2026-04-25

Horseshit

• These are the countries moving to ban social media for children

• Cybersecurity incident leaves U.S. drivers stranded

  Drivers in 46 U.S. states were left temporarily stranded in March when breathalyzer devices installed on their cars went inactive. These ignition-interlock devices require a driver, typically one who has been convicted of an alcohol-related driving offense, to breathe into a tube and will prevent the car from starting if the system detects alcohol beyond a state-mandated threshold that’s well below the standard legal blood alcohol limit. A cyberattack on backend systems at Intoxalock, an ignition-interlock provider, prevented devices from verifying compliance. The episode highlights how failures in cloud services can reverberate through the physical world of mobility.

• An Alberta startup is selling no-tech tractors for half the price of the regular stuff.

• The Stanford Freshmen Who Want to Rule the World

• The Rich and Powerful Want to Live Forever. What If They Could?

• Giant ‘kraken-like’ octopuses ate dinosaurs.

  • Monstrous octopus terrorized seas off B.C. in Age of Dinosaurs, study suggests

• What happened to Omegle? rise and fall of internet's favorite stranger danger

• Tech bros: it's time to challenge Silicon Valley's saviour complex

celebrity gossip

• Tim Cook wrote a winning recipe for Apple

• UK gaming icon Peter Molyneux on AI, his final creation and a changing industry

• Zodiac Killer may be tied to Black Dahlia case after 'code cracked,' DNA taken

Musk

• Grok plays along with researchers pretending to be delusional

• SpaceX to develop space-based interceptor weapon prototypes

• The xAI exodus: Meet the people who have left Musk's AI company

• Elon Musk's near-daily online posts about race are turning off some fans

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Weak security means attackers could disable all of a city's public EV chargers

• 'Look, no hands': China chases the driverless dream at Beijing car show

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The pope moves to police AI

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The global edtech boom is fading as investors look elsewhere

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• SilentGlass actively blocks malicious HDMI and Display Port connections

  Monitors are ‘highly likely’ to be used to gain access to a network for espionage purposes, disruption or financial gain, with mitigations often costly and inefficient.

  • Geek world goes "What!?!" AFAIK no actual "network over HDMI" hardware exists, despite such a thing being part of the spec.

• Instagram has launched another Snapchat clone

• Linux 7.1 Removes Drivers For Long Obsolete Input Hardware: Bye Bus Mouse Support

  For newer hardware but still irrelevant is removing the OLPC HGPK PS/2 protocol support as it's been broken for 12 years without anyone complaining. This protocol flavor was used by ALPS touchpads in One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) laptops and broken since 2015 in the mainline kernel.

• Six things I'll remember when I think about Tim Cook's version of Apple

• Intel shutters open-source evangelism program, archives key community projects

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA still confident that Artemis astronauts will land on the moon in 2028 despite spacesuit delays.

• Relatives of dead or missing scientists grapple with impact of wild speculation

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• US accuses China of "industrial-scale" AI theft. China says it's "slander"

• Canada's AI Startup Cohere Buys Germany's Aleph Alpha to Expand in Europe

• You're about to feel the AI money squeeze

• DeepSeek targets $20B valuation to stop poaching of staff

• We're Using So Much AI That Computing Firepower Is Running Out

• Anthropic tested removing Claude Code from the Pro plan

• AI run store in SF can't stop ordering candies and paying women less.

• Nvidia's B200 costs around $6,400 to produce

  we estimate that the NVIDIA B200 costs $5,700 - $7,300 to produce, with HBM memory and advanced packaging together accounting for roughly two-thirds of the total unit cost. Reports suggest a sale price of $30,000 to $40,000 per chip, which implies a chip-level gross margin of around 82% for NVIDIA.

• Medical Student Created Top Influencer 'Emily Hart' Using AI, Making $ Thousands

• A flood of useful security reports

• Supply chain cracks constrain AI boom

• Health-care AI is here. We don't know if it helps patients

• America must guard against China's own Mythos

• 'Too Dangerous to Release' Is Becoming AI's New Normal

• What Anthropic's Mythos Means for the Future of Cybersecurity

• Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic

  • Google Commits to Invest Up to $40B in Anthropic

  • Google investing up to $40B in Anthropic

• Sam Altman's Next High-Wire Act: Getting OpenAI to Make More Money

• Anthropic reveals changes to Claude's operating instructions caused degradation

• Anthropic CPO leaves Figma board after reports of competing product

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• U.S. soldier charged with using classified information to bet on Maduro removal

  • US soldier charged with using Intel to win $400K Polymarket bet on Maduro raid

• French police look at claim of sensor tampering to win weather bets

  • France Investigates Temperature Spikes That Led to Big Payouts on Polymarket

• The stablecoin market has got too stable

• Crypto-miners are quietly colonising computers

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Microsoft offers buyouts for longtime employees

  • Microsoft plans voluntary employee buyout for up to 7% of U.S. workforce

• Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

  • Why Meta is laying off 10% of its workforce

  • Meta to ax 8k jobs as Zuckerberg doubles down on AI

• Meta to cut 8,000 jobs, Microsoft offers buyouts to to staff as AI spending costs hit Big Tech workers.

• Stock markets are too high and set to fall, says Bank of England deputy

• United plans fare hikes to offset fuel costs

• Oracle's Deluge of AI Debt Pushes Wall Street to the Limit

• P&G warns of $1B profit hit in fiscal 2027 from higher oil prices

• Intel's stock soars 20% as results top estimates, showing signs of growth

  • Intel Shares Eclipse Dot-Com Peak After Strong Sales Forecast

• Global oil crisis has changed fossil fuel industry for ever, IEA chief says

• Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approve Paramount acquisition

• As electric aspirations fade, Porsche sells its stake in Bugatti

• 'Startup Cowboys' Are Making This Texas Town the New Tech Hotspot

• Ignoring the War Has Been Working for Long-Term Investors

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• FCC alters the Wi-Fi router ban to include hotspots

  • FCC's Foreign-Made Router Ban Expands to Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot Devices

• AI data center backlash threatens Pennsylvania GOP incumbents in 2026 election

• Maine governor vetoes statewide pause in new data centers

• House Panel Orders Southern Poverty Law Center to Turn Over Communications With Biden’s DOJ

  House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on April 23 gave the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) until April 30 to hand over documents regarding its relationship with the Biden–Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI, as part of a federal prosecution of the civil rights group. In a letter to Bryan Fair, SPLC interim president and chief executive, Jordan wrote that “publicly available documents revealed how the Justice Department partnered closely with the SPLC during the Biden-Harris Administration, including scheduling regular meetings, giving the SPLC early access to federal law-enforcement data, and allowing SPLC employees to train federal prosecutors.” The letter was also posted to social media.

  • Prominent civil rights activist says bombshell indictment of Southern Poverty Law Center is just 'tip of the iceberg'

  “They ask which problems are fundable, not which ones are solvable. So you get this kind of corruption that you’re witnessing,” the octogenarian declared.

• DOJ Ends Investigation into Fed Chair Powell

• Tariffs Raised Consumers' Prices, but the Refunds Go Only to Businesses

• Supreme Court to hear argument on law enforcement's use of "geofence warrants"

Democrats

• Inside the House Dem push to impeach Trump on Day 1

  A cohort of resistance-minded House Democrats is pushing their colleagues to begin building the case against President Trump now in anticipation of a Day 1 impeachment vote if they retake the House. The mere existence of this movement demonstrates just how much pressure lawmakers who have not yet gotten on board with impeachment will face in January of 2027.

Left Angst

• Eric Trump Brags About $24M Pentagon Deal His Company Landed

• Trump's Justice Department is bringing back firing squads for federal executions

• Palantir Is Helping Trump's IRS Conduct "Massive-Scale" Data Mining

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon email floats suspending Spain from NATO

• Iran War Has Drained U.S. Supplies of Critical, Costly Weapons

World

• S. Korea police arrest man over AI image of runaway wolf that misled authorities

• Netherlands reaches deal to cut reliance on U.S. cloud tech

• EU to warn against early nuclear exits in effort to address energy crisis

• How Europe regulated itself into American vassalage

• UK Biobank leak: Health details of 500 000 people are offered for sale

  • UK Biobank health data listed for sale in China, government confirms

• No 10 says Falklands sovereignty rests with UK after report of US 'review'

• Turkey bans social media for children under 15, including gaming platforms

• Norway Set to Become Latest Country to Ban Social Media for Under 16s

• Asia's Billionaires Are Bankrolling a Push for More Babies

• James Bosworth on the 'Orange Wave' Happening Across Latin America

Iran / Houthi

• How Big a Threat Are Iranian-Backed Cyberattacks?

Israel

• Is this what war looks like now?

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Kremlin's tightening grip on internet fuels Russian discontent

China

• Chinese Hospitals Are Selling Patient Data to Fuel the AI Boom

• Xi Jinping wants a powerful currency. America's war has helped

Health / Medicine

• Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition

• FDA gives the green light to the first gene therapy for deafness

• Rectal cancer deaths rising rapidly among millennials: 'It's a medical crisis.'

• After waiting years for justice, many Purdue opioid victims are defeated by paperwork

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• The biggest iceberg is almost gone

• One town's scheme to get rid of its geese

• Study shows removing exposure to plastic from our food chain yields quick result

• US climate sees decline in both hot and cold extreme temperatures since 1899

• Shearwaters washing up dead on Australian beaches not due to 'natural' causes

  In our new research, we point to the real cause of deaths in Australian waters: starvation linked to climate change. Researchers overseas have also pinpointed ocean warming as a key factor in mass deaths of seabirds.

• 1 in 50 million split-colored lobster found in Massachusetts

• Corpus Christi plans to declare a 'water emergency'

• Unfounded Health Concerns Are Powering a Solar Backlash

• A New Idea to Save the Climate? Dam the Bering Strait