An Experiment

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Oct 262018
 

To all zero of my readers,

Actually writing things seems to be something I can’t muster up the will to do.

So I hacked up an rss plugin for wordpress last year to repost excepts from my tt-rss shared feed, but have left the posts it generates private. Since it’s OK if not ideal, I’m just gonna set the plugin to post publicly for now to see if it works out, and maybe as motivation to hurry up and finish tweaking the format, or writing a fresh plugin from scratch that only does what I need.

For now it will post every time I update my shared feed from tt-rss; I am leaning toward modifying it so that it collects all posts and makes a single daily entry, but I’ll see how this works first.

Ars Technica – As demand for Meta AI glasses explodes, it’s harder to avoid creepy recordings

Aug 212026
 

Can you tell when someone nearby is wearing Meta AI glasses?
As millions of people buy into the smart glasses fad each year, the odds are increasing that you could be secretly recorded while simply going about your day.
Meta is not the only smart glasses maker, but its AI glasses are by far the most popular. And as the devices become more common, some public places, including schools, courts, restaurants, and entertainment venues, have begun to ban them. Even tech lovers have rejected Meta glasses in certain settings. The hackers behind DEF CON 2026 reportedly banned smart glasses with no exceptions, reminding attendees with prescription pairs to “be sure to pack non-violating eyewear if you need them.”Read…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/meta-ai-glasses-may-get-creepier-and-apps-that-detect-them-arent-perfect/

 2026-08-21  No Responses »

Hackaday – More On Wave Overhangs for 3D Printing

Aug 202026
 

We’ve heard of wave overhangs before. It is a new technique for printing horizontal overhangs with no supports. Building on some other techniques like arc overhangs. The idea is to teach the slicer not to try to draw overhangs in the middle of free space. Instead, when the slicer realizes there is a horizontal overhang, it tries to “grow” the overhang from the main part. You can see an overview in the video below.
For example, imagine printing a letter ‘T’ vertically. The stem of the T is no problem, but when you try to print the arms it will normally need support. But if you could just print the arms starting at the stem with slight…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2026/08/16/more-on-wave-overhangs-for-3d-printing/

 2026-08-20  No Responses »

INDY Week – Op-Ed: Wake County’s Buried Past Deserves Daylight

Aug 202026
 

Most of us know what surrounds our homes: the schools, parks, shopping centers, and roads. But many Wake County residents may not know what lies beneath some of them. North Carolina’s official inventory identifies 34 pre-regulatory landfills and dumps in Wake County. These are not simply the large, modern landfills most of us picture. The list includes old municipal dumps and private disposal sites in Raleigh, Cary, Apex, Garner, Holly Springs, Fuquay-Varina, Morrisville, Knightdale, Wake Forest, Rolesville, Wendell, and Zebulon. Recorded locations include Wade Avenue, Capital Boulevard, Dorothea Dix, Bass Lake Road, Newspaper Way, and residential or commercial properties. That does not mean every site is dangerous. It does mean we should know which sites have…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://indyweek.com/firstperson/commentary/op-ed-wake-landfills/

 2026-08-20  No Responses »

New on MIT Technology Review – Debates over AI consciousness are a trap

Aug 202026
 

“Runaway” AI, “rogue” agents, and “autonomous” actors—the current rhetoric would have you believe that AI agents are not only awake and aware, but angry at their creators. Prominent tech leaders such as Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and Sam Altman push for regulation of these seemingly “superhuman” systems, while a separate faction, led by policy organizations and academic philosophers often aligned with the effective altruism movement, debates whether humanity holds the moral right to govern them at all.  Upon closer inspection, they are all calling for the same thing: a view of AI systems as being so advanced and capable that no entity, human or corporate, could possibly be responsible for their actions. While these perspectives seem…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/20/1142571/ai-consciousness-debate-trap/

 2026-08-20  No Responses »

Planet PostgreSQL – Christopher Winslett: Postgres 19: How Our Advice Has Changed Since We Wrote It

Aug 202026
 

Over the years we have written a lot about how data gets into Postgres, how it sits on disk, and how indexes help you find it again. Some of that advice was written against Postgres 10 or 11. A surprising amount of it is still exactly what we would tell you for the upcoming Postgres 19 release. Functionality described here is based on current betas; minor details may still change before GA.This post revisits Crunchy posts in the “load, storage, indexes, and partitioning” bucket: what we wrote, which version moved the needle, and what we would tell you to do now. Along the way: async I/O, more resilient COPY, LZ4 by default, richer BRIN shapes, skip…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/9sD

 2026-08-20  No Responses »

The Onion – Democratic Socialism: Myth Vs. Fact

Aug 192026
 

Candidates from the left’s Democratic Socialists of America party have been gaining momentum around the country in primaries leading up to the midterms. The Onion examines the common myths and facts surrounding the DSA. MYTH: Socialist ideas have never worked in the real world. FACT: No political theory has ever worked in real life. MYTH: The Soviet Union had democratic socialism. FACT: The Soviet Union had a dog who went to space. MYTH: The government will take away your money and give it to the poor. FACT: You are the poor. MYTH: The workers of the world must unite and seize the means of production from the ruling class by force if necessary. FACT: The workers…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theonion.com/democratic-socialism-myth-vs-fact/

 2026-08-19  No Responses »

Planet Python – Antoine Beaupré: The people vs the AI overlords

Aug 192026
 

Previously in this series: The Four Horsemen of the LLM
Apocalypse. In a post to oss-security, my (Debian) co-developer Russ Allbery
stated that “open source software [OSS] is coming face to face with a
motivation crisis that has been building for a long time”. His point
is essentially that large language models (LLMs1) are making the
existing OSS community crisis worse. For him, it’s the flood of code
reviews, but he argues that varies according to people’s desires, for
others it’s security issues and so on. I think Russ is right, but I would argue there’s something much bigger
than our open communities going on here, and it’s about the entire
field of computing. This pressure is on all of us, regardless of
whether we work…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://anarc.at/blog/2026-08-18-people-vs-ai-overlords/

 2026-08-19  No Responses »

– The Conversation – Home – Just because the bill is low doesn’t mean energy is affordable

Aug 192026
 

To keep energy bills manageable, people often set heating and cooling temperatures to uncomfortable levels. Olga Dobrovolska/Moment via Getty ImagesOne light bulb. That was what electrification brought to my grandmother Mag’s two-story farmhouse in Boydton, Virginia. No one wrote down the year the rural electric cooperative workers brought the wire to her house in the late 1940s. Newspapers celebrated rural electrification for making people’s lives better: People could run refrigerators, water pumps, dishwashers and, in some places, air conditioning. Mag’s family did not think one bulb in the first floor of their two-story house counted as history. Their lives barely changed after they got electricity. Every day she hauled buckets of water from a stream…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theconversation.com/just-because-the-bill-is-low-doesnt-mean-energy-is-affordable-289458

 2026-08-19  No Responses »

Planet Lisp – Scott L. Burson: Git support for Lisp improved in 2.55.0

Aug 182026
 

[I posted this on Reddit, then realized I should copy it here so it shows up on Planet Lisp.]In a Git diff, each consecutive subsequence of lines near a difference is called a “hunk”.  Each hunk has a one-line header that might look something like this:@@ -316,8 +322,9 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv)The numbers indicate which lines of each version of the file appear in the hunk.  The rest of the line is intended to be the first line of the function, class, or other top-level definition that the hunk is within.  Git finds that line using a regexp corresponding to the source language.  It’s just to give the reader a bit more context; nothing…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://scottlburson2.blogspot.com/2026/08/git-support-for-lisp-improved-in-2550.html

 2026-08-18  No Responses »

Techdirt. – ABC Sues The FCC For Massive First Amendment Violations

Aug 182026
 

After years of feckless capitulation, ABC is clearly developing something vaguely resembling a backbone.
The company has filed a new lawsuit against Brendan Carr and the FCC (pdf), (correctly) claiming that the agency has been engaged in a coordinated campaign of harassment that violates the First Amendment and tramples the company’s free speech rights. The lawsuit asks a federal court to put an end to the harassment campaign the company says poses an “existential threat” to its operations.
“Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts,” ABC/Disney wrote in its complaint.
As we’ve explored at length, the Trump FCC has…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/18/abc-sues-the-fcc-for-massive-first-amendment-violations/

 2026-08-18  No Responses »

Ars Technica – Fairphone’s latest repairable phone is finally available in the US for $650

Aug 182026
 

As smartphone designs have become more refined, they’ve also become less repairable. Fairphone bucks that trend, offering devices that can be fully disassembled and serviced using a single screwdriver. But its devices were a pain to get in the US until now.
The Dutch company has launched the Fairphone Gen 6+ in the US, offering not only the phone but a full line of accessories and replacement parts so you can keep your phone running for years. And yes, the battery is removable.
Don’t expect the Fairphone Gen 6+ to blow you away in the spec department—it focuses on being repairable and paying workers a fair wage. Half of the phone is made from recycled materials, and it…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/08/fairphone-brings-the-repairable-fairphone-gen-6-to-the-us/

 2026-08-18  No Responses »

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – Pluralistic: IP can’t save you from AI (18 Aug 2026)

Aug 182026
 

Today’s links

IP can’t save you from AI: Property rights cannot substitute for labor rights and privacy rights.

Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

Object permanence: Flying Brits v brown people; Probability neglect; Law v “enhanced patdowns”; Onion says Brits love paywalls; “Hench”; “Lessons in Magic and Disaster.”

Upcoming appearances: Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.

Recent appearances: Where I’ve been.

Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Colophon: All the rest.

IP can’t save you from AI (permalink)
You don’t have to believe that AI “art” is any good (I don’t), nor do you have to believe that AI “art” can be any good (I don’t) to understand that the reason that…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/18/enron-corpus/

 2026-08-18  No Responses »

Planet Debian – Ian Jackson: Debian LLM GR – Summary of the options

Aug 172026
 

Introduction
A plea to the undecided voter
Table
Notes

Debian LLM GR – Summary of the options
Introduction
LLMs have finally made it to the ultimate stage of Debian’s governance processes, a General Resolution of all the project’s full governing members (DDs).
There are a lot of options on the ballot, and they all have a different structure and approach the question in a different way. It can be hard to see the wood for the trees. I have made a summary table to try to capture the main differences, both in effect, and sentiment.
A plea to the undecided voter
Suspending briefly my attempt to be neutral:
Before voting, I encourage you to read the passionate rationales in options H and A, or at…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/20998.html

 2026-08-17  No Responses »

Hackaday – Improving FDM Filament Drying With a Spot of Vacuum

Mar 312026
 

Keeping your filament safely away from moisture exposure is one of the most crucial aspects of getting a good 3D print, with equipment like a filament dryer a standard piece of equipment to help drive accumulated moisture out of filament prior to printing or storage. Generally such filament dryers use hot air to accomplish this task over the course of a few hours, but this is not very efficient for a number of reasons. Increasing the vaporization rate of water without significantly more power use should namely be quite straightforward.
The key here is the vapor pressure of a liquid, specifically the point at which it begins to transition between its liquid and gaseous phases, also known…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2026/03/31/improving-fdm-filament-drying-with-a-spot-of-vacuum/

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TechCrunch – FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

Mar 182026
 

FBI director Kash Patel told lawmakers that the agency is actively purchasing commercially available location data, which can track Americans without needing a warrant.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/18/fbi-is-buying-location-data-to-track-us-citizens-kash-patel-wyden/

 2026-03-18  Comments Off on TechCrunch – FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

Phoronix – Experimental Out-Of-Tree Code Aims To Provide HDMI 2.1 FRL For AMD Linux Driver

Feb 172026
 

One of the limitations of the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver has been the lack of its support for HDMI 2.1 and later. AMD has wanted to support HDMI 2.1+ functionality under Linux but it’s been legally blocked by the HDMI Forum. But anxious independent users have been working on open-source patches for wiring up HDMI 2.1 into the AMDGPU driver outside of the realm of AMD and the HDMI Forum’s blessings…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDGPU-HDMI-2.1-FRL

 2026-02-17  Comments Off on Phoronix – Experimental Out-Of-Tree Code Aims To Provide HDMI 2.1 FRL For AMD Linux Driver

Ballot Access News – Jon Fleischman, California Politics Analyst, Shows How Democratic Interest Groups Manipulate the California Top-Two System

Feb 172026
 

Jon Fleischman has this article in the Orange County Register about how Democratic interest groups manipulate the California top-two system. He says in the gubernatorial race, public employee unions, which have a great deal of spending power, will boost one of the two leading Republicans and depress support for the other leading Republican. Their goal is to get one Democrat and one Republican on the general election ballot. They are confident the Democrat would win. They do not like the idea of two Democrats being the only names on the November ballot.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2026/02/17/jon-fleischman-california-politics-analyst-shows-how-democratic-interest-groups-manipulate-the-california-top-two-system/

 2026-02-17  Comments Off on Ballot Access News – Jon Fleischman, California Politics Analyst, Shows How Democratic Interest Groups Manipulate the California Top-Two System

The Register – Dear Oracle, we need to talk about the future of MySQL

Feb 172026
 

Faithful pen open letter proposing independent foundation with or without Big Red’s participation

A group of influential users and developers of MySQL have invited Oracle to join their plans to create an independent foundation to guide the future development of the popular open source database, which Big Red owns.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2026/02/17/mysql_foundation_oracle_letter/

 2026-02-17  Comments Off on The Register – Dear Oracle, we need to talk about the future of MySQL
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