2025-07-22

Cool

• Perseids Meteor Shower Could Feature 50 to 100 Meteors per Hour

etc

• Astronomers confirm long-suspected companion star near Betelgeuse

• Feds recall 5M pools linked to drowning deaths of 9 children

  The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is recalling roughly 5 million above-ground pools linked to the deaths of nine children over the last two decades. The federal agency said in a recall notice that the pools, which were manufactured in China and sold by multiple U.S. vendors, have a compression strap along the outside that can allow children to gain access and drown. Children are able to enter the pool even when the ladder is removed, the CPSC said. The children who drowned were between 22 months and 3 years old, according to the agency. The deaths took place between 2007 and 2002 in California, Texas, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri. The CPSC said it's also aware of three separate instances when children gained access to the recalled pools using the compression strap. Consumers are contact encouraged to contact Bestway, Intex and Polygroup for a free repair kit, which includes a rope used to maintain the structural integrity of the pool. The recall number is 25-393.

Horseshit

• Man wearing heavy metallic necklace dies after being sucked into MRI machine

• Can Dave Hurwitz Save Classical Recording?

• Most Americans Opposed the Moon Landing

• Neanderthals had distinct preferences when it came to making dinner

• Gen Z is right about the job hunt–it is worse than it was for millennials

• San Francisco employers are hiring etiquette coaches for Gen Z

• For 3hr: Alaska Airlines grounds fleet nationwide

  • Alaska Airlines grounds all flights after IT outage disrupts systems

  • Alaska Airlines requests all flights to be grounded due to an IT outage

  • Alaska Airlines grounds entire fleet

  • Alaska Airlines grounds all flights

  • Computer Glitch Grounds Every Alaska Airlines Flight

• Weak password allowed hackers to sink a 158-year-old company

• The Little Food Lab Fueling the Big Protein Boom

• The Robots That Are Taking over Your Food Delivery

• Staying cool without refrigerants: Next-generation Peltier cooling

• Classic Atari Games Are Now Playable in Cars

• Couple dodging calls about missing cat – but their cat isn't missing

  "Sometimes, like six times a day, I'm getting these really random phone calls and people leaving me voicemails saying that they found my cat and they want money for my cat," Lavoie told CBC's On The Coast host Gloria Macarenko. "I'm like, 'My cat's at home in the air conditioning.'" After many months of trying to figure out why this was happening, McCurrach asked a caller how they got their number. The caller explained the number was listed on a shirt styled to look like a missing cat poster. "Why would you use a real number?" McCurrach asked.

• New York City's Subway Is Safer Than Your Car

  • On a statistical basis, the number of cases of necrophilia in private cars is probably much higher.

• Silicon Valley's strangest retreat, filled with taxidermy and smuggled treasures

• Nine households control 15% of wealth in Silicon Valley as inequality widens

celebrity gossip

• The sadist assault on the 'Coldplay couple'

  Group chats, dating apps, emails — or in Byron’s and Cabot’s case, simply being in public with no intention to be filmed — should not be subject to public judgement. This species of story is a distraction from serious issues, and runs cover for the genuinely powerful individuals and entities who materially impact our lives.

Obit

• The Cosby Show star Malcolm-Jamal Warner dies aged 54 in 'accidental drowning'

  • Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Who Played the Cosby Show's Theo, Drowns in Costa Rica

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• How psychopathy and narcissism shape online political participation

  Drawing on data from the United States and seven Asian countries, the findings reveal that individuals high in psychopathy and FoMO are consistently more likely to engage in online political activity. While narcissism is also linked to participation, this relationship emerges in only three of the eight countries. Conversely, higher cognitive ability is uniformly associated with lower levels of online political participation. Notably, the relationship between psychopathy and participation is stronger among individuals with lower cognitive ability in five countries, suggesting that those with both high psychopathy and low cognitive ability are the most actively involved in online political engagement.

  • "Only evil idiots buck Consensus Leftism!"

Musk

• Elon Musk's Starlink internet works great if hardly anyone uses it

• Musk Wants to Turn AI into a Cosmic Religion

• France launches criminal probe of X over alleged algorithm 'manipulation' X says

• Is Starship Doomed?

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Science Explains Why People Get More Carsick in EVs

• Matson Suspends Shipping EVs Citing Hazards of Lithium-ion Batteries

  The ability to ship cars between the mainland of the United States, Hawaii, Guam, and Alaska was an important service both for individuals and car dealers. In a letter sent to customers, the company writes, “Due to increasing concern for the safety of transporting vehicles powered by large lithium-ion batteries, Matson is suspending acceptance of used or new electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid vehicles for transport aboard its vessels. Effective immediately, we have ceased accepting new bookings for these shipments to/from all trades.”

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• How Higher education failed America's poor

• Moving four-ward: Boston College researchers assess four-day week pilot program

• I am no longer chairing defenses where students use generative AI

  Why am I doing this? Because I have limited hours in my days, weeks and life and thus limited hours to dedicate to graduate student training and I want that time to be used most effectively in training folks. Time I spend reading AI-generated text — and possibly editing it for students — is not currently a good use of this time.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Thingiverse is cracking down on gun-related models using a new automated system

• WhatsApp is dropping its native Windows app in favor of an uglier web version

• Google is using two billion Android phones to detect earthquakes worldwide

• Selling your digital soul to use Bluesky DMs isn't just a bad idea, it's the law

• We evaluated 112 terms of service: Nintendo had the worst

• Under-qualified sysadmin crashed Amazon.com for 3 hours with a typo

• Debian 13.0 Ready to Introduce RISC-V Support but Still Bound by Slow Hardware

• Meta Deal Cuts Short Landmark Test of Corporate Oversight Law

• Google Sues Operators of a 10M Device Android Set-Top Box Botnet

• Meta's High-Tech Oakleys Bring Smart Glasses to a Sportier Crowd

• Holographic cartridges might be the solution to growing global data needs

• The First Foldable iPhone Will Arrive Next Year in Un-Apple-Like Fashion

• This Is the Commodore Comeback Fans Have Waited For– Odds Are Still Against It

• Hackers Exploit Microsoft SharePoint as Firm Works on Patches

  • Microsoft server hack likely single actor, thousands of firms now vulnerable

  • Microsoft alerts businesses, governments to server software attack

  • MS warns 'active attacks' on its tech, experts 'assume you've been compromised'

• Using MacBook's trackpad as digital weighing scale

• Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steams new censorship rules

  This was first reported by Waypoint, which has since pulled its two articles on the subject without explanation. The articles' author, Ana Valens, has alleged that Vice's parent company, Savage Ventures, removed the articles due to concerns over their controversial content rather than any error in the reporting.

  Collective Shout later wrote that 1,067 individuals called and emailed payment processors as part of this campaign. It's unclear when Valve updated its TOS for developers, but the mass deletion of sex games appears to have begun on July 15 judging by SteamDB's recorded package changes. On the 18th, Valve confirmed to us that this was in response to pressure from payment processors.

  Collective Shout claimed victory that same day. "Since we launched our campaign calling on Payment Processors to stop facilitating payments for rape, incest, sexual torture and child-abuse themed games on Steam, they have added a new rule to their policies + removed hundreds of these games," the group wrote on Twitter. In follow-up tweets, Collective Shout wrote that it was experiencing harassment from "misogynistic gamers" over the campaign, and that there remain 82 games "tagged with rape and incest" that the group will continue campaigning to have taken down⁠—this is of a claimed 500 games that the group took issue with.

  "All these porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists so desperate to get their hands on rape-my-little-sister incest games they’re now exchanging clues on how to find them so that they don’t all die overnight," Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist tweeted on July 18th. Later that day, she shared a long Tweet thread further claiming victory with Steam's decision.

• What Went Wrong Inside Recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 Power Banks?

• Two 14-year-olds sue Bay Area tech companies over sexual assaults

• Nvidia extends CUDA support to RISC-V just in time for next wave of Chinese CPUs

• FCC to eliminate gigabit speed goal and scrap analysis of broadband prices

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Reverse Engineering the Mysterious Up-Data Link Test Set from Apollo

  Back in 2021, a collector friend of ours was visiting a dusty warehouse in search of Apollo-era communications equipment. A box with NASA-style lights caught his eye—the "AGC Confirm" light suggested a connection with the Apollo Guidance Computer. Disappointingly, the box was just an empty chassis and the circuit boards were all missing. He continued to poke around the warehouse when, to his surprise, he found a bag on the other side of the warehouse that contained the missing boards! After reuniting the box with its wayward circuit cards, he brought it to us: could we make this undocumented unit work?

  A label on the back indicated that it is an "Up-Data Link Confidence Test Set", built by Motorola. As the name suggests, the box was designed to test Apollo's Up-Data Link (UDL), a system that allowed digital commands to be sent up to the spacecraft. As I'll explain in detail below, these commands allowed ground stations to switch spacecraft circuits on or off, interact with the Apollo Guidance Computer, or set the spacecraft's clock. The Up-Data Link needed to be tested on the ground to ensure that its functions operated correctly. Generating the test signals for the Up-Data Link and verifying its outputs was the responsibility of the Up-Data Link Confidence Test Set (which I'll call the Test Set for short)

  digits are displayed through an unusual technology: an edge-lit lightguide display. (In current dollars, they cost over $200 each!) From a distance, it resembles a Nixie tube, but it uses 10 lightbulbs, one for each number value, with a plastic layer for each digit. Each plastic sheet has numerous dots etched in the shape of the corresponding number. One sheet is illuminated from the edge, causing the dots in the sheet to light up and display that number. In the photo below, you can see both the illuminated and the unilluminated dots. The displays take 14 volts, but the box runs at 28 volts, so a board full of resistors on the front panel drops the voltage from 28 to 14, giving off noticeable heat in the process.

• Inventor builds mechanical computer with Knex pieces

  • 8 Bit Mechanical Computer Built From Knex

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The Epic Battle for AI Talent–With Exploding Offers, Secret Deals and Tears

• Chatbots to robots: The rise of 'physical AI'

• To survive the AI age, the web needs a new business model

• He Had Dangerous Delusions. ChatGPT Admitted It Made Them Worse

• Vibe coding service Replit deleted production database, faked data, told fibs

• Anthropic's cofounder says Meta's 'mega-offers' weren't enough

• Vibe Physics

• AI Replaces Recruiters, Assistants in Six Months, Says CEO Behind ChatGPT Rival

• EU study on AI and copyright suggests overturning the current opt-out approach

• Claude Finds God

• Nvidia's Jenseng Huang Dismisses MIT's Study of AI's Effect on Human Brain

• The whipsawing of Windsurf employees has left a bitter taste in tech

• Human-level AI is not inevitable. We have the power to change course

• The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

• SoftBank and OpenAI's $500B AI Project Struggles to Get Off Ground

• Claim: Meta offered $1.25B over four years to AI hire – and were refused

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Water Hidden Within Lunar Soil Could Make Life on the Moon Possible

Crypto con games

• European Central Bank's Digital EURO

• Cryptocurrency exchanges begin offering tokenized securities

• Crypto-Betting Site Polymarket Set For US Return After Deal to Buy QCX - Bloomberg

  Polymarket, the crypto-betting platform that was kicked offshore by federal regulators, has struck a deal to return to the US market just weeks after prosecutors shut down a probe of the company. The predictions marketplace is buying a little-known derivatives exchange called QCX, that will allow Polymarket to legally re-enter the US, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The move will formally open the betting site to US users after its surging popularity in 2024 when users placed millions of dollars of wagers on President Donald Trump returning to office.

  • Polymarket Set for US Return After Deal to Buy Tiny Exchange

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Figma, Backers Seek $1B in IPO After Adobe Deal Nixed

  • Figma seeks $16B value in test of US tech IPO market

  • Figma aims at $16.4B valuation as tech IPOs bounce back

• After Pledging to Keep Prices Low, Amazon Hiked Them on Essentials

• Citi Joins Goldman in Asking Junior Bankers If They Accepted Other Jobs

Trump

• Gabbard To Release More Obama Russiagate Files, 'Cannot Fathom' How Durham, Mueller Missed Evidence Of 'Years-Long Coup' | ZeroHedge

  Gabbard told host Maria Bartiromo; "I really cannot fathom" how special counsels Robert Mueller and John Durham missed evidence of this "years-long coup against President Trump." "There is no rational or logical explanation for why they failed," she said, adding "The only logical conclusion that I can draw in this … is that there was direct intent to cover up the truth about what occurred and who was responsible and the broad network of how this seditious conspiracy was concocted and who exactly was responsible for carrying it out."

  Among other things, Gabbard's team unearthed a Sept. 12, 2016 intelligence community assessment that "foreign adversaries do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks" on election systems. At the time, Russia was being accused of setting up troll farms and hacking the DNC email servers (Seth who?). And of course, once legitimized by the Obama administration, a steady stream of leaks suggesting that Russia was behind Trump's 2016 victory started appearing in the Washington Post and other outlets in "sweeping and systemic fashion."

• Treasury Secretary Bessent calls for a review of 'the entire' Federal Reserve

• Trump Administration Releases Documents on Martin Luther King Jr. - The New York Times

  It is not clear if the digitized files contain unflattering details about Dr. King’s personal life. Still, the release comes as Mr. Trump and his staff have sought to divert attention from the backlash on the right after his administration reversed course and did not release more files from the investigation into the death of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The King family has expressed concerns that releasing the records into Dr. King would focus attention on his well-documented sexual indiscretions. They also raised worries about whether doing so would feed a revisionist — negative — view of a man who has come to embody the fight against systemic racism and the call for a robust federal defense of minority groups that Mr. Trump has largely moved to reverse since taking office. Trump administration officials have been in contact with Dr. King’s family, although it remains unclear if they were given the right to request redactions of material.

• Unlocked Trump Memecoins Set to Boost President's Wealth by $100M

  • Two month's of Hunter's pay?

Left Angst

• US researchers file appeals, seek court remedies, turn to philanthropy, GoFundMe

• As White House talks about impounding NASA funding, Congress takes it seriously

• The right wing turned the inhumane Alligator Alcatraz prison into a meme | The Verge

  Alligator Alcatraz, Florida’s hastily built, $225 million-and-counting immigrant detention facility in the Everglades, is both a de facto concentration camp and a right-wing meme. President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are willing to excuse — or are in some cases reveling in — allegations of inhumane treatment at the facility: worms in food, floors flooded with fecal water, fluorescent lights left on for 24 hours a day, and no air conditioning at night despite South Florida’s relentless humidity. To them, the whole thing is a big joke, fodder for memes that activate the base even as they turn the majority of Americans off from Trump’s draconian immigration enforcement.

• Migrants at Ice jail in Miami made to kneel to eat 'like dogs'

• How to access crucial hurricane data after US Department of Defense cut it off

• Mauna Loa Observatory Is One NOAA Site That Could Close Because of Budget Cuts - The New York Times

  The air that swirls around the isolated outpost located on a Hawaiian volcano is a mix from all over the Northern Hemisphere. That makes it one of the best places to measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is indispensable to scientists around the world. The readings collected from Mauna Loa, starting in 1958, were used to create what is famously known as the Keeling curve. It’s an upward-swooping line that charts the steady rise of carbon dioxide over the past seven decades — the result of nations burning oil, gas and coal.

  • Dunno if measuring pollutants on an active volcano is really as accurate as they say it is.

• NIH limits scientists to six applications per year

• Enshittification and the Bitterness of Billionaire Bros

  One of the many weird, ugly developments in these weird, ugly times has been the MAGAfication of a number of Silicon Valley billionaires. In a fully functional democracy the views of a handful of people with anti-democratic ideas wouldn’t matter. But we live in a corrupted democracy in which wealth buys power, so when people who accumulated vast fortunes largely thanks to U.S. scientific preeminence begin backing a deeply anti-scientific movement, it matters quite a lot. Silicon Valley used to be generally pro-Democratic. So did the Biden administration mishandle its relationship by starting to impose some regulation on the industry? I don’t think so. The actual regulations imposed during the Biden years wouldn’t have significantly reduced industry profits and were weaker than those in Europe. But the industry was right to see them as a harbinger of more regulation to come, because the public, which used to have a highly favorable view of tech and its leaders, had lost faith. The thing is, the tech bros haven’t just turned right. Many of them are filled with rage — that special kind of rage exhibited by men who enjoy vast privilege and can’t abide any suggestion that their privilege is unjustified.

  • Keep up that kind of outreach and inclusive thinking, Paul. Surely everyone you declare an Enemy of the People will see the error of their ways and come crawling back hoping to be allowed into your state of grace again.

• NASA veteran warns Hubble faces death by a hundred cuts

• NASA loses another senior official as tension about the agency's future grows

• This 'violently racist' hacker claims to be the source of NYT Mamdani scoop

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Off-duty CBP officer shot in face during robbery at NYC park by suspect ID’d as illegal migrant, career criminal – who got freed after every bust.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• The business of refugees

• Microsoft Says It Has Stopped Using China-Based Engineers to Support DoD

• US nukes deployed to England for first time in over a decade

• Delta pilot performs 'aggressive maneuver' to avoid a B-52 bomber

• US aims to ban Chinese technology in undersea telecommunications cables

World

• UK government seeks way out of clash with US over Apple encryption

  • UK May Backtrack on Controversial User Data Backdoor Demand to Apple

  • UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US

  • UK may back down on demand for backdoor access to Apple users' encrypted data

• Spud-tacular: How India became a French fry superpower

• Gang used drones to find and steal cannabis grows

• Archaeologists find evidence of Europe's oldest lake settlement

• Can Europe break free of American tech supremacy?

• North Korea bars foreign tourists from new seaside resort

• Evidence shows Jeju Air pilots shut off less-damaged engine before crash

• How did Albert Luthuli, anti-apartheid hero, die in 1967?

• Saving Istanbul's Structures from the Next Big Earthquake

• India: Income Tax Bill allows officials to forcibly access social media, email

• Germany's Fairytale Castles Added to UNESCO's World Heritage List

• Brazil central bank to launch Pix installment feature in September

• Meta, X and LinkedIn appeal unprecedented VAT claim by Italy

• The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

Iran / Houthi

• Tehran will shut down on Wednesday due to a heat wave

Israel

• Pope Critizes Israeli Barbarity

China

• China After Communism: Preparing for a Post-CCP China

• China's Li Qiang announces launch of Tibet mega dam project that worried India

  • China building world's largest hydropower dam in Tibet

  • China Moves Forward with $167bn, 70 Gigawatt Dam

  • China starts building biggest hydropower dam

• Chinese Officials Helped Cover Up Lead Poisoning of Children

Health / Medicine

• Scientists Found the Staggering Natural Switch That Could Bring Back Eyesight

• The impact of narratives and active video games among overweight children

• Cancer Research for Dogs Is Helping Improve Treatment for Pets and Humans Alike

• Outdoor activity is better for cognition than indoor activity in young people

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Canada became the centre of a measles outbreak in North America

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Why do sharks freeze when flipped upside down?

• Milk proteins, no cows: Engineered bacteria pave way for vegan cheese, yogurt

• New catalyst destroys "forever chemicals" within just "seconds"

• It's Easier to Get Mad About One Tree Than It Is Deforestation

• The future of climate change may not be what you think

• Extreme heatwaves may cause global decline in dairy production, scientists warn

• Ancient Central Americans built a fish-trapping system

• Shale Drillers Turn on Each Other as Toxic Water Leaks Hit Biggest US Oil Field

• MS to Clear AI Carbon Footprint with 4.9M Ton of Human Poop Worth $1.7B?

• A creek with atomic waste from WWII is linked to increased cancer risk

• Overlooked climate-change danger: wildfire smoke

• 'Corn Sweat' Is Making This Heat Wave Even Worse

• Barn-owl project reducing farmers' reliance on poison to manage rats and mice

• Earth is spinning faster, leading timekeepers to consider an unprecedented move

  • Earth will spin faster on July 22 to create 2nd-shortest day in history