DNA samples found near Toyah Cordingley burial site scrutinised
The former nurse accused of the 2018 murder of Toyah Cordingley was 3.7 billion times more likely than not to have contributed to a DNA sample found on a stick where she was buried, his trial has heard. ⌘ Read more

Black Friday Reminder For Those Hating Ads But Loving Linux Hardware/Software
As the one and last friendly reminder, if you enjoy the daily and original content found on Phoronix.com but not liking ads and wanting to view multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and more: the 2025 Black Friday / Cyber Week deal is ending Monday to help support the site while enjoying a discounted rate… ⌘ Read more

Epic’s Sweeney Says Platforms Should Stop Tagging Games Made With AI
The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, has argued that platforms like Steam should not label games that are made using AI. From a report: Responding to a post on Twitter from a user who suggested that storefronts drop this tag, the industry exec said that it “makes no sense” to flag such content. Sweeney added that soon AI will be a part of … ⌘ Read more

Better Technology, Worse Motivation: GenAI’s Mediocrity Trap

While generative AI (GenAI) promises productive efficiency, it can paradoxically lead to lower-quality work. We conducted an experiment with professional illustrators and found that AI assistance flattens the quality curve—it accelerates initial gains but sharply diminishes the returns on sustained effort. Faced with this, a significant number of professionals made a strategic choice: they sacrificed the final quality to save time.

From http://www.jin-li.org/uploads/1/1/4/5/114595093/ai_and_motivation.pdf

I haven’t read this and can’t vouch for it; seems vaguely AI-boostery. Still, the conclusions are interesting. This seems to be the picture that is emerging about generative AI generally: most people don’t like it and find that degrades the quality of work. Coders seem to like it and think that it helps them, but in fact it makes the slower, less productive, and more bug prone.

By all measures it’s a bad technology. We should just be honest about it. There is no need to make excuses for multi-trillion-dollar corporations.

@prologic@twtxt.net it would have been so much easy to run your own. I guess we all like to suffer every once and then, and this time is your turn. 😅

Common Desktop Environment “CDE” 2.5.3 Released After Two Years
Two years and one week since the prior point release, Common Desktop Environment 2.5.3 is now available as the latest iteration of this Unix desktop environment built around the Motif toolkit. CDE has been open-source for more than a decade now but its development not exactly brisk. But for those resisting the likes of Wayland and other modern display tech – especially with KDE announcing today Plasma 6.8 will be Wayland-exclusive – CDE 2.5.3 is now avail … ⌘ Read more

Google’s AirDrop Support For Pixel 10 Likely Exists Because of EU’s Apple Ruling
Last week, Google surprised the tech world when it announced AirDrop support on Pixel 10 devices – all without Apple’s involvement. “While it initially seemed like this was a rogue move made by Google to coerce Apple into another boundary-breaking decision, it might actually be part of the repercussions that also l … ⌘ Read more

Newegg Sparks Debate With New PayPal-Integrated AI Shopping Push
BrianFagioli writes: Newegg’s new partnership with PayPal is another sign that mainstream e-commerce is shifting control from users to AI-driven intermediaries. Instead of shoppers visiting Newegg directly, PayPal’s agentic commerce system pushes product discovery through AI platforms like Perplexity where recommendations, checkout, and fraud che … ⌘ Read more

Oh fuck me! I had basically turned off the route to git.mills.io last night and went ot bed at ~2AM after unsuccessfully trying to control the attacks (bad bots) that were behaving like a DDoS attack. Tried to re-enable the route this monring and *BOOM, they’re back! As-if they never stopped?! what da actual fuq?! Anyone have any clever ideas of what I can do here to allows normal users, like you nice folk and block ths obnoxious traffic?!

More Than Half of New Articles On the Internet Are Being Written By AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Conversation: The line between human and machine authorship is blurring, particularly as it’s become increasingly difficult to tell whether something was written by a person or AI. Now, in what may seem like a tipping point, the digital marketing firm Graphite recently published a study sho … ⌘ Read more

Live: ASX to rise as Wall St extends rally on growing bets of Fed rate cut
A rally on Wall Street is likely to send Australian stocks higher as revived tech strength and the growing probability of a December interest rate cut from the US Federal Reserve put investors in a buying mood the day before the Thanksgiving holiday. Follow the latest updates in our live blog. ⌘ Read more

Bamboo scaffolding, flames and wind. Here’s what we know about the Hong Kong fire
The blaze in Tai Po that engulfed multiple high-rise apartment blocks is still burning, and authorities say it likely began in bamboo scaffolding that encased the buildings. ⌘ Read more

China’s Dual Squeeze on European Industry Intensifies
European manufacturers are facing a two-front assault from China that has German industry associations warning of deindustrialisation: on one side, artificially cheap Chinese goods are flooding into Europe, and on the other, Beijing has demonstrated its willingness to abruptly cut off access to critical inputs like rare earths and semiconductors.

The alarm intensified in O … ⌘ Read more

NASA Rover Makes a Shocking Discovery: Lightning on Mars
An anonymous reader shares a report: It is shocking but not surprising. Lightning crackles on Mars, scientists reported on Wednesday. What they observed, however, were not jagged, high-voltage bolts like those on Earth, arcing thousands of feet from cloud to ground. Rather, the phenomenon was more like the shock you feel when you scuff your feet on the carpet … ⌘ Read more

Man accused of student’s murder ‘likely’ had intellectual disability, court hears
A neuropsychologist has told the Northern Territory Supreme Court a man accused of murdering an international student in Darwin “likely” had an intellectual disability that impacted his ability to exercise self-control. ⌘ Read more

China Launches An Emergency Lifeboat To Bring Three Astronauts Back To Earth
China launched an uncrewed Shenzhou 22 spacecraft to serve as an emergency lifeboat for three astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station after a docked return craft was found to have a cracked window likely caused by space debris. “A Long March 2F rocket fired its engines and lifted off with the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft, … ⌘ Read more

When I try to login to PayPal I now see:

Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker

Here’s the thing. PayPal takes fees from transactions and payments received and sent.

I have very right not have ads shoved in my face for something that isn’t actually free in the first place and costs money to use. If PayPal would like to continue to piss off folks me like, then I’ll happily close my PayPal account and go somewhere else that doesn’t shove ads in my face and consume 30-40% of my Internet bandwidth on useless garbage/crap.

#PayPal #Ads

Warner Music Group Partners With Suno To Offer AI Likenesses of Its Artists
Warner Music Group has reached a licensing deal with Suno that will let users create AI-generated music using the voices and likenesses of artists who opt in. WMG says participating artists will have “full control” over how their likeness and music are used. “These will be new creation experiences from artists who do opt in, … ⌘ Read more

Australians with dementia urged to revisit the past like Hemsworth family
Helena Popovic took her father on a trip home to Serbia after he was diagnosed with dementia and believes its reminiscence therapy slowed the condition’s progress. ⌘ Read more

Hacker Conference Installed a Literal Antivirus Monitoring System
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Hacker conferences – like all conventions – are notorious for giving attendees a parting gift of mystery illness. To combat “con crud,” New Zealand’s premier hacker conference, Kawaiicon, quietly launched a real-time, room-by-room carbon dioxide monitoring system for attendees. To get the system u … ⌘ Read more

Google Denies ‘Misleading’ Reports of Gmail Using Your Emails To Train AI
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google is pushing back on viral social media posts and articles like this one by Malwarebytes, claiming Google has changed its policy to use your Gmail messages and attachments to train AI models, and the only way to opt out is by disabling “smart features” like spell checking.

But Google spok … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I think you will like this one: https://gibberifier.com/

Was the Moon-Forming Protoplanet ‘Theia’ a Neighbor of Earth?
Theia crashed into earth and formed the moon, the theory goes. But then where did Theia come from? The lead author on a new study says “The most convincing scenario is that most of the building blocks of Earth and Theia originated in the inner Solar System. Earth and Theia are likely to have been neighbors.”

Though Theia was completely destroyed in th … ⌘ Read more

How do you call it when a cat greets you like this? ⌘ Read more

Mozilla Announces ‘TABS API’ For Developers Building AI Agents
“Fresh from announcing it is building an AI browsing mode in Firefox and laying the groundwork for agentic interactions in the Firefox 145 release, the corp arm of Mozilla is now flexing its AI muscles in the direction of those more likely to care,” writes the blog OMG Ubuntu:

If you’re a developer building AI agents, you can sign up to get early acces … ⌘ Read more

Could High-Speed Trains Shorten US Travel Times While Reducing Emissions?
With some animated graphics, CNN “reimagined” what three of America’s busiest air and road travel routes would look like with high-speed trains, for “a glimpse into a faster, more connected future.”

The journey from New York City to Chicago could take just over six hours by high-speed train at an average speed of 160 mph, cutting … ⌘ Read more

** Sticker party, November **
Some random thoughts including how the band Imagine Dragons is kinda like Metal for kids; distributing apps, even without involving Apple at all, is deeply annoying on macOS; Pokemon ZA is fun, but I think that I’m a turn-based girlie at heart; my partner has been playing a lot of Tears of the Kingdom lately, it has been a lot of fun for me to watch, and hair-pullingly frustrating for our nearly 10 year old who has strong opinions about the correct order of operations in that game; I wrote, but am cu … ⌘ Read more

How the Internet Rewired Work - and What That Tells Us About AI’s Likely Impact
“The internet did transform work — but not the way 1998 thought…” argues the Wall Street Journal. “The internet slipped inside almost every job and rewired how work got done.”

So while the number of single-task jobs like travel agent dropped, most jobs “are bundles of judgment, coordination and hands-on work,” and in … ⌘ Read more

Extinct animals in Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age make it a must-watch
From woolly mammoths to giant sloths, via some lesser-known ice-age beasts like ‘killer koalas’, the visuals in this documentary are simply astounding ⌘ Read more

This is what this looked like visually 😳

@prologic@twtxt.net Time to make a new internet. Maybe one that intentionally doesn’t “scale” and remains slow (on both ends) so it’s harder to overload in this manner, harder to abuse for tracking your every move, … Got any of those 56k modems left?

(I’m half-joking. “Make The Internet Expensive Again” like it was in the 1990ies and some of these problems might go away. Disclaimer: I didn’t have my coffee yet. 😅)

Physicists Reveal a New Quantum State Where Electrons Run Wild
ScienceDaily reports:

Electrons can freeze into strange geometric crystals and then melt back into liquid-like motion under the right quantum conditions. Researchers identified how to tune these transitions and even discovered a bizarre “pinball” state where some electrons stay locked in place while others dart around freely. Their simulations hel … ⌘ Read more

And regarding those broken URLs: I once speculated that these bots operate on an old dataset, because I thought that my redirect rules actually were broken once and produced loops. But a) I cannot reproduce this today, and b) I cannot find anything related to that in my Git history, either. But it’s hard to tell, because I switched operating systems and webservers since then …

But the thing is that I’m seeing new URLs constructed in this pattern. So this can’t just be an old crawling dataset.

I am now wondering if those broken URLs are bot bugs as well.

They look like this (zalgo is a new project):

https://www.uninformativ.de/projects/slinp/zalgo/scksums/bevelbar/

When you request that URL, you get redirected to /git/:

$ curl -sI https://www.uninformativ.de/projects/slinp/zalgo/scksums/bevelbar/
HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2025 06:13:51 GMT
Server: OpenBSD httpd
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 510
Location: /git/

And on /git/, there are links to my repos. So if a broken client requests https://www.uninformativ.de/projects/slinp/zalgo/scksums/bevelbar/, then sees a bunch of links and simply appends them, you’ll end up with an infinite loop.

Is that what’s going on here or are my redirects actually still broken … ?

I just noticed this pattern:

uninformativ.de 201.218.xxx.xxx - - [22/Nov/2025:06:53:27 +0100] "GET /projects/lariza/multipass/xiate/padme/gophcatch HTTP/1.1" 301 0 "" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
www.uninformativ.de 103.10.xxx.xxx  - - [22/Nov/2025:06:53:28 +0100] "GET http://uninformativ.de/projects/lariza/multipass/xiate/padme/gophcatch HTTP/1.1" 400 0 "" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"

Let me add some spaces to make it more clear:

    uninformativ.de 201.218.xxx.xxx - - [22/Nov/2025:06:53:27 +0100] "GET                       /projects/lariza/multipass/xiate/padme/gophcatch HTTP/1.1" 301 0 "" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
www.uninformativ.de 103.10.xxx.xxx  - - [22/Nov/2025:06:53:28 +0100] "GET http://uninformativ.de/projects/lariza/multipass/xiate/padme/gophcatch HTTP/1.1" 400 0 "" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"

Some IP (from Brazil) requests some (non-existing, completely broken) URL from my webserver. But they use the hostname uninformativ.de, so they get redirected to www.uninformativ.de.

In the next step, just a second later, some other IP (from Nepal) issues an HTTP proxy request for the same URL.

Clearly, someone has no idea how HTTP redirects work. And clearly, they’re running their broken code on some kind of botnet all over the world.

Japan Says World’s Largest Nuclear Plant To Restart
The Japanese government said that the world’s biggest nuclear plant would restart operations. Semafor: The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa site closed in 2012, as Japan – which previously generated 30% of its electricity from nuclear power – shuttered most of its fleet in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown. But like much of the world, it is looking once again to nuclear power for reliable … ⌘ Read more

Google Mocks iPhone in Musical ‘Wicked’ Ad Claiming Pixel Firsts
Google this week shared a new ad in its ongoing anti-Apple “BestPhonesForever” series, this time leaning into the launch of the new Wicked: For Good movie that’s out in theaters.

The spot features an iPhone fawning over a Pixel smartphone before breaking into the Wicked: For Good song. Google suggests that it was first to multiple features that the ‌iPhone‌ then copied, like screening phone calls an … ⌘ Read more

Does my cat look like the famous Indian cat Pyari? ⌘ Read more

Anyone else’s cats like to lie on their backs? ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.18 Sees Late Improvements For Xbox Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, & Alienware Laptops
We’re closing in on the Linux 6.18 stable kernel release likely in little more than one week (30 November barring any delays) and today’s batch of x86 platform driver updates is bringing some new hardware support as well as some notable consumer device fixes/improvements… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Slated To Land “mm/cid” Rewrite That Has Very Positive Performance Potential
A set of Linux kernel patches posted back in October for rewriting the kernel’s memory-mapped concurrency ID code for some nice performance wins looks like it will land for Linux 6.19. This is the code that prominent Intel engineer Thomas Gleixner found to yield up to an 18% improvement for the PostgreSQL database. My testing of this “mm/cid” code has also shown some nice performance wins too… ⌘ Read more

@kiwu@twtxt.net I’m glad you’re liking the updates haha 😆

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org @bender@twtxt.net Pfft, they want folks to relocate to Sydney. Fuck that 🤣 Sydney is a bit like San Francisco, I’m not actually sure which is worse. Fuck’n expensive as hell, the only palce you’d be able to afford to buy or rent is at least ~2hrs out of the city by public transport (i.e: train) and by that time you’ve just pissed your life down the toilet, because you’d be expected ot work a 9-10hr day + 2-3hrs of travel each way, buy the time you factor in having to wake up super early to get ready to travel in to work, you basically have zero time for anything else, let alone your ufamily,

Fuck that.

Why do you sleep like that ⌘ Read more

Rust-Based Arm GPU Kernel Driver “Tyr” Begins Running GNOME & Basic Games
Initially upstreamed into the Linux 6.18 kernel is Tyr as a Rust-based GPU kernel driver for Arm Mali hardware. This is in effect a Rust alternative to the Panthor DRM kernel driver for newer Arm Mali GPUs with the Command Stream Firmware (CSF). With the latest development code for Tyr, it’s moved onto running the GNOME desktop and basic games like SuperTuxKart… ⌘ Read more

Affinity is a Powerful Free Photoshop Alternative for Mac (and Windows)
Affinity is a powerful creative application that offers photo and image editing capabilities, vector design, and page layout features, all in a single app, and feature-wise it’s easily able to compete with the likes of Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. But unlike Photoshop or Illustrator, Affinity is now completely free – though advanced features like AI … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/11/19/affinity … ⌘ Read more

I was looking at some ancient code and then thought: Hmm, maybe it would be a good idea to see more details in this error message. Which of the values don’t line up. On the other hand, that feature isn’t probably used anyway, because it’s a bit ugly to use (historically evolved). And on top of that, most teams need something slightly different, if they deal with that sort of thing.

I still told my workmates about it, so they could also have a look at it and we can decide tomorrow what to do about it. Speaking of the devil, no kidding, not even half an hour later, a puzzled tester contacted me. She received exactly that rather useless error message. Looks like I had an afflatus. ;-)

It’s interesting, though, that in all those years, nobody stumbled across this before. At least we now know for sure that this is not dead code. :-)

@bender@twtxt.net Haha 🤣 Spoken like someone that’s done this before 😅

Linux 6.18 Receives Fixes For ELECOM M-XT3URBK & SONiX AK870 PRO Devices
Sent out today was likely the last batch of HID subsystem fixes ahead of the Linux 6.18 kernel releasing as stable around the end of the month. With it are some new device-specific quirks for fixing hardware support for a mouse and keyboard… ⌘ Read more

Why’s she looking at me like that!? 😭 ⌘ Read more

Set Alarm-Style iPhone Reminders in iOS 26.2
In iOS 26.2, currently in beta, Apple has added a new optional feature that provides the Reminders app with a more urgent notification system. When you need to ensure you don’t miss an important task, you can now set an alarm that works just like your morning wake-up call, with a snooze and slide-to-stop slider.

Image

The feature distinguishes Reminder alarms from sta … ⌘ Read more