Sunday, August 30, 2026 · No. 16
20 articles · ~4h 2m read · 7 sections
A personal morning paper, assembled daily; the selection is the reader's, the words are the authors'.
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Top Stories
Lawmakers added $1 to car insurance policies. That money paid for Flock cameras
DeepLogin · Hacker News: Best · texastribune.org · 13 min
The Texas Tribune finds that a $1 car insurance fee hike meant to fight catalytic converter theft has funneled at least $30 million into Flock license-plate cameras, funding roughly 3,200 cameras across the state via 95 grants. Lawmakers who passed the fee unanimously say they never intended it for surveillance, and Governor Abbott paused new funding after the analysis.
DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
firefax · Hacker News: Best · theguardian.com · 10 min
The Department of Homeland Security is using an obscure customs statute, 19 USC 1509, to obtain records on journalists, non-profits, and unions without judicial approval. In one case it obtained six months of phone records for Minneapolis journalist Georgia Fort—more than 10,000 calls and texts—and sought YouTube account data for Fort, Don Lemon, Democracy Now, and Megyn Kelly, with Google refusing to comply.
Tech & Engineering
Running Apache Spark on AWS - Where the Billed Clock Starts, What Gets Measured, and What You Rewrite When You Move a Job Between EMR Serverless, EMR on EKS, an...
hidekazu-konishi.com · tyler's Top Finds on Scour Today · hidekazu-konishi.com · 54 min
Spark execution on Glue, EMR Serverless, and EMR on EKS bills from three different start points: Glue excludes startup and shutdown, Serverless counts from worker readiness (or image download with custom images), and EKS from image download. The piece consolidates nine scattered documentation locations and notes inconsistent API reporting — EKS returns no usage field at all.
I asked 100 companies for my data. Some deleted it instead.
Reece Rodgers, wired.com · Ars Technica · arstechnica.com · 7 min
Testing California's privacy law, a reporter files 100 data-access requests and finds companies often answer with deletion, not access. Crunchbase deletes his account, BeenVerified removes his info, and Cash App's phone support turns him away, while McDonald's sends a 515-page report predicting he'll never stop eating there. Privacy experts see this as proof companies underinvest in compliance and suggest data minimization.
Christophe Pettus: All Your GUCs in a Row: log_line_prefix and log_timezone
Planet PostgreSQL · postgr.es · 6 min
Decodes every % escape in PostgreSQL's log_line_prefix, from the session-pivot %q to the freezes-prone %i, and prescribes a specific prefix for production. It argues for log_timezone UTC, explaining that abbreviations like PDT are rejected and why local-time logs break during the autumn hour repeat. Grounded in sandbox examples and the docs' own example.
Science & Space
I’m Part of the Team Writing the Next Bible of Psychiatry—For the First Time, the DSM Will Use Biology to Understand Mental Disorders
Anand Kumar · Nautilus · nautil.us · 6 min
A psychiatrist who served on the DSM's strategic committee describes the plan to weave biology into the next edition. She explains why psychiatry still lacks biomarkers—syndromes overlap and biology is subtle—and highlights advances including an FDA-approved Alzheimer's blood test, C-reactive protein in depression, and polygenic risk scores. The aim is precision medicine, not replacing the manual.
Chimpanzees have been hurling rocks at the same trees for more than a decade
updawg · ~science - Tildes · theconversation.com · 5 min
In Boé National Park, researchers study a rare chimpanzee behaviour seen in only four West African groups: accumulative stone throwing. Camera traps and audio reveal adult males throwing rocks with pant hoots and buttress drumming, likely as communication. Most sites remained in use a decade later, but bauxite mining threatens the habitat.
AI & Machine Learning
AI chatbots may be better than search engines in guarding against foreign propaganda
Huo Jingnan · News : NPR · npr.org · 13 min
NPR and NewsGuard test 30 queries built on false narratives from China, Iran and Russia against chatbots and search engines. Chatbots debunk the falsehoods about three-quarters of the time, while AI summaries underperform, with Bing failing most often. Digital literacy expert Mike Caulfield calls chatbots a good way to start investigating such issues.
You have to beat the models at something
seangoedecke.com · 8 min
Software engineers must find comparative advantages over AI, argues the essay, and identifies two durable gaps: deep familiarity with the codebase, which lets humans catch AI's errors of ignorance and paranoia, and technical communication, since LLMs increasingly write in a 'Claudish' slop that humans reflexively ignore. The piece warns that acting as a 'meat proxy' — simply passing through agent output — makes engineers disposable.
Culture & Essays
The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now
ibobev · Hacker News: Best · stephendiehl.com · 10 min
The internet's founding amateur ethos has given way to an industrial grift economy that profiles human weakness and conscripts ordinary people into unpaid distribution. Crypto is its apotheosis—a pyramid scheme with a volunteer propaganda network—and AI-generated content will drive the cost of plausible lies to zero. Frictionless feeds serve alien algorithms that cannot recognize human ends, leaving the question of what a human life is for unanswered.
The bridges of Rwanda open up new worlds
Fatma Tanis · News : NPR · npr.org · 8 min
A new 230-foot pedestrian bridge over Rwanda's Mukungwa river connects two settlements, replacing three-hour hikes and risky log crossings. Research on 96 bridges built by nonprofit Fika since 2020 finds gains: household income and consumption up, school re-enrollment by over 100 students, clinic visits up 40%, and a 120% return on investment.
Musicians-turned-detectives are hunting for AI grifters
Charles Pulliam-Moore · The Verge - All Posts · theverge.com · 9 min
EDM producers Max Harris and Nihil Young hunt for AI-generated tracks, describing telltale signs like stuttering vocals and a hissing noise in Suno-produced songs. Top AI music creators earned over $6 million in 2025, and Deezer reports AI songs now account for over half of new uploads, while Young faced harassment after publicly accusing artists. It captures the difficulty of distinguishing human from machine-made music.
Why Bugs Bunny endures as a queer icon & one of history’s great drag queens
Jorge Molina · Queerty · queerty.com · 6 min
A special edition of the queer film retrospective 'A Gay Old Time' makes the case that Bugs Bunny endures as a queer icon because of his effortless gender-bending and gleeful defiance, positioning him among history's great drag queens. The piece surveys his cross-dressing from 1939's 'Hare-um, Scare-um' through 'What's Opera, Doc?' and ties the celebration to the release of 'Coyote vs. Acme.'
Mounts Krn and Batognica
hello@manuelmoreale.com (Manuel Moreale) · Manuel Moreale RSS Feed · manuelmoreale.com · 4 min
After a decade of photographing Mount Krn from the valley, a hiker finally makes the ascent, gaining over 1,200 meters in under three hours. The loop continues to nearby Batognica, where the ground is still littered with rusted barbed wire, shovels, artillery shells and bunkers from the First World War. The seven-hour traverse ends with a rough, humid descent and views that reward the effort.
Niche Corner
The Server Called Paranoia: Defend Autistici/Inventati
Micah Lee · micahflee.com · 25 min
A U.S. designation of Italian hacker collective Autistici/Inventati as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist gives institutions until September 25 to sever ties. The account traces the group's 25-year evolution from a recycled server in a Milan hacklab through police raids and legal victories, arguing the designation conflates providing communications infrastructure with authoring the material that passes through it.
2026 UTMB Results: Ben Dhiman and Blandine L’Hirondel Win
Robbie Harms · iRunFar.com · 15 min
Dhiman wins the men's UTMB in 18:16:29, the fastest time ever on the loop but not a course record due to a reroute; Chassagne and Olson finish second and third, with three men breaking 19 hours for the first time. L’Hirondel takes the women's race in 21:54:49, the first woman under 22 hours, joining Ruth Croft as the only triple-crown winners of UTMB, CCC, and OCC; Entrekin is second in her debut.
The Konica IIA Is a Shining Example of Timeless Technology
Chris Niccolls · PetaPixel · petapixel.com · 7 min
A vintage Konica IIA arrives from an anonymous viewer, prompting a hands-on retrospective of the 1956 rangefinder. With its non-collapsible 48mm Hexanon f/2 lens, heavy 750-gram body, and accurate viewfinder, the camera delivers excellent contrast and color even after seventy years. The review traces Konica's origins from a Tokyo pharmacy to its eventual merger with Minolta.
The Off-Grid Car Camping Gear I Rate (And What's Not Worth Your Money)
Jalopnik · tyler's Top Finds on Scour Today · jalopnik.com · 8 min
A Florida camper rates his off-grid gear, awarding 10/10 to a sleeping bag, cookware set, and portable toilet he calls his favorite piece. He pans a butane stove with two settings and argues rooftop tents aren't worth over $1,000, while an abused power bank earns 8/10.
From the Blogroll
Bug Blindness
davidmckenna · Hacker News: Best · danluu.com · 28 min
A programmer who spots hundreds to thousands of bugs a week argues that most people suffer from 'quality blindness'—they simply don't notice flaws in software they use or build. He traces the condition through search-engine spam, Blackboard's hated interface, and Discourse's performance-cheating code, and warns that with coding agents, overcoming this blindness matters more than ever.
A Roku alternative streaming device
Dave Farquhar · dfarq.homeip.net · 10 min
Disturbed by Roku's acquisition by Fox and the prospect of a media company tracking viewing habits, he builds a privacy-focused streaming box from a used Dell Optiplex 3040 Micro. He loads LineageOS TV x86 on the $60-70 mini PC, pairs it with a Jellyfin client, and finds Jellyfin runs smoother than on his Roku. The setup sends no telemetry, and he also argues for owning DRM-free files and self-hosting media.