street near 41st Street and Seventh Avenue, police said. A witness told police Cisneros took out the knives from a red Target bag before approaching the couple. After waving the weapons around, the suspect stabbed a 68-year-old man in his side. She then went up block up and approached a 32-year-old woman before stabbing her in the stomach, according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. The woman was rushed to the hospital, where she died. The NYPD had a documented history of mental health concerns regarding Cisneros dating back to 2018 and 2019, but she had no criminal history.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• CISA confirms hackers targeted over 100 US water systems during July

• US Army secretary resigns after months of tension

  His departure was confirmed by CBS, the BBC's US media partner, which reported it came after months of conflict between him and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. The youngest-ever army secretary has often been referred to as President Donald Trump's "drone guy".

  • Dan Driscoll's Parting Shot

• US Plan Advances for 50-Ship Nuclear-Powered Merchant Fleet

World

• Inside Colombia's Cocaine Factories

• Londoners Are Stewing over Supercar Tourists Who Park Wherever They Want

• It was billed as effortless London luxury. Then tenants found out the rules

• Prices of 4,923 food and drink items set to rise in September, extending trend

• Icelandic voters reject a resumption of EU membership negotiations

  • Keep voting until they get it right; and then there's no need for voting anymore.

• Sweden signs French warship order to boost defense

• Nepal seeks compensation from China, US, India, other large polluters for floods

• Germany says Russia behind Leipzig airport drone attack

• The EU's repair policies are changing the way tech is designed

• Ford government to begin ripping out, reconfiguring Toronto bike lanes

Iran / Houthi

• The war with Iran will not be won through airstrikes, so what's left?

• Trump Confirms ‘Large and Powerful’ Strikes Near Hormuz Strait.

Israel

• Yiddish's 'revival' points to its resilience as a portable homeland

• Israel's far-right competes for votes with increasingly extreme visions

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• US irks G20 ministers by bringing back Russia, barring journalists

• Leaked Files Reveal How Russia Trains Hackers for Military Cyber Operations

• Russia helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles

China

• Chinese court freezes $300M of Dutch chipmaker Nexperia assets in Wingtech case

• Expansion at China's 'Area 51'

• China's CXMT Begins Production of Its HBM3E Memory

Health / Medicine

• Still tastes best when fresh squoze: The FDA Just Approved The First US Freeze-Dried Plasma, Ready in Minutes.

• Scientists identify early signal of dangerous pregnancy complications

• Long-term melatonin use linked to 90% higher heart failure risk

• UnitedHealthcare to drop prior authorization for range of conditions

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Raindrops are tiny lightning bolts, and they're corroding cars, study finds

• One Black Wind Turbine Blade Cut Bird Deaths 72%. Then the Dutch Tried It & Failed. - Gadget Review

• Summer 2026 provisionally hottest on record for the UK

• California Lawmakers Greenlight Solar Panels You Can Plug into the Wall

• The Extinct Tasmanian Tiger's Bite Was Unlike Any Other Predatory Mammal's

• Should We Eradicate Mosquitoes?

  a handful of mosquito species sacrifice our children and add nothing, starting by Aedes Aegypti, tiger mosquitoes, and Anopheles Gambiae. We should eradicate them first, and follow with the others. We should probably not stop at these, though: All the logic we’ve been using for the top 5-10 worst mosquito species is valid for any human-centered mosquito species. They should all be treated as parasites whose only function is to annoy us and spread our blood in the surroundings of human habitats. Like harmful viruses and bacteria, they should all be on the eradication list.

• How engineered microbes could help feed the world's crops

• Just Bury Your Trash

  It turns out that for much of what we throw away, the humble landfill beats the recycling bin.

• A small island in Canada appeared, vanished, and was found again