ReHacked vol. 332: Screen-Free Activities for Kids, Francis Bacon’s Essays and more
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"When you're good at something, you'll tell everyone. When you're great at something, they'll tell you." --Walter Payton
Offline Kids – Screen-Free Activities for Kids #parenting
Discover simple, screen-free activities to enjoy at home, outdoors, or on the move.
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Let's stop pretending that managers and executives care about productivity #productivity #economy #ai #longread
Businesses today don’t care about management, productivity, or even costs.
Manifestly and demonstrably, businesses only care about control over labour and stock prices and they ignore anything resembling modern management theory or related fields.
Modern management theory itself isn’t that modern. It was born out of US’s World War Two efforts, that’s where people like W. E. Deming came up, and matured during the rebuilding of Japan – where, again, Deming was hugely influential – got reimported into the US via Japan in the seventies and eighties but then has almost entirely been ignored by tech and increasingly ignored by the rest of the economy as the influence of tech and financialisation increased. Today, big chunks English-language management and executive culture are effectively the opposite of what we know works when managing organisations.
Dead need right to delete their data against AI, lawyer says • The Register #privacy #ai #copyright
People die but their data may endure, which troubles legal scholar Victoria Haneman.
The emergence of generative AI means a person's digital presence can be recreated and revived, even if they or their family don't want that kind of memorial.
Haneman, Chair of Fiduciary Law at the University of Georgia School of Law, argues US law should give a dead person's estate a limited right to digital deletion as a defense against the exploitation of digital remains.
After the chores | Seth's Blog #productivity
The thing is, if you wait until all the chores are done before you take initiative, create, ship or connect, you’ll never get around to the life-changing work of showing up with possibility.
Perhaps we can do that before we do our chores.
Adult sites are stashing exploit code inside racy .svg files - Ars Technica #security #privacy
“This Trojan, also written in Javascript, silently clicks a ‘Like’ button for a Facebook page without the user’s knowledge or consent, in this case the adult posts we found above,” Malwarebytes researcher Pieter Arntz wrote. “The user will have to be logged in on Facebook for this to work, but we know many people keep Facebook open for easy access.”
The researchers found a positive and statistically-significant association between 3 types of air pollutant and dementia. These were:
- Particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less (PM2.5), a pollutant made up of tiny particles small enough that they can be inhaled deep into the lungs. These particles come from several sources, including vehicle emissions, power plants, industrial processes, wood burning stoves and fireplaces, and construction dust. They also form in the atmosphere because of complex chemical reactions involving other pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The particles can stay in the air for a long time and travel a long way from where they were produced.
- Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), one of the key pollutants that arise from burning fossil fuels. It is found in vehicle exhaust, especially diesel exhaust, and industrial emissions, as well as those from gas stoves and heaters. Exposure to high concentrations of nitrogen dioxide can irritate the respiratory system, worsening and inducing conditions like asthma and reducing lung function.
- Soot from sources such as vehicle exhaust emissions and burning wood. It can trap heat and affect the climate. When inhaled, it can penetrate deep into the lungs, aggravating respiratory diseases and increasing the risk of heart problems.
3D Rendered Art Imagines Cartoons Have Gone the Way of the Dinosaurs #art
Artist Filip Hodas imagines a world in which some of the most iconic cartoon characters have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Calling his series Cartoon Fossils, he has crafted 3D renderings that feature the skulls of Goofy, Scrooge McDuck, Spongebob Squarepants, Minnie Mouse, and more. Each of the artifacts is presented as though it is in a museum. The giant weathered bones and their well-worn accessories—such as Goofy’s Hat and Minnie’s bow—sit atop pedestals with tiny labels that reveal their scientific names and a description of the character on display.
The Strangest Jobs in Feudal Japan #history
For all the chaos, bloodshed and crazed killers stuffing decapitated heads with bamboo grass, there was a beautiful simplicity to the Sengoku period. During the 150 or so years of civil war, samurai tried to kill each other for land and glory while everyone else tried to stay out of their way. Then the Edo Period rolled around, peace was achieved, and the old rules went out the window together with a bunch of jobs.
That was when many samurai retrained themselves and became cops. As for commoners, they looked for anything that allowed them to make a living, and in the process, some of them carved for themselves the strangest niches in Japan’s labor history.
Francis Bacon’s Essays explore the darker side of human nature. 400 years on, they still instruct and unnerve #philosophy #rabbithole
A renaissance man, Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Chancellor. From early on, he was drawn into a political life at the court. He eventually rose to the Lord Chancellorship himself under King James, before falling from grace in disputed circumstances in 1621.
Yet Bacon was always ambivalent about his public calling. His letters attest that he felt himself better suited for the “contemplative” life of the mind.
He is best known today for his vital role in making the case for a new “advancement of learning” in early modern Europe. His 1620 work, Novum Organum, modelled a “new method” for studying nature, with rules for making structured observations, then tabulating and interpreting findings, which would inspire the later experimental sciences.
The Essays, in contrast, address social, moral and political subjects. They first appeared in 1597, (as a collection of just ten), expanding to an edition of 38 essays in 1612. Then, in 1625, the final edition of 58 essays was published. Bacon died the following year. Ever interested in the natural world, he caught a fatal chill while conducting experiments on the refrigeration of chickens in the snow.
EU Chat Control Plan Gains Support, Threatens Encryption #privacy
Pre-encryption scanning on devices Instead of weakening encryption, the plan seeks to implement client-side scanning, meaning software embedded in users’ devices that inspects content before it is encrypted. “A bit like if the Post Office came to read all your letters in your living room before you put them in the envelope,” Korben said.
He added that the real target isn’t criminals, who use encrypted or decentralized channels, but ordinary users whose private conversations would now be open to algorithmic scrutiny.
The proposal cites the prevention of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as its justification. However, it would result in “mass surveillance by means of fully automated real-time surveillance of messaging and chats and the end of privacy of digital correspondence,” Breyer wrote.
The table of contents (and the index) | Seth's Blog #information
We’re at risk of becoming all index.
The world could probably benefit from your table of contents.
Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation releases report on Titan submersible #report #disaster #safety
The U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) released its Report of Investigation (ROI) Tuesday on the loss of the Titan submersible, which imploded during a June 2023 dive to the Titanic, killing five people.
The more than 300-page ROI outlines key findings and contributing factors in the casualty and includes 17 safety recommendations aimed at strengthening oversight of submersible operations, improving coordination among federal agencies and closing gaps in international maritime policy.
“This marine casualty and the loss of five lives was preventable,” said Jason Neubauer, Titan MBI chair. “The two-year investigation has identified multiple contributing factors that led to this tragedy, providing valuable lessons learned to prevent a future occurrence. There is a need for stronger oversight and clear options for operators who are exploring new concepts outside of the existing regulatory framework. I am optimistic the ROI’s findings and recommendations will help improve awareness of the risks and the importance of proper oversight while still providing a pathway for innovation.”
Scientific fraud has become an ‘industry,’ alarming analysis finds | Science | AAAS #science
The paper, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paints an alarming picture. Northwestern University metascientist Reese Richardson and his colleagues identify networks of editors and authors colluding to publish shoddy or fraudulent papers, report that large organizations are placing batches of fake papers in journals, suggest brokers may serve as intermediaries between paper mills and intercepted journals, and find that the number of fake papers—though still relatively small—seems to be increasing at a rate far greater than the scientific literature generally.
The Gulf’s trillion-dollar AI dream faces a water crisis - Rest of World #ai #environment #sustainability
The World Resources Institute ranks the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar among the most water-stressed countries on Earth, with daily per capita consumption exceeding 500 liters — almost three times the European average. The countries pledged $2 trillion of deals during U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East tour in May this year.
The UAE’s new 1-gigawatt Stargate AI campus, backed by OpenAI and Abu Dhabi’s G42, is only the beginning of a massive infrastructure build-out across the region. Saudi Arabia has separately announced plans for 2,200 megawatts of new data center capacity, attracting tech giants including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services to establish regional hubs.
The ghost in the machine | Seth's Blog #knowledge
When a system becomes complex and our knowledge peters out, we’re tempted to assert, in the words of Gilbert Ryle, that there’s a ‘ghost in the machine.’
Marking 13 Years on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity Picks Up New Skills | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) #space #engineering
New capabilities allow the rover to do science with less energy from its batteries.
Thirteen years since Curiosity landed on Mars, engineers are finding ways to make the NASA rover even more productive. The six-wheeled robot has been given more autonomy and the ability to multitask — improvements designed to make the most of Curiosity’s energy source, a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG). Increased efficiency means the rover has ample power as it continues to decipher how the ancient Martian climate changed, transforming a world of lakes and rivers into the chilly desert it is today.
Passkeys are just passwords that require a password manager | by Dan Fabulich | Aug, 2025 | Medium #security
Password managers provide no way for you to copy and paste your passkeys. To present a passkey, you have to use a password manager. This provides some anti-phishing protection. A passkey includes metadata, including the site/app that created it, and the password managers simply won’t provide the passkey to the wrong site/app. There’s no social-engineering technique someone can use to get you to copy and paste your passkey to an enemy.
Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand | PC Gamer #internet #censorship
Two weeks after Valve confirmed it had removed a pile of NSFW games from Steam because of pressure from credit card companies—and one week after Itch.io followed suit—Mastercard has released a statement denying responsibility for the takedowns, saying it "allows all lawful purchases" to be processed through its systems.
"Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations," the company says.
"Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content."
Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade website no-crawl directives #ai #privacy
We are observing stealth crawling behavior from Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine. Although Perplexity initially crawls from their declared user agent, when they are presented with a network block, they appear to obscure their crawling identity in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences. We see continued evidence that Perplexity is repeatedly modifying their user agent and changing their source ASNs to hide their crawling activity, as well as ignoring — or sometimes failing to even fetch — robots.txt files.
The Internet as we have known it for the past three decades is rapidly changing, but one thing remains constant: it is built on trust. There are clear preferences that crawlers should be transparent, serve a clear purpose, perform a specific activity, and, most importantly, follow website directives and preferences. Based on Perplexity’s observed behavior, which is incompatible with those preferences, we have de-listed them as a verified bot and added heuristics to our managed rules that block this stealth crawling.
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