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• Post #4396000

  help wanted https://lake.computer/blog/help-wanted/ « I am very sorry that the software that I created & put online for free, without any warranty, explicit or implied, has not met your expectations. You are entitled to a full refund. I have taken the liberty to initiate it. You should already have it. »

• Post #4378978

  Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years (and working with a decades-old C codebase) https://changelog.complete.org/archives/44456-celebrating-45-years-of-kermit-with-the-first-new-c-kermit-release-in-15-years-and-working-with-a-decades-old-c-codebase

• Post #4374327

  Don't be a meat proxy https://gruhn.me/blog/2026-08-03/

• Post #4198585

  SAVE JODRELL BANK – Protect a national treasure of science, heritage & inspiration https://c.org/fCZVFS2YYj Reverse funding cuts that would end 80Y of world-leading UK science. Home to the iconic Lovell Telescope, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, & the heart of UK radio astronomy – faces losing all its core annual funding of £2.8 million. Unless this decision is reversed or new funding is secured, all scientific work will end on 1 April 2028, and this historic site could close forever.

• Post #4138012

  The Strongest El Niño Ever https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-strongest-el-nino-ever#footnote-anchor-1 With all the July runs in, dynamical models give a ~90% chance of a record-setting event <- much bigger than 1877-1878. That killed ~50 million people.

• Post #4117433

  Dev accidentally commits Copilot binary to FreeBSD ports repo https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/07/24/dev-accidentally-commits-copilot-binary-to-freebsd-ports-repo/5278458 Git is aptly named: it isn’t easy – but there are alternatives <- by me on #TheRegister

• Post #4111334

  Gribnif: Classic Atari ST/TT/Falcon Software https://gribnif.github.io/ « The source code to NeoDesk, Geneva and several other titles is now available on GitHub. »

• Post #4094493

  Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/25/anti-ai-open-source-has-an-enemy-in-common-but-almost-nothing-else/5278275 Building bot-free alternatives may require lefties, libertarians, and culture warriors to share code <- my last on #TheRegister for a few weeks -- but I anticipate some fisticuffs over this one...

• Post #4093277

  Em dashes are fucking amazing https://psychotechnology.substack.com/p/em-dashes-are-fucking-amazing An ode to a punctuation mark

• Post #4068447

  Emily Bender Sets the Record Straight on “Stochastic Parrots” https://spectrum.ieee.org/stochastic-parrot Five years later, its lead author revisits the paper in the age of ChatGPT

• Post #4066305

  The No-AI list: A list of projects that pledged not to use AI or are disrupting it. https://noai.starlightnet.work/list.html

• Post #4043147

  Coyote V. Acme In The United States District Court, Southwestern District, Tempe, Arizona Case No. B19294, Judge Joan Kujava, Presiding https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1990/02/26/coyote-v-acme (The New Yorker, Shouts & Murmurs, By Ian Frazier; February 19, 1990

• Post #4022646

  Long Presumed Dead, a Thriving Coral Reef Is Discovered in West Africa https://e360.yale.edu/digest/benin-coral-reef

• Post #3988177

  Valve's Steam Frame pushes Arch Linux toward official Arm64 support https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/07/21/valves-steam-frame-pushes-arch-linux-toward-official-arm64-support/5275459 Collabora's Holo Core port lays the groundwork for running SteamOS 3 natively on the headset <- by me on #TheRegister

• Post #3986173

  Computers Are Bad: the actual osi model (2021) https://computer.rip/2021-03-27-the-actual-osi-model.html

• Post #3960690

  The computer at the bottom of a canal https://negroniventurestudios.com/2026/07/18/the-computer-at-the-bottom-of-a-canal/ Somewhere at the bottom of the Forth and Clyde Canal, buried in the silt, there is a box of 1988 custom silicon that was right about almost everything.

• Post #3953885

  RE: https://norden.social/@hart/116944056952271840 "Too few people know this ⬇️ and they fear this development... #climatecatastrophe"

• Post #3933405

  We're Going to Make Out Like Bandits https://www.rocketpoweredjetpants.com/2026/04/were-going-to-make-out-like-bandits/ <- Why AI is _good_ news for skilled programmers. This is hilarious – & probably right.

• Post #3916143

  Today’s stupid prompt injection: just write like the AI (from Pivot to AI) https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/07/16/todays-stupid-prompt-injection-just-write-like-the-ai/ <- oh, this is good: some trivially easy reverse-engineering of how chatbots work lets you exploit them & bypass safeguards.

• Post #3888376

  Torvalds challenged the haters to fork Linux. Someone said 'hold my beer' https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/07/17/torvalds-challenged-the-haters-to-fork-linux-someone-said-hold-my-beer/5274275 More a rewrite really, and of a very early version: Linux 0.11 – in Rust <- by me on #TheRegister

• Post #3886438

  Linus Torvalds tells AI haters to fork off https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/15/linus-torvalds-tells-ai-haters-to-fork-off/5271894 Linux supremo says contributors opposed to AI use can 'just walk away' <- not by me, but significant news from @theregister

• Post #3861757

  Hating AI in 2026 (from Potentially Useful) https://www.eamoncaddigan.net/posts/ai-in-2026/ <- an ML professional talks about the mass delusion that LLMs can in any way think

• Post #3854930

  My little holiday project made it onto the front page of Hackaday today! :-) The Ultimate Distraction Free Writing Environment https://hackaday.com/2025/01/02/the-ultimate-distraction-free-writing-environment/

• Post #3838675

  A moment of silence, please, for the final release of Debian on x86-32 https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/07/15/a-moment-of-silence-please-for-the-final-release-of-debian-on-x86-32/5271198 New Debian versions hit FOSSland in the form of 13.6 and 12.15 <- by me on #TheRegister

• Post #3831349

  How Successful Companies Go Blind https://ianreppel.org/how-successful-companies-go-blind/

• Post #3811125

  Know thine enemy: A critical engagement with AI-assisted software development https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/know-thine-enemy-a-critical-engagement-with-ai-assisted-software-development-e41d9b058ab1 <- a developer's view from the outside, and it's not all sunshine and roses as the fanboys claim

• Post #3807381

  Frame: A new X11 server – implemented directly in assembly https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/07/14/frame-a-new-x11-server-implemented-directly-in-assembly/5270498 Joins yserver, Phoenix, and of course XLibre – and outlier Arcan <- by me on #TheRegister

• Post #3789831

  2 consecutive posts in my HackerNews RSS feed from different users... "Grok uploaded my user directory to xAI's servers" "Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCS" *not-very-well muffled laughter*

• Post #3760580

  Wally Funk, last of Mercury 13 and oldest woman in space, dies at 87 https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/wally-funk-last-of-mercury-13-and-oldest-woman-in-space-dies-at-87/ “I have been waiting a long time to finally get up there…”

• Post #3747003

  The Fool on the Hill: AGI Will Not Have a Lizard Brain https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2026-05-11-AGI-Will-Not-Have-A-Lizard-Brain/ I will argue in this essay that: * We don't yet have Artificial General Intelligence; * We're not currently on a fruitful path towards it; * It's probably not possible in the lifetime of anyone now living; * If & when it does happen, it will not be the monster you imagine.