Anarcat’s review of Fish is interesting and shows some benefits I hadn’t previously realised, I’ll have to try it out [1].

Longnow has an insightful article about religion and magic mushrooms [2].

Brian Krebs wrote an informative artivle about DOGE and the many security problems that it has caused to the US government [3].

Techdirt has an insightful article about why they are forced to become a democracy blog after the attacks by Trump et al [4].

Antoine wrote an insightful blog post about the war for the Internet and how in many ways we are losing to fascists [5].

Interesting story about people working for free at Apple to develop a graphing calculator [6]. We need ways for FOSS people to associate to do such projects.

Interesting YouTube video about a wiki for building a cheap road legal car [7].

Interesting video about powering spacecraft with Plutonion 238 and how they are running out [8].

Interesting information about the search for mh370 [9]. I previously hadn’t been convinced that it was hijacked but I am now.

The EFF has an interesting article about the Rayhunter, a tool to detect cellular spying that can run with cheap hardware [10].

Oliver Lindburg wrote an interesting article about Designing for Crisis [1].

Bruce Schneier blogged about how to cryptographically identify other humans in advance of AT technology allowing faking people you know [2].

Anarcat has an interesting review of qalc which is a really good calculator, I’ll install it on all my workstations [3]. It even does furlongs per fortnight! This would be good to be called from a LLM system when someone asks about mathematical things.

Krebs has an informative article about a criminal employed by Elon’s DOGE [4]. Conservatives tend to be criminals.

Krebs wrote an interesting article about the security of the iOS (and presumably Android) apps for DeekSeek [5]. Seems that the DeepSeek people did everything wrong.

Bruce Schneier and Davi Ottenheimer wrote an insightful article DOGE as a National Cyberattack [6].

Bruce Schneier and Barath Raghavan wrote an insightful article about why and how computer generated voices should sound “robotic” [7].

Cory Doctorow has an interesting approach to the trade war between the US and Canada, instead of putting tarrifs on imports from the US the Canadian government should make it legal for Canadians to unlock their own property [8].

This youtube video about designing a compressed air engine for a model plane is interesting [9].

Krebs has an interesting article on phishing and mobile phone wallets, Google and Apple need to restrict the number of wallets per phone [10].

The Daily WTF has a good summary of why Elon’s DOGE organisation is badly designed and run and a brief mention of how it damages the US [11].

ArsTechnica has an informative article about device code phishing [12]. The increased use of single-sign-on is going to make this more of a problem.

Shrivu wrote an insightful and informative article on how to backdoor LLMs [13].

Cory Doctorow wrote an informative post about MLMs and how they are the mirror world version of community organising [14].

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/2cmk6g6a
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/2d6ynkp4
• [3] https://anarc.at/blog/2025-02-08-qalculate-hacks/
• [4] https://tinyurl.com/2yo9gp6b
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/249swu8d
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/23soj7ya
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/22eq6gee
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/2xueute7
• [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udI2dWmwMUE
• [10] https://tinyurl.com/24tbqdjm
• [11] https://thedailywtf.com/articles/walking-the-doge
• [12] https://tinyurl.com/27zf3yjt
• [13] https://tinyurl.com/26tpcu7f
• [14] https://tinyurl.com/2bwqq4xp

Aaron Quigley’s Everything Open lecture about Intelligent Interfaces is one of the most interesting research reports I’ve seen in a long time [1]. This one can be understood and appreciated by people who don’t have a strong background in computer science.

Statites (satellites that don’t orbit the sun but use solar sails to hover in place) could be used to catch up to interstellar objects [2].

Slashgear has an interesting article about an AI piloted F16 beating a human piloted F16 [3]. Given the serious handicaps of flying a plane designed for humans and flying to minimise risk to itself and other crewed aircraft this is a serious victory. Hopefully crewed military aircraft will be obsolete soon.

Amusing video about the performance of cats with MMORPG style descriptions [4].

John Goerzen wrote an interesting blog post about censorship and the changes to Facebook [5].

Ron Garret wrote an interesting blog post 15 years ago when going through what he now describes as an existential crisis [6].

A comment on Ron’s post is references Alan Crowe’s blog post about whether the “self” exists which is an interesting philosophical post [7]. But I’m still going to think of myself as a person.

Another comment on Ron’s post references Aaron Swartz’ blog post about Noam Chomsky etc [8]. I have to watch Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media.

Ron Garret wrote an interesting blog post about his failed attempts to start a company and how it all worked out well for him any way [9].

Amusing video about a failed crowdfunded e-bike [10].

Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful article about how Enshittification is not caused by VCs but by lack of controls [11].

• [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR9dLdEGn9o
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/249k5cbf
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/2asnzwbz
• [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es5aPICeXOU
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/27qabt9x
• [6] https://blog.rongarret.info/2010/09/what-would-you-do.html
• [7] https://www.hulver.com/scoop/story/2008/12/14/10333/990
• [8] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany
• [9] https://tinyurl.com/2aobxz4p
• [10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbaJ97-_dOM
• [11] https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/

Interesting video about the hack of Andrew Tate’s The Real World site [1].

Informative video about Nick Fuentes covering the racism, anti-semitism, misogyny, and how he is clearly in denial about being gay [2]. It ends with his arrest. Hopefully the first of many arrests. This is what conservatives support.

Insightful article covering the history of bus-mastering attacks on computer security and ending with pwning via CF cards [3].

Interesting lecture at the seL4 symposium about attestation of a running Linux kernel [4]. I’m not a fan of most attestation systems but using a separate isolated seL4 process to monitor a Linux VM offers some real benefits.

Interesting seL4 symposium lecture about CPU drivers and the fact that a modern SoC is a distributed computing environment with lots of untrusted firmware [5]. I like the way he slipped and called it “unworthy firmware” instead of “untrustworthy firmware”, I think I’ll copy that.

• [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j84gB2cbNps
• [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdmnHhZYOUg
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/2awdgnht
• [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyTyJKugoqU
• [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGLSJ8m-X2I

Interesting news about NVidia using RISC-V CPUs in all their GPUs [1]. Hopefully they will develop some fast RISC-V cores.

Interesting blog post about using an 8K TV as a monitor, I’m very tempted to do this [2].

Interesting post about how the Windows kernel development work can’t compete with Linux kernel development [3].

Paul T wrote an insightful article about the ideal of reducing complexity of computer systems and the question of from who’s perspective complexity will be reduced [4].

Interesting lecture at the seL4 symposium about the PANCAKE language for verified systems programming [5]. The idea that “if you are verifying your code types don’t help much” is interesting.

Interesting lecture from the seL4 summit about real world security, starts with the big picture and ends with seL4 specifics [6].

Interesting lecture from the seL4 summit about Cog’s work building a commercial virtualised phome [7]. He talks about not building a “brick of a smartphone that’s obsolete 6 months after release”, is he referring to the Librem5?

Informative document about how Qualcom prevents OSs from accessing EL2 on Snapdragon devices with a link to a work-around for devices shipped with Windows (not Android), this means that only Windows can use the hypervisor features of those CPUs [8].

Linus tech tips did a walk through of an Intel fab, I learned a few things about CPU manufacture [9].

Interesting information on the amount of engineering that can go into a single component. There’s lots of parts that are grossly overpriced (Dell and HP have plenty of examples in their catalogues) but generally aerospace doesn’t have much overpricing [10].

Interesting lecture about TEE on RISC-V with the seL4 kernel [11].

Ian Jackson wrote an informative blog post about the repeating issue of software licenses that aren’t free enough with Rust being the current iteration of this issue [12].

The quackery of Master Bates to allegedly remove the need for glasses is still going around [13].

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/2396vhdt
• [2] https://daniel.lawrence.lu/blog/y2023m12d15/
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/25d3n66c
• [4] https://notes.pault.ag/complex-for-whom/
• [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAHVV0Lzopw
• [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyWB3jLj_P8
• [7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI_Rn-riJ-Y
• [8] https://github.com/TravMurav/Qcom-Secure-Launch
• [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ehSCWoaOqQ
• [10] https://x.com/gak_pdx/status/1860448570446610562
• [11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRgLIb4eO8U
• [12] https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/19151.html
• [13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvUB-tORITk

Dacid Brin wrote an interesting article about AI ecosystems and how humans might work with machines on creative projects [1]. Also he’s right about “influencers” being like funghi.

Cory Doctorow wrote an interesting post about DRM, coalitions, and cheating [2]. It seems that people like me who want “trusted computing” to secure their own computers don’t fit well in any of the coalitions.

The CHERI capability system for using extra hardware to validate jump addresses is an interesting advance in computer science [3]. The lecture is froim the seL4 Summit, this sort of advance in security goes well with a formally proven microkernel. I hope that this becomes a checkbox when ordering a custom RISC-V design.

Bunnie wrote an insightful blog post about how the Mossad might have gone about implementing the exploding pager attack [4]. I guess we will see a lot more of this in future, it seems easy to do.

Interesting blog post about Control Flow Integrity in the V8 engine of Chrome [5].

Interesting blog post about the new mseal() syscall which can be used by CFI among other things [6].

This is the Linux kernel documentation about the Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) Shadow Stack [7]. Unfortunately not enabled in Debian/Unstable yet.

ARM added support for Branch Target Identification in version 8.5 of the architecture [8].

The CEO of Automatic has taken his dispute with WPEngine to an epic level, this video catalogues it, I wonder what is wrong with him [9].

NuShell is an interesting development in shell technology which runs on Linux and Windows [10].

Interesting article about making a computer game without coding using ML [11]. I doubt that it would be a good game, but maybe educational for kids.

Krebs has an insightful article about location tracking by phones which is surprisingly accurate [12]. He has provided information on how to opt out of some of it on Android, but we need legislative action!

Interesting YouTube video about how to make a 20kW microwave oven and what it can do [13]. Don’t do this at home, or anywhere else!

The Void editor is an interesting project, a fork of VSCode that supports DIRECT connections to LLM systems where you don’t have their server acting as a middle-man and potentially snooping [14].

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/26geg4az
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/29n4hyvv
• [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcufX8hZ5-o
• [4] https://tinyurl.com/2beb7ala
• [5] https://v8.dev/blog/control-flow-integrity
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/26p8hlcr
• [7] https://docs.kernel.org/next/x86/shstk.html
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/26ffcrho
• [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-imW24OXLY
• [10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoX_S6d-XU4
• [11] https://tinyurl.com/ysqe79q7
• [12] https://tinyurl.com/258r74cl
• [13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg79n_ndR68
• [14] https://tinyurl.com/2xtu7kvv

CNA Insider has an insightful documentary series about Chinese illegal immigrants to the US [1]. They should migrate to Australia, easier to get in and a better place to live.

Linus tech tips has an informative video about using Windows on Snapdragon ARM64 laptops. [2]. Maybe I should get one for running Linux. They are quite expensive on ebay now which is presumably a good sign about their quality.

A web site for comparing monospace fonts so you can find the one that best suits yuor coding [3]. Roboto works well for me.

Noema has an interesting article about nationhood comparing the attitudes towards European colonisation in Africa and Russian colonisation in Ukraine [4].

Insightful lecture by Grace Hopper (then Captain) about the future of computers [5]. The second part is linked from the first part. Published by the NSA.

Tony Hoare gave an insightful lecture titled “The Billion Dollar Mistake” about his work on designing the Algol language in 1965 [6]. The lecture was recorded in about 2005. But it still has a lot of relevance to computer science.

Jascha Sohl-Dickstein wrote an interesting blog post about Goodhart’s law, Machine Learning models, and how to try and mitigate problems in society [7].

Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful article on the Marshmallow test and long term thinking [8]. The rich fail this test badly.

Insightful interview with Justice Breyer about interpreting the US constitution and the problems with “textualism” and “originalism” [9].

Cory Doctorow wrote an informative article about Google’s practices of deleting Gmail accounts for no apparent reason and denying people access to their data [10]. We need more laws like the Digital Markets Act in the EU and we need them to apply to eBay/PayPal and AWS/Amazon.

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/22x27vdt
• [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFMTJm3vmh0
• [3] https://www.codingfont.com/
• [4] https://www.noemamag.com/nationhood-revisited/
• [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9iqF5uTFk
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/y27atm9a
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/2ys4ul3f
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/24zng3pr
• [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUvdPHw4Nd0
• [10] https://locusmag.com/2024/07/cory-doctorow-unpersoned/

Bruce Schneier and Kim Córdova wrote an insightful article about the changes that corporations make to culture as technical debt [1]. We need anti-trust laws to be enforced before it’s too late!

Bruce Schneier posted the transcript of an insightful lecture he gave on rethinking democracy for the age of AI [2].

Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful blog post about companies that are “too big to care” [3]. We need to break up those monopolies.

Science Alert has an interesting article on plans to get renewable energy by drilling into the magma chamber of an active volcano [4]. What I want to know is whether using the energy could reduce the power of an eruption or even prevent it from happening.

Bruce Schneier wrote an interesting article about Crowdstrike and the market incentives for brittle systems [5]. Also we need to have more formally proven software and more use of systems like seL4.

Dave’s Garage on YouTube has an interesting video about modern Mainframes [6]. Their IO capacity dwarfs the memory bandwidth of most PC servers.

Framework has an interesting YouTube video about the process of developing a RISC-V motherboard for their laptops [7].

The documentary series Who Broke Britain by ABC news gives a good insight into the harm caused by austerity policies [8].

Rolling Stone has an interesting story about the consequences of being a CIA agent in al Quaeda [9].

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/2d49n8al
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/26vnjl6e
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/27njkm72
• [4] https://tinyurl.com/yvrnxq6w
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/298p9zxv
• [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouAG4vXFORc
• [7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMwepyyaj8I
• [8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW2NSrzcrIQ
• [9] https://tinyurl.com/2dfgty8z

Interesting Scientific American article about the way that language shapes thought processes and how it was demonstrated in eye tracking experiments with people who have Aboriginal languages as their first language [1].

David Brin wrote an interesting article “Do We Really Want Immortality” [2]. I disagree with his conclusions about the politics though. Better manufacturing technology should allow decreasing the retirement age while funding schools well.

Scientific American has a surprising article about the differences between Chimp and Bonobo parenting [3]. I’d never have expected Chimp moms to be protective.

Sam Varghese wrote an insightful and informative article about the corruption in Indian politics and the attempts to silence Australian journalist Avani Dias [4].

WorksInProgress has an insightful article about the world’s first around the world solo yacht race [5]. It has some interesting ideas about engineering.

Htwo has an interesting video about adverts for fake games [6]. It’s surprising how they apparently make money from advertising games that don’t exist.

Elena Hashman wrote an insightful blog post about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome [7]. I hope they make some progress on curing it soon. The fact that it seems similar to “long Covid” which is quite common suggests that a lot of research will be applied to that sort of thing.

Bruce Schneier wrote an insightful blog post about the risks of MS Copilot [8].

Krebs has an interesting article about how Apple does Wifi AP based geo-location and how that can be abused for tracking APs in warzones etc. Bad Apple! [9].

Bruce Schneier wrote an insightful blog post on How AI Will Change Democracy [10].

Charles Stross wrote an amusing and insightful post about MS Recall titled Is Microsoft Trying to Commit Suicide [11].

Bruce Schneier wrote an insightful blog post about seeing the world as a data structure [12].

Luke Miani has an informative YouTube video about eBay scammers selling overprices MacBooks [13].

The Yorkshire Ranter has an insightful article about Ronald Coase and the problems with outsourcing big development contracts as an array of contracts without any overall control [14].

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/ytwvpary
• [2] https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/immortality.html
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/26czjpjl
• [4] https://sams-blog.com/?p=5615
• [5] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-maintenance-race/
• [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhajAqI66nU
• [7] https://hashman.ca/me-cfs/
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/29b4h5oz
• [9] https://tinyurl.com/24sz7lwa
• [10] https://tinyurl.com/2c6dx8d4
• [11] https://tinyurl.com/26e3xxmn
• [12] https://tinyurl.com/26ykzgn4
• [13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V6Pez_Dbzs
• [14] https://tinyurl.com/27h5urv9

Modos Labs have released the design of an e-ink display connected by USB-C [1]. They have provided a lot of background information on e-ink displays which isn’t available elsewhere. Excellent work!

Informative article about a company giving renters insecure locks while facilitating collusion to raise rents [2].

Insightful video by JimmyTheGiant about the destruction of housing estates in the UK [3]. I wonder how much of this was deliberate by the Tories.

Insightful video by Modern Vintage Gamer about the way Nintendo is destroying history by preventing people playing old games [4].

Interesting video by Louis Rossmann about the low quality of products and reviews on Amazon [5]. We all know about Enshittification, but it seems that Amazon is getting to the stage of being unusable for some products.

Amusing video by Folding Ideas about Decentraland an attampt at a blockchain based second life type thing which failed as you expect blockchain things to fail [6]. The top comment is a transcription of the actions of the speaker’s pet cat. ;)

• [1] https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider?tab=readme-ov-file
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/2yosvptu
• [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxCgueTf0W0
• [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2KV8MHRJlQ
• [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y83BS_mK9GE
• [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q