To paraphrase Cory Doctrow: evaluate new technologies based not only on what they can do, but also on who they do it for, and who they do it to.

I have a Samsung phone and I take great pleasure in ignoring the weekly reminders that I still haven’t agreed to their latest privacy policy (or any previous version since the very first one which I was forced to accept while setting up the phone). Refusing to do this probably doesn’t accomplish anything, but it’s my own private act of rebellion while I eagerly await those new Motorola phones with first-party Graphene OS support.

This is exactly what I said about Windows Recall. It’s not a bad idea per se, but it requires the user to trust a company which has repeatedly and publicly screwed over its customers; a thing which no sane person would do.

Not quite the same, but church forests are actually a part of Ethiopian orthodox religious tradition.

https://africageographic.com/stories/ethiopias-church-forests-2/

Doesn’t US Mobile offer all the of the major networks? I’ve also been looking at them recently, and my understanding is that the three networks they offer are (despite their silly codenames) in reality just verizon, t-mobile, and at&t. You can pick which one you want to use and even switch between them without too much hassle.

Seconding Band of Brothers. It’s cut from the same cloth as Chernobyl. If OP is looking for more of that specifically, then It’s an obvious and excellent recommendation.

Should’ve asked for the two songs to be: What’s New Pussycat, and It’s Not Unusual.

Letterboxd isn’t a 1-to-1 replacement for imdb, but it does have user submitted reviews and ratings out of 5 stars. I would suggest giving it a shot if that’s primarily what you’re after.

I find it interesting that almost all the beloved AI characters in sci-fi have personalities ranging from ‘a little bit snarky’ to ‘raging asshole’. Given the tendency of media to influence to aesthetics of actual tech products that follow, ten years ago I would have predicted that an AI assistant would be given a personality along the lines of Cortana (Halo) or Jarvis (iron man). But somehow half a dozen companies in fierce competition with each other all decided that the right move was to go with more-sycophantic-c3p0.

I try to use my feed as a way to broaden my horizons by mixing in publications that are a bit outside of my usual wheelhouse. Normally what happens is I’ll randomly run across an article and, if I enjoy reading it, I’ll add the publisher’s feed for a while to see what else they have. For example, Smithsonian Magazine, Aeon, and Planetizen can all be interesting from time to time.

I would also recommend subscribing to at least one publication focused on your city or state/region to help stay informed on local news and issues. If you’re in the US you can try checking out the local member of States Newsroom.

And of course, make sure you get your regular dose of XKCD and SMBC

May I ask what makes you think this is an AI image? I’ve looked pretty closely for all the usual telltale signs, and it just looks like a picture of some really good cosplay as far as I can tell.

Inb4 Hank Green does a video about this.

Qwant and Ecosia are especially notable for their efforts to build an independent search index.

For those who don’t know, most “independent” search engines, including DDG, still rely on Bing or Google results behind the scenes. They basically just act as a middleman by taking your query, forwarding it to one of those providers, and then returning the results to you. Some of them will attempt to reshuffle the order of those results to push the ones they think are best towards the top, but they’re still fundamentally limited to what Google and Bing choose to give them.

Presently a lot of Qwant and Ecosia searches go through Bing, but they’re collaborating to build an independent index which will allow them to become fully independent. I believe they’re already serving a mix of results from Bing and their own index, with plans to bias more and more towards their index as it matures.

Now do yourself a favor and buy a good quality cable thats at least 10ft long and rated for 240W. The feeling of having one cable that can charge any of your devices from any seat on your couch is incredible.

Even in the wide world of dubiously useful AI chatbots, Copilot really stands out for just how incompetent it is. The other day I was working on a PowerPoint presentation, and one of the slides included a photo with a kind of cluttered looking background. Now, I can probably count the number of things that AI is genuinely good at on one hand, and context aware image editing trends to be one of them, so I decided to click the Copilot button that Microsoft now has built directly into PowerPoint and see what happens. A chat window popped up and I concisely explained what I wanted it to do: “please remove the background from the photo on slide 5.” It responded on that infuriating obseqious tone that they all have and assured me that it would be happy to help with my request just as soon as I uploaded my presentation.

What?

The chatbot running inside an instance of PowerPoint with my presentation open is asking me to “upload” my presentation? I explained this to it, and it came back with some BS about being unable to access the presentation because a “token expired” before requesting again that I upload my presentation. I tried a little longer to convince it otherwise, but it just kept very politely insisting that it was unable to do what I was asking for until I uploaded my presentation.

Eventually I gave up. The photo wasn’t that bad anyway.

Oh yeah, this has happened multiple times, and the story is always the same:

1. The government says they’re going to release info on UFOs. This caused a brief flury of interest from the general public which is reinforced by the conspiracy theorists who swear that this will finally be proof of little green men at area 51, or whatever.
2. The government takes a while to follow through, during which time the general public slowly loses interest. The conspiracy theorists start getting impatient and publicly worrying that there must be a faction within the government that’s deliberately slow walking the release or even modifying the documents because they don’t want The Truth to get out.
3. The documents are finally released. They consist of 99% dry, beauracratic paperwork and 0% admissions that aliens have every visited earth, but the conspiracy theorists dig through and pull out a few scraps that can be spun to make a good headline.
4. The nation spends at most a week talking about “video taken out the window of a fighter jet of a mysterious floating orb thats porobably just a balloon” #27, or “eye witness account from a sleep deprived 18 year old soldier who swears he saw an alien space ship while on guard duty at 2am” #382.
5. The national news cycle moves on, and most people promptly forget about the whole thing. Meanwhile, the conspiracy theorists take whatever scraps they were able to find and add these to their rotating library of bullshit to talk about. The initial promise that this was going to be irrefutable proof that aliens have visited earth is quietly forgotten. If it ever does come up, they blame that shadowy faction of the government which must have succeeded in watering down the release before publishing it.

Rinse and repeat.

Out of curiosity, is this something that RISC-V does better, or are they going down the same path as ARM?

“Gunpowder caliber guano” is an absolutely amazing way to call something batshit insane and I will be taking every available opportunity to use it in conversation from now on.

Reminds me a bit of the work of Shou Xin https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/09/shouxin-graphite-cat-drawings/

For what its worth, Slotin in particular knew the consequences. If i recall correctly, he had a reputation for being a bit of a “cowboy” when it came to experimental protocol. I believe the lab even had specially made tools for handling the core, but Slotin insisted on using a screwdriver because it was easier.