https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/world/europe/text-messages-between-russian-spies-annotated.html
These are funny-sad. Intercepted texts from deep cover Russian spies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/world/europe/text-messages-between-russian-spies-annotated.html
These are funny-sad. Intercepted texts from deep cover Russian spies.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/05/krebsonsecurity-hit-with-near-record-6-3-tbps-ddos/
How long will Google do this?
“Aisuru botnet comprises a globally-dispersed collection of hacked IoT devices, including routers, digital video recorders and other systems”
Absurdly cheap: “botnet was rented out in subscription tiers ranging from $150 per day to $600 per week”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/scott-adams-dilbert-prostate-cancer-biden.html
Adams became an enthusiastic MAGA extremist. But now he’s dying of metastatic cancer of the prostate. He may be reevaluating his beliefs.
“Part of Mr. Adams’ sympathy for Mr. Biden seemed to come from his own lived experience with the disease, which he called “intolerable” … “I don’t have good days,” he said. “Every day is a nightmare. And evening is even worse.”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/autoimmune-disease-transformed
Suddenly a lot of chronic diseases may be cured. Not AFAIK applicable to Rheumatoid Arthritis but Lupus and many less common disorders. Trial results expected over next 1-2 years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/health/joe-biden-prostate-cancer-diagnosis-screening.html
Basically it’s a lousy test. High false positive, high false negative, and in 80+ the goal isn’t 20y survival.
“… about half of men have some cancer in their prostate by their 70s or 80s, although most have no symptoms.”
If you find a PSA you have to pay attention to it – even if you don’t want to.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01549-3
“… a man bought a lower jawbone from an antique shop in Tainan City in Taiwan. It had been dredged from the Penghu Channel, 20 kilometres offshore. The man donated it to a museum after researchers realized, on the basis of photographs, that it was a hominin bone. When they finally described it in 2015, the researchers noted that its second molar looked distinctly Denisovan”
Paywalled but the free part is still good.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2025/05/20/federal-workers-trump-mental-health/
“In 2011, economists examined a decade of data and found that mass layoffs resulted in an additional suicide for every 4,200 men and for every 7,100 women losing their jobs. Mass layoffs can devastate entire communities, they noted, fracturing social networks and creating pools of applicants fighting over limited jobs.”
1/3 are veterans, often more vulnerable than non-veteran cohorts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/science/humpback-whale-vision-collisions.html
Humpback whales hardly see anything.
Seems interesting … if true …
https://www.wired.com/story/intelligence-evolved-at-least-twice-in-vertebrate-animals/
Stephen Baxter’s SF novel “Evolution” does a very good job of portraying a velociraptor like dinosaur with hunter-gather tech and intelligence — doomed by inability to domesticate animals or cooperate. It was a small part of the novel but a fascinating bit of prescience.
“Rather than neat layers, birds have “unspecified balls of neurons without landmarks or distinctions” but the neural networks resemble ours. And resemble LLMs.
https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/remarks-on-ai-from-nz
The mammals scurry about while T-Rex fights Triceratops. I like that Stephenson remembers McLuhan. His “optimistic take” is, inevitably, pretty dark. If AGI works there are no good futures left …
“preserving and advancing our own intelligence by holding at arms length seductive augmentations in order to avoid suffering the amputations that are their price”
Uh-no. Not happening.
https://spyglass.org/theres-no-free-lunch-at-apple/
Bloomberg’s juicy summary is paywalled but this is a decent free version of same content.
“Shipping polished jewels.” tells me, however, that Siegler does not actually use any Apple software.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/05/20/covid-vaccine-elderly-high-risk-fda/
The reporting is confusing because it doesn’t describe what is meant by “approval”. I suspect it’s about whether “insurance companies are required to cover the cost of the shots with no out-of-pocket charges to consumers.”
There is limited benefit to current COVID vaccines for lower-risk people so this would be a cost consideration even if the CDC/FDA were not being run by lunatics.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/technology/ai-jobs-radiologists-mayo-clinic.html
It is really too early to know but even if radiologist image reading shrinks there is lots of other high value work to do.
Lessons for education predictions here.
https://www.twincities.com/2025/05/18/real-world-economics-tax-bill-full-of-perverse-incentives/
The MAGA party is almost dumber than the GOP.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-18-2025
Rather than raise taxes or cut costs MAGA will cut taxes and cut *future* costs. If they win.
https://tidbits.com/watchlist/neo-network-utility-1-1-4/
“Free, 4.9 MB, macOS 13+”
https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/how-to-outwit-generative-ai
The thought/language debate is very complex. Ii suspect there is a lot of variation between people.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/we-can-demand-better-from-the-media
I am a bit skeptical they have any capacity for shame but it’s worth a shot.
https://thenewstack.io/google-ai-infrastructure-pm-on-new-tpus-liquid-cooling-and-more/
Were we supposed to be into exaflops in 2025? I have lost track.
It is amazing. Truly worth a scan. I’m saving a local copy to mine it for prompt ideas. (They need to add APA citation formatting.)
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-12-2025
Don’t blame Qatar, they are just playing by MAGA rules.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-novel-concept-will-judges-start-enforcing-the-law-with-doge
Roe v Wade never made legal sense to me. The judicial interpretation of the 2nd amendment is absurd.
Now it’s going to new extremes. The GOP SCOTUS corruption has old roots.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/upshot/boys-falling-behind-data.html
Girls are better at school work and better at modern employment settings. And women do not “marry down” (might change).
We will need boy-oriented school options (open to all), which implies charter schools.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/business/economy/trump-trade-china-tariffs.html
Xi didn’t even break a sweat. “Trumpian” will become a synonym for incompetence beyond the bounds of imagination.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/world/africa/trump-white-south-african-refugees.html
Dozens. I was thinking they would get at least a hundred. This is just nonsense to obscure the Qatari bribe and the crypto corruption and the tariff humiliation. Focus.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/why-pete-hegseth-still-has-a-job/
Jedeed explains why Hegseth will not be fired.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/crypto-is-still-for-criming
We are 25y into being a broken nation. A place where Qatar sends its bribery budget.
(Alas, many Dems are crypto-corrupt. It’s not just the MAGA.)
9/11. Lehman Bros. COVID. The US economy took at lot of hits before the MAGA took power.
https://musgrave.substack.com/p/everything-has-a-price
The more you look for America’s corruption the more you see.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/molly-jong-fast-reflects-on-her-mothers-dementia
Daughter of fame writes about celebrity and transience: “Watching my mother’s failed metamorphosis back to normal made me a sort of fame hobbyist”
https://timkellogg.me/blog/2025/05/10/ai-code-updated
AI coding: What works for Tim doesn’t work for others:
“I’m using a lot of hidden technical skills.
Yes, anyone can do it, but few will”
GenAI seems to work best for experts, and maybe only peculiar experts.
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/05/11/last-week-on-my-mac-whos-afraid-of-changing-interface/
Oakley makes the case: macOS 16 will be a disaster. The tech doc example alone is persuasive.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-crisis-of-the-21st-century-is
A good time for Americans to vote for the most corrupt, delusional, and incompetent leaders of our history.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/04/29/google-ends-support-for-early-nest-thermostats/
They still work as fancy regular thermostats. My dumb home is unaffected.
http://hypercritical.co/2025/05/09/apple-turnover
I also want to see Cook go.
Installed by MDM so somewhere in MAGA land an admin thought this was good.
China readjusting estimates of US intelligence into new realm.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/29/north_korea_worker_interview_questions/
Living in a state of fear. Forever.
https://tech.kateva.org/2025/05/word-services-in-macos-sequoia.html
These are great time savers, but in a macOS migration I lost them. Turns out I had to reenable deep in the bowels of macOS settings.
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/05/08/reducing-noise-by-searching-loguis-views/
And yet the log cannot tell us whether Spotlight has died indexing an obscure document.
It’s impressive anything works.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/us/politics/trump-censorship-black-history.html
The people who teach these topics are unlikely to obey.
“the Smithsonian issued a statement saying it would do no such thing.”
There is Streisand Effect potential here.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/whole-lotta-snakin-going
“Holy #$%#!, that’s some list”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/into-the-wilds-of-democratic-navel-gazing-and-big-think
“fundamentally the job of an opposition is to oppose. Don’t overcomplicate it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/insider/mini-retirement-trend.html
“Death is coming either way …. We might as well take risks and see if we can make our lives better by trying something different.”
In the 70s we thought the future would include mixtures of work and education and redirection.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/enshittification
It isn’t just Google search. It is widespread corruption in government and journalism. It is medicine failing to confront scientific fraud and fake journals. It is shooting the messengers rather than judging the message.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/putting-trumps-threats-in-writing
Courage, duty, integrity, wisdom. Some Americans still have what it takes.
A democracy, if you can keep it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/world/asia/singapore-election-pap-workers.html
Disappointing. Result underscores how hard it is to build and sustain democracy. Wealth and education are not enough.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/world/trump-dual-state.html
Developed to describe Nazi era, applies well to MAGA era.