2026-11-04

Horseshit

• Cometary impacts an unlikely pathway towards the origins of life on Earth

  • Life ingredients probably didn't ride in on a comet

• Man caught in car with £14k of drugs as a lamb ate chips in the back seat avoids jail

• The quest for immortality has become serious business

• The Brain Injury That Made Edward Freytag a Musical Genius

• A Moscow stray became the first dog in orbit – and an animal rights icon

• Whither Tartaria?

• Dog a Fake Hero.; Pushes Children into the Seine to Rescue Them

• The State of Longevity: The healthmaxxing economy is here

• Fire risk to US structures will nearly triple by 2060 if we do nothing

• Ancient Meteorite Found in the Sahara Holds Secrets About Mars' Watery Past

• Is There Anything Left in the Dream of Cold Fusion?

• Dinosaur blood found in fossils for the first time

  • Fossilised red blood cells found in 115M-year-old dinosaur's bone, scientists

• Snapchat Is Harming Children at an Industrial Scale

• Silicon Valley dating now means spreadsheets, AI and $5K-a-month coaches

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Who controls the technology we depend on?

Musk

• Musk is throttling Grok because its cost is 'unsustainably high'

• What is Starshield? A look at SpaceX's military satellite network

• SpaceX launches its 'Starfall' return capsule for 2nd time

• xAI installs eight converted jet engines to power Mississippi data center

• Thoughts on Owning a Self-Driving Tesla

• Trump Accounts to Get SpaceX Shares from Shotwell in December

• Anti-Oligarchy Activists Plan to Dox Elon Musk and Billionaires

• Tesla allegedly misled South Korean customers about automated-driving tech

Robot uprising / Humanoid Helpers

• Apple HomeView Ultra, drone and laundry-folding robot reportedly in development

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Cops bust botnet of 1.3M infected Android TV boxes

  • Tech Firms Dismantle Botnet That Turned 1.3M TV Boxes into Proxies

• New York Times sues maker of Brave web browser over copyrights

  • The New York Times sues Brave web browser for AI scraping and bypassing paywalls

  • NYT demands Brave shut down its paywall blocker and end deals with AI firms

• Apple warns of 'unprecedented' rise in memory chip prices

  • Apple's Growth Machine Is Slowing. High Prices Might Not Save It

  • Apple forecasts margin drop in holiday quarter as rising memory costs bite

  • Apple faces unprecedented memory cost increases as RAM prices continue to surge

• iPhone 18 rumors suggest a bigger battery, higher price next year

• I Dumped Apple's Fucking Word List

  Apple's system dictionary flags every word with one of three tiers (vulgar, offensive, sensitive) and up to eleven topic flags (sex, drugs, religion, politics, violence, …). Oedipus is vulgar. Tom and Mick are offensive. pee, poo, niggle and underling are sensitive. And "Trump" is the only living politician in the English sensitive tier, next to Hitler, Mao, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Biden, Obama and Putin are clean.

• Funimation Shutdown Fuels Push for DMCA Exemption to Legally Rip Anime Content

• Deadly Intel Fab 28 explosion causes two-week shutdown, cost $600M

• Google search has gone from being handy to useless

• Microsoft's Canada timezone troubles leave admins fixing calendars

• Microsoft fixes a Windows 11 annoyance as PC revenue declines

• Fujifilm to boost tape production 5x as AI fuels archiving demand

• Password manager mSecure tells users to change passwords, won't say why

• Google use of press items may infringe copyright rules, EU court adviser says

• Sony pushes PS5 owners to trade in consoles amid unprecedented price hikes

Panopticon / Surveiled State

• Study Claims Vizio Simply Ignores 'Smart' TV Spying Opt Out Requests

• $20M in Fines and Vizio Smart TVs Opt Out of Spying Option Does Nothing

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Open-source "codes of conduct" are cancer and need to be retired

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA's Swift space telescope predicted to crash back to Earth tomorrow

  After attempts to save it failed earlier this year, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, aka the Swift telescope, was shut down at the end of October. The telescope, about the size of a minibus with solar-panel wings, is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere sometime on November 4 (AEDT). Where it will land, and what will survive its fiery re-entry remain unknown.

  • SWIFT Reentry Window

  The nominal decay epoch is 4 Nov 2026 at 08:30 UTC, with a window of 27.5 days. A window that long means the reentry location is not known. The TIP places the nominal reentry point at 10 S, 201.1 E on an ascending pass at 08:30 UTC on 4 Nov. That point carries little weight at this stage. SWIFT completes an orbit about every 88.6 minutes, so the 660-hour window spans roughly 447 orbits. Because the window is far longer than one orbit, any point under the orbit between 20.5 N and 20.5 S is possible. SWIFT’s 20.5-degree inclination sets those limits, and it will not reenter outside that band.

• Improved asteroid deflection model runs faster, reveals more doomsday worries

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The AI Boom May Be Sowing Seeds of Another Financial Crisis

  • US tech giants' hidden AI debt swells 90% to $3.2T in 6 months

  • America Can't Afford an AI Recession

  • How AI is creating a lopsided US economy

• Anthropic IPO filing: $1.7B quarterly payroll, about $107K per employee monthly

  • Anthropic warns its AI could be dangerous. So why do people want to invest?

  • Anthropic's compute tab could top $1T as Q3 revenue nears $17B

  • Anthropic Employees Cost over $100K a Month on Average

• Sam Altman's Case Against Your RAM Is Efficient. That's the Problem

• Games Are Being Ripped Off by AI, and Things Are Only Going to Get Worse

  • Claude's new rules against game cloning won't stop the AI copying boom

  • New Claude Limits to Prevent Game Cloning and Reverse Engineering

• Anthropic warns that it's close to RSI capability

• OpenAI hires former US Army secretary as military seeks to expand AI use

• OpenAI considers rebranding data centers to 'AI compute campuses"

• AI could break legal systems by finding previously hidden loopholes

• I treated Sophie as if she were human. The next day she betrayed me

• A colleague hated my AI-polished emails–so he set a trap

• The AI Layoff Experiment Is Backfiring as Companies Rehire Humans

• Google Will Turn Off Search for Schools That Reject A.I

• How governments worldwide are shaping what AI can say about politics

• World of Warcraft: Forever Is Overrun with AI Slop

• Is AI Mainly Being Used to Stop Hiring Young Workers

• 'Our Risk, Their Reward': Zohran Mamdani on AI and Data Centers

• Old, Polluting Jet Engines Are Being Scavenged to Power Data Centers

• AI chatbots are becoming political advisers. Their answers can mislead voters

• AI Detectors Like Pangram Are Changing Human Writing

• Researchers warn secret "trigger words" can make hacked AI robots attack people

• Princeton students, faculty divided over access to University ChatGPT accounts

• OpenAI Updates Its Model Spec

• AI cracks a 27-year-old pillar of computer science, OpenAI and Anthropic claim

• Nvidia tells data center operators to limit business to Chinese customers

• Google researchers demand freedom to tell the world what they know about AI

• Itch.io Deletes 'Terabytes' of AI Slop in to Counter Surge in Game Uploads

• OpenAI seems to be silently re-enabling model training on Codex chats | Hacker News

• AI 'godfather' Hinton: humans might have been better off without AI

• OpenAI employees warned about operational security lapses for years, sources say

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Binance hackers used fake job interview to breach PC before $6.3B attack

  • Binance Hackers Used Fake Job Interviews in $6.3B Heist

  • Binance says fake job interviews used as part of $6.3B crypto hack

  • Binance says hackers used fake job interviews, AI tool to steal $6.3B

• Binance users pull $5B as crypto exchange restarts services after heist

• Kalshi and its co-founders face felony charges for violating Utah gambling laws

• Americans bet $1.9B on midterms; markets favor Democrats in House and Senate

Economicon / Business / Finance

• SUSE Laying Off 10% of Its Workforce Due to AI and Automation

  • SUSE fires one in ten due to AI

• Disney Plans Layoffs, Targeting 20% Cost Savings

  • Disney Eyes Thousands of Layoffs in Push for 20% Cost Cuts.

• FTC orders Delta, Uber and others to hand over data on algorithmic pricing

• Unions gain access to 1000s of Google workers after employment rights overhaul

• What Millions of Data Points Reveal About US Inflation

• US Hedge Funds Just Sold Every AI Stock They Bought Since 2025

• Fiserv cuts 3,000 employees and contractor jobs under new CEO

• September 2026 JOLTS Report: Eerily Quiet

  The economy has been making plenty of noise, but the labor market has remained fairly silent. For two and a half years, the share of workers separating from their jobs each month, whether they quit, got laid off, or left for any other reason, has barely moved. A slight bump in the quits rate – to 2.1% in September, the first time it has exceeded 2% since June 2025 – may signal a turnaround, but the signal is faint. Churn hasn’t been this sluggish for this long since the early 2010s, when the economy was still digging out of the Great Recession. Today’s unemployment rate is roughly half as high as it was back then, and it has hardly changed in more than two years.

• AMD Beats Wall Street Expectations as It Pivots to Data-Center First Status

• Canva is announcing changes and layoffs affecting 22 percent of its staff

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• California's Billionaire Tax Slips from 52% Support to 42%

• Virginia Becomes First State to Enforce GPS Speed Limiters on High-Risk Drivers

• DOJ to Monitor Elections in All 50 States for First Time

• Congress is banning many hemp products in December

• Using public & private records my AI agent swarm found $787 million in government billing that made absolutely no sense threadreader link

  One physical therapist billed Medicare for 9,006 hours of treatment in a year that only has 8,760 hours. That’s 30 hours of therapy. Every. Single. Weekday. A single mall parking lot claimed over 1 million summer meals served in one August. That’s more than half the entire state’s summer breakfast claims… from one parking lot. They went from 7,688 meals the year before to a $4.9 million payday. A lab presented itself as a COVID testing site. Then billed Medicare $6M+ for genetic tests on 1,433 seniors, including 50% of all cystic fibrosis tests given to Medicare patients in America. Average age: 76.

• How astronauts are casting their mid-term votes from space

Trump

• Trump vows to pardon Elon Musk if Democrats win midterms

• US ending $4 billion in annual aid to Israel after Trump talks with Netanyahu

  • Trump to cut off $4 billion in foreign aid to Israel by year's end, convert to weapons sales

  • Trump says US will end military aid to Israel by the end of this year

Democrats

• Democrats run more anti-tech ads amid AI boom

• Alaska’s Decoy Scandal Brings Back the Usual Suspects for Shady Election Tactics

Left Angst

• WA is losing more from Canada than shoppers

• Trump wanted to give No Kings no air. Then, Meta suspended its Instagram

• The New York Times rushes to apologize for its outbreak of journalism.

  Having outraged its core audience, The New York Times is rushing to explain how it managed to commit journalism in covering the Senate race in Alaska. The paper last month impressed its usual critics by tracking down damning details of how Democratic candidate Mary Peltola’s campaign recruited a strawman candidate sharing the same name as the Republican incumbent, a ploy that, in concert with the state’s ranked-choice-voting rules, could make her the winner even if more people meant to vote for the real Dan Sullivan. The paper’s been rushing to control the damage with various followup offerings, including an earnest report on how Peltola had no idea what her top aides were doing and a newsletter dispatch about how “both sides do it.”

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• DOJ warns FBI data breach likely extends to Justice Department employees

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. Pushes to Restore Russian Gas Sales to Europe via Ukraine

• US order to purge Acronis tied to years of scrutiny over Russian ties

• Ericsson says it can detect, track drones using only mobile networks

  • Turning Every Radio Into a Radar: The Future of Integrated Sensing and Communications

World

• Poland's in the midst of a constitutional crisis

  The EU withheld billions of euros in funds to Poland during the nationalist PiS-led governments of 2015 to 2023, saying their judiciary reforms had subverted democratic checks and balances. After Donald Tusk's pro-European coalition took office ​in 2023, it pledged to restore the rule of law and reform the court. But President Karol Nawrocki, a Law and Justice ally, has acted to thwart those ⁠efforts since his election as president in 2025. Earlier this year, Nawrocki refused to swear in several judges nominated by parliament.

• Shop freezers in seven European countries hit by cyber-attack

• Major test for Australia's social media ban begins in High Court

  • Reddit tells Australian court it isn't social media, calls under-16 ban 'inept'

• Palantir tech unused or little used by 29 NHS trusts said to be benefiting from

• Report reveals campaign promoting racist, and Islamophobic views in Europe

  • Influence campaign floods France with racist ads, before 2027 election

• As US ties fray, Europe plans first undersea cable link to Greenland

• El Salvador sends 2k troops to Haiti to rescue four missing soldiers

• Mexico, the Final Frontier of the Global War on Cash

• 'Quiet quitting' could be hitting the economy – here's why

  Over the last decade, Britons have become less engaged with the jobs they do and are less willing to put in extra effort, according to a Resolution Foundation report. The thinktank said this could partly help explain the slump in productivity since the pandemic.

• French blood storage facilities targeted in cyberattack

Iran / Houthi

• US strikes Iran’s Qeshm Island as Trump talks down war risks

  “We had a war with Iran. We won,” Trump told reporters Monday. “I don’t know if you even call it a war because we haven’t been doing any fighting for months.” But the U.S. has been engaged in smaller-scale strikes against Iran for several weeks, officials said, with explosions reported around Qeshm island on Monday on social media. Some of the officials described the assaults as defensive in nature to prevent Iran from having the freedom to attack commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Unlike earlier in the war, the U.S. hasn’t publicly announced the attacks. The U.S. has been purposefully keeping the campaign quiet so as not to signal any intention of resuming major combat operations, one official said.

  • Multiple Explosions Heard On Iran's Qeshm Island Near Hormuz, State Media Claims Three US Drones Downed

  • US struck Iran’s Qeshm Island, Wall Street Journal reports

• The worst month for ships in the Strait of Hormuz

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Hackers claim to have stolen 23TB of data from Russian statistics body

• At least 33 dead after Russia drops nine bombs on a Ukrainian school building

China

• China plans a manned lunar landing before 2030

• Nvidia orders data centre clients to reduce China exposure

• Aito vehicles' manufacturer Seres patents hidden in-car toilet design

Health / Medicine

• More people are having strokes before 55

• Revived Pig Kidneys Frozen for a Year Could Rewrite Future of Organ Transplants

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Another child dies of measles as CDC reportedly holds up health alert

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Behavioral evidence for two-stage sleep in spiders

• Paper straws worse for the environment than plastic ones

• Polar vortex disruption comes early

• U.N. Scientists Legitimized Carbon Capture and Skewed Decades of Climate Policy

• Critically endangered pygmy raccoons observed making their own paper toys

• Brazil publishes first global 'roadmap' for phasing out fossil fuels

• What to do if you hit a deer: Tis the season for sex-crazed deer.

  • Other states are less formal: Tennessee Roadkill Law: Rules for Salvaging Deer and Other Wildlife