Tootfinder

US did not halt weapons shipments to Ukraine, Meloni says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/04/us-did-not-halt-weapons.html

Similarweb: since the launch of Google's AI Overviews, the number of news searches that result in no click-throughs grew from 56% in May 2024 to 69% in May 2025 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/02/chat

ChatGPT referrals to news sites are growing, but not enough to offset search declines | TechCrunch
Not surprisingly, organic traffic has also declined, dropping from over 2.3 billion visits at its peak in mid-2024 to now under 1.7 billion.

Should we teach vibe coding? Here's why not.
Should AI coding be taught in undergrad CS education?
1/2
I teach undergraduate computer science labs, including for intro and more-advanced core courses. I don't publish (non-negligible) scholarly work in the area, but I've got years of craft expertise in course design, and I do follow the academic literature to some degree. In other words, In not the world's leading expert, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about course design, and consider myself competent at it, with plenty of direct experience in what knowledge & skills I can expect from students as they move through the curriculum.
I'm also strongly against most uses of what's called "AI" these days (specifically, generative deep neutral networks as supplied by our current cadre of techbro). There are a surprising number of completely orthogonal reasons to oppose the use of these systems, and a very limited number of reasonable exceptions (overcoming accessibility barriers is an example). On the grounds of environmental and digital-commons-pollution costs alone, using specifically the largest/newest models is unethical in most cases.
But as any good teacher should, I constantly question these evaluations, because I worry about the impact on my students should I eschew teaching relevant tech for bad reasons (and even for his reasons). I also want to make my reasoning clear to students, who should absolutely question me on this. That inspired me to ask a simple question: ignoring for one moment the ethical objections (which we shouldn't, of course; they're very stark), at what level in the CS major could I expect to teach a course about programming with AI assistance, and expect students to succeed at a more technically demanding final project than a course at the same level where students were banned from using AI? In other words, at what level would I expect students to actually benefit from AI coding "assistance?"
To be clear, I'm assuming that students aren't using AI in other aspects of coursework: the topic of using AI to "help you study" is a separate one (TL;DR it's gross value is not negative, but it's mostly not worth the harm to your metacognitive abilities, which AI-induced changes to the digital commons are making more important than ever).
So what's my answer to this question?
If I'm being incredibly optimistic, senior year. Slightly less optimistic, second year of a masters program. Realistic? Maybe never.
The interesting bit for you-the-reader is: why is this my answer? (Especially given that students would probably self-report significant gains at lower levels.) To start with, [this paper where experienced developers thought that AI assistance sped up their work on real tasks when in fact it slowed it down] (https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089) is informative. There are a lot of differences in task between experienced devs solving real bugs and students working on a class project, but it's important to understand that we shouldn't have a baseline expectation that AI coding "assistants" will speed things up in the best of circumstances, and we shouldn't trust self-reports of productivity (or the AI hype machine in general).
Now we might imagine that coding assistants will be better at helping with a student project than at helping with fixing bugs in open-source software, since it's a much easier task. For many programming assignments that have a fixed answer, we know that many AI assistants can just spit out a solution based on prompting them with the problem description (there's another elephant in the room here to do with learning outcomes regardless of project success, but we'll ignore this over too, my focus here is on project complexity reach, not learning outcomes). My question is about more open-ended projects, not assignments with an expected answer. Here's a second study (by one of my colleagues) about novices using AI assistance for programming tasks. It showcases how difficult it is to use AI tools well, and some of these stumbling blocks that novices in particular face.
But what about intermediate students? Might there be some level where the AI is helpful because the task is still relatively simple and the students are good enough to handle it? The problem with this is that as task complexity increases, so does the likelihood of the AI generating (or copying) code that uses more complex constructs which a student doesn't understand. Let's say I have second year students writing interactive websites with JavaScript. Without a lot of care that those students don't know how to deploy, the AI is likely to suggest code that depends on several different frameworks, from React to JQuery, without actually setting up or including those frameworks, and of course three students would be way out of their depth trying to do that. This is a general problem: each programming class carefully limits the specific code frameworks and constructs it expects students to know based on the material it covers. There is no feasible way to limit an AI assistant to a fixed set of constructs or frameworks, using current designs. There are alternate designs where this would be possible (like AI search through adaptation from a controlled library of snippets) but those would be entirely different tools.
So what happens on a sizeable class project where the AI has dropped in buggy code, especially if it uses code constructs the students don't understand? Best case, they understand that they don't understand and re-prompt, or ask for help from an instructor or TA quickly who helps them get rid of the stuff they don't understand and re-prompt or manually add stuff they do. Average case: they waste several hours and/or sweep the bugs partly under the rug, resulting in a project with significant defects. Students in their second and even third years of a CS major still have a lot to learn about debugging, and usually have significant gaps in their knowledge of even their most comfortable programming language. I do think regardless of AI we as teachers need to get better at teaching debugging skills, but the knowledge gaps are inevitable because there's just too much to know. In Python, for example, the LLM is going to spit out yields, async functions, try/finally, maybe even something like a while/else, or with recent training data, the walrus operator. I can't expect even a fraction of 3rd year students who have worked with Python since their first year to know about all these things, and based on how students approach projects where they have studied all the relevant constructs but have forgotten some, I'm not optimistic seeing these things will magically become learning opportunities. Student projects are better off working with a limited subset of full programming languages that the students have actually learned, and using AI coding assistants as currently designed makes this impossible. Beyond that, even when the "assistant" just introduces bugs using syntax the students understand, even through their 4th year many students struggle to understand the operation of moderately complex code they've written themselves, let alone written by someone else. Having access to an AI that will confidently offer incorrect explanations for bugs will make this worse.
To be sure a small minority of students will be able to overcome these problems, but that minority is the group that has a good grasp of the fundamentals and has broadened their knowledge through self-study, which earlier AI-reliant classes would make less likely to happen. In any case, I care about the average student, since we already have plenty of stuff about our institutions that makes life easier for a favored few while being worse for the average student (note that our construction of that favored few as the "good" students is a large part of this problem).
To summarize: because AI assistants introduce excess code complexity and difficult-to-debug bugs, they'll slow down rather than speed up project progress for the average student on moderately complex projects. On a fixed deadline, they'll result in worse projects, or necessitate less ambitious project scoping to ensure adequate completion, and I expect this remains broadly true through 4-6 years of study in most programs (don't take this as an endorsement of AI "assistants" for masters students; we've ignored a lot of other problems along the way).
There's a related problem: solving open-ended project assignments well ultimately depends on deeply understanding the problem, and AI "assistants" allow students to put a lot of code in their file without spending much time thinking about the problem or building an understanding of it. This is awful for learning outcomes, but also bad for project success. Getting students to see the value of thinking deeply about a problem is a thorny pedagogical puzzle at the best of times, and allowing the use of AI "assistants" makes the problem much much worse. This is another area I hope to see (or even drive) pedagogical improvement in, for what it's worth.
1/2

@40zetrel@mastodon.social it is not a crime to be in the United States without documentation; it is a civil violation.
Thank you in advance for checking your facts before speaking (or voting) in any place at any time with bad info in the future.
Please consider it your patriotic duty!
I’m sure you wouldn’t want to damage the United States by spreading bad info, again.
🫡🇺🇸

Albany mayor: being undocumented in the U.S. is not a crime
Albany Mayor Kathy M. Sheehan said in a national television interview that it’s not a crime for immigrants to live in th

The easy access that scammers have to sophisticated AI tools means nothing -- from emails to video calls -- can be trusted.
https://www.wired.com/youre-not-ready/

You're Not Ready
Seems bad out there. Unfortunately, it can always get worse. From evil hacker AI to world-changing cyberattacks, WIRED envisions the future you haven't prepared for.

It's not your water bottle, honest. It's not your plastic storage containers. It's not the deli take out. It's not in the soil. (I mean, it is, but this isn't where so much of it gets into _us_.)
We breathe it.

Chargers LB Denzel Perryman released from custody, will not face weapons violation charges https://www.nfl.com/news/chargers-lb-denzel-perryman-released-from-custody-will-not-face-weapons-violation-charges

Here's your annual warning to beware hanging out in person with Defcon attendees, because many of them have returned with asymptomatic COVID infections.
As in every year since 2021, Defcon is a super spreader event. Many COVID infections are NOT symptomatic: not showing symptoms does not guarantee not carrying the highly contagious virus.

Some ad industry executives express anger and disappointment at the US v. Google ruling, and say it will do little to alter Google's dominance of the ad market (Ronan Shields/Digiday)
https://digiday.com/media-buying/angry

Angry and disappointed, if not surprised: The ad industry reacts to the Google search remedies ruling 
The industry reacts to the ruling that Google will not have to divest Android or Chrome in latest antitrust development

Human stupidity knows no limits:
Experiencing extreme weather and disasters is not enough to change views on climate action
https://theconversation.com/experiencing-extreme-weather-and-disasters-is-not-…

Experiencing extreme weather and disasters is not enough to change views on climate action, study shows
A 70,000-person global study found understanding how events such as fires and floods are linked to climate change may be a key driver of support for climate action.

Jerry Jones urged not to give Shilo Sanders a chance on Cowboys after Bucs release https://bolavip.com/en/nfl/jerry-jones-urged-not-to-give-shilo-sanders-a-chance-on-cowboys-after-bucs-release

For many of the days of my career, the most important task I’ve had was to say “no”.
It’s really more like “No, not that way, but let’s find a solution.”
Saying “yes, here’s some code to do the thing you asked, even though you should DEFINITELY not be doing that thing because it’s dangerous for you and your users” is how someone (or some machine) who is not [yet] good at this job acts.

Taktik-Shooter "Ready or Not" muss für Konsolen-Release entschärft werden
Für den Konsolen-Release von "Ready or Not" mussten die Entwickler den Gewaltgrad entschärfen. Einige Änderungen wirken sich auch auf die PC-Version aus.

from my link log —
Three cases against IF NOT EXISTS / IF EXISTS in PostgreSQL DDL.
https://postgres.ai/blog/20211103-three-cases-against-if-not-exists-and-if-exists-in-postgresql-ddl
saved 2021-11-12

Three Cases Against IF NOT EXISTS / IF EXISTS in Postgres DDL | Postgres AI

What is this about?

Many DDL statements in PostgreSQL support modified IF EXISTS / IF NOT EXISTS. For example:

 test=# create table if not exists mytable(); CREATE TABLE test=# drop table if exists mytable; DROP TABLE 

I recommend using `IF EXISTS` / `IF NOT EXISTS`…

Ukraine will not be left alone! Is the US preparing to resume military aid?: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/04/ukraine-will-not-be-left.html

"He’s not interesting. He’s not smart. He’s not anything. He’s just a mean, stupid, mediocre narcissist." - Amanda Marcotte

Find the lie.


https://newrepublic.com/article/198432/transcript-trump-sava…

Transcript: Trump Savagely Mocked on “The View,” Enraging White House
As Trump gets harshly roasted on “The View” and the White House threatens retaliation in response, a skillful decoder of MAGA explains how this saga exposes his deep weaknesses—political and psychological alike.

Ethernet nerds: Does this section from 802.3-2022 actually require that you be able to read the currently negotiated speed and duplex state back from this register, or only write to force a specific speed?
Every PHY I've ever seen except the VSC8512 lets you read back the actual operating conditions, but reading the spec it seems that there's not actually a mandate that this capability be there.
The register is defined as readable but it's not well defined whether it …

No, Google did not warn 2.5 billion Gmail users to reset passwords
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/no-google-did-not-warn-25-billion-gmail-users-to-reset-passwords/

No, Google did not warn 2.5 billion Gmail users to reset passwords
Google has disputed a widely reported story about the company warning all Gmail users to reset their passwords due to a recent data breach that also affected some Workspace accounts.

Republicans Are Cutting Medicare. Not Only Medicaid, Medicare. (David Dayen/American Prospect)
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-03-republicans-cutting-medicare-not-only-medicaid/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250703/p63#a250703p63

Antarctica Just Lost a Greenland's Worth of Ice — And That’s Not the Scariest Part
https://scitechdaily.com/antarctica-just-lost-a-greenlands-worth-of-ice-and-thats-not-the-scariest-part/

There's a point here, but it's really narrower than it looks.
Many individuals can self-host to a level that meets their needs. Not everyone needs anti-DDoS on their web server. Not everyone needs 10GB of space for email accessible from any device anywhere. Almost no one needs a global anycast DNS network. https://

Positively not SOS: pseudo-moments and extreme rays in exact arithmetic
Didier Henrion (LAAS-POP)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01382 https://arxiv.org/pdf/25…

Positively not SOS: pseudo-moments and extreme rays in exact arithmetic
A polynomial that is a sum of squares (SOS) of other polynomials is evidently positive. The converse is not true, there are positive polynomials which are not SOS. This note focuses on the problem of certifying, in exact arithmetic, that a given positive polynomial is not SOS. Using convex duality, this can be achieved by constructing a separating linear functional called a pseudo-moment certificate. We present constructive procedures to compute such certificates with rational coefficients for …

“Horizontal Scrolling Containers Are Not a Content Strategy”
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/08/horizontal-scrolling-containers-are-not-a-content-strategy.html
I’m not talking about carousels. Even if I am talking about carouse…

Horizontal Scrolling Containers Are Not a Content Strategy
I should clarify that I am not talking about carousels. That said, because users often consider horizontal scrolling containers to be carousels, I will be talking about carousels. Also, this post is written by a monolingual American. While I discuss localization issues, there’s no way I can get into all…

Blah. Rain today so I did not bike to work. Not quite ready for that... I have to take the car tomorrow as well due to a doctor appointment. Hopefully I can bike on Friday!
#biking #bikeTooter

Live your truth MAGA
#MAGA #socialism

"Ask any developer working on Cloud, Mobile, or Web apps whether they would consider Windows a viable choice for their work, and their gasp would be heard from the Pitcairn Islands. And let us not even start talking about LLMs, AI, or other golden nuggets in vogue these days."
https://

Why Wait For The Best When I Could Have You?
Billions of people in this planet instinctively associate the concept of "operating system" to Microsoft Windows by antonomasia. Through perhaps resignation, corporate coercion, laziness, or just sheer ignorance, most cannot fathom a world in which laptops do not boot without a "Start" menu or do not randomly display a Blue Screen of Death every time they plug a new device.

"Vladimir Putin is not looking for a cease-fire, and he does not want to negotiate. Why? Because he believes that he can win. Thanks to the actions of the U.S. government, he still thinks that he can conquer all of Ukraine"

America's Great Realignment Toward Putin
Donald Trump is giving Vladimir Putin every incentive to keep killing Ukrainians.

Republicans Are Cutting Medicare.
Not Only Medicaid, Medicare.
Passage of the Big Beautiful Bill will force mandatory sequestration that will mean half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts.
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-0…

Republicans Are Cutting Medicare. Not Only Medicaid, Medicare.
Passage of the Big Beautiful Bill will force mandatory sequestration that will mean half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #AfternoonShow
Obongjayar:
🎵 Not in Surrender
#Obongjayar
https://obongjayar.bandcamp.com/track/not-in-surrender
https://open.spotify.com/track/0hCmWAC2RJQUsNmpc3FKVq

They're not gonna turn up an opportunity to show Wendy James, are they. And Wendy's certainly not going to turn up an opportunity to appear on #TOTP
Transvision Vamp incoming, you mark my words.

Not everything Bill Bonner writes about economics is particularly orthodox, but this clear, simple description of why this tariff policy is idiotic makes this short piece well worth reading.
https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/p/fire-and-ice-e21

The scary thing is not that so many Americans find it easier to imagine the apocalypse than the end of cars. The scary thing is that so many actually prefer the former to the latter, and by not choosing the latter so choose to manifest the former.
#USPol #FuckCars

@… I would recommend not reading it, and also not quoting it if you can find an alternative formulation.

#BlueskyBridge question: can you choose which posts to bridge or not?
Also, if you're using it, do you like it or not (and why)?

In my ideal #jrpg a choice delays the option not chosen, a choice does not restrict other options.

Turns out the human mind sees what it wants to see, not what you actually see
https://bgr.com/science/turns-out-the-human-mind-sees-what-it-wants-to-see-not-what-you-actually-s…

Turns out the human mind sees what it wants to see, not what you actually see
Researchers have discovered that how the brain sees can vary depending on whether a scene plays out the way the mind expects or not.

Fact Check: Video Game Footage Does NOT Show Actual Downing Of Israeli Plane -- Footage NOT Released by Iran: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/03/fact-check-video-game-footage.html

Gotta say, not a huge fan of the new layout for the mastodon app on iPad. Not because of the single-column design, but because it’s HORIFICALLY buggy. Like, not-even-field-tested-seemingly buggy

How AI-assisted "vibe hacking", which often relies on jailbroken versions of mainstream AI models, is leading to a cybersecurity "arms race" (Matthew Gault/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/youre-not-ready-for-ai-hacker-agents/

The Rise of ‘Vibe Hacking’ Is the Next AI Nightmare
In the very near future, victory will belong to the savvy blackhat hacker who uses AI to generate code at scale.

I have to hand this beautiful #Tallbike back to its owner and creator @… tomorrow. Sadly I did not ride it as much as I should have because I had a little technical problem, that I did not want to attempt to fix myself (and risk damage). However, after confirming toda…

Even if you're not #LDS #Mormon. Even if you're not #Utahn, if you or someone you know has been in or associated with this the

Deep Dive 2: The Boy Scouts of America
Podcast Episode · Architecture of Abuse · 06/20/2025 · 52m

#Matrix 2024: Can not decrypt this message
#Matrix 2025: Can not find this message
Progress.

Packers rookie WR Matthew Golden not feeling pressure of first-round status https://www.nfl.com/news/packers-rookie-wr-matthew-golden-not-feeling-pressure-of-first-round-status

How could anyone endure such a state, of having someone there and not there -- not there and there -- at the same time?

«In the single most damning thing I can say about Proton in 2025, the Proton GitHub repository has a “cursorrules” file. They’re vibe-coding their public systems. Much secure!»
oh fuckin' hell, makes you wonder how their non-public stuff is being made 🫠
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/08/02/protons-lumo-ai-chatbot-not-end-to-end-encrypted-not-open-source/

I just love being tech support for my wife. Actually I don't mind... until it's about printers.
So yeah, Epson pushed out an update to her printer that made it stop working with third party ink cartridges. I'm not shocked that they would do that, but did have to explain that Epson considers this to be a feature, not a bug.
While in there, I had to troubleshoot why the printer was not on the network. Somewhere along the line the ip address got flipped from dhcp to manu…

This list of Unicode character name errata feels like back-matter for some SF novel
https://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/
Via @…

Let’s be clear:
The people saying “Alligator Auschwitz” are not blowing things out of proportion. They are not putting words in MAGA’s mouth. This is a clear and explicit endorsement of the mass murder of an entire identity group in the US.
And yes, obviously she is “joking.” Of course she is “joking.” But with quotation marks. She is not joking.

Beach Day for Harley and her pack. She's not much of a water dog but likes to lounge on the beach, and people watch.
Not many days left, I suspect, for Beach activity, so we are getting out as much as we can.
#DogsOfMastadon #BeachLife #GetOutside

Long; central Massachusetts colonial history
Today on a whim I visited a site in Massachusetts marked as "Huguenot Fort Ruins" on OpenStreetMaps. I drove out with my 4-year-old through increasingly rural central Massachusetts forests & fields to end up on a narrow street near the top of a hill beside a small field. The neighboring houses had huge lawns, some with tractors.
Appropriately for this day and this moment in history, the history of the site turns out to be a microcosm of America. Across the field beyond a cross-shaped stone memorial stood an info board with a few diagrams and some text. The text of the main sign (including typos/misspellings) read:
"""
Town Is Formed
Early in the 1680's, interest began to generate to develop a town in the area west of Natick in the south central part of the Commonwealth that would be suitable for a settlement. A Mr. Hugh Campbell, a Scotch merchant of Boston petitioned the court for land for a colony. At about the same time, Joseph Dudley and William Stoughton also were desirous of obtaining land for a settlement. A claim was made for all lands west of the Blackstone River to the southern land of Massachusetts to a point northerly of the Springfield Road then running southwesterly until it joined the southern line of Massachusetts.
Associated with Dudley and Stoughton was Robert Thompson of London, England, Dr. Daniel Cox and John Blackwell, both of London and Thomas Freak of Hannington, Wiltshire, as proprietors. A stipulation in the acquisition of this land being that within four years thirty families and an orthodox minister settle in the area. An extension of this stipulation was granted at the end of the four years when no group large enough seemed to be willing to take up the opportunity.
In 1686, Robert Thompson met Gabriel Bernor and learned that he was seeking an area where his countrymen, who had fled their native France because of the Edict of Nantes, were desirous of a place to live. Their main concern was to settle in a place that would allow them freedom of worship. New Oxford, as it was the so-named, at that time included the larger part of Charlton, one-fourth of Auburn, one-fifth of Dudley and several square miles of the northeast portion of Southbridge as well as the easterly ares now known as Webster.
Joseph Dudley's assessment that the area was capable of a good settlement probably was based on the idea of the meadows already established along with the plains, ponds, brooks and rivers. Meadows were a necessity as they provided hay for animal feed and other uses by the settlers. The French River tributary books and streams provided a good source for fishing and hunting. There were open areas on the plains as customarily in November of each year, the Indians burnt over areas to keep them free of underwood and brush. It appeared then that this area was ready for settling.
The first seventy-five years of the settling of the Town of Oxford originally known as Manchaug, embraced three different cultures. The Indians were known to be here about 1656 when the Missionary, John Eliott and his partner Daniel Gookin visited in the praying towns. Thirty years later, in 1686, the Huguenots walked here from Boston under the guidance of their leader Isaac Bertrand DuTuffeau. The Huguenot's that arrived were not peasants, but were acknowledged to be the best Agriculturist, Wine Growers, Merchant's, and Manufacter's in France. There were 30 families consisting of 52 people. At the time of their first departure (10 years), due to Indian insurrection, there were 80 people in the group, and near their Meetinghouse/Church was a Cemetery that held 20 bodies. In 1699, 8 to 10 familie's made a second attempt to re-settle, failing after only four years, with the village being completely abandoned in 1704.
The English colonist made their way here in 1713 and established what has become a permanent settlement.
"""
All that was left of the fort was a crumbling stone wall that would have been the base of a higher wooden wall according to a picture of a model (I didn't think to get a shot of that myself). Only trees and brush remain where the multi-story main wooden building was.
This story has so many echoes in the present:
- The rich colonialists from Boston & London agree to settle the land, buying/taking land "rights" from the colonial British court that claimed jurisdiction without actually having control of the land. Whether the sponsors ever actually visited the land themselves I don't know. They surely profited somehow, whether from selling on the land rights later or collecting taxes/rent or whatever, by they needed poor laborers to actually do the work of developing the land (& driving out the original inhabitants, who had no say in the machinations of the Boston court).
- The land deal was on condition that there capital-holders who stood to profit would find settlers to actually do the work of colonizing. The British crown wanted more territory to be controlled in practice not just in theory, but they weren't going to be the ones to do the hard work.
- The capital-holders actually failed to find enough poor suckers to do their dirty work for 4 years, until the Huguenots, fleeing religious persecution in France, were desperate enough to accept their terms.
- Of course, the land was only so ripe for settlement because of careful tending over centuries by the natives who were eventually driven off, and whose land management practices are abandoned today. Given the mention of praying towns (& dates), this was after King Phillip's war, which resulted in at least some forced resettlement of native tribes around the area, but the descendants of those "Indians" mentioned in this sign are still around. For example, this is the site of one local band of Nipmuck, whose namesake lake is about 5 miles south of the fort site: #LandBack.

Recognizing Cowboys who not only wore The Star, but The Stripes as well https://insidethestar.com/recognizing-cowboys-who-not-only-wore-the-star-but-the-stripes-as-well

An interview with Newsquest CEO Henry Faure Walker on the regional publisher's focus on local news; paid digital subs have risen 35% YoY to 135K (Alice Brooker/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/

Focus on local, not 'trending', news fuels record Newsquest digital growth
Newsquest CEO Henry Faure Walker discusses how the publishers has reached record digital subscriptions and page views.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett says country is not in a 'constitutional crisis' (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/amy-coney-barrett-says-country-not-constitutional-crisis-bari-weiss-rcna229238
http://www.memeorandum.com/250904/p149#a250904p149

I may or may not load #ICEBlock. I’m unclear on the validity of the privacy claims and don’t have the time to dive into it deeply...
However, I found it amusing that someone complained about it wanting “Always On" location services. Clearly someone not getting the point that it is meant to *ALERT you when ICE is nearby. Not to tell you only when you ask.

from my link log —
Current technology is not ready for proper alpha blending.
https://blog.pkh.me/p/43-the-current-technology-is-not-ready-for-proper-blending.html
saved 2025-07-19

The current technology is not ready for proper blending

For many of the days of my career, the most important task I’ve had was to say “no”.
It’s really more like “No, not that way, but let’s find a solution.”
Saying “yes, here’s some code to do the thing you asked, even though you should DEFINITELY not be doing that thing because it’s dangerous for you and your users” is how someone (or some machine) who is not [yet] good at this job acts.

Titans' JC Latham: Cam Ward not expecting QB1 job to 'just be given to him' over Will Levis https://www.nfl.com/news/titans-jc-latham-cam-ward-not-expecting-qb1-job-to-just-be-given-to-him-over-will-levis

If Texas guardsman enter Illinois without IL authorization, & so are not legally a military force to the state of Illinois, & if they emerge from Great Lakes base carrying a gun that’s properly of the TX NG’s arsenal, do they both break law by not being licensed in IL to carry a firearm arm _&_ is the firearm itself contraband to & in state of IL, so could guardsman be charged, as any civilian would be, both w/some sort of illegal possession of a firearm arm _&_ possessio…

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 has told faculty that a deal with the Trump administration is not imminent and denied that the University is considering a $500 million settlement,
according to three faculty members familiar with the matter.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/8/…

Harvard President Garber Tells Faculty He Is Not Considering a $500 Million Deal With Trump | News | The Harvard Crimson
Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 has told faculty that a deal with the Trump administration is not imminent and denied that the University is considering a $500 million settlement, according to three faculty members familiar with the conversation.

AOC wrote on BlueSky, a good summary of the Trump budget bill adopted in Congress.
"I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.
This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.
It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing."
#usa

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Nation of Language:
🎵 I'm Not Ready for the Change
#NationofLanguage
https://nationoflanguage.bandcamp.com/track/im-not-ready-for-the-change
https://open.spotify.com/track/5ORQX1wOPqCP031V1CxjUq

Not that America should hold us up as a role model, of course.
England turned 250 in the second half of the 12th century (depending on how you define "England" as a country), when kings and barons were romping around slaughtering each other and the population with gay abandon.
Great Britain turned 250 in 1957, at which point we'd only just finally got past post-WW2 rationing and still possibly clung on to some delusions of being an Empire.
And the UK has another 26 years to go before we get to have a 250th birthday. Maybe we'll be doing good by then (but probably not).

@… I am not really looking for what’s “good” or “cool”, but what’s accepted and normal. I am not looking to scare anyone.
My preferred JS testing library is https://github.com/avajs/ava

NFLPA interim boss David White tells AP an 18-game regular season is 'not inevitable' https://www.foxsports.com/articles/nfl/nflpa-interim-boss-david-white-tells-ap-an-18game-regular-season-is-not-inevitable…

‘Not many events like this left’ — A Ukrainian literary festival in a city falsely claimed by Russia: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/03/not-many-events-like-this.html

Trump And Miller Compel Colleges Not To Enroll International Students (Stuart Anderson/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2025/08/03/trump-and-miller-compel-colleges-not-to-enroll-international-students/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250803/p23#a250803p23

NFLPA interim boss: 18-game slate not inevitable https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46146061/nflpa-interim-boss-18-game-regular-season-not-inevitable

OpenAI says the tokenized OpenAI shares Robinhood has started offering are not equity: "We did not partner with Robinhood...and do not endorse it" (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/openai-robinhood-tokens.html

OpenAI says Robinhood's tokens aren't equity in the company
OpenAI said it was not involved in Robinhood’s launch of tokenized shares in Europe, warning users the assets were issued without its approval.

Despite what economists and educators view as the benefits of international students,
Trump officials, led by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, are determined to reduce the number of international students who enter and remain in the United States to work.

Trump And Miller Compel Colleges Not To Enroll International Students
Trump officials are using rules, policies and agreements to compel and discourage U.S. universities from enrolling international students.

Should we teach vibe coding? Here's why not.
2/2
To address the bigger question I started with ("should we teach AI-"assisted" coding?"), my answer is: "No, except enough to show students directly what its pitfalls are." We have little enough time as it is to cover the core knowledge that they'll need, which has become more urgent now that they're going to be expected to clean up AI bugs and they'll have less time to develop an understanding of the problems they're supposed to be solving. The skill of prompt engineering & other skills of working with AI are relatively easy to pick up on your own, given a decent not-even-mathematical understanding of how a neutral network works, which is something we should be giving to all students, not just our majors.
Reasonable learning objectives for CS majors might include explaining what types of bugs an AI "assistant" is most likely to introduce, explaining the difference between software engineering and writing code, explaining why using an AI "assistant" is likely to violate open-source licenses, listing at lest three independent ethical objections to contemporary LLMs and explaining the evidence for/reasoning behind them, explaining why we should expect AI "assistants" to be better at generating code from scratch than at fixing bugs in existing code (and why they'll confidently "claim" to have fixed problems they haven't), and even fixing bugs in AI generated code (without AI "assistance").
If we lived in a world where the underlying environmental, labor, and data commons issues with AI weren't as bad, or if we could find and use systems that effectively mitigate these issues (there's lots of piecemeal progress on several of these) then we should probably start teaching an elective on coding with an assistant to students who have mastered programming basics, but such a class should probably spend a good chunk of time on non-assisted debugging.
#AI #LLMs #VibeCoding

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
Nation of Language:
🎵 I'm Not Ready for the Change
#NationofLanguage
https://nationoflanguage.bandcamp.com/track/im-not-ready-for-the-change
https://open.spotify.com/track/5ORQX1wOPqCP031V1CxjUq

Why the acting CDC director's background does not inspire confidence (Steve Benen/MSNBC)
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/acting-cdc-directors-background-not-inspire-confidence-rcna228822
http://www.memeorandum.com/250903/p98#a250903p98

Similarweb: since the launch of Google's AI Overviews in May 2024, the number of news searches that result in no click-throughs grew from 56% to 69% in May 2025 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/02/chat

ChatGPT referrals to news sites are growing, but not enough to offset search declines | TechCrunch
Not surprisingly, organic traffic has also declined, dropping from over 2.3 billion visits at its peak in mid-2024 to now under 1.7 billion.

from my link log —
JSON is not a subset of YAML.
https://john-millikin.com/json-is-not-a-yaml-subset
saved 2025-07-23 https:…

Today is July 3rd but tomorrow's a Friday and we have other plans, so tonight for dinner I'm going to throw some hot dogs on the BBQ, then run around firing guns in the air and shouting "USA! USA!"
OK well maybe not those second two things because I'm not a maniac but we are having hot dogs for dinner.
And I know I'm doing it all wrong but I still haven't forgiven Dick van Dyke for his accent in Mary Poppins so this is my little bit of cultural misappropriation as revenge.
#July4th

The American president wrote, “Vladimir, STOP!” on his Truth Social account in April,
-- but the Russian president did not halt his offensive in eastern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president called for an unconditional cease-fire in May,
-- but the Russians did not agree to stop attacking Ukrainian civilians from the air.
Donald Trump repeatedly promised, during his campaign, that he would end the war “in one day,”
-- but the war is not over.
He spoke to Vla…

America's Great Realignment Toward Putin
Donald Trump is giving Vladimir Putin every incentive to keep killing Ukrainians.

How 20-something CEOs like Cognition AI's Scott Wu, Cursor's Michael Truell, Cluely's Roy Lee, and Scale AI's Alexandr Wang are swarming San Francisco's AI boom (Natallie Rocha/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/technology/ai…

Swarming to San Francisco’s A.I. Boom: a New Crop of 20-Something CEOs
Some dropped out of M.I.T., Georgetown and Stanford. Others decided not to go to college. They all say they could not afford to wait to build their own artificial intelligence start-ups.

Isaiah Likely not expected to play in Ravens' Week 1 matchup with Bills due to foot injury, per report

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/isaiah-

The key is not allow boys to be raised by older boys, even ones who are legally adults. By the time they’re thinking about dating, they are likely to be ruined.
The problem is too much gendering in childhood. So many people are raised to think in binary gender terms compelled to conform to gender norms and believe in binary-gender ideology.
I will never run out of gratitude for being the only boy in my family for much of my childhood.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
Nation of Language:
🎵 I'm Not Ready for the Change
#NationofLanguage
https://nationoflanguage.bandcamp.com/track/im-not-ready-for-the-change
https://open.spotify.com/track/5ORQX1wOPqCP031V1CxjUq

How to tell a vibe coder of lying when they say they check their code.
People who will admit to using LLMs to write code will usually claim that they "carefully check" the output since we all know that LLM code has a lot of errors in it. This is insufficient to address several problems that LLMs cause, including labor issues, digital commons stress/pollution, license violation, and environmental issues, but at least it's they are checking their code carefully we shouldn't assume that it's any worse quality-wise than human-authored code, right?
Well, from principles alone we can expect it to be worse, since checking code the AI wrote is a much more boring task than writing code yourself, so anyone who has ever studied human-computer interaction even a little bit can predict people will quickly slack off, stating to trust the AI way too much, because it's less work. I'm a different domain, the journalist who published an entire "summer reading list" full of nonexistent titles is a great example of this. I'm sure he also intended to carefully check the AI output, but then got lazy. Clearly he did not have a good grasp of the likely failure modes of the tool he was using.
But for vibe coders, there's one easy tell we can look for, at least in some cases: coding in Python without type hints. To be clear, this doesn't apply to novice coders, who might not be aware that type hints are an option. But any serious Python software engineer, whether they used type hints before or not, would know that they're an option. And if you know they're an option, you also know they're an excellent tool for catching code defects, with a very low effort:reward ratio, especially if we assume an LLM generates them. Of the cases where adding types requires any thought at all, 95% of them offer chances to improve your code design and make it more robust. Knowing about but not using type hints in Python is a great sign that you don't care very much about code quality. That's totally fine in many cases: I've got a few demos or jam games in Python with no type hints, and it's okay that they're buggy. I was never going to debug them to a polished level anyways. But if we're talking about a vibe coder who claims that they're taking extra care to check for the (frequent) LLM-induced errors, that's not the situation.
Note that this shouldn't be read as an endorsement of vibe coding for demos or other rough-is-acceptable code: the other ethical issues I skipped past at the start still make it unethical to use in all but a few cases (for example, I have my students use it for a single assignment so they can see for themselves how it's not all it's cracked up to be, and even then they have an option to observe a pre-recorded prompt session instead).

Micah Parsons changes his wardrobe, but not his stance, as 'Pay Micah' looms over Cowboys camp

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/micah-p

Putin, Zelensky not ready for face-to-face meeting, Erdogan says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/02/putin-zelensky-not-ready-for.html

from my link log —
A convex polyhedron without Rupert's property: a copy cannot pass via a straight hole through the body.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18475
saved 2025-08-28

A convex polyhedron without Rupert's property
A three-dimensional convex body is said to have Rupert's property if its copy can be passed through a straight hole inside that body. In this work we construct a polyhedron which is provably not Rupert, thus we disprove a conjecture from 2017. We also find a polyhedron that is Rupert but not locally Rupert.

'The great ones know how to find it': Why K.C. still expects the best from Travis Kelce https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45599138/kansas-city-chiefs-not-lowering-expectations-travis-kelce

The US Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, seemingly does not know about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre or Ruby Bridges:
“I will look into it and get back to you.”
https://bsky.app/profile/popcrave.com/post/3lqsmomv2rk2i

NFLPA interim executive director says 18-game regular season not inevitable: 'We haven't talked about it yet'

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/new…

Elon Musk snubbed from invite list for Trump's Rose Garden event with CEOs (Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-not-invited-trump-rose-garden-ceo-event-2025-9
http://www.memeorandum.com/250904/p75#a250904p75

AOC:
I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.
This is not a simple budget increase.
It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.
It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play.
And people are disappearing.

NFL power rankings 2025: Model says Packers in top tier, Chiefs not among top five contenders

https://www.cbssports.com/betting/news/nfl

Lamar Jackson contract: Ravens QB sidesteps question about extension, says he's 'not worried about that'

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/lamar-j…

The Trump people have just announced that they have sent a letter to Columbia’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, accusing Columbia of being in violation of civil rights law.
My initial reaction is that this is good news since it implies both that Columbia hasn’t further caved-in yet and makes clear that the Trump people have run out of ammunition

The Situation at Columbia XXIII
This week I’m very happy to not be at Columbia, and not in the US, enjoying spending the week at the Perimeter Institute at a conference in honor of Lee Smolin. Since there’s a little b…

"It seemed tariffs were already boosting inflation and dampening growth at the margin, albeit not to a sufficient degree to tip the economy into recession," writes Josh Barro.
"Now the jobs numbers are also showing significant weakness, even though they're not yet showing the bottom falling out of the labor market.
The last remaining bullish economic indicator is the stock market.
Like Furman, I can't explain why stocks are doing so well in spite o…

Well, This Jobs Report Clarifies Some Things
Trump will get his rate cut, but there's little other good news for the president.

I've always thought of civility like I think of objectivity in news:
well intended, but entirely optional standard that often results in things that need to be said not being said in order to keep messages more palatable.
Of course, I am a Midwestern guy who teaches the 1st Amendment for a living.
-- Christopher Terry
…

Quinn: McLaurin request business, not distraction https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45884983/quinn-mclaurin-trade-request-normal-business-not-distraction

Donald Trump’s budget bill is set to make ICE the single largest federal law enforcement agency in US history.
The mass deportations the far right fantasizes about will remain unrealistic,
-- but not for lack of funds.
https://jacobin.com/2025/07/ice-trump-

ICE Is About to Get More Money Than It Can Spend
Donald Trump’s budget bill is set to make ICE the single largest federal law enforcement agency in US history. The mass deportations the far right fantasizes about will remain unrealistic, but not for lack of funds.

I’m going to be very honest and clear.
I am fully preparing myself to die under this new American regime.
That’s not to say that it’s the end of the world. It isn’t.
But I am almost 50 years old. It will take so long to do anything with this mess that this is the new normal for *me*.
I do hope a lot of you run. I hope you vote, sure.
Maybe do a general strike or rent strike.
All great!
But I spent the last week reading things and this is not, for ME…

The U.S. military B-2 Spirit bomber pilots and crew involved with the coordinated strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities last month have been invited to attend a July 4 celebration at the White House
-- but it's not clear what measures have been taken to protect their identities.
The White House confirmed to Military.com that those involved in the mission, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, were invited to the White House's July 4 celebration.
It follows comments mad…

Pilots Who Conducted Iran Strikes Invited to White House on July 4, Raising Security Concerns
The B-2 Spirit bomber pilots and crew involved with the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities last month have been invited to attend a July 4 celebration at the White House, but it's not clear what measures have been taken to protect their identities.

Jerry Jones not swayed by Parsons' trade request https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45887700/cowboys-jerry-jones-not-swayed-micah-parsons-trade-request-says-part-negotiation

US won't send some weapons pledged to Ukraine following a Pentagon review of military aid
A Pentagon review determined that stocks were too low on some weapons previously pledged to Ukraine,
so pending shipments of some items won’t be sent,
according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide information that has not yet been made public.

The Defense Department did not provide details on what specific weapons were being held back.

The…

US won't send some weapons pledged to Ukraine following a Pentagon review of military aid
The U.S. is halting some shipments of weapons to Ukraine amid concerns that its own stockpiles have declined too much