2025-07-30

etc

• M8.7 Earthquake in Western Pacific, Tsunami Warning Issued

  • Earthquake of magnitude 8 strikes off Russia's Kamchatka

Horseshit

• We Can Hear Silence Like a Sound, Scientists Say

• Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good

• They have a strange way of figuring stuff

  By definition, right-leaning states cannot hit the top of the list, even though a lot of people either support some of the policies in place or simply don’t care all that much. Environmental quality is something that’s not being considered when one looks at how much of Tennessee is essentially untouched wilderness.

• The General Theory of Enshittification

• The Biggest Passenger Planes Keep Breaking Down

• You might be ghosting the internet. Can it survive?

• Research reveals how sexual desire shapes long-term partner preferences

• Works better with hot dogs: "I ran electricty through dough to make crustless bread"

• The world's first passenger jet was a death trap. Now it's brought back to life

celebrity gossip

• George Lucas Offers a Peek into His New Museum: 'A Temple to the People's Art'

Obit

• Google engineer dies in Yosemite after being struck by falling tree branch

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Cognitive distortions are associated with increasing political polarization

Musk

• Neuralink user writes her name telepathically after 20 years

• Tennessee partners with Elon Musk on Tesla tunnel between Nashville and airport

• Elon Musk says xAI’s Colossus 2 supercomputer in Memphis close to coming online.

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Red Flags for Waymo in Boston

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Reevaluating the role of education on cognitive decline in 33 countries

• Algebra Gatekeepers: Schools deny advanced math to the highest-scoring students

• Innovation starts with consumers, not academia – Daniel Lemire's blog

• In a digital age, old-fashioned watchmaking schools are in demand

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Lisuan 7G106 runs Chinese AAA titles at 4K over 70 FPS and matches RTX 4060

• Age Verification Laws Send VPN Use Soaring–and Threaten the Open Internet

• Publishers cry foul over W3C crusade to rid web of third-party cookies

• 'Fair Use' Prevails as Library of Congress Wins DMCA Anti-Circumvention Battle

• A Luggage Service's Web Bugs Exposed the Travel Plans of Every User

• Yahoo Mail Drastically Cuts Down Free Storage from 1TB to 20GB

• Nvidia's RTX 5050 is faster than the classic 1080 Ti.

• Google profits even as its AI summaries reduce website ad link clicks

• Spilling the Tea

  It’s a little too on the nose that a hot new app that purports to exist so that women can anonymously seek out and spill the tea on men, which then puts user information into an unprotected dropbox thus spilling the tea on the identities of many of its users. In the circles I follow this predictably led to discussions about how badly the app was coded and incorrect speculation that this was linked to vibe coding, whereas the dumb mistakes involved were in this case fully human.

  My current read is that this would all be good if it somehow had strong mechanisms to catch and punish attempts to misuse the system, especially keeping it from spilling over outside of one’s dating life. The problem is I have a hard time imagining how that will work, and I see a lot of potential for misuse that I think will overwhelm the positive advantages.

• The first hit was free... Futurehome smart hub owners must pay new $117 subscription or lose access

• Jack Dorsey's Bluetooth Messaging App Bitchat Now on App Store

• YouTube rolls out age-estimation tech to identify US teens

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Vision for W3C: a manifesto for our operations and decision making

• RP2350 A4, RP2354, and a new Hacking Challenge - Raspberry Pi

  Those of you interfacing RP2350 to retro computer hardware will be pleased to hear that, after an extensive qualification campaign, RP2350 is now officially 5V tolerant!

• Vortex’s Take on the Model M: Cover Band or New Legend?

  Unicomp can let the aesthetics drift because they bring the original band on stage: the signature buckling spring mechanisms that are unlike anything else on the market. When talking about the Model M, everything comes down to how it feels and how it sounds. And on both marks, Unicomp’s buckling spring mechanism lives up to its reputation. The Vortex M looks like a Model M. Its build quality feels like a Model M. But one key press and it becomes clear this is a different beast. Underneath the Model M-styled skin, Vortex’s keyboard is a very modern design — everything the Unicomp is not. For our test, Vortex provided a keyboard with Cherry MX Blues, the classic clicky option the company and I both thought would best match up against Model M’s buckling springs. Pricing varies based on options, but as tested, it clocked in at $154.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Cheyenne to host AI data center using more electricity than all Wyoming homes

• AI Undresses Women and Girls "For Fun," Makes 36M in Profit

• India's AI-driven tech firings could derail middle class dreams

• Hertz' AI System That Scans for "Damage" on Cars Is Turning into a Disaster

• How big tech plans to feed AI's voracious appetite for power

• Meta Is Going to Let Job Candidates Use AI During Coding Tests

• Signs That AI Wrote a Paper, According to an English Composition Professor

• Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%

• The tax of 'almost right' AI code

• The Demon Inside ChatGPT

• Sam Altman Is Right: AI-Powered Crypto Scams Are Exploding

• Microsoft Introduces 'Copilot Mode' in Edge

• Apple Loses Fourth AI Researcher in a Month to Meta's Superintelligence Team

• Stack Overflow's 2025 Developer Survey Reveals Trust in AI at an All Time Low

• Anthropic Nears Deal to Raise Funding at $170B Valuation

• Spy agencies are experimenting with the newest AI models

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Celebrating 25 Years of Continuous Human Presence Aboard the ISS

• The first company to complete a successful lunar landing is going public

• Signs of alien life on exoplanet K2-18B have all but vanished

  Hopes of finding alien life on planet K2-18b are rapidly fading, as new observations appear to show no detectable evidence of the biomolecule previous studies had seen hints of. Most scientists agree this shows earlier claims were premature, but one of the researchers behind the previous finding argues that the new data in fact shows stronger evidence than prior observations.

• Cape Canaveral marks 75 years since its first rocket launch

• Thales Space and Italian Space Agency to develop first human outpost on the moon

• US Space Force scheduled to launch eighth X-37B mission

Crypto con games

• North Korean hackers blamed for record spike in crypto thefts in 2025

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Walmart salary data revealed: How much it pays designers, software engineers

• Wag once worth $650M, files for bankruptcy

• BrewDog's 'Equity for Punks' may have contributed to its struggles

• Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern reach $85B merger deal

  • Union Pacific to buy Norfolk in $85B mega U.S. railroad deal

  • Union Pacific announces bid for Norfolk Southern to create transcontinental rail

• The Housing Market Is Frozen. Zillow's CEO Knows You're Still Scrolling

• JPMorgan Chase Nears a Deal to Take over Apple's Credit-Card Program

• Lockheed Has Something ‘Magical,’ Costly as Hell, and Totally Secret Up its Sleeve.

  • They bringing out the Navy Anti-Gravity stuff?

• The Driver of Apple's Exploding Valuation Is Under Threat

• Palo Alto Networks Nears over $20B Deal for Cybersecurity Firm CyberArk

• Spotify stock falls on revenue miss, lackluster guidance

• Novo Nordisk shares plunge 23% after Wegovy maker names new CEO, cuts guidance

  • Novo Nordisk Shares Plummet as Competition Weighs on Sales

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• A Fight over a Ban on Hemp in Texas

Trump

• Sen. Josh Hawley introduces bill to send tariff rebate checks to Americans.

  Hawley, who championed stimulus check legislation with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., amid the Covid pandemic in 2020, authored his new bill to echo that past effort. The program would be set up as a refundable tax credit, with the government sending checks this year should the bill advance through Congress and get Trump’s signature. The bill would ensure that the amount provided to each adult and dependent child is at least $600. It also allows for a larger rebate per person should tariff revenue exceed projections.

• There was no “missing minute” in Epstein jail video, government source says.

  • CBS News investigation of Jeffrey Epstein jail video reveals new discrepancies

Democrats

• ‘You Must Be Kidding’: Media Matters, Collapsing Under Siege from Elon Musk, Fumes at Massive Legal Bills From Marc Elias Firm

  But that may be what Media Matters will do to end its legal fight with Musk. According to the Times, Media Matters has attempted to settle with Musk and X through its new legal team at Susman Godfrey. X demanded that Media Matters pay all of the cash it has in the bank and shut down operations, the Times reported. Media Matters declined the offer.

• Lina Khan: Democrats Can Learn from Zohran Mamdani - The New York Times

  One of the most underappreciated aspects of Zohran Mamdani’s successful primary campaign for New York City mayor was its connection to small business. He stopped by halal carts and bodegas and asked what challenges they faced. It is the kind of outreach that teaches policymakers about real problems in our economy and can help build trust and lasting relationships. It is also too rare. Fighting for an economy where small businesses can thrive was once core to the Democratic Party. Democrats built a lasting coalition by shifting economic power to ordinary Americans, checking the power of big business, and expanding the middle class. But for decades, the party has largely ceded issues important to small businesses to Republicans.

  From 1980 to 2020, as the share of the economy accounted for by small businesses fell, big business interests began spending heavily in elections, bending the ears of many Democrats and sometimes skewing how they saw the economy. Even when Democratic policies were better for small businesses than Republican policies, Democrats didn’t make a sustained effort to court small-business owners and turn them into a reliable base of support.

Left Angst

• Trump trade deals prove access to the U.S. still matters above all else

  In the Trump-dominated global economy, the U.S. gets plenty but gives nothing in return. This is the reality of the asymmetric trade deals touted by the White House, which show how far foreign leaders will go to safeguard access to the U.S. market. Trump announced agreements with Europe and Japan in which both agreed to drop their tariff rates to zero, promised eye-popping investments in the U.S., and opened markets to American producers.

• Florida’s attorney general targets a restaurant over an LGBTQ Pride event

• NSF plans end to lone U.S. Antarctic research icebreaker

  • Molecule eases neurological symptoms of mitochondrial deficiency in coenzyme Q10

• Portrait of a Young Doge Coder Dismantling America's Institutions

• The proposed destruction of the USDA: it's deja vu all over again

• Sydney Sweeney Wears Jeans In Ad, Woke Liberals See Nazis   | ZeroHedge

  Another unhappy white liberal woman then claimed that American Eagle exactly knew what it was doing with this ad "to revive the Third Reich."

• How the Trump FCC justified requiring a "bias monitor" at CBS

• Take It Down Kills Parody

  Donald Trump is a notorious media bully. He uses lawsuits, executive power, and political pressure to punish critics and bend institutions to his will. Disney, Meta, and Paramount have since paid out multi-million-dollar settlements over content disputes. CBS News leaders resigned. Colbert’s show was canceled. The AP was barred from the White House. Even Rupert Murdoch is now being sued over unflattering coverage. Trump targets law firms, universities, and online services like TikTok, the moment they stop serving his interests. Despite this well-established pattern of silencing dissent, lawmakers handed him the Take It Down Act: a sweeping censorship weapon he has openly vowed to wield against his critics. Recently, South Park fired back in its first new episode in years, with a bold, refreshing, and unapologetically crude parody of the Christian “He Gets Us” campaign—featuring a deepfaked, fully nude Donald Trump wandering the desert as a solemn narrator asks, “When things heat up, who will deliver us from temptation?” The “public service announcement” ends with a glowing political endorsement from Trump’s wide-eyed, “teeny tiny penis.” It’s brilliant satire that cuts right to the heart of American political delusion. It’s also potentially criminal under the law Trump championed. Welcome to the new reality: mocking the President with AI could now land you in prison.

  • see also "Douglass Mackey" who just got loose from a jail sentence for mocking Hillary in 2016, and whose story was not taken up byt these "free speech advocates" because he wasn't speaking the way they liked.

• US to burn $9.7M worth of USAID-purchased contraceptives

• A Million Veterans Gave DNA for Research. Scientists Worry Data Will Be Wasted

• EPA to revoke endangerment finding, the basis for regulating greenhouse gases

  • EPA wants to eliminate regulation for greenhouse gases

• Doge-Pilled: Why Luke Farritor Followed Elon Musk to Washington

• Pete Hegseth's Deal to Get Trump His Free Qatari Jet Is Leaked

• TSA facial recognition scans are optional on paper, mandatory in practice

• Congress's NASA and NSF Budgets Counter Trump, Fund Science

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Shane Tamura ID'd as NYC gunman after deadly shooting that killed NYPD officer

  The maniac gunman who killed at least five people at a Midtown office building on Monday evening was identified as a 27-year-old Las Vegas man, according to law enforcement sources. Shane Tamura was named by sources as the shooter who stormed 345 Park Avenue, a swanky 44-floor building and opened fire, killing one police officer and at least four civilians. The number of injured was expected to grow, the sources said.

  • Blackstone executive among four people killed in Midtown NYC shooting

• Citizen recorded an immigration arrest. Officers told him to delete it or else

• Minnesota activates National Guard after St. Paul cyberattack

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Navy Set to Unplug Critical Hurricane Satellites This Week

  Navy officials say they are restricting data access to these three juggernaut weather satellites – some in operation since 2005 – to mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk to the their High-Performance Computing environment. The moratorium notice issued June 30th, however, did not explain how the urgent IT security issue would be resolved through July as critical data continued to flow to NOAA and other end users like the National Hurricane Center. The loss of data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) instrument aboard each of the three defense satellites is significant and devastating to U.S. hurricane forecasters and to tropical cyclone forecast agencies around the globe. When I asked officials to elaborate on what’s changed about their IT modernization requirements that would suddenly prevent data dissemination, the Navy’s spokesperson said they had nothing further to provide on the matter.

  According to experts familiar with the Navy’s computing architecture, the IT security concerns are valid, though Defense officials chose not to fund or prioritize efforts to patch the issue. The weather satellites also store data onboard and relay this stored data – including all real-time global SSMIS data – to sites with domestic communications satellite (DOMSAT) antenna, a relic of the 1970s and 1980s. Today only one operable DOMSAT antenna is left and it’s owned and operated by the Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC). The software used by the antenna is some 40 years old and unsurprisingly doesn’t meet present-day information assurance compliance. It's unclear what level of effort is required to update the software, but the decision to cut the data rather than patching the security risk doesn’t appear to weigh the risk the premature outage poses to U.S. national security and critical DOD facilities around the world (full disclosure: I served in a tropical cyclone advisory capacity to DOD in the past, so these are matters with which I’m familiar).

  • the "mitigation" is probably some individual babysitting a box and making sure none of the people accessing it are running anything they should by watching top or something.

• Cadence to plead guilty and pay $140M to US for China sales

World

• Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

• Microsoft Suspends Services to India Refiner Nayara over EU Sanctions

• The UK is slogging through an online age-gate apocalypse

• EU Commission finds Temu in breach of online platform rules

• The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025

• Apple Shift Turns India into Top Maker of US Smartphones

  • India overtakes China in smartphone exports to U.S. as manufacturing jumps 240%

  • India eats China's lunch in US smartphone manufacturing

• Polish Train Maker Is Suing the Hackers Who Exposed Its Anti-Repair Tricks

• War Games: MoD asks soldiers with 1337 skillz to compete in esports

• Farage 'on the side of predators' with Online Safety Act criticism, says Labour

• Munich-bound United Airlines Boeing 787-8 declares 'mayday' after engine failure

• The UK planning to ban VPN

• The Criminal Enterprise Run by Monkeys

• Harsh Reality of US Trade Deal Stirs EU Soul-Searching over Lost Clout

• Can a Country Be Too Rich? Norway Is Finding Out

• The hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe

• Bangladesh sees economic hope a year after autocrat ousted in people's revolt

• YouTube to Be Included in Australia's Teen Social Media Ban

  • YouTube to be included in social media ban for under 16 after exemption reversed

Israel

• Viral images of starving Gaza boy don't tell the whole story

• Palestinian who helped make Oscar-winning No Other Land killed in West Bank

• Israel's War Became Unjust

• U.K. Will Recognize Palestinian Statehood in September, Barring Cease-Fire

• Israeli public figures call for 'crippling sanctions' over Gaza starvation

• US labor activist Chris Smalls assaulted by IDF during Gaza aid trip, group says

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Flights grounded as Russia's airline Aeroflot hacked and systems 'destroyed'

  • Cyberattack on Russian airline causes the cancellation of more than 100 flights

China

• Chinese consumer complaints show widespread padding of car sales

• Nvidia orders 300k H20 chips from TSMC due to robust China demand

• A Cosmic Mystery: Is China Building the Biggest Telescope?

• China reins in the spiralling construction costs of nuclear power

Health / Medicine

• In-exercise caffeine improves performance in the heat, study finds

• A record-breaking baby has been born from an embryo that's over 30 years old

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• The world left its fight against tuberculosis unfinished

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Nature's most extreme fat loss is fueled by 28.5M shrimp snacks

• Could aluminium become the packaging 'champion'?

• The Life of Plastic

• Lowest Six-Month Human Death Toll From Bad Weather Since Records Began – The Daily Sceptic

• Now on Wall Street, JBS eyes growth amid scrutiny on deforestation and graft

• The guerrilla campaign to save a Texas prairie from 'silent extinction'

• The IPCC: Can it regain its credibility?

  if you're looking for an institutional manifestation of what good science looks like in practice, then the IPCC is seen by many as providing that gold standard. Over the years, it's become very familiar with attacks from climate deniers (serried ranks of pointy-headed flat-earthers have been summarily seen off by the IPCC over the years), more radical, independent scientists (with whom it's maintained a polite “agree to disagree” position), and climate activists, who it rather patronizingly ignores. But the IPCC is now in real trouble, with a much more problematic opponent: the world's elite actuaries! The driest, dustiest, most unimpeachably authoritative of global professions has chosen to turn its full firepower on the IPCC—and the fallout could (and should!) transform the world of climate science.

  If the IPCC continues to provide governments with seriously flawed assessments of climate risk, furnishing them with every conceivable variety of comfort blanket that protects us from the “whole truth” about accelerating climate change, then there is literally no way governments will ever come up with timely, proportionate responses to the crisis. And we'll all pay the price for that. In the meantime, the resurgence of climate denialism in the USA, turbocharged by the Trump Administration's determination to kill off America's burgeoning green industries, is already having predictable consequences.

  • Deal with doubts raised by 40 years of "doomsday!" by doubling down on the doom! Surely that'll make them more credible.

• Trump promised a drilling boom, but US energy industry hasn't been interested

• Nuclear Winter Would Be Even Worse Than We Thought

  researchers at Pennsylvania State University examined how nuclear war might disrupt food security worldwide, focusing specifically on the global production of corn, the most produced grain crop in the world. In the worst-case scenario, nuclear weapons would wreak havoc on our atmospheric systems, gradually cutting our annual corn production by up to 87%, the study warns.

• We Love Our Dogs and Cats. But Are They Bad for the Environment?