2025-11-04

etc

• Thinking Clearly – Daniel Lemire's blog

  People often lose sight of their motivation and follow trends. Reconnect with your motivation and adjust your means accordingly.

Horseshit

• Fountain Pens Are More Popular Than Ever–and Purists Are Fuming

• Cave Rescue That Captivated the Nation

• A New Paradigm for Protecting Homes from Disastrous Fires

• Mercedes' New Concept Car Looks Straight Out of '90s Batman Cartoons

• Damien Hirst: Assistants Make My Spot Paintings

• Your Gen Z colleagues have the right idea about work-life balance

• NY wants to shut down Kalshi, the company behind the NYC mayor's race odds

• NASA test flight seeks to help bring commercial supersonic travel back

• Rare 'mad honey' is only found in two places in the world

• Top US billionaires' collective wealth grew by $698B in past year – report

• I tried lab-grown chocolate. Could it be the future of Halloween?

• For rural Californians, unreliable power has become the norm

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page

Musk

• In Grok we don't trust: academics assess Elon Musk's AI-powered encyclopedia

• I tried Elon Musk's Wikipedia clone and boy is it racist

• Elon Musk teases a flying car on Joe Rogan's show

Electric / Self Driving cars

• The shrine to the 'Mayor of 16th Street' – KitKat, tragically killed by Waymo

• One would think this would be simpler than cars: Europe's first driverless train makes debut in Czechia

• as well: Honda's Self-Driving Lawn Mower Is Super Cool but Will Cost More Than a Civic Si

• Waymo to expand robotaxi service to Las Vegas, San Diego and Detroit next year

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Ethical Diversity

  People vary wildly in their integrity, the degree to which they’ll actually do what they say they’ll do when it’s inconvenient or costly. Someone can tick every box on your political wishlist and still be the person who harasses female graduate students at conferences or be the department chair who hires his spouse’s catering business for all department events. Someone else might have politics you find abhorrent and still be the one who shows up and supports the team unselfishly. The HxA crowd talks about intellectual courage, about being willing to engage with difficult ideas. They’re silent on the question of whether someone is among the tens of millions who steal in self-checkout lines (15% of users).

  In every organization, you see selective rule enforcement and legitimate policies used as weapons. This creates ‘atmospheric pressure’: bosses won’t threaten explicitly or promise anything directly, but they create conditions where people understand what’s expected and what benefits come from compliance. It’s the president’s chief of staff whose spouse is a photographer ‘available’ for faculty headshots. It’s the dean who mentions the non-profit she raises money for while discussing promotion. It’s all deniable. Nothing provable. But everyone navigates by it. And the downstream effect when leaders behave without ethics is that everyone else does.

  Recognizing ethical diversity would mean building recognition of ethical differences into how we talk about leadership, about institutional culture, about what makes a good colleague or mentor. Institutions have a robust vocabulary for gender, race, ethnicity, LGBTQ, or “first gen” dynamics in professional settings. But we have no language, no model for how to talk about the fact that some people operate with more ethical consistency than others, and that this isn’t the same as political alignment or ideological commitment.

  Everyone reading this likely thinks they’re on the ethical end of the spectrum. Everyone has a story about why their own inconsistencies don’t count, why the gap between their principles and their practice is justified by circumstances. The person who fudged their receipts or claimed a library book was “stolen” had reasons. The ones abusing their position had explanations. Addressing ethical diversity means recognizing that I might be someone else’s example of the problem, that my own sense of my integrity might be less reliable than I want to believe. The viewpoint diversity advocates don’t touch this because it would require the one form of self-examination that’s truly uncomfortable, not whether your politics are correct, but whether you do what you say.

• The Slow Death of Special Education

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

• Kensington's new trackball comes packed with scroll wheels

• Facebook Dating Has Become a Surprise Hit for the Social Network

• Spotify Sued over "Billions" of Fraudulent Drake Streams

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• HN Jobs: (they appear to have retired the "freelancer" thread)

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

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

  • someone stepped up: Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2025)

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Senators announce bill that would ban AI chatbot companions for minors

• Why companies will just keep nudging you to try AI

• Large reasoning models almost certainly can think

• Nvidia to invest up to $1B in AI startup Poolside

• Companies are told to stop hiring humans – we're closer to an AI job apocalypse

• Sam Altman says 'enough' to questions about OpenAI's revenue

• Sam Altman says OpenAI will have a 'legitimate AI researcher' by 2028

• New Version of Siri to 'Lean' on Google Gemini

• From Intel to the infinite, Pat Gelsinger wants Christian AI to change the world

• Google and Microsoft Face Less AI Spending Risk Than Meta, Amazon

• Google's Jeff Dean on the Coming Era of Virtual Engineers

• Mistake-filled legal briefs show the limits of relying on AI tools at work

• I Loved Being Social. Then I Started Talking to a Chatbot

• AI makes you smarter but none the wiser

• How Afraid of the A.I. Apocalypse Should We Be?

• OpenAI Signs $38B Cloud Computing Deal with Amazon

  • OpenAI, Amazon strike $38B agreement for ChatGPT maker to use AWS

  • OpenAI signs $38B compute deal with Amazon

  • OpenAI signs AI compute deal with Amazon

  • OpenAI signs $38B cloud computing deal with Amazon

• Polish to be the most effective language for prompting AI, new study reveals

• Meta has an AI product problem

• Why Even Basic A.I. Use Is So Bad for Students

• How Many AI Artists Have Debuted on Billboard's Charts?

  • AI music is charting weekly as Billboard claims trend is "quickly accelerating"

• Google pulls AI model after senator says it fabricated assault allegation

• I Led Product Safety at OpenAI. Don't Trust Its Claims About 'Erotica.'

• New California law requires AI to tell you it's AI

• Tech giants brace to spend billions more in CapEx as AI race heats up

• AI Is Teaching the Next Generation of M.B.A.s the Classic Case Study

• OpenAI Made a $12B Loss Last Quarter, Microsoft Results Indicate

• Coca-Cola's new AI holiday ad is a sloppy eyesore

• First clinical pregnancy following AI-based microfluidic sperm detection

• Palantir tops estimates, boosts fourth-quarter guidance on AI adoption

• few people can either: Language models cannot reliably distinguish belief from knowledge and fact

• Microsoft Signs $9.7B Deal with Data Center Firm IREN

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Is it aliens? Why that's the least important question about interstellar objects

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Why home sellers are rejecting buyers' love notes

• US bank deals surge as Trump-era regulators race through approvals

• CEO Andy Jassy says Amazon's 14,000 layoffs weren't about cutting costs or AI

• Kimberly-Clark to acquire Kenvue (Tylenol maker) in $48.7B deal

  • Kimberly-Clark Strikes $40B Deal for Tylenol Maker Kenvue

  • Kimberly-Clark to Buy Tylenol Maker Kenvue for $40B

  • Kimberly-Clark is buying Tylenol maker Kenvue in cash and stock deal worth –$48B

• Alphabet Selling €6.25B of Debt Amid AI Expansion

• What's Missing from Your Favorite Chocolate Bar? It May Be Chocolate

• Biggest careers that have now vanished, according to data

• Korean Fried chicken stocks surge 30% as Nvidia CEO dines out on local delicacy

• Bessent: Broader recession possible without more rate cuts

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• 'Political Scores' Use Reams of Data to Predict Your Vote

• Capitol Hill is abuzz with talk of the "Athena" plan for NASA

• Mayor Karen Bass calls for investigation into LAFD’s handling of smoldering blaze that became Palisades Fire 

  L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is calling for an investigation into the Lachman Fire after a Los Angeles Times report indicated that firefighters were ordered to abandon the smoldering underground fire that later became the Palisades Fire. According to text messages, firefighters told their battalion chief that “the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch” after responding to the Lachman Fire, which ignited on New Year’s Day before being contained. However, the battalion chief ordered fire crews to “roll up their hoses and pull out of the area on Jan. 2 — the day after the 8-acre blaze was declared contained — rather than stay and make sure there were no hidden embers that could spark a new fire,” according to the Times report. Days later on Jan. 7, gusty winds continued stoking the remnants of the Lachman Fire, which exploded into the deadly Palisades Fire.

• Snap benefits will restart, but will be half the normal payment

Trump

• BBC 'doctored' Trump speech, internal report reveals

  The BBC “doctored” a Donald Trump speech by making him appear to encourage the Capitol Hill riot, according to an internal whistleblowing memo seen by The Telegraph. A Panorama programme, broadcast a week before the US election, “completely misled” viewers by showing the president telling supporters he was going to walk to the Capitol with them to “fight like hell”, when in fact he said he would walk with them “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”. The “mangled” footage was highlighted in a 19-page dossier on BBC bias, which was compiled by a recent member of the corporation’s standards committee and is now circulating in government departments. The dossier said the programme made the US president “‘say’ things [he] never actually said” by splicing together footage from the start of his speech with something he said nearly an hour later. It claimed senior executives and the BBC’s chairman had ignored and dismissed a string of serious complaints raised by the corporation’s own standards watchdog.

  • BBC Engaged in Underhanded Edits of Trump’s J6 Speech

• Trump readies US troops for ground invasion in Mexico to go after drug cartels

Democrats

• Mamdani Has a Point About Rent Control

Left Angst

• Maybe the autopen did it? Trump, 79, Claims He Has 'No Idea' Who Crypto Billionaire He Pardoned Is

  • 'No idea who he is', says Trump after pardoning crypto tycoon

• Moon Duchin on the Math of Gerrymandering

• US accused of threatening EU diplomats

• Ex-CIA Director John Brennan explodes as he's confronted about Hunter Biden's laptop

  “We never said it was disinformation; we said it was Russian influence operations, which is what they do. There’s a big difference,” he added. After Speciale pushed back, the ex-CIA boss waved his hand in frustration and vented, “I’m not going to waste my time with you.” Speciale, who claimed the confrontation took place last Thursday, posted video of the fiery moment Saturday alongside text of the infamous “spies who lie” letter that Brennan signed.

  • the emails had Google DKIM keys; if there had been anything faked the proof was easy to show. But no one has. On the other hand, the signatures of many emails had been verified within days of the release.

• FDA's top drug regulator resigns after officials probe 'serious concerns'

  Dr. George Tidmarsh, who was named to the FDA post in July, was placed on leave Friday after officials in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of General Counsel were notified of the issues, HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard said in an email. Tidmarsh then resigned Sunday morning. “Secretary Kennedy expects the highest ethical standards from all individuals serving under his leadership and remains committed to full transparency,” Hilliard said. The departure came the same day that a drugmaker connected to one of Tidmarsh’s former business associates filed a lawsuit alleging that he made “false and defamatory statements,” during his time at the FDA. The lawsuit, brought by Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, alleges that Tidmarsh used his FDA position to pursue a “longstanding personal vendetta” against the chair of the company’s board of directors, Kevin Tang.

• Republican plan would make deanonymization of census data trivial

• How tech lords and populists changed the rules of power

• Duffy says he would shutter US airspace if he thought it was unsafe

• Private messages reveal GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape

• America is bracing for political violence – and significant portion think its OK

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FBI: ‘Potential’ Halloween terror plot foiled; multiple subjects arrested in Michigan.

  “This morning the FBI thwarted a potential terrorist attack and arrested multiple subjects in Michigan who were allegedly plotting a violent attack over Halloween weekend,” Patel posted on X Friday morning. A social media post from the Dearborn Police Department said it was “made aware that the FBI conducted operations” in the city early Friday morning. However, the FBI has not confirmed the location of the arrests or the alleged plot's location.

  Amir Makled, who represents a 20-year-old suspect from Dearborn, Michigan, told the Detroit News he thought there was no conspiracy and said he expected there would be no charges. He told the outlet the young men may have been looking at questionable content online, but insisted there was no evidence of a terror plot in any of their communications. “This is not a terrorist cell,” Makled told the Detroit News. “There was never any planned mass-casualty event or terrorism plot of any kind that I’m aware of. They might have been on some websites or online chat groups that they shouldn’t have been, but nothing that is illegal.” He told WSLS that he did not know "where this hysteria and this fearmongering came from.”

• Hack Exposes Kansas City's Police Misconduct List

• 'People will freeze to death' if heating aid doesn't come soon

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Türkiye will not sell rare earth elements to the USA

World

• LAP Coffee commotion puts German view of venture capital under scrutiny

• Canada commits to stockpile critical minerals as a national security priority

• House of Lords asks OfCom to step up Online Safety Act enforcement

• Working Past 100? In Japan, Some People Never Quit

• Arrests in Louvre Heist Show Power of DNA Databases in Solving Crimes

• 'Scamming became the new farming': inside India's cybercrime villages

• A company needs to spend €95k to pay someone €39k as net salary in France

• The race to shore up Europe's power grids against cyberattacks and sabotage

• Rome: Worker trapped and one injured after part of medieval tower collapses

• Segregating women on public transport is the wrong solution to crime problems

• Rigid gender roles are prompting women to leave rural Japan

• Possession of porn featuring strangling to become a crime in the UK

Israel

• Israeli military's ex-top lawyer arrested as scandal over video leak deepens

  • Israels top military lawyer arrested after she admitted leaking video of abuse

  • Israels top military lawyer resigns, goes missing, is found and thrown into jail

China

• Xi Jinping cracks joke about spying with phones given to South Korean president

• China intimidated UK university to ditch human rights research, documents show

• China's Xi pushes for global AI body at APEC in counter to US

Health / Medicine

• Drugs, 500 times stronger than heroin, taking Australian lives?

• Is Health Insurance Even Worth It Anymore?

  The unpopular truth is that health insurance in America covers too many things. Health insurance is largely about pre-payment of care. All health care shouldn’t go through health insurance. Premiums and deductibles are high because everything goes through insurance. Insurance should protect against risk, not guarantee consumption through pre-payment. It seems like we’re getting to a breaking point where health insurance, as it currently works in the United States, is due for a major overhaul.

• 'Biotech Barbie' says the time has come to consider CRISPR babies

• Cops on ketamine? Largely unregulated mental health treatment faces hurdles

• Is vaping less harmful than smoking, and does it help people quit?

• Focused sound energy could treat cancer, Alzheimer's and other diseases

• Gut microbiome tests are everywhere. Should you get one?

• Equifax Plans to Profit from Medicaid Cuts

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• State of the Climate a Planet on the Brink

• Orcas Repeatedly Attack Young Great White Sharks, Drone Footage Reveals

  • In Mexico, Killer Whales Take Down Great White Sharks

• Why Hurricane Melissa Was One of the Most Powerful Atlantic Storms in History

• The Runaway Monkeys Upending the Animal-Rights Movement

• Factory Farming Is a Blight

• Genetic Mechanisms May Explain Why Bowhead Whales Can Live for 200 Years

• Antarctic glacier shows fastest retreat in modern history

• Opinion: The era of 'free' excess renewable energy is over