2025-07-02

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• Runestone That May Be North America's Oldest Turns Up in a Canada Forest

• When Your Source of Truth is Reality

  What if the database did need to be exact? That’s tough because I’m increasingly convinced that there will always be a gap between a database and the real-world stuff it’s tracking. The problem with any database tracking real-world objects is that your single source of truth is reality. That means whatever is in the database is NOT a source of truth. As such, it doesn’t matter how well-designed your database or application is - you can get into trouble because the real world can change at any time.

• July 4th Among the Deadliest Days of the Year, Drunk Driving Is a Major Reason

Horseshit

• Left-Handed Creativity Myth Debunked

• Black holes tell us where we are in the Universe. Phones and WiFi block the view

• When the digital nomad dream turns sour

• How to Say No at Work

• What Makes Someone Cool? A New Study Offers Clues.

• Raphael Discovery Emerges from Vatican Museum Restoration

• Enhancing Stock Price Prediction Through Integration of Astrological Data

• A Classic Childhood Pastime Is Fading

  • As a child my Dad helped me (re)build several of my bicycles, and service and maintain them. What you can purchase today in kid sizes is "Bike Shaped Objects" that cannot be repaired and, and if you luck out and get one that functions initially you can expect it to break somehow within a couple of weeks.

• Economic Nihilism

  Lee observed job interviews had already been made outdated by technology, becoming a kind of drudgery that was no longer meaningful for screening human talent. Then-Columbia student Lee started the company as a way to cheat on technical interviews for big tech firms. After their product, an AI “cheating tool” called Interview Coder, secured the team internship offers from Meta, TikTok, Amazon, and Capital One, Columbia University suspended Lee for live-tweeting his disciplinary process in late March. Since then, Lee has raised a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz. Though Cluely no longer brazenly uses the word “cheat” on most of its copy, Cluely tells its users that the AI will do the heavy lifting for them. The product now advertises itself as an “undetectable AI” that responds to users’ screen and audio. “It’s inevitable that college students and young people will use the tools at their disposal,” Lee told me. The Cluely manifesto, subtitled “We want to cheat on everything,” spells out how cheating becomes the new normal.

• Anthropologist uncovers the 11,000-year history of avocado domestication

• The Fed says this is a cube of $1 million. They're off by half a million

• The remarkable tale of how humans nearly didn't conquer the world

• The place of humans in machine society

• Newark's air traffic outages were just the tip of the iceberg

Obit

• 82-year-old woman burned in Colorado firebomb attack has died, officials say.

• Jimmy Swaggart Dead: Televangelist, Cousin of Jerry Lew Lewis Was 90

  Jimmy Swaggart, a scandal-plagued Pentecostal televangelist who was known for his fire-and-brimstone sermonizing, and who waged a fiery campaign against rock ‘n’ roll even though he was the cousin of rock pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and country star Mickey Gilley, died Tuesday at age 90.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Google kills the fact-checking snippet

  Hidden in a developer blog earlier this month, Google announced that it will stop using the fact-checking snippets in search. For a decade, the fact-checking snippet, under the name of ClaimReview, has been a way to protect users worldwide by showcasing fact-checked information when a Google user searched explicitly for an already debunked claim. It exposed citizens to reliable information first by enhancing search results for fact-check articles. ClaimReview enabled Google to expose fact-checked content to over 120 million European Union citizens in the first half of 2024 (see data by country here). I am the founder and CEO of fact-checking foundation Maldita.es and chair of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network. Google did not inform fact-checkers that the 10-year collaboration was coming to an end, let alone consult with us on the decision to stop using the fact-checks that we provided for free.

• Higher levels of trust in people and institutions linked to greater well-being

Musk

• Musk's X appoints 'king of virality' in bid to draw in younger users

• X Will Deploy AI to Write Community Notes, Expand Fact-Checking

• New claim added: X opens up to Community Notes written by AI bots

Electric / Self Driving cars

• 'The Most Humbling Thing I've Ever Seen': Ford CEO on China's Car Industry

• Why Apple's Car Failed Before It Even Launched

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Microsoft implies Windows LOST half a billion users since Windows 11 debut

• Report Reveals Apple's Secretive Vision Products Roadmap

• While Everything Gets Worse, It's Nice That the Switch 2 Just Works

• The Kodak Brand Gets a Second Life

• Folks aren't buying the PCs that US vendors stockpiled to dodge tariffs

• Michael Moritz Made Billions on Google and PayPal. Now, He's Betting on News.

• Apple claims San Jose engineer stole trade secrets, took them to rival

• From Tyson to TikTok: the boxing fan generational gap is widening

• AT&T now lets you lock down your account to prevent SIM swapping attacks

• Gamers Reject RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB – Outsold 16:1 by 16 GB Model

• Tinder will require new users in California to use facial recognition technology

  • Tinder rolls out mandatory face verification for California users

• AMC now warns moviegoers to expect '25-30 minutes' of ads and trailers

• Judge orders EverQuest emulator to halt content and put profits in escrow

• Young Americans Are Spending a Whole Lot Less on Video Games This Year

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• HN Jobs:

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2025)

  • Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2025)

  • Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (July 2025)

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Cloudflare to block AI firms from scraping content without consent

  • Cloudflare introduces pay-per-crawl for AI bots

  • Cloudflare Is Blocking AI Crawlers by Default

  • Cloudflare Introduces Default Blocking of A.I. Data Scrapers

  • Pay up or stop scraping: Cloudflare program charges bots for each crawl

  • Cloudflare launches tool to help website owners monetize AI bot crawler access

• OpenAI Leadership Responds to Meta Offers: 'Someone Has Broken into Our Home'

• If you care about money or power, stay close to AI

• Microsoft claims AI diagnostic tool can outperform doctors

• Mark Zuckerberg Announces Creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs

• Apple weighs using Anthropic or OpenAI to power Siri in major reversal

• People have empathy with AI as long as they think it's human

• AI Boom Should Prompt States to Rein in Data Center Tax Losses

• Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations

• The dueling truths of AI, both grift and revolution

• OpenAI Shuts Down for a Week (Reportedly)

• Sam Altman Slams Meta's AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

• Mark Zuckerberg Offering $300M over Four Years for Top Research Talent

• AI talent wars lead to superstar salaries for top tech staff

• AI Can Keep Truck Drivers Awake

• Zvi: AI Moratorium Stripped from BBB

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Scrap Metal or an Alien Spacecraft?

• Space is hard. There is no excuse for pretending it's easy

• Long-dead satellite emits strong radio signal, puzzling astronomers

• Bezos-backed methane tracking satellite is lost in space

• Is the US forfeiting its Mars leadership to China's Mars Sample Return plan?

• 'new stars' have exploded into the night sky – both visible to the naked eye

Crypto con games

• Token That's Useless Is Crypto's Latest Meme Cult

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Oracle stock jumps after $30B annual cloud deal revealed in filing

• The CEO who is building the "IKEA of factories"

• Judge OKs sale of 23andMe to a nonprofit led by its founder

  • 23andMe Sold to TTAM Research Institute, a Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation

• Amazon Is on the Cusp of Using More Robots Than Humans in Its Warehouses

• Organized crime and gold trade are increasingly connected, report shows

• Superstar coders are raking it in. Others, not so much

• Bay Area tech firms legal battle with McDonalds broken ice cream machines ends

• A Trio of US Treasury Hacks Exposes a Pattern Making Banks Nervous

• Powell confirms that the Fed would have cut by now were it not for tariffs

• Homes Are Taking Longer to Sell in US Markets That Once Flourished

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• California passes major overhaul of CEQA

  • California Dismantles Landmark Environmental Law to Tackle Housing Crisis

• US Senate strikes AI regulation ban from Trump megabill

  • US Senate removes controversial 'AI moratorium' from budget bill

  • Republicans nix measure that would have blocked states from regulating AI

• Senate Passes Trump's Big Policy Bill

  • Senate passes Trump’s megabill after pulling all-nighter

Trump

• Trump suggests DOGE look at subsidies for Musk's companies to save money

• Trump Says He'll Have to 'Take a Look' at Deporting Musk

  • Trump says he'll 'look' at deporting Musk as feud reignites

  • Trump threatens Tesla, SpaceX support

• Media Forced To Admit Trump's Tariffs Are Working As Revenues Spike | ZeroHedge

  The US has collected over $121 billion in revenues from tariffs on imported goods, and despite claims that tariffs are a "tax on the consumer", prices on the shelf have not risen so far. Opponents of the policy are struggling to explain the data. Some still argue that disaster is right around the corner while others are acknowledging that there is a potential to pay off US debt over time if the import duties remain in place for the long term.

Left Angst

• Is Peter Thiel the Antichrist? NYT Didn't Think to Ask

• Stalled funding, canceled grants: How the NIH crisis is affecting Duke

• Unregulated tech tests: Thiel, Altman and co want Freedom Cities

  • Startup City Groups Meeting Trump Officials to Push for Freedom Cities

• Effects of USAID defunding on mortality projections up to 2030

• Schools serving undocumented kids go underground

• Doge now targeting SEC policy, eyes SPAC rules, sources say

• That 'One Big Beautiful Bill' tried to tie AI deregulation to broadband funding

• Online shopping see biggest slowdown in over decade as tariffs disrupt ecommerce

• Tech firms suggest placing trackers under offenders' skin

• White House works to ground NASA science missions before Congress can act

• Trump team threatens to prosecute CNN over reporting on Ice-tracking app

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Coordinated, Nationwide Action Combats North Korean IT Worker Illicit Scheme

• Rogue IT worker gets seven months in prison over $200k digital rampage

• Drug cartel hacked FBI official's phone to track and kill informants

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Iran may go after US defense firms with cyber attacks

• Space Force Boosting an Ecosystem of GPS Alternatives in Low-Earth Orbit

World

• Helsinki appeal court convicts two HS journalists of treason

  Helsinki Court of Appeal has convicted two Helsingin Sanomat journalists of treason. Tuomo Pietiläinen and Laura Halminen were found guilty of revealing a national security secret and attempting to commit the same offence. Pietiläinen received a four-month suspended prison sentence, while Halminen was sentenced to an 80-day income-linked fine. Charges against their supervisor, Kalle Silfverberg, were dismissed. The charges relate to a December 2017 Helsingin Sanomat article about the Finnish Intelligence Research Centre and follow-up stories, some of which were not published.

• Singapore police can now seize bank accounts to stop scams

• Whitehall's ambition to cut costs using AI is fraught with risk

• Deutsche Bahn train hits 405 km/h without falling to bits

• Google announces their first national credential partner for EU age assurance

• Gmail ads are not just annoying: Google is now facing a record fine in France

• A French region has banned tap water. Is it a warning for the rest of Europe?

• Are Brother's Insecure Printers Illegal in the UK?

• $7k single-seat electric car has become a hit in Japan

• Under shadow of Trump warning, Africa pioneers non-dollar payment systems

• European consumers are mostly saying 'non' to trading in their old phones

Iran / Houthi

• What the Leaked Nobitex Source Code Reveals About Iran's Crypto Infrastructure

Israel

• Opioid pills discovered in US-backed food aid, Gaza authorities say

• Israel in ‘advanced talks’ for deal to end hostilities with Syria, says senior official.

China

• There's a Race to Power the Future. China Is Pulling Away

• China tests hypersonic aircraft Mach 12

• China successfully tests hypersonic aircraft, maybe at Mach 12

Health / Medicine

• Cheese may be giving you nightmares

• Aging-related inflammation is not universal across human populations

  • "Inflammaging" may be more related to environment than aging

• Ozempic Canadian Patient Expiring

• Cat Parasite Can Seriously Disrupt Brain Function, Study Suggests

• Why aren't Italians as obese as Americans? It's not what they eat

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Where Does Sand Come From? Parrotfish Poop Makes White Beaches

• Scientists identify culprit behind biggest-ever U.S. honey bee die-off

  USDA research points to viruses spread by pesticide-resistant mites, indicating a worrying trend

  U.S. beekeepers had a disastrous winter. Between June 2024 and January 2025, a full 62% of commercial honey bee colonies in the United States died, according to an extensive survey. It was the largest die-off on record, coming on the heels of a 55% die-off the previous winter. As soon as scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) caught wind of the record-breaking die-offs, they sprang into action—but their efforts were slowed by a series of federal funding cuts and layoffs by President Donald Trump’s administration. Now, 6 months later, USDA scientists have finally identified a culprit. According to a preprint posted to the bioRxiv server this month, nearly all the dead colonies tested positive for bee viruses spread by parasitic mites. Alarmingly, every single one of the mites the researchers screened was resistant to amitraz, the only viable mite-specific pesticide—or miticide—of its kind left in humans’ arsenal.

  • Didn't we ban pesticides "because bees"?

• Evidence of a 12,800-year-old Shallow Airburst Depression in Louisiana

• Ultra-processed food affects integrity of feeding-related brain regions

• 'Unprecedented' alerts in France as blistering heat grips Europe

  • Unprecedented except for every summer for the last 50 years...

• In a Milestone for Manhattan, a Pair of Coyotes Has Made Central Park Their Home

• Climate change influencer once chums with Greta Thunberg now calls the movement a 'scam' | Just The News

  While her fans cheered her on, Biggers told Just the News that her beliefs in a “climate crisis” took a toll on her mental health. That’s true of many young people. The most recent poll on the topic, published in the renowned medical journal The Lancet, surveyed over 15,000 people aged 16-25 in the U.S. about their thoughts and emotions about climate change. The poll found that 85% are moderately worried about climate change, and nearly 58% are very or extremely worried. Nearly 43% said it impacts their mental health. Over time, Biggers began to question her leftist ideals, and she started to see the climate movement as anti-human and ultimately harmful. She now calls the climate movement a “scam,” and she’s making videos on TikTok and elsewhere in hopes that young people will consider a more positive view of modern life, one they can hopefully be grateful for. In turn, they can escape the anxiety she says the climate movement causes young people to feel.

• Gut microbes could protect us from toxic 'forever chemicals'

  • Gut Bacteria Can Protect Against Forever Chemicals

• MIT's high-tech 'bubble wrap' turns air into safe drinking water

• USDA seeks to combat spread of New World screwworms into U.S.

• Great until it burns: Large CO2 removal potential of woody debris preservation in managed forests

• America's Hot Garbage Problem