Tootfinder

I've just used Good Law Project's tool to tell Keir Starmer that his ID scheme is a recipe for repression. Will you do the same? https://goodlaw.social/c78cc5

Tell Keir Starmer to scrap his ID card scheme
With his government in turmoil and Nigel Farage breathing down his neck, Keir Starmer has reached for the panic button, announcing a scheme for ID cards that would be compulsory to prove your right to work. But ID cards would cost billions, be riddled with errors and won’t reduce irregular migration at all. They haven’t worked in Europe, they haven’t worked anywhere in the world, and they won’t work here. Email Starmer and let him know that ID cards are a recipe for repression. If we co…

One Navy secretary and his allies in Congress fought to build more littoral combat ships even as they broke down at sea and their weapons systems failed. The Navy wound up with more ships than it wanted, at an estimated lifetime cost that could reach $100 billion or more.
The Navy’s haste to deliver ships took precedence over combat ability. Without functioning weapons systems the vessels are like a “box floating in the ocean,” one former officer said.
Sailors and officers complain…

The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship”
Littoral combat ships were supposed to launch the Navy into the future. Instead they broke down across the globe and many of their weapons never worked. Now the Navy is getting rid of them. One is less than five years old.

Notice how much space is given to a Black visa overstayer, and how little to Elon Musk, who worked on a student visa, allegedly, which is against the law.
Ian Roberts, Des Moines Superintendent, Had a Story Too Good to Be True - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/us/des-moines-iowa-superintendent-ian-roberts-immigration-ice.html

A look at CollectiveMetrics.org, a new nonprofit founded by two ex-Meta ad executives that aims to bring more transparency to digital advertising to fight scams (Craig Silverman/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/scam-ads-are-flooding-so…

Scam Ads Are Flooding Social Media. These Former Meta Staffers Have a Plan
Rob Leathern and Rob Goldman, who both worked at Meta, are launching a new nonprofit that aims to bring transparency to an increasingly opaque, scam-filled social media ecosystem.

Decided to test the MiSTer out on the Sony PVM with the RGB breakout cable through the gwscart switch: worked perfectly as well.
#retrogaming #mister

I'm putting together notes for novices to do simple data analysis with R and the fact that I'm telling them to "cut and paste this inscrutable block of code at the start of your file" reminds me of nothing so much as when I worked for the ESRI in Dublin in the mid 1980s and we used to run SPSS analyses remotely on UCD's Amdahl by sandwiching our SPSS code (on punch cards) between two decks of IBM Job Control Language cards of which we understood nothing whatsoever.

One way my Mom failed me (because it's always the mother's fault of course... ) is that she always made sure I got fed on a regular schedule whether I wanted or had even thought about it myself. A mark of a terrible parent...
As an adult, I've never worked out how to reliably eat. I understand the theory, that's not the problem. I can cook well enough to satisfy myself. That's also not the problem. I always have food in the kitchen.

@… As a Dane/Pole, I just want to point out: Neither of my sets of grandparents had a particularly enjoyable childhood.
(Of course being Danish worked out better, but still not awesome)

Today I worked with FaSh on converting a rather old vue/vuetify 2 app to vue/vuetify 3 using AI tools (using https://github.com/obra/superpowers, nice to benefit from Jesses work again). It worked quite well! It's not done yet, but a lot of the hard lifting was done by the AI (and us providing some gui…

I've been doing lots of roof repairs lately. I sealed up the skylights, and finally fixed a major leak that I hadn't been able to source. Had a couple of tiny leaks during last night's deluge, and made a couple minor patches today. Just waiting for tonight's downpour to see if they worked. 🌧️

I hear some of the issues are being actively worked on which is great.
But: to have broadly successful and inviting social network, you gotta have both the people and the tech.

This week I watched a video about Grist posted by LawrenceSystems and found it to be a good fit in what I've been looking for a while now.
Basically just a spreadsheet with API support for automation with other systems and data collectors. Been using SuiteCRM for a while and it worked well enough but is too clunky and brittle to quickly add/adjust columns or extend functionality.
Thus far have put together some middleware for device inventory management and about to work on …

"At around 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, armed federal agents rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of a five-storey residential apartment in the South Shore of Chicago. The agents worked their way through the building, kicking down doors and throwing flash bang grenades, rounding up adults and screaming children alike, detaining them in zip-ties and arresting dozens, according to witnesses and local reporting."

‘Military-Style’ ICE Raid On Chicago Apartment Building Shows Escalation in Trump’s Crackdown  
Chicago ICE raid saw children taken from their homes unclothed and separated from their parents, according to witnesses.

Also in todays fun - a true 'first world' problem if ever I had one. Im watching my car get worked on at the dealer, sitting in a comfy chair looking through the glass at the techs in the garage. And my phone keeps trying to connect to my car. "To continue, use Android Auto" AAAHHH!

#Wordle 1,539 3/6*
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ <1% of 213,416 (36)
⬜🟨🟩🟩⬜ 0 of 98 (2)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
WordleBot
Skill 83/99
Luck 75/99
Such a fortuitous first word.
And my 2nd guess worked out but user error, reused an eliminated letter. Really not sure how that got by me.

Achievement unlocked: used my pet AI to write a prompt for a pissy and unhelpful AI that worked beautifully.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/three-3
Has anyone worked out a way for trans-binary sexual reproduction to even work?

What to Make of Raiders' Midseason Grade https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-midseason-grade-denver-broncos

It’s Audrey Denney with some big news 🚨
𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽 𝟱𝟬 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗱, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜’𝗺 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗮’𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗺𝗮𝗽𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲! 
I grew up on a family farm, worked my way through college in Chico, and built my life here as a teacher and nonprofit leader. I know this place, and I know Washington is failing us. 
That’s why I got into this race even before we were certain what the maps would look like; in the face of uncertainty, I’m cert…

Audrey Denney for Congress
Join Audrey Denney’s movement to fight for rural California. An educator, nonprofit strategist, and lifelong advocate, Audrey is ready to take on corporate influence, defend healthcare, protect our forests, and put people first in Congress 2026.

Innermost stable circular orbit of Kerr-Bertotti-Robinson black holes and inspirals from it: Exact solutions
Tower Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04684 https://

Innermost stable circular orbit of Kerr-Bertotti-Robinson black holes and inspirals from it: Exact solutions
For an uncharged test particle in the Kerr-Bertotti-Robinson spacetime, two classes of remarkable orbits are worked out, both in exact forms. First, for both prograde and retrograde motions, the radii of innermost stable circular orbits are expressed fully in terms of the outer and inner horizon radii just like Kerr black holes, despite the fact that Kerr-Bertotti-Robinson black holes have three parameters. Second, closed analytic solutions are given to the problem of a test particle inspiralin…

Started the Go rewrite/translation for the `sisyphus-ffmpeg` module. I'd forgotten the joy of unmarshalling JSON in Go, but after going with structs full of pointers everything worked out pretty well. Still need to add a few more features like grabbing the number of frames for a video source, but it's working great at this point.
#ffmpeg

In-situ characterisation and data-driven crystal plasticity analysis of short-to-long crack transition in a ductile aluminium alloy
Abdalrhaman Koko, Bemin Sheen, Caitlin Green, Fionn Dunne
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03713

In-situ characterisation and data-driven crystal plasticity analysis of short-to-long crack transition in a ductile aluminium alloy
Crack arrest in ductile alloys plays a critical role in damage-tolerant design for aerospace and structural applications, yet the transition from microstructure-sensitive short cracks to load-controlled long cracks remains poorly understood. Here, we present an in-situ, high-resolution experimental study of crack propagation in cold-worked 5052 aluminium alloy using scanning electron microscopy digital image correlation (SEM-DIC), electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), and novel data-driven c…

Intel has partnerships with multiple Chinese surveillance companies sanctioned by the US for enabling human rights abuses, including Uniview and Hikvision (Emily Baker-White/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-wh

Intel Worked With Chinese Firms Sanctioned For Enabling Human Rights Abuses
As the U.S. government takes a 10% stake in Intel, Forbes has learned the tech company partnered with sanctioned Chinese surveillance firms Uniview, Hikvision and Cloudwalk.

2025 NFL trade deadline winners, losers: Eagles fill needs, Jets sell, Bills strike out https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6778376/2025/11/05/nfl-trade-deadline-2025winners-losers-eagles-jets-bills-chiefs/

Worked with an #acting #coaching client and seeing them sink further into the material in ways neither of us anticipated was cool. The words hit them new ways, and happily they followed and built on that to hit new versions of delivery for what came next.

My first paycheck was from CBS -- the owned-and-operated station in St. Louis, where I worked as a copyboy in the KMOX-TV newsroom. CBS was the "Tiffany network," the gold standard of broadcast journalism. It is sad to see that come to an end. Billionaire Larry Ellison is buying the company and putting a right-wing kook, Bari Weiss, in charge of CBS News.

NYT names Real Estate Editor Nikita Stewart as its new Metro editor; she has held various NYT positions and worked at The Star-Ledger and The Washington Post (Addison Cummings/The New York Times Company)
https://www.nytco.com/press/nikita-stewart-is-our-next-metro-editor…

20 year DOJ vet lead counsel on critical terrorism case,
fired b/c he once worked in career role for Lisa Monaco.
They are simply strangling the DOJ.
1/3 of leadership has left.
And the cost here has to be reckoned in public safety.
Everything gets sacrificed to absurd views of loyalty and revenge.
…

Harry Litman (@harrylitman.bsky.social)
20 year DOJ vet lead counsel on critical terrorism case, fired b/c he once worked in career role for Lisa Monaco.They are simply strangling the DOJ. 1/3 of leadership has left. And the cost here has to be reckoned in public safety. Everything gets sacrificed to absurd views of loyalty and revenge.

"Fossil fuel projects face stricter scrutiny after Europe’s top human rights court ruling"
#Europe #FossilFuels #Energy

Norway oil projects face stricter climate scrutiny after court ruling
The case worked its way through European legal systems for nearly a decade before the ruling.

Last time it worked big time! Now Oldskulenerd reacted to HOME. feel like clicking like on his Patreon? Helps us this time, too!
It’s free, only a Patreon account necessary. Just click the link and click ❤️!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/142623265

during covid and home office bosses installed programs that tracked your every move on your laptop to specifically mark you as 'working' if your mouse moved enough and you made enough keyboard types
now microsoft office announces 'vibe working' (AI assisted excel spreadsheets and word documents) since 'vibe coding' worked out so well ❤️

Great deconstruction of both Superman movies & why Zack Snyder's Man of Steel feels unrelatable.
▶️ Superman vs Man of Steel: One Scene That Shows Why One Worked - SCENE FI...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=78sapSaT-v8&si=uV04w0Ma9DFyoiFU

I'm a Senior #Software Engineer with 20 years of professional experience.
I'm based in the USA and looking for #remote work.
I have primarily worked with web technologies such as #JavaScript

2025 NFL trade deadline winners, losers: Eagles fill needs, Jets sell, Bills strike out https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6778376/2025/11/05/nfl-trade-deadline-2025winners-losers-eagles-jets-bills-chiefs/

One does not simply use rootless … me with a rootless Podman walks into Mordor of CI and docker build anyway.
Just kidding! Rootless Podman containers, quadlets and systemd are truly amazing in 2025.
https://vyskocil.me/blog/ci-setup-which-never-worked/

Ci Setup Which Never Worked
In an earlier post about giving up Kubernetes, I wrote that my server is a plain old virtual machine pet. While this works pretty well for a static web server use case, I wanted to explore ways how to automate this blog. This is a story about how I failed. I am writing this because I did my best to make it work, but it turned out its impossible At the same time it has a some good hints about user systemd, quadlets, rootless podman and what I managed to get working.

Randomly reminded of the story my mom told me about when she worked at a Dunkin Donuts in college.
Apparently the locals would always ask for "barbarian cream" donuts.

"""
Traditional politics of assistance and the repression of unemployment were now called into question. The need for reform became urgent.
Poverty was gradually separated from the old moral confusions. Economic crises had shown that unemployment could not be confused with indolence, as indigence and enforced idleness spread throughout the countryside, to precisely the places that had previously been considered home to the purest and most immediate forms of moral life. This demonstrated that poverty did not solely fall under the order of the fault: ‘Begging is the fruit of poverty, which in turn is the consequence of accidents in the production of the earth or in the output of factories, of a rise in the price of basic foodstuffs, or of growth of the population, etc.’ Indigence became a matter of economics.
But it was not contingent, nor was it destined to be suppressed forever. There would always be a certain quantity of poverty that could never be effaced, a sort of fatal indigence that would accompany all forms of society until the end of time, even in places where all the idle were employed: ‘The only paupers in a well governed state must be those born in indigence, or those who fall into it by accident.’ This backdrop of poverty was somehow inalienable: whether by birth or accident, it formed an inevitable part of society. The state of lack was so firmly entrenched in the destiny of man and the structure of society that for a long time the idea of a state without paupers remained inconceivable: in the thought of philosophers, property, work and indigence were terms linked right up until the nineteenth century.
This portion of poverty was necessary because it could not be suppressed; but it was equally necessary in that it made wealth possible. Because they worked but consumed little, a class of people in need allowed a nation to become rich, to release the value of its fields, colonies and mines, making products that could be sold throughout the world. An impoverished people, in short, was a people that had no poor. Indigence became an indispensable element in the state. It hid the secret but most real life of society. The poor were the seat and the glory of nations. And their noble misery, for which there was no cure, was to be exalted:
«My intention is solely to invite the authorities to turn part of their vigilant attention to considering the portion of the People who suffer … the assistance that we owe them is linked to the honour and prosperity of the Empire, of which the Poor are the firmest bulwark, for no sovereign can maintain and extend his domain without favouring the population, and cultivating the Land, Commerce and the Arts; and the Poor are the necessary agents for the great powers that reveal the true force of a People.»
What we see here is a moral rehabilitation of the figure of the Pauper, bringing about the fundamental economic and social reintegration of his person. Paupers had no place in a mercantilist economy, as they were neither producers nor consumers, and they were idle, vagabond or unemployed, deserving nothing better than confinement, a measure that extracted and exiled them from society. But with the arrival of the industrial economy and its thirst for manpower, paupers were once again a part of the body of the nation.
"""
(Michel Foucault, History of Madness)

»Just use HTML — JavaScript is…
- Slower to load
- Slower to run
- More prone to breaking
- Harder to read and reason about
- Doesn’t actually look like the final output«
Don't use JavaScript for the design, because CSS as well as SVG images can create a lot of animation and the ability to create a dynamic web interface.
🧑‍💻

Just use HTML
I’ve worked on so many projects recently that were more complicated than they needed to be because they used JavaScript to generate HTML. JavaScript is… Slower to load Slower to run More prone to breaking Harder to read and reason about Doesn’t actually look like the final output It’s inferior to just using HTML in nearly every way. I’m not saying never use JavaScript, though. I think JS is great at augmenting and enhancing what’s already there, and adding interactivity that canno…

In my life I've met people whose names mysteriously matched their jobs or professions. Some examples:
I once met a Norwegian named "Tor-Eddie" whose job title was… editor.
In Buenos Aires my personal physician for a while was "Dr. Doctorovich".
I once worked with a Spanish developer whose family name was literally "Coder".
In Geneva I once met the director of a human rights organization whose name was "Ángel Escudero de Paz&quo…

A Calogero Model with root string representatives of infinite order Coxeter orbits
Andreas Fring
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01738 https://arxiv.org/pdf/250…

A Calogero Model with root string representatives of infinite order Coxeter orbits
We present a worked example for the new extensions of the multi-particle Calogero model endowed with infinite Weyl group symmetry of affine and hyperbolic type. Building upon the hyperbolic extension of the $A_3$-Kac-Moody algebra, we construct an explicit realisation of the model in terms of infinite root systems generated from Coxeter orbits. To address the challenge of summing over infinitely many roots, we introduce root string representatives that span the invariant root space while preser…

I had over three hundred accounts following me that I didn't follow back, mostly because I lost track of all the new followers.
So I did the unthinkable thing:
I asked Perplexity to write me a python script to follow everyone back. I will just unfollow some of them later, if I don't like them enough. But for now, everyone gets the benefit of the doubt.😉
The script needed some adjustments, but it worked.
Here's the script if you need it:

followback
A short python script that looks for all your mastodon followers that you don't follow back, and follows them.

My costume was this meat cleaver through my head, and nothing else.
Both of my kids worked for like a week on each of theirs.
At least 50 people on the street commented on mine when we trick-or-treated. Laziness ftw? 😂

THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while
they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there because the
center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and Perrier…

This post covers things I've also felt about Hugo for ages, poster child for something that should just be left alone already.
https://commaok.xyz/post/on_hugo/

Two arrested in Egypt as authorities take down Streameast sports piracy platform https://therecord.media/streameast-sports-piracy-site-takedown-arrests-egypt

A year and a half ago, I was let go by my previous employer. They did a half a dozen rounds of layoffs over the course of 2 years or so. The previous Christmas, six packs of these were the Christmas present to employees. They worked with a local microbrewery to commission a line of beer to celebrate their successes. This has been sitting in my fridge since then. I don't drink that much and I didn't feel like dumping it out. It's been waiting for me to make a recipe that calls for beer.

An analysis of 30 US data center proposals in 14 states: in most cases, local officials signed NDAs and worked with apparent shell companies to hide details (Natalie Kainz/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/dat

How NDAs keep AI data center details hidden from Americans
A review of over 30 data center proposals across 14 states found that in most cases, officials signed NDAs and worked with what appeared to be shell companies.

From my LinkedIn post: “Telling your dev team to use AI coding tools is like telling your 2010 ops team to use AWS. They didn’t know how to code, they were ticket and click-it VMware people… developers who don’t have product management mindset or have never managed a dev team will fail by trying to micromanage the output of the tool rather than specifying the outcome of the product and managing the agent team to deliver that outcome.”

Back in 2010 when we first started using AWS to run Netflix, the AWS services were very incomplete, somewhat unreliable, had scaling issues, but were super fast to provision compared to filing… | Adrian Cockcroft
Back in 2010 when we first started using AWS to run Netflix, the AWS services were very incomplete, somewhat unreliable, had scaling issues, but were super fast to provision compared to filing tickets and waiting for data center ops teams to do what we need. We worked around the issues, built a new cloud native developer driven architecture and scaled Netflix at speed. At the time many people said we were crazy to run a large enterprise on cloud and would be back in datacenters when it failed. …

Great little trip down Eagles history lane
https://www.musicradar.com/artists/they-all-thoug…

“They all thought it was a bonkers idea but it worked. It was already a great song, but that one little thing made it different”: How the Eagles made somebody else’s song their own – and defined the sound of country rock
"Those open chords felt like an announcement: ‘And now... the Eagles!’”

2025 NFL trade deadline winners, losers: Eagles fill needs, Jets sell, Bills strike out https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6778376/2025/11/05/nfl-trade-deadline-2025winners-losers-eagles-jets-bills-chiefs/

A senior national security prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia
said in a farewell note taped to his door to colleagues on Friday
that he was apparently fired this week because a January 6 conspiracy theorist denounced him on social media
for having worked for the deputy attorney general in the Biden administration.
The veteran federal prosecutor, Michael Ben’Ary,
was fired on Wednesday,
the same day that Julie Kelly,
a pro-Trump commentato…

If you see me at @… this week, and especially if you've worked on a #Swift package that we use, hit me up for some maple syrup straight from the tree—I’m bringing a few to give to new friends.

Lord of the Rings extended Edition is astonishing.
Head of the Nazgûl misunderstanding how prophesy worked before being impaled on the spike of a giant sundial always takes me aback.

Currently have active Covid and think I've worked out a protocol for giving sweets to trick or treaters without risking infecting them.
(Although the likely outcome is that, like the last two years, no trick or treaters will in fact show up, and we'll be left with a stockpile of sweets that will take us 6 months to eat ourselves.)

Julia Platt was a brilliant scientist. #Science She made experimental breakthroughs in developmental biology from the late 1800s to the 1920s. She worked in universities in the U.S. and Europe. Her non-standard ideas and techniques were eventually accepted and shown to be correct by male scientists, after she died.
Here's a portrait of her after she was mayor of Pacific Grove, California. She h…

Hey @… I was just listening to the great literary olfactoloy episode with @allylouks.bsky.social€, but I feel that the existence/role of human pheromones has been a bit misrepresented.
I have worked on mammalian pheromones for my PhD, and I have encountered (at least) two major definitions of the term "pheromone", one based on the function of a substance, and the other, which I personally prefer, on the information flow involved in it (https://doi.org/10.1159/000096511).
Based on the Sbarbati & Osculati definition, a pheromone would be a component that conveys information between individuals of the same species.
There is also quite a bit of research that argues for the existence of human pheromones (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.a.20125, https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.a.20125, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1198331)
However, the discussion on the existence of human pheromones is difficult, as it touches on the topic of free will as many reactions to odor are involuntary. During the International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste held in Iceland in 2024, there have been several session on human olfaction touching on sensitive aspects such as olfaction-mediated effects on mate choice and pregnancy, but none of the researchers dared utter the word pheromone, while colleagues working on other mammals where happily talking about pheromonal effects for very similar topics.
Long story short, I feel that saying there is no hard evidence for human pheromones is misrepresenting the current research.

I was asking Claude Sonnet 4.5 some questions about how to transfer some old Fortran 90 progs into R. It's the sort of simple rules based question that AI is supposed to be good at. It's helpful on the rules of R, but took a lot of prompting to get it right -it would not have worked for someone who didn't understand the maths.
But it sure knows how to be creepily sycophantic. It's a machine and shouldn't pretend to be human.

If the November 2025 election was a referendum on President Trump, the Democrats have a lot to celebrate tonight.
Democratic candidates swept key races:
Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Democratic socialist, beat Trump-endorsed former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a historic election for New York City mayor.

Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a 46-year-old Democrat who previously worked as a CIA officer, beat a Republican candidate to become Virginia governor.

Rep…

Voters approve Prop. 50, California redistricting, in a win for Democrats
Prop. 50, California’s congressional redistricting measure, was on the ballot on a high-profile election day that saw Democratic wins in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere.

Three kinds of developers:
- Those who work according to how they wished the system worked
- Those who work according to how they think the system should work
- Those who work according to how the system actually works

Had a call today where it was announced a co-worker passed away after a private illness. The host said they "were always the first one in [to the office] and the last one out", and not a lot else.
I didn't know this person or their situation, so I'm not commenting directly on this.
However, it does remind me of the idea: a year after you pass, the only people who will remember that you worked long hours are your family.
RIP, co-worker.

It's cold, rainy (real showers!), and gusts of strong wind - but I needed to get some air. My wife wanted to get to the nearby shop for some bread rolls ... so we decided to do a 30min rain walk in full rain gear.
"I do this for you - I would just take the car"
But it was - just - good! Rain jacket and trousers worked, same as head lamps. Shoes probably need some care. But good to know this now.

So, we had we had the Chez Dallman Pecan Chicken Bok Choy again. I wanted to take my wife's picture, but she protested and said she never looks good under the glaring kitchen light. I pushed the settings button in the camera app and said wryly, "Ah, there it is: turning on 'Make My Wife Beautiful' mode!" And I pushed at the screen.
My wife cracked up. (I did too.) It worked. She likes the photo, or at least she doesn't hate it. I can't post it here, though…

First step of Degoogling: Ask your self How does Google earn?
It worked for me..
#degoogle #privacy

@… did you … know? #wasps #waspnest

Brandelyn Tafoya - From Scratch Cooking | Low Tox Homestead on Instagram: "I wish I knew this earlier!! Decided to try it since we strongly dislike having to spray wasp nests. Can’t believe it actually worked!!! Basically you hang a paper bag next to their nest, and they think it’s another nest and leave. So cool!!!! . #nontoxichome #farmhack #homehacks #tryit #househack #organicliving #nontoxicliving #waspnest #homestead"
39K likes, 625 comments - pivotfarm on August 23, 2025: "I wish I knew this earlier!! Decided to try it since we strongly dislike having to spray wasp nests. Can’t believe it actually worked!!! Basically you hang a paper bag next to their nest, and they think it’s another nest and leave. So cool!!!! . #nontoxichome #farmhack #homehacks #tryit #househack #organicliving #nontoxicliving #waspnest #homestead".

Interesting discussion of "protein culture", the latest health trend that's now deeply embedded in most food products.
I myself found I was going a bit overboard with protein til a few months ago. Was getting about 180 grams per day, which is way more than needed. Now I'm down to about 100g per day.
I find few things more American and capitalist than the health and longevity business. I worked with a guy who's big into longevity and the way he talks about …

DeepTravel: An End-to-End Agentic Reinforcement Learning Framework for Autonomous Travel Planning Agents
Yansong Ning, Rui Liu, Jun Wang, Kai Chen, Wei Li, Jun Fang, Kan Zheng, Naiqiang Tan, Hao Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21842

DeepTravel: An End-to-End Agentic Reinforcement Learning Framework for Autonomous Travel Planning Agents
Travel planning (TP) agent has recently worked as an emerging building block to interact with external tools and resources for travel itinerary generation, ensuring enjoyable user experience. Despite its benefits, existing studies rely on hand craft prompt and fixed agent workflow, hindering more flexible and autonomous TP agent. This paper proposes DeepTravel, an end to end agentic reinforcement learning framework for building autonomous travel planning agent, capable of autonomously planning,…

My first attempt at desoldering a BGA chip and it worked really well. Chip cleaned up nicely as well.
Disclaimer: I don't plan on using this chip or board again. So, I don't need it to work at the end.
#retrocomputing
#desoldering

Next step in the PIC12F683 project, a partial decap.
Tried some new techniques that worked great, but let a bit of acid on the back that caused minor corrosion on the die attach paddle. I know how to prevent it next time though.

It should be clear that idiots and assault weapons don't mix. We have an apparently limitless supply of idiots. Guns can be controlled and have been in the past. It worked then. It can work now. I have to begin

NATO Tests 'Unjammable, Undetectable' Laser Comms at Sea—and It Worked
https://gizmodo.com/nato-tests-unjammable-undetectable-laser-comms-at-sea-and-it-worked-2000673703

20 year DOJ vet lead counsel on critical terrorism case,
fired b/c he once worked in career role for Lisa Monaco.
They are simply strangling the DOJ.
1/3 of leadership has left.
And the cost here has to be reckoned in public safety.
Everything gets sacrificed to absurd views of loyalty and revenge.
…

I worked with Pete Carroll for years. Let me tell you how he helped me find my true identity https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6650383/2025/09/23/pete-carroll-leadership-raiders-seahawks/

So if AI worked so fantastically well, why don’t the owners of the AI companies keep it to themselves instead of selling it at a loss

She's worked at a hospital for more than half a decade at this point. This has given her valuable insights.. 😂

DOJ accuses US ransomware negotiators of launching their own ransomware attacks
The Department of Justice indicted Kevin Tyler Martin and another unnamed employee,
who both worked as ransomware negotiators at DigitalMint,
with three counts of computer hacking and extortion related to a series of attempted ransomware attacks against at least five U.S.-based companies.
Prosecutors also charged a third individual, Ryan Clifford Goldberg, a former incident response manage…

DOJ accuses US ransomware negotiators of launching their own ransomware attacks | TechCrunch
Three people, including two U.S. ransomware negotiators, are accused of working on behalf of the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware gang.

An ex-OpenAI staffer of four years says it isn't doing enough to protect users, especially those with mental health issues, and needs to offer more than words (Steven Adler/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/opinion

Opinion | I Worked at OpenAI. It’s Not Doing Enough to Protect People.
A.I. companies need to do more to show the proof behind their claims.

Hmmm I'm not sure if renaming my blog's fediverse handle worked as intended.
On the profile page I see a counter of 152 posts. But the timeline only shows the posts since the rename 🤔
@…
.

haha, the united states once worked on a nuclear bomb that could wipe out the entirety of france (sundial, a 10,000 megaton bomb) very glad we came up with this instead of building houses for homeless

I tried to reach the last owners of Versailles to see how having such an opulent palace while your people starve worked out… but they seem not to be able to reply.
https://apnews.com/article/east-wing-white-house-ballroom-demolition-b60f…

What lawmakers are saying about Trump's demolition of the East Wing
Members of Congress are divided largely along party lines on the demolition of the East Wing of the White House to make room for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that President Donald Trump wants to build. The stunning images of the teardown this week have left Democratic lawmakers incensed. Republicans, meanwhile, are likening it to a long line of White House renovations over the years. House Speaker Mike Johnson says “the ballroom is going to be glorious.” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schu…

Decided to actually start migrating stuff off of Github seriously. While I did move a few repos to Codeberg, I decided to just go with the whole self-hosted route and put the homelab to work by standing up my own Forgejo instance. Wasn't too bad, went with a Postgres database and the migration tool worked pretty well. So far so good...
https://

Opinion | I Worked at OpenAI. It’s Not Doing Enough to Protect People. - The New York Times
https://archive.ph/4ECor

And if it worked so well, why isn’t it tasked to make better versions of itself?

Nathan Calvin, general counsel of AI safety nonprofit Encode, says OpenAI used intimidation tactics to undermine California's SB 53 while it was being debated (Sharon Goldman/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/10/1…

A 3-person policy nonprofit that worked on California’s AI safety law is publicly accusing OpenAI of intimidation tactics
In a widely read post on social media, the general counsel of Encode said OpenAI used subpoenas and political muscle to intimidate the firm and to undermine California’s new AI safety bill, all while falsely claiming the firm was funded by Elon Musk.

The Times and The Sun removed stories about a "royal cleaner" who claimed to have worked for the Royal Family, published based on questionable press releases (Rob Waugh/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/royal-

Royal cleaner stories removed by Times and Sun after authenticity questions
Stories featuring a ‘royal cleaner’ who claimed to have worked for the Royals have been withdrawn over questions about their authenticity.

I worked with Pete Carroll for years. Let me tell you how he helped me find my true identity https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6650383/2025/09/23/pete-carroll-leadership-raiders-seahawks/

Sources: Lewis, 41, signs with TE-thin Broncos https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46770337/broncos-sign-te-marcedes-lewis-41-practice-squad

Sources and docs: Microsoft worked with the FBI to track anti-Israel protests, flagged internal emails with words like "Gaza", deleted posts, and fired staff (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-26/mic…

Deplatforming Nick Fuentes was what kept him from being mainstreamed
-- it worked.
Elon's replatforming of all of these people
and allowing actual Nazis around
is why the US government is now publishing white supremacist propaganda regularly.
This is not a new debate. Deplatforming works.
https://…

Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social)
Mind-blowing stuff from Robby Soave. "Podcasters should not avoid Fuentes." Of course they should. Deplatforming Nazis is good. Not amplifying them is not censorship. Also laughable to claim Fuentes has been deplatformed. His growing reach is directly tied to MAGA destigmatizing naked racism. https://reason.com/2025/10/30/deplatforming-nick-fuentes-wont-stop-antisemitism/

The Marshall Project names Jennifer Peter as EIC, replacing Susan Chira, who stepped down in December 2024; Peter worked at the Boston Globe since 2004 (The Marshall Project)
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/08/26/jennifer-peter-new-editor-in-chief

The Marshall Project Names Jennifer Peter New Editor-in-Chief
Peter, of The Boston Globe, will lead the national criminal justice outlet’s news operations.

As a thought experiment let’s assume “AI” actually worked as advertised.
What would happen if literally every human being told it to “come up and implement a fully automated legal business scheme to make me a profit of a million dollars a day”?

An interview with Nick Clegg about Zuckerberg's "masculine energy", Silicon Valley's "cloying conformity" and "combination of machismo and self-pity", and more (Gaby Hinsliff/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics…

Dr. Kamila Naxerova is trying to understand how cancer spreads in the body.
Dr. Rachael Sirianni is trying to find new ways to deliver drugs for childhood brain cancer.
Dr. David Ho is trying to make breakthroughs in H.I.V. research.
These researchers and so many others worked to ensure that Americans had access to the best medical treatments available
and that they had first access to those treatments.
That is, they worked until Trump administration gutted fun…

Opinion | Trump Is Defunding Medical Research. It Could Cost You Your Life.
They hoped to make tomorrow’s medicines. Then came Trump.

Trump scores golden gifts as U.S., S. Korea advance trade talks
The United States and South Korea advanced trade talks Wednesday,
addressing details of $350 billion that would be invested in the American economy,
after negotiations and ceremonies that included the presentation of a gold medal and crown to President Trump.
Both were gifts from the country’s president, Lee Jae Myung, who dialed up the flattery while Washington and Seoul worked to nail down financial pr…

Huxe, an app built by three former NotebookLM developers that offers users personalized daily briefs and topic exploration with AI podcast hosts, raised $4.6M (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/23/former…

Former NotebookLM devs' new app, Huxe, taps audio to help you with news and research | TechCrunch
Three devs who worked on NotebookLM are now building an app called Huxe, which can help users dive deep into topics by generating a "podcast" with multiple AI hosts.

Peter Williams, the former general manager at defense contractor L3Harris,
has pleaded guilty to selling surveillance technology to a Russian broker that buys “cyber tools,”
the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Wednesday. 
“The material, stolen over a three-year period from the U.S. defense contractor where he worked,
was comprised of national-security focused software that included at least eight sensitive and protected cyber-exploit components,”
read the D…

Former L3Harris Trenchant boss pleads guilty to selling zero-day exploits to Russian broker | TechCrunch
Prosecutors confirmed Peter Williams, the former Trenchant boss, sold eight exploits to a Russian buyer. TechCrunch exclusively reported that the Trenchant division was investigating a leak of its hacking tools, after another employee was accused of involvement.

With an influx of Meta alums, some OpenAI staffers worry it is adopting Meta's tactics, like using social media dynamics with Sora and a softening stance on ads (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-readies-facebook-era

OpenAI Readies Itself for Its Facebook Era
This summer, Fidji Simo wasted no time addressing a concern among many at OpenAI. Leading her first all-hands meeting as the startup’s new CEO of applications, she acknowledged that she and many others at OpenAI shared the same background: They’d previously worked at Meta Platforms. And then ...

Anthropic says it worked with the US National Nuclear Security Administration on a classifier to block concerning chats, like those on building nuclear reactors (Morgan Chalfant/Semafor)
https://www.semafor.com/article/08/21/2025/anthropic-develops-anti-nuke-a…

Anthropic develops anti-nuke AI tool
The company built a tool designed to prevent its AI models from being used to make nuclear weapons.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on Sunday that
the United States has revoked the visa for British journalist
Sami Hamdi,
alleging that he has supported terrorism and worked to
"undermine American national security."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) confirmed that Hamdi has not been deported but remains in custody,
and lawyers for the advocacy group are "working to address this injusti…

DHS Revokes Visa for British Journalist Accused of Supporting Terrorism
British Journalist Sam Hamdi has been accused of supporting terrorism and remains in custody as the U.S. looks to deport him.

American healthcare is on life support, -- and Republican policies now threaten to pull the plug.
Last summer, all but five GOP lawmakers worked with the Trump administration to enact the
“One Big Beautiful Bill Act,”
a law that defunds healthcare for working families,
all while funding tax breaks for billionaires.
That’s why I testified at an Oct. 8 hearing held by House Democrats in Washington, D.C., to speak out against this partisan law
—because it wil…

Republicans Are Pulling the Plug on American Healthcare
We must protect and expand coverage, invest in safe staffing, and fund community hospitals, writes Dr. Bryce Pulliam.