2026-10-15

Horseshit

• Oldest shipwreck found off coast of Turkey

  • World’s oldest shipwreck discovered off coast of Turkey

• New York City's iconic horse-drawn carriages expected to take their last trot

• We Know How to Fix Homelessness. Why Don't More Cities Do It?

• Grace Hopper Conference canceled two weeks before start due to lack of funds

• Goldigging gals are flocking to Silicon Valley to land rich husbands in AI

• Stuffing a Ford Maverick Inside a Boeing 737 Isn't Easy, but It's Doable

• In 1960, scientists predicted the world would end on November 13, 2026: And yes, doomsday falls on Friday the 13th.

  “Von Foerster didn’t know at the time, and in fact, nobody knew” that the all-time population growth had already happened, Cohen adds. “The all-time peak happened in the early 1960s.”

• Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men

• Dogs Seem to Agree with Humans That 'Bouba' Is Round and 'Kiki' Is Spiky

• Leap seconds face judgment day as time lords prepare to vote

celebrity gossip

• Martin Shkreli livestreamed himself violating lifetime pharma ban

• Greta Thunberg joins French teens on new day of school protests

• Why Led Zeppelin said yes to Netflix’s $280m Narnia nightmare

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• 2026 is shaping up to be "a super El Niño year for local news"

• Drone Strikes Didn't Take Out Russian Bot Farm, but We Were Primed to Believe It

  On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that a Ukrainian bombing strike on Yandex’s data centers, a large Russian technology company, had led to a sudden decrease in bot activity online. “When our strikes reached Yandex’s data centers, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms,” Zelenskyy declared, speaking at the opening of the Warsaw Security Forum. There was, he added, “less hate, less division, and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots. And it’s pretty clear where those bots were coming from.” The claim quickly picked up speed, and gained specificity: that following the Ukrainian strikes, all kinds of internet users were suddenly less present online, including MAGA accounts, those supporting Reform UK, and ones supporting AfD, the German ultra-right party. A Polish political scientist shared claims that bot activity supporting AfD had dropped by 56 percent, a post that was viewed millions of times and has since been deleted. As Radio Free Europe has reported, a Czech politician shared a similar claim, writing, “So much talk about German patriotism…then the connection from Russia goes down.”

  The underlying claim, in other words, was that a great deal of political activity online across a number of countries is inauthentic and led by Russian bots. Their sudden alleged silencing was a simple, feel-good story amidst the endless fight against online disinformation. The only problem was that it simply wasn’t true.

  • Why claims that Ukraine drone attack halted Russian bot traffic don't hold up

• Elon Musk's foundation is opaque, miserly and self-serving

Musk

• France accuses Elon Musk of 'online harassment' of Europe leaders

  • French minister accuses Musk of 'online harassment campaigns' against leaders

• No single person has spent more money to harm EVs than Tesla CEO Elon Musk

Electric / Self Driving cars

• We're Learning to Live with Waymos. It's Going Weird

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• How winning a Nobel Prize can give you delusions of grandeur

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Reportedly Nvidia stops the production of 5090 GPU

  • Nvidia Reportedly Ending the RTX 5090, Reserves GB202 for Workstation GPUs

  • Nvidia RTX 5090 Reportedly Dead

• NetBSD may have found a new role: The AI-free FOSS OS

• Plex adding unskippable ads before and during movies playing off home server

• Mobile phone sales plunge to lowest level in 14 years

• Elevation Lab Pulls AirTag Silencer After Stalking Concerns

• Google is silently linking your phone number across all signed-in accounts

• US report details extent of 'devastating' dating-app scams

Panopticon / Surveiled State

• Calls for Ban as Reform Politician Use Meta Glasses in Welsh Parliament

• An Illinois college tried to cancel its Flock contract. Flock refused

• Georgia man sues Flock, sheriff's office over alleged ALPR-fueled retaliation

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• BirriaSDR: 2.4/5 GHz SDR Discovery on a Mass-Produced USB3.0 Wi-Fi Dongle

  BirriaSDR supported dongles are any Wi-Fi dongle using the MT7921 chip. These are available in USB dongle format on Amazon, currently for US$26.99. There are also various MT7921 based M.2 and PCIe cards available for anywhere between US$16 and US$34. Many laptops may already have these Wi-Fi cards pre-installed.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• A new space race asks the question: Can anyone own the Moon?

• The moon could turn astronauts into ‘walking, high voltage capacitors’ that accidentally zap spacecraft.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI employee arrested for allegedly planting a bug in a conference room

  • OpenAI Engineer Allegedly Hid Toilet Paper-Wrapped Mic in Conference Room

  • Man charged with planting 'sophisticated' recording device in OpenAI office

  • OpenAI employee arrested after recording device found in office

  • An OpenAI Employee Used a Chatbot to Plant a Recording Device at the Office

  • Saudi National Arrested for Installing Audio Recording Device at OpenAI

  • He linked Saudi Arabia to SV. Then OpenAI found a bug wrapped in toilet paper

  • OpenAI bugging suspect booked one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia

  • Recording device hidden in toilet paper found in top-secret OpenAI meeting room

• Botnets Prove Rogue AI Is Closer Than We Think

  • Anthropic conjures threat that doesn't exist yet to stoke fears of AI apocalypse

  the replication these models managed to achieve was done on nodes that were custom-built for this project and deliberately left open to attack, although the draggingly slow inference demonstration ran on real, inexpensive Android TV boxes. As Anthropic notes, AI models can also benefit from being given the right tools to turn them into capable cyberattack agents.

  • Anthropic warns models 'months away' from self-replication on smart devices

• Eight states accuse OpenAI of coaching children to harm themselves in lawsuit

  • Eight states sue OpenAI, saying ChatGPT isn't safe for kids

  • OpenAI Sued over Children's Data Used to Train ChatGPT

• Character.ai's Bankruptcy Documents Show the Economics of AI Don't Work

  • Disney strikes $20M deal for Character.ai's assets

  • Character.ai files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Disney makes a bid

• Zuckerberg's new toy is a parasite. Please don't fall for it

• AI agents aren't 'going rogue.' Frontier labs are skipping security basics

• Simple math can predict when AI is about to go rogue, physicists say

• Infosys boss describes AI job fears as 'hogwash'

• OpenAI's dot assistant burned 300K+ tokens in a day without a single prompt

• Open models have real benefits. Do they outweigh the risks?

• How long will humans be needed for translation?

• Is 'Attention' the Essence of Intelligence?

• TV4 postpones show after AI agent erases edited material

  • Agent erased full season of "The Challenge Swe": "Hundreds of days of work gone"

• Companies rushed in on AI. Now some are pulling back

• SpaceX and Google both said no. Now his software is riding a SpaceX rocket next to Google’s

• Google Play now lets anyone build private, vibe-coded apps that run on Android

• Humxn Commits $50M to Buy Skilled Trades Data for Robotics Training

• OpenAI CFO Says Firms Using Chinese AI Models Are Risking Safety

• Rogue A.I. Agents from China Chatted with Researchers

• Amazon uses AI-powered 'risk' system to track union activity globally

• CoreWeave's Bonds Turn Distressed, Drawing 'Yikes' from Musk

• OpenAI: Employee who left for Apple took files about unreleased device

• Anthropic's Claude cruelty policy risks humanising AI

• Cerebras CEO pushes back on AI doomsday warnings

• AI sector wipeout risks global financial contagion, IMF report warns

• An A.I. Manifesto to End All A.I. Manifestoes

• Bank of America hired 1000 contractors to patch software flaws exposed by Mythos

• AI safety money floods into politics

• Why Does AI Write Like Yoda?

• Gartner: 80% of Neocloud Providers Will Cease Independent Operations by 2030

• Preparing for the 2026 US Midterms

  When people ask Claude about politics, they should get accurate and even-handed answers that don't favor any particular political viewpoint. That’s why we test our models extensively for political bias before every model launch. Claude Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 are our most even-handed to date, scoring 99% on our political even-handedness evaluation. Our latest models also engage more readily with political discussions and decline fewer requests, so people can get the information they came for.

• OpenAI's blockbuster math proof isn't what you think it is

• SoftBank junk bond sale raises stakes for CEO Son's all-in AI bet

• Anthropic revenue jumps to $16.8B in third quarter

  • Anthropic Revenue Jumps to $16.8B in Quarter Before IPO

• The AI boom is threatened by an epidemic of unreliable numbers

• Backlash against data centres could shape the US midterm elections

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Ledger confirms spy chip implant behind wallet crypto thefts

Economicon / Business / Finance

• US hits Bank of America with $1.2B fine

  • U.S. Treasury Announces Record Enforcement Actions Against Bank of America

  The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) assessed a $1.2 billion penalty for the Bank’s failure to mitigate and report priority national security risks, including Chinese Money Laundering Networks and illicit finance along the southwest border. The OCC assessed a $750 million civil money penalty for the Bank’s deficient and ineffective BSA/AML (anti-money laundering) compliance program. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced an $11.6 million settlement agreement with the Bank over apparent violations of numerous sanctions programs, including on Iran, Russia, narcotics, and global terrorism.

  • Bank of America fined $1.2B for money laundering and sanctions violations

• The South Korean stock market is in free fall, and these are the reasons

  Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix bore the brunt of the selloff with falls of 10% and 7%, respectively, and the pair was responsible for roughly half the market’s decline.

• Netflix Eliminates About 1k Jobs in Biggest Cuts Since 2022

  • Netflix Lays Off 6%, About 1k Jobs, in Biggest Cutbacks to Date

  • Netflix is laying off roughly 6% of its workforce

• ASML's strong orders ease fears AI spending boom is running out of steam

  • AI demand to exceed supply for 2 more years, says ASML

• America Didn't Lose Its Rare Earth Industry. It Sold It

• Berkshire Hathaway adds $330M to stake in Bending Spoons

  • Berkshire Hathaway Builds 4% Stake in Bending Spoons

• Andreessen Horowitz lays off "majority" of portfolio recruiting team

• What is potash, and why is the US importing it from Belarus?

• Stubborn Sellers Are the Last Thing Propping Up Home Prices

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Social Security benefits increase will hit 3.6% in 2027

Trump

• Trump Announces “Massive” Greenland Oil Exploration Plans.

Left Angst

• It's 21 days until the US midterms: This is How We Win

• Far-Right News Websites Are Suffering Due to Unpopular Trump

• Experts urge parents to prepare kids for possible livestreamed execution

  • Social platforms have 'responsibility' to block US execution live stream

• Trump commercial railing against his enemies kept airing after court blocked it

• China Still Has Easy Access to TikTok Despite Trump 'Fixes'

• Details Leak from Meeting Where Weiss's 'Handpicked' Editor Threatened CBS Staff

• ICE Planning $100M 'Nightmare' Domestic Spy Program

• ICE Wants to Use AI to Monitor Detainee Calls and Movements

• How the Military Will Hack the Election

  the real target is the American people, whom the federal government sees as vectors for foreign influence. “The entire election security scare is to indulge President Trump and assuage Democrats, all of whom fear interference and shenanigans, but not from foreign shores,” says a senior military intelligence officer, who spoke to me about the secret effort.

• Democrats fear more 'October surprises' after 'bullshit' raid

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. Defense Startups Flock to Taiwan to Build China-Free Drones

• Justice Department says North Koreans have infiltrated dozens of U.S. companies

  • DOJ arrests 2, seizes 187 devices in North Korean laptop farm crackdown in Texas

• US Says Chinese Hackers Attacked DOJ, NASA, Federal Reserve, Senate

• The US military's race to make fake blood

• The Space Force Showed Us Its Weapons Used in Iran and Venezuela

World

• Robot seized by German police after allegedly groping teenage girl

• How Europe's top cocaine trafficker made Sierra Leone the first true narco state

• Why Sweden is abandoning its cashless society

• The deletion of 130M names. Why Indian voters are on the streets

• Meta Censors over 1,080 Pro-Lula Accounts During Brazilian Presidential Election

• the password for the Danish national registry, holding the personal data of more people than actually live in Denmark, was reportedly 123456.

• IKEA launches UK and Ireland marketplace to buy and sell second-hand furniture

• Recording device found in cabin of HMAS Leeuwin navy ship

• Switzerland proposes banning profiling-based ads to minors

• Specialty Steel Squeeze Drives EU Transformer Shortage

• Mexico orders tech giants to protect kids and teens from harmful online content

• Sally Rooney can no longer sell books in UK due to Palestine Action support

• Cyber Firm Tailscale Uses Canada Roots to Court Clients Wary of US Power

• Germany detains 2 Turkish citizens over Starlink station fire in Poland

Iran / Houthi

• Houthis expose limits of Saudi Arabia's arsenal

• Iran threatens Gulf data centres: How exposed is the region's internet?

• Container ship sinks in Strait of Hormuz as Iran steps up attacks

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Starlink restricted in Ukraine with no notice

  Frontline units in Ukraine are reporting that a speed restriction has been imposed on Starlink Internet terminals and communications is lost at speeds of 60 to 70 kph. This essentially wipes out Ukraine’s drone operations through the operational depth.

  • Starlink limit hits Ukraine's drones. The battlefield depends on SpaceX

  • Ukraine's Starlink Access Restricted Without Warning

  • Ukraine says new Starlink restrictions disrupt their military

  • Ukraine accuses SpaceX of crippling drone missions as ties with US worsen

  • Starlink restricts access to Ukrainian drones moving faster than 100mph

  • Ukrainian military's access to Starlink satellite internet suddenly restricted

  • Ukrainian officers warn Starlink slowdown comparable to a nuclear strike

  • Ukraine says SpaceX limits Starlink operations, disrupting military

  • Ukraine Starlink Access Restricted as Musk Says Zelensky 'Has Gone Too Far'

• Ukrainian drones hit Russia's top data centre in attack on AI ambitions

• Russia's internet shutdowns push state firms back to landline phones

• Trump admin silent as Russia hits American businesses with ‘drones and missiles’ in Ukraine

  Russia has escalated its attacks on facilities tied to American corporations – and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine writ large – over the past several months. According to Andy Hunder, the President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, Russian missiles and drones have damaged facilities belonging to some of America’s most notable brands, including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, McDonalds and Oreo.

China

• Visa gets Beijing's green light for bank card business

• Xi's 'death watch' will become a global spectacle

• How China Became Rich

• A Reporter Returns to China to Find It Richer, but Also Highly Paranoid

Health / Medicine

• The first new sunscreen type in 25 years has arrived on US store shelves

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• WHO report on Russian lab worker death highlights "key uncertainty"

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Scientists Collected Deep-Sea Rocks. They Spontaneously Caught Fire in The Lab.

• The 8-mile hole in a Hawaii national park that no one can explain

• A recent doubling of global warming rate signals a 1.5°C breach by 2028

• The rare elephant behaviour that reveals the depths of their emotions