2025-08-06

Horseshit

• Coast Guard releases report on OceanGate, 2 years after fatal Titan implosion

  • Titan Submersible Implosion Was Preventable Disaster, Coast Guard Concludes

  • Titan sub implosion caused by bonkers "toxic workplace environment"

  • Titan sub disaster CEO could have been charged if he survived, Coast Guard says

• A Hiker Was Missing for Nearly a Year. Then an AI System Spotted His Helmet

• Imaging reveals 2k-year-old ice mummy's 'incredibly impressive' tattoos

• One Way Parents Can Fight the Phone-Based Childhood

• He earned a Michelin star, but all he wants to do is sell ice cream

• Painting lines on soccer and football fields? That's a job robots can do now

• Joby to Acquire Blade's Passenger Business, Accelerating Air Taxi

• Neanderthals likely ate fermented meat with a side of maggots

• Maglev Trains Dead In The U.S.

celebrity gossip

• New Photos of Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan Townhouse

  • After years of "Epstein is just conspiracy theories" the media sure has an interest now... perhaps they could look int heir archives and compile lists of who he was seen hanging out with? Besides Trump?

Obit

• Former Romanian President Ion Iliescu dies aged 95

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Jim Acosta interviews 'made-up' AI avatar of Parkland victim Joaquin Oliver

  • Jim Acosta ‘Interviews’ AI-Generated Avatar of Deceased Teen Promoting Gun Control

  • Ex CNN host under fire for 'interview' with AI of dead school shooting victim

• Propaganda Doesn't Have to Be a Dirty Word

Musk

• Tesla, Elon Musk sued by shareholders over Robotaxi claims

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Was Jesus Wrapped in the Shroud of Turin? 3D Study Says Probably Not

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Scientific fraud has become an 'industry,' alarming analysis finds

• Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Amazon Cuts 100 Wondery Jobs Amid Podcast Strategy Shift

• DrawAFish.com Postmortem

  If you read the post on Hackernews, you saw that the website was an exercise in vibe-coding. I used Copilot to implement features, and I used it to implement features fast. If you saw the website only on August 1, you probably do not understand why I need to write a postmortem at all. Everything went swimmingly (ha, ha). But if you had the displeasure of viewing my website between the hours of 2AM (20 minutes after I went to sleep) and 8AM (when I woke up)[1] EST on Aug 3, then you would have seen chaos. Every single username was transformed to a heinous slur, many unsavory fish had made it into the fishtank, and many beautiful fish were gone.

• Instagram now requires users to have at least 1k followers to go live

• Substack's Algorithm Accidentally Reveals What We Knew: It's the Nazi Bar Now

• One of the biggest newsletter platforms now syndicates to Bluesky and Mastodon

• Antivirus vendors fail to spot persistent, nasty, stealthy Linux backdoor

• Before AWS existed, one company ran the servers for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook

  Their containers were so efficient that one Joyent server could handle what took multiple Amazon EC2 instances. Industry experts called it "way better than AWS." But they made one technical choice that would haunt them forever. They built it on Solaris. Developers wanted Linux.

• Microsoft promises to eventually make WinUI 'open source'

• Skechers is making kids' shoes with a hidden AirTag compartment

• Itch.io seeks payment processors who work with with adult material

• Enough is enough–I dumped Google's worsening search for Kagi

• Google is breaking websites to save a few bucks

• Intel struggles with key manufacturing process for next PC chip, sources say

• Mark Zuckerberg Just Declared War on the iPhone

• Disney's ESPN to acquire NFL media assets in major deal

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Open-Source Coders Who Benefit the Public Should Be Tax-Exempt

• The PSF has paused our Grants Program

  PSF Staff have been checking in quarterly on our award expenditure, and at the end of Q1, we were on track. When PSF Staff reviewed approved grant awards at the end of Q2, however, we had granted close to 80% of the 2025 grant budget. The grant applications received so far through July exceed the budget ceiling.

• hardware has changed

  Regardless of what happens, single thread performance was stuck anyway, the memory wall has been real since 1990 or so, latency has been barely moving, and Nvidia has been building products for decades, with a singular vision. Writing code that runs efficiently, even on CPUs let alone GPUs, is hard. There is a largely latency gap switching from CPU to GPU, although we are starting to see more CPUs and GPUs combined on the same piece of silicon, from Apple, Nvidia and AMD, although these are generally much lower memory bandwidth parts. The software side has a lot of work to do to catch up with the reality of the hardware. GenAI has accelerated this hardware transformation, and we need to work on the software transformation for modern hardware.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Google Makes Fun of Apple Intelligence Siri Delay in Ad Promoting Pixel 10

• ChatGPT adds mental health guardrails after fell short in recognizing delusion

• ChatGPT and the Meaning of Life

  such pessimistic lamentations have come to seem to me no more than misplaced machismo. Sure, Marx’s and my culture, the ethos of our post-industrial professional class, might make us regret a world without work. But we shouldn’t confuse the way two philosophers were brought up with the fundamental values of human life. What stranger narcissism could there be than bemoaning the end of others’ suffering, disease, and need, just because it deprives you of the chance to be a hero?

  I know that the post-instrumental world could be a much better place. But its coming means the death of my culture, the end of my way of life. My fear and grief about this loss won’t disappear because of some choice consolatory words. But I know how to relish the twilight too. I feel lucky to live in a time where people have something to do, and the exploits around me seem more poignant, and more beautiful, in the dusk.

• AI Is Listening to Your Meetings. Watch What You Say

• Bragging about replacing coders with AI is a sales-pitch

• 'We didn't vote for Chat GPT': Swedish PM under fire for using AI in role

• Google agrees to pause AI workloads when power demand spikes

• Developer survey shows trust in AI coding tools is falling as usage rises

• An Illinois bill banning AI therapy has been signed into law

  • Illinois Bans AI from Providing Therapy

• Anthropic Unveils More Powerful AI Model Ahead of Rival GPT-5 Release

• The AI bubble is so big it's propping up the US economy (for now)

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Blue Origin successfully completes another human flight.

• Is the Dream Chaser space plane ever going to launch into orbit?

• Skyrora wins green light to lob rockets from Scotland

• SpinLaunch, the Space Industry's Best Kept Secret

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Microsoft employee slammed for time spent on breaks and grabbing snacks

• Chipmaker TSMC says it has discovered potential trade secret leaks

• More than 3,000 Boeing fighter jet, munitions machinists go on strike.

• US Jobs Market Is Showing Signs of a ‘He-cession’ - Bloomberg

  Despite all the drama about the weakening jobs numbers, the US labor market is actually doing OK. There is one major exception, however: if you happen to be a young man. While the overall unemployment rate was still a respectable 4.2% in July, for young men aged 20 to 24, it was 8.3%, which is near recession levels — and for recent college graduates, the annual rate is 5.3%. Both of these numbers are about double the comparable figures for young women. During the pandemic, the economy was so bad for working women that it inspired the term “she-cession.” Could the US now be headed for a “he-cession”?

• US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief

  • Oh god no. Don't let the Intel worm get inside TSMC. Look what it did to Intel.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Judges Openly Doubt Government as Justice Dept. Misleads and Dodges Orders

• HHS Winds Down mRNA Vaccine Development Under BARDA

Trump

• White House Preps Order to Punish Banks That Discriminate Against Conservatives

• Trump says new semiconductor tariff plan coming as soon as next week

Democrats

• Texas Republicans vote to arrest Democrats blocking redistricting plan

• California could slash 5 GOP House seats to counter Texas

  alifornia Democrats are considering new political maps that could slash five Republican-held House seats in the liberal-leaning state while bolstering Democratic incumbents in other battleground districts. The move comes in direct response to efforts by Texas Republicans to redraw House districts in order to strengthen the GOP hold on the chamber in 2026. A draft plan that’s circulating aims to boost the Democratic margin to 48 of California’s 52 congressional seats, according to a source familiar with the plan who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Left Angst

• Trump administration trashes anti-pollution plan for JD Vance's home town

• Purdue student from South Korea released from ICE detention facility

• The EPA's Disastrous Plan to End the Regulation of Greenhouse Gases

• Pentagon slashes staff of R&D repository by nearly 80%

• EPA Moves to Cancel $7B in Grants for Solar Energy

• Call to a local Social Security may be picked up by someone who can't help

• FCC Abandons Efforts to Make U.S. Broadband Fast and Affordable

• White House Orders NASA to Destroy Important Satellite

• Its called "The constitution"... I know the NYT aint fond of it but they might recognize the unifying element that their enemies share. The Supreme Court Has Finally Found a President It Likes

• Some countries still want to save the world

• US class-action lawsuit would force EPA to reinstate $3B climate program

  • Law is made in Congress, not in courts or in the offices of the executive branch agencies.

• RFK Jr. pulls $500M in funding for vaccine development

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Inside North Korea's effort to infiltrate U.S. companies

• U.S. may require visa applicants to post bond up to $15,000 to enter country

  • U.S. to Require Some Foreign Visitors to Pay Bonds of Up to $15,000 for Entry

  • US to require bonds of up to $15,000 for some tourists

  • US to require up to $15K bond from visitors in new visa trial

• Palmer Luckey: I Saw the Future of War. Now It's Up to Us to Prepare for It

World

• Jair Bolsonaro Put on House Arrest by Brazil’s Supreme Court - The New York Times

  Brazil’s Supreme Court on Monday ordered the house arrest of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is accused of overseeing a plot to cling to power after losing the 2022 election. His case lies at the center of President Trump’s tariff feud with the South American nation. Mr. Bolsonaro, who was ordered last month to wear an ankle monitor while he awaited trial, had been told to remain at home most hours and to stay off social media platforms. In the new ruling on Monday, Justice Alexandre de Moraes said that the former president had violated those terms, indirectly sharing posts and videos on social media through the accounts of his allies and sons.

• India Will Buy Russian Oil Despite Trump's Threats, Officials Say

• V. Cheng took advantage of HK lockdown to get dramatic shot of Monster Building

• The UK's Online Safety Act Is the Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About

• The migrant hotel protests are different this time

  The protests of 2025 are also organised in a way that literal communist “community organisers” could only hope to dream of. Sometimes, known activists in the community are responsible for bringing everyone together, like James Harvey and Sydney Jones, who organised the protest in Norwich last weekend. Other times, a Facebook group or WhatsApp chat will be set up, along the lines of “X COMMUNITY SAYS NO TO Y LOCAL HOTEL,” by a completely random local resident, who just decides to start organising protests, despite having absolutely zero experience doing so. Both types of local leaders, veterans and novices, have had a tendency to hold the crowds back, instructing them to keep it peaceful. (As an aside, it is quite funny that I have now had to return to using Facebook after everyone my age in politics abandoned the platform years ago, just to keep up with when the next protest is about to take off.)

• 'No land, no home, no future': Himalayan Lepchas fear new dam

• Decades of Blunders Put a Lethal Wall at the End of a South Korean Runway

• Brazil's Supreme Court Illegally Used Social Media Posts to Frame Protesters

• Denmark zoo asks people to donate unwanted pets to feed predators

• VPNs may become a new target of EU lawmakers after being deemed "key challenge"

• Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time

Israel

• A wasteland of rubble, dust and graves: how Gaza looks from the sky

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Punishing Putin's Enablers India and China

• Russia's Secret War and the Plot to Kill a German CEO

• Russia blocks websites and isolates its internet from the world

China

• Chinese blessing scam more prominent in Australia as operators re-emerge

• China pushes back at US demands to stop buying Russian and Iranian oil

• China Faces EU Sanctions over Secret Drone Shipments to Russia's Military

• China 'to triple number of Uyghur organ-harvesting centres'

• Uncle Sam floats tracking tech to keep AI chips out of China

• China issues certification requiring intensive training for civilian drone use

Health / Medicine

• Eating earlier linked to long-term weight-loss success

  • After years of "weight loss pills cure everything"; suddenly it is permissible to mention other methods again... I expect that means the stories about "weight loss drugs cause spontaneous decapitation" and other side effects will be starting soon.

• Speak and they shall appear: 'Ozempic face' may be driving a cosmetic surgery boom

• 'It's just PR': Skittles, Hershey and Nestle are removing artificial colors

  • If its just PR they could have done it at any time previously and made all sorts of friends. Remember the endless furor about the Red M&M's: Why Were Red M&M's Discontinued for a Decade?

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Covid-19 Made Our Brains Age Faster

• "Red meat allergy" from tick bites is spreading both in US and globally

  • And the "bio-ethicists" are happy about that: Beneficial Bloodsucking

• Southern China Outbreak of Mosquito-Borne Virus

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Cigarette smoking: Scientists have solved the mystery of what killed more than 5B sea stars

• California farmers identify a hot new cash crop: Solar power

• World in $1.5T 'plastics crisis' hitting health from infancy to old age

• Dinosaur teeth reveal prehistoric air quality was pretty awful

  • I like the theory that they had a much thicker atmosphere than we do; to the point that buoyancy helped them be so large without suffering the effects of gravity that limit the size of terrestrial animals today.

• Fast-moving wildfires burn nearly 21,000 acres across northwestern Colorado

• Thermal camera reveals how dangerously hot playgrounds get.

  • Back in the day kids often played in creeks in the summer. with snakes and stuff. dirt. the horror...

• Why suppressing all wildfires has made today's megafires worse

• Audio of arguments from Marriage Story used to scare off wolves in the US

• Melting glaciers could trigger volcanic eruptions around the globe, study finds