Tootfinder

Zelensky discusses security guarantees with Erdogan, says they'll be 'set out on paper next week': https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/zelensky-discusses-security-guarantees-with.html

Dell reports Q2 revenue up 19% YoY to $29.78B, vs. $29.17B est., and says it plans to ship $20B of AI servers in its fiscal 2026, double what it sold last year (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/dell-earnings-report-q2-2026.html

Dell shares fall on soft third-quarter earnings outlook
Dell said it now plans to ship $20 billion of AI servers in its fiscal 2026, double what it sold last year.

Just came back from vacation in Canada’s Maritimes. Doesn’t mean I have any insights to offer about the area, but it’s super photogenic and my blog is going to be bulging with pictures over the next few days. Starting here: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/20

Maritime Vacation

Remarkable that this article coincides with the phishing attack spam pummeling instances that uses fake age verification as its attack surface. https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/29/mastodon-says-it-doesnt-have-the-means-to-comply-with-age…

Mastodon says it doesn't 'have the means' to comply with age verification laws | TechCrunch
Decentralized social network Mastodon says it cannot comply with age verification laws, like in Mississippi and elsewhere, and says it's up to individual server owners to decide.

Wikipedia: Republikaner leiten Untersuchung ein
Ein Untersuchungsausschuss in den USA verlangt innerhalb von zwei Wochen von der Wikipedia-Stiftung Informationen über mutmaßliche Manipulationen von Inhalten.
https://www.

More bad news on AMOC: "I used to say that the chance of Amoc collapsing as a result of global warming was less than 10%”, said Prof @… even in a low-emission scenario, sticking to the Paris agreement, it looks like more like 25%."

"Dass Deutschland ein eigenes Ministerium für Raumfahrt bekommt, hatte die CSU noch vor wenigen Monaten als großen Coup gefeiert. Nicht nur träumt Parteichef Markus Söder, ein bekennender Weltallfan, von deutschen Astronauten auf dem Mond, vielleicht sogar auf dem Mars."
der will doch nur die marsmännchen zu leberkäs verarbeiten um sie zu essen

CVS app now has sort of fake liquid glass even on not iOS 26 and yes it’s completely illegible.
This is going to be a complete disaster.

@… Milkteaの通知サーバからのエラー、多いからねえ。

Massive CDC walkout erupts amid internal chaos (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/28/cdc-walkout-protest-resignations-rfk-hhs
http://www.memeorandum.com/250828/p120#a250828p120

A district court judge blocks the Trump administration from firing Michael Abramowitz as Voice of America's director, weeks after Kari Lake tried to remove him (Scott Nover/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/08/28/voa-director-k…

Judge blocks Kari Lake, tasked to dismantle VOA, from firing its director
Michael Abramowitz was given an ultimatum: Relinquish his post or be fired. A judge ruled the Trump administration lacks the authority to remove him.

The collapse of a critical Atlantic current can no longer be considered a low-likelihood event, a study has concluded, making deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions even more urgent to avoid the catastrophic impact.
https://www.theguardian.co…

Periodically, people propose that in keeping with Muni's 49 being a "BRT" service on Van Ness, it should skip local stops on Mission St. This op-ed is the latest example:
https://sf.streetsblog.org/2025/08/27/lets-make-munis…

Op-Ed: Let's Make Muni's 49 Van Ness/Mission Bus Work for San Francisco - Streetsblog San Francisco
A transformative BRT project that can’t keep up with demand

I just listened to this whole concert album and it’s just fantastic, hell of a performance. Hot damn. And then I purchased it, because I am old and crusty and I like to actually hold the data for music in my own library on my own danged device.
Thank you, @…!
“The Central Park Concert,” Astor Piazzolla https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/115091925379104280

Weeks after the Trump administration attempted to remove VOA Director Michael Abramowitz from his position,
a judge ruled only an advisory board could do so.

• Complications: Trump can’t get the board in question,
the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, to do so,
because he fired the entire board shortly after taking office.

Tracking Trump: CDC leaders resign in protest; a Fed governor sues Trump; a judge blocks the firing of VOA’s director; and more
The 7 follows President Donald Trump’s second term.

Interessante, isto.
(mesmo que o abacate, francamente, fosse muito dispensšvel. É um sorvedouro de šgua, aquilo)
https://eco.sapo.pt/2025/08/28/do-emprego-ao-rendimento-um-raio-x-a-agricultura-algarvia/

Do emprego ao rendimento, um raio-x à agricultura algarvia
Radiografia à atividade agrícola no Algarve mostra que setor está em forte crescimento, gera riqueza, emprego, apesar da escassez de água na região.

🐧 Dagger beaks and strong wings: New fossils rewrite the penguin story and affirm NZ as a cradle of their evolution
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-dagger-beaks-strong-wings-fossils.html

Dagger beaks and strong wings: New fossils rewrite the penguin story and affirm NZ as a cradle of their evolution
Remarkable new fossil discoveries in New Zealand are driving a significant reassessment of our understanding of the early evolution of penguins.

from my link log —
The history of an old joke: “From here?!”
https://www.dirtyfeed.org/2025/07/from-here/
saved 2025-08-13 https://…

“From Here?”
Over the years, I’ve written plenty about comedy writers reusing jokes. Today’s topic is one of the most famous and most-quoted examples of the lot. So let’s turn to ersatz Bond f…

“We found that the tipping point where the [AMOC] shutdown becomes inevitable is probably in the next 10 to 20 years or so.”
Fuck.
#Climate #ClimateAction

Holako gogoa dodan Svalbardera itzultzeko. Ez bazara joan ondiño eta pentsatu badozu inoiz, joan. Benetan.

@… a completely optional cc to maybe @… or @…?

Cowboys trade Micah Parsons to Packers: Source https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6582707/2025/08/28/micah-parsons-trade-packers-cowboys-nfl-2025/

This is an amazing photo and great story
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/aug/28/best-tennis-photo-jasmine-paolini-us-open-ray-giubilo?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

French Judge Investigating Robert Spatz (81) Requests Spain’s Judicial Assistance
https://openbuddhism.org/justice/2025/french-judge-investigating-robert-spatz-81-requests-spains-judicial-assistance/

French Judge Investigating Robert Spatz (81) Requests Spain’s Judicial Assistance
Elodie Emery reports in ‘Le Monde’ that French judge has requested judicial assistance from the Spanish authorities in relation to an ongoing investigation into allegations of physical and sexual…

"Social media post sparks rediscovery of endemic Sri Lanka rainforest plant"
#SriLanka #Plants #Environment

Social media post sparks rediscovery of endemic Sri Lanka rainforest plant
COLOMBO — In 2012, Sri Lanka’s National Red List delivered a grim verdict on endemic Pini- Beraliya, the towering dipterocarp Doona ovalifolia (syn. Shorea ovalifolia) tree by categorizing it as “extinct in the wild.” For decades, the species was known mainly from a single cultivated specimen in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Peradeniya in central […]

Spain heatwave was 'most intense on record' #Spain

Spain heatwave was 'most intense on record'
A 16-day heatwave Spain suffered this month was "the most intense on record," the national meteorological agency said on Sunday.

So Trump has shown again he is betraying his European allies and NATO by colluding with Putin. It is time that more European politicians say this aloud. A new reality, the USA is no longer a friend or ally. NATO is a dead man walking.
#trump #putin

Join us for a casual Scrappy Hour bike ride on Sunday, August 31st. 🚴‍♀️
We'll roll out from Rocket Baby just after 9am and head to the Domes... There's about four or five of us so far but we welcome anyone to join us! 🚴
https://www.instagram.com/p/DNvbxVRXHS1/

Scrappy Hour on Instagram: "It’s that time of year again! Ya, you know it! It’s Scrappy Hour BBQ BABY!!! Maybe it will be hot and we can all go swimming. Or maybe it will rain and we can all cower together. Or maybe it will be perfect and we’ll lay in the grass eating hot dogs till we have to roll us out of there. Here’s how it’s going to go down. First we’ll do a ride. We’re gonna do the Domes again, because it’s fun. Meet ups: BAY VIEW Cactus Club- meet 8:30a; wheels up 9:00a EAST SIDE/RW The Daily Bird-meet 9:00a; wheels up 9:15a TOSA Rocket Baby- meet 9:00; wheels up 9:15a Then, we SHBBQ at South Shore Park! We’ll bring some dogs and veggie alternatives. A couple sides. And a cooler of mixed bevies. We’ll bring a couple grills too. Last year our gang showed up with some really delightful offerings! There was homemade bread, and baked goods and side salads. It ruled. So feel free to bring what ever you would like to share with everyone. It will be much appreciated. Bring a baseball mitt and we’ll have a catch. Have a frisbee, bring that too. If it’s hot, good luck keeping me out of that lake, so bring your suit. If you have any questions, as always hit us up and we’ll try to answer. All our love, SH ✌️🚲🏃‍♂️☕️ #coffeeoutsidemke #scrappyhourmke"
107 likes, 8 comments - scrappyhourmke on August 24, 2025: "It’s that time of year again! Ya, you know it! It’s Scrappy Hour BBQ BABY!!! Maybe it will be hot and we can all go swimming. Or maybe it will rain and we can all cower together. Or maybe it will be perfect and we’ll lay in the grass eating hot dogs till we have to roll us out of there. Here’s how it’s going to go down. First we’ll do a ride. We’re gonna do the Domes again, because it’s fun. Meet ups: BAY VIEW …

Im niedersächsischen #Zeven hat die Energiequelle GmbH neun moderne #V162-Windenergieanlagen mit insgesamt 54 MW Leistung erfolgreich in Betrieb genommen.
Trotz schwieriger Baubedingungen entstand der #Windpark

Die Energiequelle GmbH errichtet in Niedersachsen neun V162-Anlagen mit einer Gesamtleistung von 54 MW | Windkraft-Journal
(WK-intern) - Kallinchen (iwr-pressedienst) - Die Energiequelle GmbH hat im niedersächsischen Zeven neun V162-Anlagen von Vestas errichtet und erfolgreich in Betrieb genommen. Mit einer Nabenhöhe von 169 Metern und einem Rotordurchmesser von 162 Metern zählen die Anlagen zu den modernsten ihrer Art. Sie sollen zukünftig rund 40.000 Haushalte mit erneuerbar produziertem Strom versorgen. Der gesamte

Deadly retaliation: Kremlin missiles attack Kyiv after striking oil facilities! | News Pulse: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/deadly-retaliation-kremlin-missiles-attack.html

Intel CFO David Zinser says the company received $5.7B from the US government on Wednesday evening; the White House says the deal is still "being ironed out" (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/intel-trump-deal-commerce.html

Intel gets $5.7 billion from Trump deal as White House says details are 'being ironed out'
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Intel deal is still "being ironed out by the Department of Commerce."

periodic reminder to cancel the 8-bit guy

@… 添付画像の説明も全文検索の対象に含まれているよ。そうしないと画像見つけるの難しいし！
#fedibird

The American Meteorological Society doesn't buy the Trump regime's climate denial report.
https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/about-ams/ams-

Federal judge says Kari Lake can't fire Voice of America director (David Folkenflik/NPR)
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/28/nx-s1-5521328/judge-kari-lake-voice-of-america-firing-judge-ruling
http://www.memeorandum.com/250828/p116#a250828p116

More on CBP treatment of Canadians at the US border, this time with CBP’s own statistics, which are interesting: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/us-canada-device-searches-1.7619944?cmp=rss

Surge in U.S. customs searches of electronic devices raises concerns about harsh treatment of Canadians | CBC News
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reports a sharp rise in electronic device searches at crossings, raising concerns about privacy, discrimination and harsher scrutiny of Canadians. "There's a lot of fear going into the United States," a Toronto-based immigration lawyer says.

A look at CollabScan, a tool to scan short-form videos for pirated content, offered by Collab, a digital content studio founded by Vine creators (Tubefilter)
https://www.tubefilter.com/2025/08/28/collab-collabscan-digital-rights-manage…

Short-form creators can't keep their content out of pirates' hands. Collab wants to help. - Tubefilter
Since the dawn of digital content, piracy has been a problem for creators of all kinds. But those who make short-form content are particularly vulnerable, Vine might have perished (RIP), but these days, thanks to the rise of TikTok, short-form content is everywhere. Collab works with creators who publish videos on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and more. And some things never change: short-form content is still harder to protect than long-form videos.

Then, quoting Nathan Tankus: the market is not a perfectly rational distillation of all available information, but rather ❝a “conventional wisdom processor.” That is, it reflects views that seem safe to hold because many other people hold them — and the crowd only abandons those views when they become blatantly unsustainable.❞
Fits with the old adage that the market can stay irrational a lot longer than you can stay solvent.
2/2
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-arent-markets-freaking-out

The Air Force will offer military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt,
the Trump supporter and Air Force veteran who was fatally shot by police during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol,
according to a statement from military officials issued Thursday.

The Air Force confirmed the decision, which it said came “after reviewing the circumstances of SrA Babbitt’s death,” in a statement to The Washington Post.

Air Force offers military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt
Babbitt, a 35-year-old California native, was the only Capitol rioter killed by police. She served on active duty as a security forces senior airman from 2004 to 2008, then served in both the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard.

In a letter, FTC chair Andrew Ferguson warns Google not to filter or suppress emails sent by Republicans over Gmail; Google says its spam filters are not biased (Hans Nichols/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/28/ftc-google-gop-email-andrew-ferg…

Scoop: FTC chair warns Google not to discriminate against GOP email
Google insists that its spam filters do not discriminate.

Ukraine war latest: Russian mass attack on Kyiv kills at least 21, including 4 children: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/ukraine-war-latest-russian-mass.html

From sea ice to ocean currents, Antarctica is now undergoing abrupt changes—and we'll all feel them https://phys.org/news/2025-08-sea-ice-ocean-currents-antarctica.html
Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds

From sea ice to ocean currents, Antarctica is now undergoing abrupt changes—and we'll all feel them
Antarctica has long been seen as a remote, unchanging environment. Not any more.

wie wärs im standesamt darmstadt
das ist neben dem ratskeller sodass man nach der trauung lecker hähnchen essen kann
allerdings riecht es dafür im gesamten standesamt nach altem brathähnchen
https://www.n-tv.de/leute/Schalke-Aren…

機械同士の戦争、ひとりぼっち惑星のように、もはやなんのためにやっているのかわからない感じになるのかなって

Filing: credit reporting giant TransUnion discloses a data breach affecting 4.4M customers' personal info but claims "no credit information was accessed" (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/28/tran

TransUnion says hackers stole 4.4 million customers' personal information | TechCrunch
The credit reporting giant confirmed unauthorized access to a third-party application storing the personal information of its customers.

Drones from hell: how Ukraine destroyed Russian equipment in the Pokrovsk direction: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/drones-from-hell-how-ukraine.html

More quotable quotes from Krugman:
❝Market pricing almost never takes into account the possibility of huge, disruptive events, even when the strong possibility of such events should be obvious. The usual pattern, instead, is one of market complacency until the last possible moment. That is, markets act as if everything is normal until it’s blindingly obvious that it isn’t.❞
1/2

Number of medical evacuations to some EU member states. Our Dutch government really stands out. Caretaker Minister of Foreign Affairs @rubenbrekelmans.bsky.social adamantly refuses to take up even a single child in need of intensive medical care.
Via PG Kroeger on Bluesky

How RFK Jr. could exploit the CDC's power vacuum (Maya Goldman/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/28/rfk-jr-cdc-maha
http://www.memeorandum.com/250828/p115#a250828p115

Tribal radio stations say the Trump administration has not said when or how much they will get of the $9.4M that Senator Rounds negotiated in a handshake deal (Jennifer Shutt/North Dakota Monitor)
https://northdakotamonitor.com/2025/08/27/repub/tribal-radio-stations-wait-on-9m-pledged-in-congressional-handshake-deal/
http://mediagazer.com/250828/p14#a250828p14

There’s a significant downside to the booming Dutch beaver population.
Beavers are increasingly digging burrows and tunnels under roads, railways and
– even more worryingly – in dykes.
For a country where a quarter of the land sits below sea level,
this is not a minor problem
– especially as beavers are not exactly holding back when digging.

Mildly interesting: Office 98 for Mac had an anthropomorphized Mac assistant by default (instead of “Clippy”)

Filing: Nvidia reveals its top two customers accounted for 39% of its Q2 revenue, up from 25% in Q2, 2024 (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/nvidias-top-two-mystery-customers-made-up-39percent-of-its-q2-revenue-.html…

Nvidia's top two mystery customers made up 39% of the chipmaker's Q2 revenue
Nvidia's top two customers making up 39% of its total revenue is renewing concern about the risk of the chipmakers clientele concentration.

China accepts first sanctioned Russian LNG cargo in test of US response, Bloomberg reports: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/china-accepts-first-sanctioned-russian.html

Exclusive: Senate Dems launch "budget-buster" site targeting GOP costs (Stephen Neukam/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/08/28/senate-democrats-budget-buster-gop-site
http://www.memeorandum.com/250828/p76#a250828p76

アメフラシの生まれた朝に
借りてきたサーバーさ [参照]

A district court judge blocks the Trump administration from firing Michael Abramowitz as Voice of America's director, weeks after Kari Lake tried to remove him (Scott Nover/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/08/28/voa-director-k…

Credit reporting giant TransUnion has disclosed a data breach
affecting more than 4.4 million customers’ personal information.
In a filing with Maine’s attorney general’s office on Thursday, TransUnion attributed the July 28 breach to unauthorized access of a third-party application storing customers’ personal data for its U.S. consumer support operations.
TransUnion claimed “no credit information was accessed,” but provided no immediate evidence for its claim.
The d…

TransUnion says hackers stole 4.4 million customers' personal information | TechCrunch
The credit reporting giant confirmed unauthorized access to a third-party application storing the personal information of its customers, including Social Security numbers.

I suspect we’re doing something similar to the tank classifier when we ascribe intelligence to AIs: there are patterns such as (for example) grammatical correctness which we •associate• with this abstract thing called “intelligence,” and we thus mis-infer the existence of everything else we associate with the notion of “intelligence” when we see (for example) correct grammar.
Or should we just call the machine intelligent because we classify it as intelligence because our brains, which we assume are intelligent, think it fits the pattern of intelligence? And now you see what the OP means about “begging the question of intelligence.”

InstaLILY, whose industry-specific AI agents called InstaWorkers integrate with legacy systems, raised $25M from Insight Partners (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2025/08/27/instalily-gets-25m-accelerate-industr…

InstaLILY gets $25M to accelerate industry automation with agentic AI teammates - SiliconANGLE
InstaLILY gets $25M to accelerate industry automation with agentic AI teammates - SiliconANGLE

Putin's greatest fear – How the end of the war will reveal the collapse of the Russian economy: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/putins-greatest-fear-how-the.html

Mamdani Widens Fund-Raising Lead, as Adams Is Denied Matching Funds (Nicholas Fandos/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/nyregion/mamdani-adams-cuomo-money.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/250828/p108#a250828p108

@… 横向き考えたことなかったわ…… :tiken:

'Engulfed in flames' — Ukraine strikes Russia's railway infrastructure, fuel tanks, HUR source says, releases video: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/engulfed-in-flames-ukraine-strikes.html

Apple's Xcode 26 beta 7 adds support for GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4, which developers can use by signing into their paid Claude account (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)
https://9to5mac.com/2025/08/28/new-xcode-beta-now-available-with-gpt-5-and-claude-supp…

New Xcode beta now available with GPT-5 and Claude support - 9to5Mac
Apple has released a new beta of Xcode 26 for developers today with a pair of notable changes. There’s now...

Classifiers are notoriously prone to misclassifying things by picking up on hidden and unwanted patterns in the data. The classic hypothetical example is a military that tries to train a classifier to detect images with tanks, but they took all their tank photos on a sunny day and so the classifier just identifies sunny photos.
A real-life example of this happened with a student project: they tried to train a system to determine whether rooms on campus had a positive affect, but accidentally trained it to detect whether photos had ramped-up saturation (because all their “positive affect” photos came from admissions materials).

Tribal radio stations say the Trump administration has not said when or how much they will get of the $9.4M that Senator Rounds negotiated in a handshake deal (Jennifer Shutt/North Dakota Monitor)
https://northdakotamonitor.com/2025/08

Newsom: Crime is a larger problem in GOP-led areas than Democratic-led ones
At a news conference discussing the expansion of an existing crime suppression program in California,
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) went after P Donald Trump for the
“blatant hypocrisy” of surging National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agents to Democratic-led cities
when, he says, there are higher crime rates in some Republican-run places.

Newsom called his expansion of a program tha…

Newsom: Crime is a larger problem in GOP-led areas than Democratic-led ones
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Trump’s law enforcement surge to Democratic-led cities is “blatant hypocrisy,” when, he says, there are higher crime rates in some Republican-run places.

Zelenskyy: Russia is deliberately targeting ordinary homes! #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/zelenskyy-russia-is-deliberately-targeting.html

Judge reluctantly authorizes refund of restitution paid by Jan. 6 rioter (Kyle Cheney/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/28/january-6-rioter-refund-00534475
http://www.memeorandum.com/250828/p117#a250828p117

Marvell reports Q2 revenue up 58% YoY to $2.01B, in line with estimates, and forecasts Q3 revenue at $2.06B, below $2.11B est.; MRVL drops 11% after hours (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2025/08/28/marv…

Marvell's stock slumps on concerns over custom silicon, but long-term prospects look strong - SiliconANGLE
Marvell's stock slumps on concerns over custom silicon, but long-term prospects look strong - SiliconANGLE

チクってしますねー（更新かけました）
#fedibird #fedibird_info

The irony is not lost on me that working from ostensive definition — “supervised learning” in the biz — is in fact an area in which modern “AI” excels: “Here are 10000 pictures of cats, and 10000 pictures of not-cats. Now, is this a picture of a cat?” Machines have got pretty darned good at that in many spheres.
Does that mean we could train an AI to definitely answer whether AI is in fact “intelligence,” since intelligence is in practice defined by example? In short, no — and I think there’s a spark of insight in answering that question:

From Texas to the front lines: the story of a volunteer medic in Ukraine #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/from-texas-to-the-front.html

A look at CollabScan, a tool to scan short-form videos for pirated content, offered by Collab, a digital content studio founded by Vine creators (Tubefilter)
https://www.tubefilter.com/2025/08/28/collab-collabscan-digital-rights-manage…

RFK Jr. cannot be contained
Battacharya defended Kennedy’s decision to defund research into mRNA vaccines,
which was crucial to developing coronavirus shots, based on absurd falsehoods.

What comes next could be the dismantling of America’s vaccine infrastructure.
During Trump’s Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Kennedy teased a report on autism expected next month.
Despite reams of evidence to the contrary, he has long sought to link the condition to vaccines.

RFK Jr. cannot be contained
The ouster of Susan Monarez from the CDC is an ominous sign for American public health.

Kennedy Ousted the C.D.C. Director. If Only That Were the End of It. (Jeneen Interlandi/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/opinion/cdc-firings-kennedy.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/250828/p103#a250828p103

I continue to be very grumpy about how talk about we’ve created “artificial intelligence” when we can’t even define what “intelligence” is.
I am also grumpy about how much attention people pay to the “intelligence” part and how little to the “artificial” part.
I thus appreciate the spirit of the OP.

India's Russian oil imports will increase in September, despite US tariffs, Reuters reports: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/indias-russian-oil-imports-will.html

While facial recognition tech remains unregulated at the US federal level, 23 states have passed or expanded laws to restrict mass scraping of biometric data (Bobby Allyn/NPR)
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/28/nx-s1-5519756/biometrics-facial-recognition-l…

White House taps top RFK Jr. deputy as acting CDC director (Dan Diamond/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/08/28/cdc-director-jim-oneill/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250828/p104#a250828p104

♨️UAV strikes on Russian factories reduced their oil production capacity by 21% #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/uav-strikes-on-russian-factories.html

It is perhaps not obvious that the way we talk about intelligence tends to employ circular reasoning. Here’s a sketch.
The trouble is that that the word “intelligence” is defined •ostensively•, i.e. by examples instead of by criteria — but we talk about intelligence as if it is some real unified •thing• that underlies all those examples. That leads to circular reasoning like this:
Q: What is intelligence?
A: It is the characteristics exhibited by intelligent beings, such as [examples of intelligence go here].
Q: And what are intelligent beings?
A: Beings which exhibit intelligence.
Q: And what is intelligence?
…[stack overflow]…

Sources: Meta aims to launch its next-gen Llama AI model, Llama 4.X, by the end of 2025; the TBD team developing Llama 4.X is also trying to fix Llama 4 bugs (Jyoti Mann/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-superintelligen…

Meta races to launch latest Llama AI model by year-end, sources say
Meta plans to launch its latest AI model, called Llama 4.X, by year-end, two people familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

Defense drags the economy of the Russian Federation against the background of the crisis #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/28/defense-drags-the-economy-of.html

Trump targets brutalist buildings in push to make federal architecture 'beautiful again' (Jory Heckman/Federal News Network)
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/management/2025/08/trump-targets-brutalist-buildings-in-push-to-make-federal-architecture-beautiful-again/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250828/p122#a250828p122

Interesting question, and bonus points for using “beg the question” in its original technical sense. https://universeodon.com/@Virginicus/115097665768103871

The CFTC says non-US crypto exchanges have a path to bringing on US users, in an advisory clarifying how they can register as so-called foreign boards of trade (Lydia Beyoud/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

xAI launches Grok Code Fast 1, a "speedy and economical" agentic coding model, available for free for a limited time on GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, more (Juby Babu/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/musks-xai-forays-into…

Trump Targets Agencies Long Seen as Above Politics. Critics See Big Risks. (Luke Broadwater/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/us/politics/trump-firings-cdc-fed.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/250829/p6#a250829p6

US approves $825 million military sale to Ukraine for ERAM missiles: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/29/us-approves-million-military-sale.html

Pentagon Is Reinstalling Portrait of Confederate General at West Point Library (Greg Jaffe/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/us/politics/pentagon-trump-confederate-lee-west-point.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/250828/p145#a250828p145

A study focused on OpenAI's GPT-4o mini found that LLMs can be persuaded to comply with objectionable requests using the same tactics that persuade humans (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)

RFK Jr. investigating if drugs taken in Robin Westman's transition played 'a role' in Minneapolis mass shooting (Anthony Blair/New York Post)
https://nypost.com/2025/08/28/us-news/rfk-jr-investigating-if-drugs-taken-in-robin-westmans-transition-played-a-role-in-mass-shooting/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250829/p2#a250829p2

SEC filing: Super Micro cautions that its financial control weaknesses, if not fixed, could hurt its ability to report results "in a timely and accurate manner" (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Minneapolis school shooter Robin Westman's mother Mary Grace not cooperating with cops, hires criminal defense attorney (Shane Galvin/New York Post)
https://nypost.com/2025/08/28/us-news/minneapolis-school-shooters-mother-mary-grace-westman-not-cooperating-with-cops/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250829/p1#a250829p1

Autodesk reports Q2 revenue up 17% to $1.76B, vs. $1.73B est., forecasts Q3 revenue above est., and raises its annual forecasts; ADSK jumps 10% after hours (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/autodesk-raises-annual…

Affirm reports Q4 revenue up 33% YoY to $876.4M, above $837M est., GMV up 43% to $10.4B, and EPS of $0.20, above $0.12 est.; AFRM jumps 13% after hours (Katherine Hamilton/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/affirm-swin…

Intel CFO says the US deal aims to deter Intel from selling its foundry; it lets the US buy 5% more at $20/share if Intel's stake in the unit falls below 51% (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/29fb5020-2b25-429a-b63f-18356b467e7a