2025-08-02

etc

• Russia's earthquake was among biggest ever recorded, but damage was minimal

• Amid Air India probe, U.S. FAA and Boeing say fuel switch locks are safe

Horseshit

• Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good

• Why Won't Anyone Use the Beautiful Corporate Spaces

• Fujitsu starts development of 10000 plus superconducting quantum computer

• Face it: you're a crazy person - by Adam Mastroianni

• Scientists Are Hunting Down Humanity's Earliest Artificial Memories

• The Birth of the Attention Economy

• Dealer Repossesses Car, Customer Responds by Legally Taking Its Name

  the dealer has McCreary’s car, McCreary has the dealer’s name, and Ohio courts have yet to determine how it shakes out. It’ll be interesting to see what happens—I don’t think there’s ever been a case of a customer seeking restitution for a repossession quite like this before.

celebrity gossip

• An ex-Facebook exec said staff let Zuckerberg win at board games

• Jeffrey Epstein's Forgotten AI Summit

• Ghislaine Maxwell Transferred to Lower-Security Prison Facility

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• How the admin is covertly reconfiguring online algorithms

  Quietly, subtly, and almost always with plausible deniability, the Trump administration appears to be executing a playbook of what can best be described as reverse algorithmic capture: a process through which government pressure reshapes the architecture of digital platforms, not by direct control, but by engineering incentives that guide algorithms to amplify preferred narratives and suppress dissent. Put differently, it’s the state using soft power to realign platforms’ invisible gates toward ideological conformity—but never giving up that element of distance and plausible deniability. This strategy does not need to issue censorship orders or serve warrants to Silicon Valley tycoons. It works by shifting the terrain on which digital gatekeeping occurs. In July 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government. It requires that all artificial intelligence systems used by federal agencies be scrubbed of “ideological bias,” including references to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), critical race theory, and other progressive frameworks. Although the order ostensibly applies only to federally procured AI systems, its ripple effects stretch much farther. Any company hoping to win government contracts must now conform to these ideological guardrails—not just in internal memos and tools, but in the public-facing models they train and sell. That includes the algorithms that shape search results, feed curation, ad targeting, and content moderation on platforms like YouTube, Meta, and X. Essentially, these decisions determine what information and content – as well as content creators – you see or don’t see, and have a lasting effect by defining the parameters of acceptable discourse and content.

  • Like saying you had doubts about the 2020 election? ... This ain't new, its just that the Left objects when they don't hold the reins.

• European Censorship Accelerates

  The Committee chaired by Ohio’s Jim Jordan began investigating Europe’s primary speech-control law, the Digital Services Act, after a bizarre incident last August. Europe’s Commissioner for Internal Markets, Thierry Breton, sent a letter to X CEO Elon Musk threatening an “extremely vigilant” response for “any negative effect of illegal content on X in the EU,” ahead of a planned live interview of Donald Trump by Musk. Though the interview was to be held in Washington — speech between two Americans in America, distributed by an American company — Breton was upset it would be “accessible to users in the EU,” and “spillovers” of “illegal content” might ensue. Though Breton resigned shortly after in a clash with President Ursula von der Leyen, questions about how serious Europe might or might not be about asserting jurisdiction over American speech remained. Nearly a year later, Jordan’s Committee has come back with unpleasant answers. On May 7th, European authorities held a “DSA MultiStakeholder Workshop” in Brussels, intended to help major platforms like Meta, X, and Google understand their obligations under the DSA. As Jordan notes, the seminar was closed to the public, unlike previous seminars about laws like the Digital Markets Act. Participants of the new event were specifically warned not to describe the seminar’s “exercise scenarios,” but Jordan’s committee got hold of key documents.

  Europe’s pattern is the inverse of Trump’s. It keeps trying to expand its subsidy of ideologically charged speech, and it’s using even broader and more powerful tools than Trump’s executive orders to try to eliminate criticism of its immigration policies. The recent workshop also clearly shows the EU expanding both the scope and the methodology of its censorship practices, going after humor, satire, anodyne political opinions, memes that “may” spread “discriminatory ideologies,” and other content its army of “trusted flaggers” might not have noted even a few years ago.

• Bill would fine social media companies $5M a day for not fighting 'terrorism'

Musk

• Elon Musk gives millions to Republican super PACs ahead of the midterms

• Tesla's Sweden Sales Plunge 85.8% in July, Year to Date Decline Hits 63%

• A Tesla Robotaxi Had Its First Accident

• SpaceX's Cellular Starlink Expands to Support IoT Devices

• Jury Says Tesla Was Partly to Blame for Fatal Crash

  • Tesla partly liable in Florida Autopilot trial, jury awards $200M in damages

  • Tesla Must Pay $329M in Damages for Fatal Autopilot Crash

  • Tesla found partially liable for fatal 2019 crash

  • Tesla must pay $329M in damages in fatal Autopilot case, jury says

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Two Driverless Waymo Cars Collide at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport

  • Waymo car crashed into another Waymo car

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Oregon mandated phone-free schools – some parents are being asked to pay

• India to penalize universities with too many retractions

• Lying increases trust in science, study finds

• College is not for every student. Schools are steering them to high-demand jobs

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Samsung TV service down: Users say apps not loading amid widespread outage

• Meta Admits There's a Goldilocks Zone for VR Session Length Due to Form Factor

• Windows 10 at 10: How Microsoft led developers round in circles

• Things Apple Maps Does Better Than Google Maps

• Unpaid kink OK: Reindexing Adult NSFW Content

• Tim Cook Has Now Been Apple's CEO for Longer Than Steve Jobs

• Tim Cook Says 'It's Difficult to See a World' Without iPhones

• Colorado's new 748 area code is here. Here's a new song about it

• Microsoft gives in to Chromebook bullies and drops Windows 11 SE

• The Industry's Rush to $80 Video Games Has Stalled – For Now

• Spotify used to seem like a necessary evil for musicians. Now it just seems evil

• Live-Action Assassin's Creed Series Coming to Netflix

• Clarifying recent headlines on gaming content

  Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations. Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network.

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• HN Jobs:

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

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

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

• Linus still uses an RX580 and ditches Apple Silicon for an Intel laptop

  • The 580 has been a reliable and available part for decades. We have 2 in use in the house and I've killed 2 more over the years.

• The untold impact of cancellation

  Before my cancellation, I was an active and prominent software developer, conference organizer and frequent speaker in a vibrant community of software developers working with the Scala programming language. (In 2021) an “open letter” appeared online and was shared widely on social media throughout the community I had been part of since 2004. The letter was co-signed by 23 authoritative figures from that community, more than half of whom I had considered my friends until that moment. That instant cut my life into the time before, and the time after. I only found out about the publication of the two statements from a friend. Nobody had told me it was going to happen then; nobody had told me it was going to happen at all. Nobody had ever put any of the claims to me. It was an ambush, and I was blindsided.

  • HN comments

  • "Go along with the crowd" is the highest principle

• The NNCPNET email network

  NNCPNET is, at the moment, fairly small. The quux nodelist contains 16 entries — two of which are for quux itself, one of which is for Goerzen's personal email host, and one of which I set up for testing. So the number of people actively using the network is likely to be somewhere around a dozen.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• New AI detects deepfakes by analyzing motion, not just faces

• Google rolls out Gemini Deep Think model that tests multiple ideas in parallel

• OpenAI raises $8.3B at $300B valuation

• Tech giants ramp up spending as AI starts to deliver

• Uber Eats is adding AI to menus, food photos, and reviews

• 'Superintelligence' Will Create a New Era of Empowerment, Mark Zuckerberg Says

• Meta prepares for gigawatt datacentres to power 'superintelligence'

• AI infrastructure company fal raises $125M, valuing company at $1.5B

• Anthropic studied what gives an AI system its 'personality'

• Silicon Valley's New Strategy: Move Slow and Build Things

• AI is entering an 'unprecedented regime.' Should we stop it - and can we?

• Who Pays? AI Boom Sparks Fight over Soaring Power Costs

• A Teachers Union's Dangerous Embrace of A.I

• Meta dishes out $250M to lure 24-year-old AI whiz kid

• More details emerge on how Windsurf's VCs and founders got paid from Google deal

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Existing NASA Spacecraft Could Intercept the Weird Interstellar Object Cruising Into Our Star System.

  In a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, the researcher argued that NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which was designed to study Jupiter and launched in 2011, could get eerily close to 3I/ATLAS by March 14, 2026. Juno would have to apply a thrust of 1.66 miles per second on September 14, 2025, Loeb calculated, to intercept the mysterious object’s path.

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Figma's stock soared in its highly anticipated IPO,market cap instantly hit $45B

• Peter Thiel backing first private US uranium enrichment facility in Paducah

• Apple Reports Biggest Revenue Growth Since December 2021

• U.S. hiring was weak in July, with 73,000 jobs added

  • Biggest Job Revisions Since 2020 Expose Pitfall of Economic Data - Bloomberg

  The latest employment report showed the steepest downward revisions to US jobs growth since the pandemic, offering a dramatically different picture of the labor market in recent months. The Bureau of Labor Statistics marked down nonfarm payrolls by nearly 260,000 in May and June combined, according to the July employment report released Friday. The two-month revision was due in part to seasonal adjustment issues but also what economists say is a broader trend of low response rates.

  • "No One Can Be That Wrong" - Trump Fires Labor Statistics Boss After Weak 'Revised' Jobs Data | ZeroHedge

  • Trump orders firing of labor stats chief after data showed jobs growth slowed

  • Donald Trump to fire US labour statistics boss after weak jobs report

  • Trump seeks to fire official overseeing jobs data after weak report

  • Commissioner of labor statistics fired after weaker-than-expected jobs figures

• Three Intel senior executives to retire amid manufacturing shake up

• Rate, Price Drops Won't Substantially Improve Affordability

• Uber says emergency policies changed after driver left with child in backseat

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Blame the governor! Oklahoma’s “board meeting porn” scandal goes gonzo

Trump

• Further Modifying the Reciprocal Tariff Rates

  • Switzerland Slammed with 39% Tariff Rate in US Trade Blitz

  • Buying a Swiss Watch in America Is About to Get a Lot More Expensive

• Crypto donations flood Trump's super PAC

• Smoking Gun: Declassified Durham Appendix Confirms Hillary Clinton Plan To Smear Trump, Use FBI 'To Put More Oil On The Fire' | ZeroHedge

  • Documents Show Soros' Open Society Was in on Russia Hoax Development

  The appendix notes that, "Two of the apparently hacked emails appear to have originated from the Open Society Foundations," with emails allegedly written by former Open Society Foundations Regional Director Leonard Bernardo. "The media analysis on the DNC hacking appears solid...it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce," Bernardo allegedly wrote, citing communication with Clinton campaign official and Russia hoax architect Julia Smith. "Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire." Bernardo also confirmed plans the Russian Collusion narrative would be used against Trump to distract from Clinton's illegal use of a private email server to store and send classified information. At the time, Clinton was under criminal investigation by the FBI for the mishandling of classified information. "This should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level," Bernardo wrote. "The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue. Say something like a critical infrastructure threat for the election to feel manic since both POTUS and VPOTUS have acknowledge the fact IC would speed up searching for evidence that is regrettably still unavailable."

• Trump Orders Subs Repositioned in Rare Nuclear Threat to Russia

  • Trump Deploys 2 Nuclear Subs After Medvedev's "Foolish, Inflammatory" Statement | ZeroHedge

  On Tuesday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued the Kremlin's response to President Trump's Monday announcement from Scotland that he's reducing a deadline for Russia to agree a peace settlement from 50 days to 10 or 12 days, citing 'disappointment' in Putin not ending or at least winding down the war. Medvedev warned: "Russia isn't Israel or even Iran" and thus that "Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with (Trump's) own country."

  • Trump mobilizes nuclear subs in response to Medvedev's comments

Left Angst

• Why do right-wing figures name their companies after Lord of the Rings?

• Construction on Trump's $200M White House ballroom to begin in September

• US Energy Department misrepresents climate science in new report

• China Sees Gaps in US Cyber Defenses, Ousted National Security Official Says

• Trump Launching a New Private Health Tracking System with Big Tech's Help

• Federal government suspends research funding to UCLA

• How much cash is the US raising from tariffs?

• The Anti-Abundance Critique on Housing Is Dead Wrong

  The sharpest criticisms of the book Abundance have sometimes come from the antitrust movement. This group, mostly on the left, insists that the biggest problems in America typically come from monopolies and the corruption of big business. In housing, for example, Ezra Klein and I write that a key bottleneck to homebuilding in the last few decades has been legal barriers to construction, including zoning laws and minimum lot sizes. This is a mainstream view supported by economists and scholars who have studied the issue for decades. The antitrust left, however, claims that the more significant factor is that big homebuilders abuse their power by holding back construction to juice their profits.

• “No tax on tips” is an industry plant

• The Rule of Law Is Dead in the US

  But the Supreme Court has decided that rules and laws do not apply to Trump, and they don’t protect anybody from Trump. That means that the rule of law is functionally dead in this country (which shouldn’t be entirely surprising, given that this country almost never respects the rule of law in other countries). Nobody can know if the rights they have today will be the rights they have tomorrow. Nobody can know if a thing that is illegal for the government to do to them today will be illegal for the government to do to them tomorrow. We see the truth of this country’s descent into lawlessness every single day. All you have to do is pick up a newspaper, turn on the television, or go to Trump’s social media account. Nearly every “news” story you’ll see falls into one of two categories: Trump did something, or Trump threatens to do something. Nobody can reliably say whether those actions or threats are “legal” because everybody knows (whether they will admit that to you are not) that rules and laws no longer apply to the Trump regime.

• Delusions of Grandeur Go South

• IRS chief says agency plans to end free filing program

  Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Bill Long said the agency will end its Direct File program after a limited pilot and one full filing season.

  • IRS head says free Direct File tax service is 'gone'

  • Didn't they already report this? And open source it?

• Brown University reaches agreement with Trump administration, funding to be restored.

• Palantir Is Extending Its Reach Even Further into Government

• Smithsonian removes Trump from impeachment exhibit in American history museum

• A Nazi-Obsessed Amateur Historian Went from Obscurity to the Top of Substack

• New York Public Radio, TV Stations Face Big Cuts After Federal Funds Slashed

• Corporation for Public Broadcasting will shut down after Trump funding cuts

  • Corporation For Public Broadcasting to Shutter After Trump Cuts - Bloomberg

  “Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement Friday. “CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care.” CPB said that it informed its employees that the majority of staff positions will end with the close of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2025.

  • Corporation for Public Broadcasting to close after funding cut

  • Corporation for Public Broadcasting says it's shutting down

g + DOGE Wasted Billions Chainsawing Government in Name of Efficiency

• AMA and other medical associations are kicked out of CDC vaccine workgroups

• Conservatives Are Losing It over Superman's Basic Morality

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FBI seized $40k from Linda Martin without charging her with a crime

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Palantir gets $10B contract from U.S. Army

• In reversal, Defense Department will continue providing satellite weather data

• FBI's new secret spy base in New Zealand to counter chilling moves by China

• Navy demonstrates multi-day solar UAS flight

World

• Britain Is Losing Its Free Speech, and America Could Be Next

• Australia's productivity commission proposes cashflow tax to boost investment

• El Salvador allows Nayib Bukele to seek indefinite re-election

• Giorgia Meloni's government makes a bet on unproven nuclear technology

• UK Civil service interns must be working class, government says

• New euro banknotes spark Franco-Polish dispute over Marie Curie's name

• Full-body scans of 100k people could change medicine

• Belgium Bans Internet Archive's 'Open Library' in Site Blocking Order

• 5 Missing After Deadly Mine Collapse in Chile

• Online Safety Act: What went wrong?

  Put it this way: a statement like “we should stop young kids watching porn” is so agreeable that only the nuttiest amongst us could even begin to disagree with it. Even how the UK government is trying to get companies to comply makes sense, with businesses told to alter algorithms, remove harmful material, and verify user ages, or risk being fined. Surely, this law’s implementation involved the UK government shitting the bed and then rolling around in that shit before topping it all off by taking a little leap into a river of shit.

  The Online Safety Act is the equivalent trying to solve knife crime by having someone come into your kitchen to check you’re of the right age to use one. Oh, and this person is also totally fooled by a child wearing a fake moustache. In reality, this wouldn’t happen, because, generally, people understand that stabbings are a cultural issue, rather than a technical one. The issue is less the existence of knives and more the factors that drive people to use them aggressively.

• How Japan is quietly showing the world how to grow without economic growth

• Weight loss surgery tourism needs urgent regulation, say UK experts

Iran / Houthi

• Iran's plan to abandon GPS is about much more than technology

Israel

• Hamas Wants Gaza to Starve - The Atlantic

  Israel has unnecessarily reengineered the distribution of aid, failing to achieve its goal of separating the civilian population from Hamas while further constricting its supply. And for these decisions, it has attracted the justified condemnation of the international community. Despite the surge of hundreds of trucks into Gaza over the past four days, very few supplies have made it into warehouses to be distributed to the population. Aid shipments are being seized by a combination of desperate civilians, lawless gangs, clan-affiliated thugs, and merchants of death. Chaos and apocalyptic scenery are the norm, not the exception. There is no denying the reality of the widespread malnutrition and hunger in the Gaza Strip.

  In recent days, I’ve spoken with dozens of Gazans who are furious about what is unfolding around them. They are angry, one told me, at the “hordes of selfish people who are attacking aid convoys to steal and collect aid in a horrific manner without caring for Gazans who chose not to participate in these humiliating and demeaning displays of inhumanity, no matter the level of hunger.” But their anger is directed primarily at Hamas, which they hold responsible for putting the people of Gaza in this position, and for its continued refusal to end the war that it started.

  Hamas actually wants a famine in Gaza. Producing mass death from hunger is the group’s final play, its last hope for ending the war in a way that advances its goals. Hamas has benefited from Israel’s decision to use food as a lever against the terror group, because the catastrophic conditions for civilians have generated an international outcry, which is worsening Israel’s global standing and forcing it to reverse course.

  • Recognizing this; you'd think they'd stop insisting that all aid flow through Hamas...

• Lawyers warn that recognising a Palestinian state would breach international law

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Microsoft catches Russian hackers targeting foreign embassies

• Russia's China Ties Spur Boom in Learning Mandarin

• Russia is poised to ban WhatsApp in a bid to quell discontent

China

• China struggles to break its addiction to manufacturing

• China claims Nvidia built backdoor into H20 chip designed for Chinese market

  • China launches probe into Nvidia over H20 'risks' Asia

  • Nvidia says its chips have no backdoors after China flags H20 security concerns

Health / Medicine

• One diet soft drink daily may increase diabetes risk by more than a third

• Psilocybin helped aging mice not just live longer but "look better" new study

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Covid's origins conspiracy theories hamper ability to prevent the next pandemic

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Remarkable News in Potatoes

  • Researchers say they've discovered the potato's origins

• Rhino horns made radioactive to foil traffickers in South African project

  • Dehorning rhinos reduces poaching by 80%, study finds

• Massachusetts to offer discounted electric rates to heat pump owners this winter

• In California, an invasive mustard is destabilizing desert plant communities

• Utah wildfires creating "fire clouds" that can form their own weather systems

• Scientists want to sequence all animals, fungi and plants on Earth

• Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Could Wipe Out Malaria

• The new species of giant stick insect that weighs the same as a golf ball

• Climate change driving major algae surge in Canada's lakes, study finds

• GM's $4B Bet: Gasoline Is Still King

• Contrarian climate assessment from U.S. government draws Swift pushback