2026-09-30

Horseshit

• Liability concerns, and theft: You Are No Longer Invited to Dinner

• Secret Silicon Valley 'Sex Misconduct List' with 100 Men Warns Female Workers

• Why the Bronze Age Collapsed

  The resulting power vacuum set the stage for new empires to emerge, but that did not happen. Something was preventing the reconsolidation of small polities into vast empires. The causes of the Bronze Age collapse are still debated by historians: a series of severe droughts; the sudden appearance of mysterious Sea Peoples, who raided along the Mediterranean coast; the disruption of the tin trade routes; internal revolts; or possibly all of these at once. But there is another unifying factor that could have prevented the resurgence of empires: iron.

• Strangers don't scare me. But raising kids who can't solve their own problems does.

  Kids today are safer than we were when we were their age, but much less able to do anything on their own.

• Why Doesn't Anyone Want to Fix One of America's Scariest Roads?

  Highway 550 is the most avalanche-prone road that’s open year-round in the United States.

• "Slutcon" is just an organized pimping ring

• No errors, no warnings, no gods, no masters: HTML Purity is a Fetish

  If it is OK to write bad HTML, why do some of us fetishise "pure" HTML? I think it comes down to an ingrained belief that it is polite to reduce ambiguity. It is nice to be precise5. It reduces the cognitive burden on anyone (or anything) which reads what we have written. We are holding up our end of the social contract by producing something unadulterated and easy to comprehend. It reduces the likelihood of different browsers rendering things differently but, almost on a cellular level, we feel that things must be done properly. The browser doesn't care about your inability to follow standards. But you should have some fucking self-respect and do it anyway.

• Dyson Won't Say What's Wrong with Its CameraJet Toothbrush

celebrity gossip

• How Sign O' the Times captured Prince at his creative peak

Obit

• Saved by the Bell star Dennis Haskins dies aged 75

Musk

• SpaceX Starship reaches orbit, deploys 26 satellites, returns early

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Marriage Nihilism

  On a superficial level, a same-sex “marriage” would not affect my marriage for the same reasons that none of the various forms of postmodern marriage (e.g., polygamous, polyamorous, bigamous, incestuous, pedophilic, or interspecies) would affect my marriage. If two men want to marry, if a man and five women want to marry, if ten men and women want to marry each other, or if a woman wants to marry a dolphin, none of these unions will have any effect on my marriage in the same way that no other heterosexual marriage affects mine. Why not? On one level, all these relationships are private matters that do not have any bearing on my marriage, which is also a private matter. The simple truth of the matter is that there are only two people in the entire world who could affect my marriage: I am one and the other is my wife.

  On a deeper and more fundamental level, same-sex marriage will unquestionably affect my liberties and opportunities in innumerable ways; it will affect my marriage indirectly and in meaningful ways; and it will certainly affect the way future generations experience marriage. The postmodern view of “marriage” will impose a variety of “negative externalities” on society and therefore actually harm the institution of marriage—and my marriage with it.

  By democratizing and disconnecting marriage from its metaphysical roots, the postmodern view of marriage will inject a major dose of subjectivism, egalitarianism, and moral relativism into America’s marriage culture. It is grounded in the subjectivist premise that marriage is simply about individual wants, feelings, and needs, on the egalitarian premise that marriage is about companionship and all companionships are equal, and on the relativist principle that we cannot rank, distinguish, or judge one form of romantic union from another. The postmodern view makes different things the same and it makes unequal things equal.

• We Asked AI To Recreate The Lesbian Bar Drama From Actual Reports

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Firefox 157 released with 'biggest visual refresh in years'

  • Firefox just got a redesign with round tabs, new themes, and Compact Mode

• Sony Skipping 2027 CES Trade Show After 60 Years

• Why Windows NT "puts Linux to shame"

• TikTok to Pay Alabama $100M to Settle Social Media Addiction Claims

• Intel patent embedding MicroLEDs directly into CPU as an 'aesthetic component'

  • Few things happen slow enough for blinkenlights to be informative anymore, alas.

• Google ending ChromeOS support two years early

• Sony Japan locks PS5 Pro orders behind a 60-hour playtime requirement

• New Investigation Reveals How Easily Connected Cars Can Be Hacked.

Panopticon / Surveiled State

• My City Just Banned Flock After My Wrongful Stop Made National News

• Surveillance Company Tells Cops It Adds Facial Recognition to Flock Cameras

• Car's data privacy problems are worse than you think

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• ESP32 can stream raw I/Q up to 80MSPS 10bit on 2GHz/5GHz from WiFi/BT Stage

  With the help of LLMs, we discovered an undocumented feature in Espressif's ESP32 chips that bypasses the fixed-function modems to capture raw IQ baseband samples. ESP-SDR uses this feature to turn supported chips into low-cost software-defined radio receivers for the 2.4 GHz band (and the 5 GHz band on the ESP32-C5).

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• The austronauts are 'excited' too; i bet: Boeing "incredibly excited" to serve as nation's only astronaut transportation

• Mysterious 'UFO' spotted on SpaceX livestream

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Timnit Gebru Believes There Is No 'Existential Threat' from AI

  • As AI models go rogue, do you still trust OpenAI and Anthropic to stop them?

  • Money, hoping to divert responsibility for the bubble pop: What's Behind the AI Panic

  • AI risk is not sentience by computers, it is negligence by humans

  • Mistral CEO says U.S. AI safety debate masks competitors' 'negligence'

  • Mistral CEO accuses competitors of 'negligence'

  • Bill Gates's Blunt Warning on A.I

  • Gates Foundation 5 Year Goal: Help 3B People to Use AI in Their Language

  • Florida invokes extinction fears in legal bid to halt OpenAI development

  • Stop shaming people for using AI. Start organizing to prevent our obsolescence

• Anthropic warns of 'existential risks to humanity' in IPO prospectus

  • Anthropic warns AI may pose 'existential risks to humanity' in IPO filing

  • Anthropic warns AI may pose 'existential risks to humanity' in IPO filing

  • Anthropic's prospectus details losses, growth, and, yes, a warning that its AI could end humanity

  • Anthropic IPO prospectus reveals surging costs, $42B 2025 net loss

  • Anthropic leaders to control company via 'Founder LLC'

  • Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows AI vision, surging costs

  • Leaked Anthropic IPO Prospectus

  • Anthropic's $518B AI buildout hinges largely on deals that cannot be canceled

• Muse gives out your home address without telling you

  • Meta's new AI agent built lists of people in vulnerable groups on request

  • Unsurprisingly, Meta's new Muse AI agent blatantly ignores users permissions

• OpenAI scraps release of new model over safety concerns

  • Towards safety cases for frontier AI training

  • OpenAI axes next model citing safety issues

  • OpenAI scraps rollout of new model over safety concerns

  • OpenAI scraps release of new AI model over safety concerns

  • OpenAI apologises for Medicare hack and reveals extent of attack

  • How We Will Do Better for Australia

  • OpenAI still doesn't seem to have a handle on all its rogue AI activity.

  • OpenAI Halts New Model over Safety Worries

  • OpenAI blocked its agent's web access. Then it tunneled out through DNS

  • OpenAI apologizes to Australia after its AI agents breached government sites

  • OpenAI Ignored Employees Who Warned It Wasn't Doing Enough About Security

  • OpenAI Gets Sued over the Hugging Face Hack

  • OpenAI hit with landmark lawsuit following Hugging Face hack

• Did Anthropic's A.I. Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own?

  • When can we say AI made a scientific discovery?

• Tech's Trillion-Dollar Internal Inconsistency

  either tech's customers will generate a lot more cash than their analysts expect, or tech's cash flow forecasts are too optimistic, which raises the question of who exactly will be writing all those checks to buy AI services.

• 20 seconds of speech could help detect type 2 diabetes using AI-based tool

• U.K. funder uses 'AI triage' to reject grant proposals

• AI is turning the world into slop

• Stanford and Nvidia's open Jev-like model

• Getting AI drunk makes it more likely to break rules and share secrets

• Humans Are Reading Copilot Prompts – and They're Horrified

• AI Agents Are About to Flood the Workforce. No One's Ready for It

• AI was supposed to hit new grads hard. So far, unemployment data says otherwise.

• Condé, Hearst among 300 media execs to push federal bad bots bill on AI scraping

• Oracle's Jupiter datacenter in Mexico on hold

• Meta Has Hired MongoDB CEO Chirantan Desai for AI Push

• A surprising number of Americans use AI for spiritual reasons

• Autonomous AI in Space Exploration Raises New Stakes

• Dead Money

  the talking point that NVIDIA’s GPU sales are proof of actual demand for AI services or, indeed, that hyperscaler growth is a result of all those capital expenditures is a complete lie. In reality, at least half of all those chip sales — and I’d add in Broadcom’s TPU sales too (see my Hater’s guide for more) — are being made years before anything actually happens with the chips, making the trillion-plus dollars spent on capex so far seem somewhere between optimistic and utterly incoherent.

• The U.S. government launched an AI chatbot

• Did the Associated Press Hurt AI's Feelings?

• AI models keep posting screenshots showing sensitive data from inside companies

• McDonald's push to have AI price your Big Mac

• Students Call It Hypocrisy

• DraftKings Is Using AI to Behaviorally Target Chronic Gamblers

• Rats are constantly talking to each other. Boston is using AI to eavesdrop

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Oura Postpones IPO

• The ASML Monopoly: Platform and Ecosystem Leadership in EUV Lithography

• The booming business of insuring against US gun violence

• Egg producers reach federal and state settlement over price-fixing allegations

  As part of the agreement, the companies will be required to provide a combined 53 million eggs to food banks and community organizations in states party to the settlement and pay the states $3.3 million, according to a June 29 complaint filed by the Justice Department and states.

• U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve Falls to Lowest Level Since 1982

  • US to Tap More Oil from Emergency Reserve as Fuel Prices Surge

• The 'Colossal Headache' of Building a Made-in-America Monopoly Game

• US job openings fall in August; layoffs remain low

• Nvidia Adds $150B to Stock Buyback, the Largest

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• NSA, military cyber forces will guard US election systems during midterms

Trump

• Trump asked Xi Jinping if China would like to buy US weapons

• Trump says he and tech leaders signed AI agreement that is 'morally binding'

  • Trump says he'll order AI be renamed 'super intelligence' after meeting execs

  • Trump to sign order renaming AI as 'superintelligence'

  • Trump orders US Government to call AI 'Super Intelligence'

  • Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence

  • Trump and major AI executives sign "morally binding" voluntary controls

• Why Dario Amodei was the notable absentee from Trump's dinner with Xi

Democrats

• Judge Orders New York to Scrap Rollout of Second-Home Tax and Start Over

Left Angst

• Remote Wyoming vacation lodge emerges as haven for US 'dissident' right

• Education Department formally rescinds Title IX protections for LGBTQ students

• Inside Texas immigration court where children fight to stay in the US

• Google and Microsoft's Politically Biased Spam Filtering Obstructed $117 Million in Fundraising for Trump & GOP

• Media manipulates economic gloom — and it’s all about the midterms.

• Once Recession-Proof, D.C. Feels the Pain From Federal Workforce Reductions.

• Trump touts America.gov, but its AI answers undercut many of his statements

  • America.gov launches, but with a trial font, raising licensing questions for GSA

• The Militia and the Mole

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• California scientist emerges as possible 1982 Tylenol murders suspect

• Tennessee to execute a woman for first time in 200 years

  Christa Pike, a woman who was convicted of murder 30 years ago, is set to be put to death on Wednesday after her request for clemency was denied by Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, on Monday. If the execution goes through, she will be the first woman executed in the state in 200 years. Pike, who is now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend, who was 17 at the time, killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, one of their classmates at Knoxville Job Corps in 1995. The case received widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of the people involved, and because a satanic symbol was carved into the victim’s body.

  • Tennessee is set to execute a woman for the first time in 200 years

• Couple Accused of Killing Their Son-in-Law in Bay Area Park

• USPS shuts down site that sold 5M counterfeit postage labels for $2 each

  “The alleged scheme was simple but massive: sell counterfeit postage online at fixed, cut-rate prices, as little as $2 per label, regardless of a package’s weight, size, or destination, enabling customers to avoid legitimate Postal Service charges,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida. “The indictment alleges more than 5.1 million counterfeit labels and more than $126 million in losses.

  • Meanwhile fake "forever stamps" are widely advertised online

• FBI Announces ShinyHunters Arrest

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• NASA Asked Several Former SR-71A Blackbird Staffers to Help Secret Restart

• US Forces Exit Iraq

• Cluster of 5 suicides at Fort Meade’s Cyber Command raises questions

  Five people whose work supported missions at U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency at Fort George G. Meade died by suicide within a month of each other this summer.

• Alternatives to GPS are around the corner

• US bans $1 Billion in Canadian imports, including alcohol, dairy and motorcycles

• The Thaad Delusion

World

• Chat Control: EU states want to legalize comprehensive mass scans indirectly

• Britain overtaxes well-paid workers

• Japan holds first panel meeting on anti-espionage measures

• Singapore's Bet on Chipmaking

• Delhi Cut Electricity Loss from 50 to 5 Percent

• How Asia Has Survived the Energy Crisis

• Japan's population fell 2.5% between 2020 and 2025, census shows

• French public debt soars to 119% of GDP, highest level since 1946

• Spain Announces Ban on Evictions

• Murdered for their eyes: people with albinism living in terror in Madagascar

Iran / Houthi

• IRGC writes an open letter to American people

Israel

• New Google Maps imagery shows destruction of the Gaza Strip

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine's army is experimenting with using Steam Decks to remote-control turrets

• Russia's Jet-Powered Shahed Drones Are Quickly Evolving

China

• China Broadens Travel Curbs to Encompass Family of Top AI Talent

  • China broadens travel curbs to encompass family of top AI talent

• Former PLA Officers Eavesdrop on South Korean, U.S. Military Bases

Health / Medicine

• 1 in 8 cancer cases worldwide are caused by infections, study finds

• What If A.D.H.D. Isn't About Attention at All?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Inner Core's 2.35° Swing May Drive Earth's Day-Length Drift

• El Niño bursts through temperature record months before peak

• Bananas That Don't Go Brown to Hit Supermarkets Thanks to DNA Editing

• An amoeba that can survive and swim at 147 degrees F

• The night sky is getting 10% brighter every year. We're forgetting darkness

• How El Niño Made the Atlantic Hurricane Season Disappear

• Scientists identify new species of penguin, first in more than a century

• Scientists Reveal What Could Happen if Yellowstone Erupted Now.