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Timeline

  • Data Centers Are War Targets Now

    "Why have we gotten to the point where we have permitted militaries of various states to use civilian commercial data centers for their military purposes?"
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  • Tiny Little Office is “an office suite with no accounts...

    Tiny Little Office is “an office suite with no accounts and no server that holds your work. Every document lives in the address of its page… Copy the link and you have copied the document.” Includes a word processor, spreadsheet, calculator, etc.

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  • Starlink’s Entry Into Wireless Is Being Wildly Overhyped

    One of the ways Musk fraudulently goosed SpaceX stock value during the IPO was by pretending that the company would very quickly (in just a year or two) grow from just 12 million global Starlink subscribers (just 4 million in the States) to something more akin to 300-500 million. The way Starlink claims they’ll do […]
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  • Epic Games Somehow Gets Even Worse On AI Than Tim Sweeney’s Anti-Disclosure Take

    There have certainly been some bad takes on both sides of the AI in video games argument. In one corner, we have the never-AI-ers who reflexively claim that any use of any type of AI in any game is a total disqualifier. No quarter is given to nuance. No daylight is offered for discussion. It […]
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  • The states come for OpenAI

    Will the approach that beat Meta in New Mexico work against ChatGPT?
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  • Will Universities Respond To The AI Moment?

    A key role universities play in society is providing knowledge that can guide public action. Moreover, public universities have a legal duty to serve the public. We expect researchers in universities to  produce and disseminate knowledge that can ultimately advance human flourishing and meet the informational needs of lawmakers, civil society, and the public generally. […]
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  • Reading more details in the story of an OpenAI engineer getting arrested after bugging a conference room:

    Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, was arrested Friday and charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications. He made his initial appearance in federal court Tuesday and remains in custody.

    He seems to have had a fairly normal career, so what caused this flip to espionage? Strange. Not the obvious "he was a Chinese spy" that people might guess.

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  • The Muffled Thud of Fire in the Hole

    From a 2014 article on The Dark Power of Fraternities by Caitlin Flanagan, this is one hell of an opening paragraph:

    One warm spring night in 2011, a young man named Travis Hughes stood on the back deck of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house at Marshall University, in West Virginia, and was struck by what seemed to him — under the influence of powerful inebriants, not least among them the clear ether of youth itself — to be an excellent idea: he would shove a bottle rocket up his ass and blast it into the sweet night air. And perhaps it was an excellent idea. What was not an excellent idea, however, was to misjudge the relative tightness of a 20-year-old sphincter and the propulsive reliability of a 20-cent bottle rocket. What followed ignition was not the bright report of a successful blastoff, but the muffled thud of fire in the hole.

    Tags: Caitlin Flanagan · fireworks

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  • Sometimes a business has to make difficult decisions to stay profitable. But I can't accept that major layoffs are needed at companies that make literal billions of dollars in revenue. Often these companies are still hiring even as layoffs are announced. 📺

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  • Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

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  • It’s time to de-privatize the US government. “The problem...

    It’s time to de-privatize the US government. “The problem is not just that privatization is often inefficient because it adds a nontransparent layer of profiteering on top of government functions. The problem is that government loses basic capacity.”

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  • ICE’s Lies About A Man Officer Ran Over Undone By Footage Captured By Nearby CCTV Camera

    Here’s something ICE pretends has happened: ICE alleged in a statement that “Parra-Hernandez ran in front of an ICE vehicle and was struck.” ABC13 reached out to an ICE spokesperson, who said agents were attempting to arrest Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, who was their intended target. ICE alleges Mendoza-Cervantes entered the United States illegally from Mexico five […]
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  • Q: “An AI tool with all your passwords or a bear in the...

    Q: “An AI tool with all your passwords or a bear in the woods?” Signal president Meredith Whittaker: “Look, I know social media wants this. I know you guys want this little clip. But what the fuck? What the fuck?? Both are bad!”

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  • Occam's News reports that Trump et al are selling out the US. Putin can get the US to do what he wants by giving Trump money. Total win-win. And the US is flushed down the toilet. That's all that's going on there. All of the journalistic feigned bafflement is make-believe. It's totally obvious what's going on. And don't forget Musk has the world encircled with satellites. If he doesn't want you communicating, you don't communicate. In other words the selling-out has been going on for some time.

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  • May Peace Prevail on Earth

    Here are some photos I’ve taken during my time in Tokyo so far. I’ve been posting new stuff more or less daily to Instagram. Somehow I’m already about halfway through my stay.

    Somehow these images both capture and don’t even come close to capturing my experience here. That kinda place, I guess.

    Tags: Japan · Jason Kottke · photography

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  • MAGA Built The Censorship Machine It Spent Years Falsely Accusing Democrats Of Building

    This is not a unique or new observation, but so many MAGA attacks on others are projection, claiming that Democrats were doing the very things that MAGA always knew they would do if they were in charge. We’ve certainly spent plenty of time talking about Donald Trump’s myriad and non-stop attacks on free speech, and […]
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  • Daily Deal: The Academy of Game Art Bundle

    The Academy of Game Art Bundle teaches you the basics of how to create video game art. You’ll learn how to use Inkscape to create logos, 2D backgrounds, pre-defined modules, UI designs, and characters. A course on using DragonBones will teach you how to animate your characters as well. The bundle is on sale for […]
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  • “‘Digger’ has a lot of haters. Here’s why they’re wrong.”...

    “‘Digger’ has a lot of haters. Here’s why they’re wrong.” Digger is fascinating — I can’t remember another big movie where public opinion has been so divided (it’s either genius or garbage). I saw it with a friend and he loved it so much he went again.

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  • Court Filings Show DHS Is Collecting Info On Protesters, Feeding It To Palantir

    More evidence is piling up that contradicts the almost-but-not-quite denials given by administration officials in response to allegations about the DHS compiling a database to keep tabs on protesters. Just a few months ago, “Immigration Czar” Todd Lyons was trying to turn credible accusations into a nothingburger by deploying a few vague and trite statements […]
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  • There’s Nothing Mysterious or Unusual About the Viral German Sexual Harassment Robot

    Livestreamers used a robot to harass a woman for social media clout on the street in Germany.
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  • Anthropic says that, as of Sept ‘26, they were merging...

    Anthropic says that, as of Sept ‘26, they were merging 30,000 code changes per day, a 12-fold increase from just four months earlier. The volume increased so much that they wrote their own Git alternative.

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  • Whoa, the Lion Nebula!

    NASA’s JWST recently snapped this image of the Lion Nebula (NGC 2392).

    Massive stars undergo supernova explosions at the end of their lives, but these kinds of events are few and far in between. Most of the universe’s stars have lower masses, like the one belonging to NGC 2392. When a lower-mass star can no longer sustain itself with nuclear reactions in its core, the star becomes unstable and pulsates, losing its mass by shedding its outer layers, which then turn into shells of gas and dust called a planetary nebula. (Stars at this life stage are responsible for producing much of the universe’s observable dust.) The star’s radiation drives the ejected material away, leaving behind the very hot stellar core, also known as a white dwarf.

    In the Lion Nebula’s case, the death of the oxygen-rich central star has left behind a white dwarf that is “cooking” everything from the inside and producing a bubble of ionized gas as it does. The gas bubble, which forms the lion’s face, is expanding over time and destroying dust that is in its path. Understanding why the swept-up gas has a complex structure of rings and shells, a common feature in planetary nebulae, is an ongoing endeavor.

    The mane of the lion is the interior of a dust shell that is being illuminated by the white dwarf at the center. The tufts of hair, which look like cometary tails of material, are compact clumps of dust that have survived the stellar core’s radiation and protect the material that lies behind them.

    Webb’s imagery “freezes” this planetary nebula in time, though the star’s death, and its tumultuous effects, go on. NGC 2392 will continue to undergo changes as its gas and dust migrate away from the stellar core. Astronomers estimate the lion will eventually disperse in approximately 10,000 years — a relatively short period in astronomical terms.

    The Hubble imaged the nebula in 2000 in visible light, but the JWST’s infrared cameras are higher resolution and better at capturing the gas and dust details.

    Discovered by William Herschel in 1787 and “visible with a small telescope”, the nebula was called the Eskimo Nebula until recently — NASA discontinued using that name in 2020 because “certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful”. (via robin sloan)

    Tags: James Webb Space Telescope · NASA · photography · space

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  • Character.ai Bankruptcy Is First AI Bubble Domino to Fall

    New music genre just dropped. Also: A Tesla locks out cops, and more from around the web.
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  • The Case for Quitting: The Surprising Benefits of Opting...

    The Case for Quitting: The Surprising Benefits of Opting Out by Lindsay Crouse. “When perseverance turns against us, quitting isn’t just a way out. Often, it’s the first step to something better. A pivot. A break. A chance to go further — or be free.”

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  • China Still Has Easy Access To TikTok Despite Trump ‘Fixes’

    Remember how the Trump administration — and folks like Brendan Carr — spent four straight years fear-mongering about China’s purported control over TikTok and its owner, ByteDance? And remember how the Trump administration (with incompetent Democratic lawmaker help) “fixed” the problem by offloading Tiktok to Trump’s billionaire buddies while still maintaining co-ownership with the Chinese? […]
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  • Lots of travel this week. Hoping to fix some bugs and read a bunch. Packed a print book and my Kindle.

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  • Map & List Of The 753 Airport Codes In The World That Spell Real Words

    Map Credit I OFTEN FLY The map above shows the 753 IATA Airport Codes in the world that spell real words. E.g. London Heathrow’s airport code is LHR (not a real word) while Los Angeles’ is LAX (which is a real word). They come from I OFTEN FLY a unique aviation inspired clothing company. Interestingly, […]
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  • Watched: A Few Good Men. This movie is still so good. 🍿

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  • In 1991, Federal Panel Blasts Vaccine Unavailability That Led To A Measles Epidemic

    The apocryphal quote supposedly from Mark Twain is one of my favorites: “History does not repeat, but it does often rhyme.” Now, there is no evidence that Twain ever actually authored these words, but it’s incredible how true they tend to be regardless. And when it comes to the current measles outbreak that is ravaging […]
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  • “If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields...

    “If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.” OpenAI recently released 350+ proofs of mathematical theorems, all in one go. “I imagine many mathematicians, like me, felt like they got punched in the stomach yesterday,”

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  • The first trailer for Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The...

    The first trailer for Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew. I love Gerwig and I know this will be good, but I’m cautiously optimistic that it will be great. (I still forever have “Chronicwhatcles of Narnia” stuck in my head tho…)

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  • Girls is coming back to HBO for a 5-episode run. Lena...

    Girls is coming back to HBO for a 5-episode run. Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, and Andrew Rannells are all returning. I loved this show and will tune in for sure.

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  • Jason Snell blogs about Siri AI from the HomeView, which is better than what I assumed earlier. Is this going to be fast enough, though?

    Apple does say that if you make a Siri AI query for your personal content, it will search everything on your iPhone or iPad—and that includes apps that aren’t the HomeView. So you should be able to query your iPhone apps, but not actually run them.

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  • X’s reverse eternal September

    Why the onetime global town square now feels more like a clubhouse
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  • The Metric Is Not The Mission: The End Of The Universal Internet

    The Metric Is Not the Mission is a ten-part examination of how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives and assumptions. Across the series, the argument follows the evolution of the platform economy—from the optimism of the early internet to the growing tensions around […]
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  • I added a new plug-in to Micro.blog’s plug-in directory that implements the about.md and contact.vcf parts of SocialSpec. It’s an experiment, we’ll see where it goes!

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  • U.S. Car Privacy And Security Remain An Absolute Shitshow

    In 2023, Mozilla released a report noting that modern U.S. cars had the worst security and privacy standards of any major technology industry the organization tracks. That was followed by a major NYT report in 2024 showing how automakers routinely hoover up oodles of consumer driving and phone info, then sell access to that data […]
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  • So Many Different Mes

    Japanese photographer and artist Tomoko Sawada works primarily in self-portraiture. For her first project, she visited ID photo booths to take hundreds of photos of herself, dressed, posed, and presented differently. Eugenie Shin of Tokyo Weekender calls that 1998 project, ID 400, “a dizzying grid of strangers who are all actually the same woman”.

    For subsequent projects, Sawada says she’s continued to “examine the relationship between outer appearance and inner self through different concepts”.

    (via tokyo weekender)

    Tags: art · photography · Tomoko Sawada

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  • Character.ai's Bankruptcy Documents Show the Economics of AI Don't Work

    Character.ai enshittified its product but was still burning tons of cash, its bankruptcy documents say.
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  • Caleb Hailey has announced socialspec.org, a suite of recommendations for making websites more social. Following lists, about pages, and contact info. "The future of social media is websites."

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  • ArtCraft is building open source versions of what looks...

    ArtCraft is building open source versions of what looks like most of Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps. Oh, and a word processor and a spreadsheet app because why not?

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  • Love the great feedback about Micro.blog's new Blog Audit feature. Today I updated it with a couple more improvements: an option to download and copy archived images instead of just fixing the img tag, and a better way for us to stop bot hits from showing up in the missing paths section.

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  • Trump Bans CNN, Then Has DOJ Investigate CNN For Not Covering Him

    Remember when Elon Musk told advertisers to go fuck themselves… and then sued them (unsuccessfully) for not advertising on his personal propaganda and manipulation site? Well, it appears that Donald Trump is trying a government-backed variation on that abusive power play: claiming that news networks choosing not to cover him after he announced he was […]
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  • Daily Deal: The Complete CompTIA And IT Exam Training Bundle

    The Complete CompTIA and IT Exam Training Bundle offers access to multi-platform IT training courses, practice exam simulators, and hands-on labs such as CramWise, LinuxPath, DojoLab, CodeDirect, and ExamsDigest. These help prepare you for exams like CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+, Cloud+, Server+, and PenTest+, alongside cloud and networking credentials. It’s on sale for $40. Note: […]
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  • Looking forward to this documentary about Don Bluth. From Cartoon Brew:

    Directed by Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker of Copper Pot Pictures, the feature chronicles Bluth’s extraordinary career, from his early years at Disney and his dramatic 1979 departure to the creation of an independent animation empire that, for a time, rivaled the studio he left behind.

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  • Reelizer: A Trove of Movie Art

    Reelizer is a personal project by Roger Erik Tinch that is a collection of movie art: prints, posters, illustrations, albums, books, covers, etc. Careful, you can lose hours here…Tinch has a great eye. A few of my favorites:

    Tags: art · movie posters · movies · posters · Roger Erik Tinch

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  • The idea that AI might be conscious falls apart pretty quickly when you consider ChatGPT Images. It’s also built on the same underlying AI technology, but no one would consider image generation to be conscious.

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  • Thing I am going to make time for in the next few days:...

    Thing I am going to make time for in the next few days: Harry Styles and Thom Yorke in conversation. “My laptop has been dead for about 6 years. I don’t know where my charger is.” There’s an accompanying Rolling Stone cover story.

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  • Dubstep and BookTok, a perfect match?

    New music genre just dropped. Also: A Tesla locks out cops, and more from around the web.
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  • The Creator of ‘Smutstep’ Wants You to ‘Let Your Freak Flag Fly’

    DARQ DAGR combined BookTok romantasy and dubstep to create something new and somewhat controversial. “It’s accepting and embracing what you're into within a safe and healthy space," he said. "I think that's a really beautiful thing.”
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