2025-09-26

etc

• How Common Is Accidental Invention?

  Altogether, of the 190 “major” inventions Wikipedia lists between 1800 and 1970, I counted 15 (just under 8%) that could be described as accidental. This is a short enough list that we can enumerate each one.

Horseshit

• Our Bodies, Their Data: Platform Capitalism and Exclusion of the Global South

• Former Apple Luminary Sets Out to Create the Ultimate GPU Software

• Delta Replaces Engine Units in Effort to Address Toxic-Fume Surge on Planes

• HSBC Claims Quantum Trading Breakthrough

  • (PDF) HSBC Demonstrates Worlds First Known Quantum Enabled Algorithmic Trading

  • HSBC says quantum computing trial helps bond trading

  • HSBC Says Quantum Computing Trial Beat Wall Street Rivals

• Why the Most Valuable Company Is Buying into Quantum Computing

• Aggressive squirrel attacks send San Francisco Bay Area residents to ER

• Fusion power plants don't exist yet, but they're making money anyway

• A New Kind of Concrete Can Grow and Repair Itself

• Is Gen Z Unemployable?

• Whole-Genome Sequencing Will Change Pregnancy

• Shoplifters could soon be chased down by drones

• U.S. once again hits new low in World Happiness Report

• Lab-grown gems are robbing Botswana of its diamond riches

• Cat owners donate more money than dog owners

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Google is sorry for pulling down Covid misinfo

  • Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes taken off YouTube hours after reinstatement

• The Bullet as Shitpost: Media Won't Publish Manifestos but Scrawls on Casings Ok

• Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

Musk

• Tesla is now buying ads on Elon Musk's X to get people to vote for his $1T comp

• Musk's xAI accuses rival OpenAI of stealing trade secrets

• Elon Musk's Chatbot Goes to Washington

Electric / Self Driving cars

• German remote-driving firm that hopes to make private car ownership redundant

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Exploit Allows for Takeover of Fleets of Unitree Robots

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Regulating AI Hastens the Antichrist, Says Palantir's Peter Thiel

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Half of Math Papers Exist Only to Game Rankings

• Felony charges after South Carolina high school filled with fart spray for weeks

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Google is coming for Microsoft's lunch with converged Android PCs

  • Android for PC Is Coming

• Mastodon rolls out quote posts with protections to prevent 'dunking'

• How ‘burner phones’ can add an extra layer to personal safety

• Consumer Reports calls on Microsoft to extend support for Windows 10

• Supermicro server motherboards can be infected with unremovable malware

• VR Headsets Are Better Than Ever and No One Seems to Care

• Spotify is finally taking steps to address its AI slop and clone problem

  • Spotify Announces New AI Safeguards, Says It's Removed 75M 'Spammy' Tracks

• Google Asks US Supreme Court to Pause App Store Overhaul

  • Google Asks Supreme Court to Intervene in Dispute with Epic

• Python, the movie. The programming language's origin story comes to the screen

• Nintendo of America boss Doug Bowser is retiring

• Brother denies locking third-party ink cartridges

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Full eGPU acceleration on the Pi 500 with a 15-line patch

• Raspberry Pi 500+ Review: RGB clicky keys and NVMe storage, but $200

• Open source to closed doors: RubyGems control fight erupts

  The controversy follows a story earlier this week about Ruby Central's assumption of control over RubyGems infrastructure. What's new in Drapper's exposé is the assertion that Shopify, a major corporate user and sponsor in the Ruby ecosystem, applied financial and governance pressure to force Ruby Central's hand – effectively turning the nonprofit into a proxy for corporate interests. According to Drapper, Ruby Central had already been financially strained. A major sponsor, Sidekiq, allegedly withdrew a $250,000/year commitment after Ruby Central "platformed" Rails creator DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson) at RailsConf 2025, leaving it heavily dependent on Shopify's chequebook.

  • Once there was a time when we could share effort on software, and not worry about whether we agreed on everything else. I miss the times when "we can agree to disagree about irrelevancies" was assumed; when there weren't guardians of the Faith gatekeeping public projects.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their Partners

• The A.I. Bubble Is Coming for the Browser

• Chatbait Is Taking over the Internet

• $100B AI plan will require power equal to 10 nuclear reactors

• Journals infiltrated with 'copycat' papers that can be written by AI

• Accenture to 'exit' staff that cannot be retrained for age of AI

• AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral

• Sam Altman's AI empire will devour as much power as NYC and San Diego combined

• AI safety tool sparks student backlash after flagging art as porn

• US judge approves $1.5B Anthropic copyright settlement with authors

• Meta in Talks with Google to Use Gemini to Improve Ad Targeting

• When Sam Altman Predicts a 'Superintelligence' Might Arrive

• Business Insider reportedly tells journalists: OK to use AI and not tell readers

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Astra’s Chris Kemp woke up one recent morning and chose violence - Ars Technica

  Chris Kemp, the chief executive officer of Astra, apparently didn't get the memo about playing nice. Kemp made some spicy remarks at the Berkeley Space Symposium 2025 earlier this month, billed as the largest undergraduate aerospace event at the university (see video of the talk). He provided an overview of Astra's successes and failures, and generally sought to make a good impression on prospective interns at the company, and future employees. The university is only a few miles away from the company's Bay Area headquarters. During the speech, however, Kemp periodically deviated from building up Astra to hurling insults at several of his competitors in the launch industry. To be fair to Kemp, some of his criticisms are not without a kernel of truth. But they are uncharacteristically rough all the same, especially given Astra's uneven-at-best launch record and financial solvency to date.

• NASA Confirms First Crewed Mission to Orbit the Moon in 50 Years Set for 2026

• ULA launches third batch of Amazon's Project Kuiper satellites

Crypto con games

• Circle examines 'reversible' transactions in departure for crypto

• Memecoins Are Coming to the Stock Market

• European banks to launch euro stablecoin in bid to counter US dominance

• Cloudflare makes surprise move into crypto space

  • Cloudflare Plans to Launch Stablecoin

  • Cloudflare Introduces Net Dollar

• Unusual Trading Ahead of Crypto-Treasury Deals Draws Scrutiny from Regulators

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Owners of Radio Shack, Pier 1 Imports accused of running $112M Ponzi scheme

• The Tech Fashion Darling Accused of Swindling Investors Out of $300M

• Oracle faces an estimated 10000 more layoffs by year end, product changes likely

• Oracle saddles up with $18B debt amid AI infrastructure gamble

• In JPMorgan's Data Deal with Plaid, the Giants Cement Their Position

• Starbucks announces significant store closures and layoffs

  Niccol announced Thursday that Starbucks will close hundreds of stores this month, or about 1% of its locations. The company had 18,734 North American locations at the end of June, and the company said it will end September with 18,300 stores.

  • Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

  • Starbucks to lay off 900 workers, close stores in North America

• The US economy grew at a 3.8% rate in the second quarter

• Millions of Americans Are Becoming Economically Invisible

• Amazon to Pay $2.5B in Prime Membership Settlement

  • Amazon reaches $2.5B settlement with FTC over 'deceptive' Prime program

  • Amazon, FTC Reach $2.5B Deal in Prime Subscription Case

  • FTC Secures Historic $2.5B Settlement Against Amazon

  Amazon will be required to pay a $1 billion civil penalty, provide $1.5 billion in refunds back to consumers harmed by their deceptive Prime enrollment practices, and cease unlawful enrollment and cancellation practices for Prime.

  • Amazon Reaches $2.5B Settlement over Allegations It Misled Prime Users

  • Amazon will refund $1.5B to Prime subscribers in $2.5B FTC settlement

  • Amazon to pay $2.5B for tricking customers into signing up for Prime

  • Amazon to pay $2.5 bilion fine for duping customers into enrolling in Prime

  • Amazon will refund $1.5B to 35M customers allegedly duped into paying for Prime

• Buildings in S.F. face foreclosure after Veritas defaults on $652M debt

• Google pulls Franklin Township data center plan minutes before council vote

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Calls for criminal investigation into releasing Mikie Sherrill's military record

• Former FBI director James Comey indicted on two counts

  • FBI ex-chief Comey criminally charged as Trump targets critics, source says

Trump

• Trump expected to sign a TikTok deal Thursday

  • Let's Model the cost of a TikTok U.S. divestiture: $72.2B base case

  • Trump signs off on TikTok deal that puts US app's value at $14 billion

  • Trump signs executive order to transfer TikTok to US owners

• Statue of Trump and Epstein holding hands in DC removed as fast as it appeared

• Trump announces 100% tariff on branded or patented pharmaceuticals from Oct. 1

Left Angst

• Trump administration rehiring hundreds of workers laid off by DOGE

• (2019) Tylenol during pregnancy associated with Autism ADHD

  The researchers analyzed data from the Boston Birth Cohort, a 20-year study of early life factors influencing pregnancy and child development. They found that children whose cord blood samples contained the highest levels of acetaminophen—the generic name for the drug Tylenol—were roughly three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD or autism spectrum disorder later in childhood, compared to children with the lowest levels of acetaminophen in their cord blood.

• "Free Speech Culture" Is Killing Free Speech: Part One

  The legal view of free speech protects an unpopular speaker from being jailed or (successfully) sued; “free speech culture” is a social norm that discourages me from calling for that person to be fired, shunned, or otherwise socially sanctioned, or criticized to a degree that is, by some poorly defined measure, excessive. In my view, the “free speech culture” ethos has substantially contributed to intellectual framework that has allowed the Trump Administration and other bad actors to engage in official government censorship to an unprecedented degree. In this first post, I will describe my criticisms of the “free speech culture” ethos. In the second, I will argue that the ethos formed the rhetorical and intellectual basis for dramatically expanded official censorship.

  • The Right started talking about "tit for tat" and game theory right after the first attempt to kill Trump; "free speech" advocates were ejected like Leftists who didn't want vaccines.

• Calling someone a "nazi" is a permission slip for violence

  The last loonies on tech's woke island are getting desperate. It used to be that a wide variety of baseless accusations of racism, misogyny, or white supremacy could inflict grave social and professional consequences for the accused, but that's no longer true. So now they've had to up the ante, and that's why everyone is suddenly a nazi to these people. Because if you can't intimidate people into silence and compliance with the woke orthodoxies by threatening their job or their social circle, you might be able to threaten them with actual violence or worse. That's what the "nazi" accusation is there to convey: That violence has been authorized. The slogan has been around for a while: Punch a nazi. It has a sorta quaint, winking phrasing, so you'd be forgiven for thinking that maybe it wasn't actually meant as a real threat. But I think that theory has gone out the window. Just look at what happened to Charlie Kirk.

  • the orthodox reading is "fascists are good": HN comments

• Apple TV+'s 'The Savant' Delayed Amid Violence

• The Story of DOGE, as Told by Federal Workers

• DOGE might be storing every American's SSN on an insecure cloud server

• Will new U.S. H1B fee redraw the North American talent map?

• $100k per Employee: How the H-1B Visa Fee Could Reshape Work Forces

• The Dangerous War on Tylenol

• Hyundai's US Auto Plants Are Rife with Labor Abuses

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. Military Was Caught Off Guard by Israeli Strike on Qatar

• Hegseth orders all generals to a mysterious, in-person meeting

  • Hegseth orders rare, urgent meeting of numerous generals, admirals

• US, Canada scramble fighter jets to intercept Russian military planes off Alaska

World

• Argentina's Javier Milei lost the markets and turned to Donald Trump

• Taiwan Suspends South Africa Chip Export Curbs After Two Days

• EU opens probe into possible anticompetitive practices by SAP

• Apple pushes EU to repeal tech rules over feature delays, app vulnerabilities

  • Apple asks EU to scrap landmark digital competition law

  • Apple Calls for Changes to Anti-Monopoly Laws

  • Apple Demands EU Repeal the Digital Markets Act

  • Apple says it may stop shipping to the EU

• Raids, fines and secrecy: The hidden, illegal world of tattooing in South Korea

• Denmark shuts multiple airports, more unidentified drones spotted

  • Drone activity confirmed at multiple Denmark airports

• Millions Ditch TV Licence as BBC Enforcement Struggles

• Over 1k Indonesians sick from school meals in more food poisoning outbreaks

• The sun sets on India's iconic and controversial Soviet fighter jet

• Australia wants to know if GitHub is a social network that endangers children?

• The Richest Man in Germany Is Worth $44B. The Nazis Know Why

• Woman in Spanish cold case identified after 20 years

• EU starting registration of fingerprints and faces for short-stay foreigners

• Britain is slowly going bust

• UK to announce plans for digital ID scheme

  • Keir Starmer expected to announce plans for digital ID cards

• Apples Are Vital to Kashmir's Economy. A Landslide Left Them to Rot

• UK phone retailers lock shop doors while trading to tackle rising thefts

• Austria hails 'brain gain' in luring 25 academics away from US after cuts

• Cocaine lab found on property of Bolivia's former anti-drug czar

Iran / Houthi

• Every Nation Wants to Copy Iran's Deadly Shahed Drone

Israel

• Microsoft blocks Israel's use of its tech. in mass surveillance of Palestinians

  • Microsoft blocks Israel's use of its data centers

  • Microsoft Disables Some Cloud Services Used by Israel's Defense Ministry

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Europe has a Russian drone problem. Here are ways it could be solved

• Russian jet kamikaze drone with Raspberry Pi 4

• Ukraine's Plan to Starve the Russian War Machine

• High above the equator, Russia is stalking satellites used by NATO armed forces

China

• Xi Jinping sets out conservative climate goal for China over next decade

• China's plans to cut emissions too weak to stave off global catastrophe

• China set to open tallest bridge, expanding infrastructure push

• There Are More Robots Working in China Than the Rest of the World Combined

Health / Medicine

• New Blood Pressure Guidelines Mean You May Now Have Hypertension.

  • But we have a pill for that! Lots of them, in fact. None of them as good for you as an old fashioned wank, all of them with much worse side effects. But at least no one complains when you pop a pill at the lunch table.

• 'Amazing feat': US man still alive six months after pig kidney transplant

• The Cause of One of the Deadliest Cancers Might Be Inside Your Mouth

• Death rates rose in hospital ERs after private equity firms took over

• In quest for better NSAIDs, researchers decouple inflammation from pain

• Sharp rise in memory and thinking problems among U.S. adults

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• "Screwworm is dangerously close": Flesh-eating parasites just 70 miles from US

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• A new mega-earthquake hotspot could be forming beneath the Atlantic

• Ganges River is drying at an unprecedented rate, new study finds

• Seven of nine planetary boundaries now breached

• Oceans dangerously acidic from carbon emissions, report warns

• Rooftop solar is in a slump. Are dark days ahead?

• Ozone causes substantial reductions in carbon of managed European forests

• Heat Stress Is a Major Driver of India's Kidney Disease Epidemic

• Arctic sea ice has reached minimum extent for 2025