Researchers Make ‘Neuromorphic’ Artificial Skin For Robots
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The nervous system does an astonishing job of tracking sensory information, and does so using signals that would drive many computer scientists insane: a noisy stream of activity spikes that may be transmitted to hundreds of additional neurons, where they are integrated with similar spike trains coming … ⌘ Read more

Texas Father Rescues Kidnapped 15-Year-Old Daughter After Tracking Her Phone’s Location
An anonymous reader shared this report from The Guardian:

A Texas father used the parental controls on his teenage daughter’s cell phone to find and help rescue her after she was kidnapped at knifepoint while walking her dog on Christmas, authorities allege… Her father subsequently located her phon … ⌘ Read more

Samsung’s 2026 Gaming Monitors Promise 6K, 3D, and Up To 1,040Hz
An anonymous reader shares a report: Samsung is breaking new ground with its 2026 lineup of gaming monitors, with the Odyssey 3D G90XH becoming the first to feature a 6K display with “glasses-free 3D.” The new monitor comes with a 32-inch IPS panel, offering real-time eye-tracking that “adjusts depth and perspective” based on your position, … ⌘ Read more

Australia Poised for Desalination Boom as Water Shortages Loom
Australia is on track for a significant expansion of desalination capacity – converting seawater to freshwater – to meet the needs of a swelling population at a time of declining average rainfall. From a report: The world’s driest inhabited continent is projected to build or expand 11 desalination plants worth more than A$23 billion ($15 billion) over t … ⌘ Read more

Uber, Lyft Set To Trial Robotaxis In the UK In Partnership With China’s Baidu
Uber and Lyft plan to trial robotaxis in London starting in 2026 using autonomous vehicles from Baidu, as the UK fast-tracks approvals for self-driving cars on public roads. CNBC reports: Lyft’s testing of Baidu’s initial fleet of dozens of vehicles will begin in 2026, pending regulatory approval, “with plans to scale to h … ⌘ Read more

Garmin Emergency Autoland Has First Save
“Garmin’s Collier Trophy award-winning Autonomi emergency Autoland, a system designed to safely land an aircraft in the event of pilot incapacitation, made its first real-world use and save on Saturday,” writes Slashdot reader slipped_bit. AvBrief.com reports: Social media posts from flight tracking hobbyists reported a King Air 200 squawked 7700 about 2 p.m. local time today. The Autoland sy … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net I’ve been awake at that time, didn’t notice anything. 🤔 Where was that BGP analyzer again … 😅 There’s a tool that keeps track of these things, right? I forgot what it was.

Spotify Says ‘Anti-Copyright Extremists’ Scraped Its Library
A group of activists has scraped Spotify’s entire library, accessing 256 million rows of track metadata and 86 million audio files totaling roughly 300TB of data. The metadata has been released via Anna’s Archive, a search engine for “shadow libraries” that previously focused on books.

Spotify described the activists as “anti-copyright extremists … ⌘ Read more

Strava Puts Popular ‘Year In Sport’ Recap Behind an $80 Paywall
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this month, Strava, the popular fitness-tracking app, released its annual “Year in Sport” wrap-up – a cutesy, animated series of graphics summarizing each user’s athletic achievements. But this year, for the first time, Strava made this feature available only to users with subscriptions ( … ⌘ Read more

Video Game Hardware Sales Had a Historically Bad November In the US
U.S. video game hardware spending fell 27% year over year in November to $695 million, according to market analyst company Circana. “This is the lowest video game hardware spending total for a November month since the $455 million reached during the November 2005 tracking period,” Circana says. Furthermore, only 1.6 million units of hardwa … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I shrank Day 9 Part 2 from “cover the whole map” to “only track the interesting lines.” By compressing coordinates to just the unique x/y breakpoints, the grid got tiny. I still flood-fill and do the corner-pair checks, but now on that compact grid with weighted prefix sums for instant rectangle checks. Result: far less RAM, way less CPU, same correct answer.

Chinese Whistleblower Living In US Is Being Hunted By Beijing With US Tech
A former Chinese official who fled to the U.S. says Beijing has used advanced surveillance technology from U.S. companies to track, intimidate, and punish him and his family across borders. ABC News reports: Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang was recuperating from cancer on a Korean resort island when he got an urgent call: … ⌘ Read more

Ukrainians Sue US Chip Firms For Powering Russian Drones, Missiles
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of Ukrainian civilians filed a series of lawsuits in Texas this week, accusing some of the biggest US chip firms of negligently failing to track chips that evaded export curbs. Those chips were ultimately used to power Russian and Iranian weapon systems, causing wrongful deaths last … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Builds Location Verification Tech That Could Track Where Its AI Chips End Up
Nvidia has developed location verification technology that could determine which country its AI chips are operating in, Reuters reports, citing a source, a capability that may help address ongoing concerns about the smuggling of advanced semiconductors to restricted markets like China. The feature, which Nvid … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft To Invest $17.5 Billion in India
Microsoft announced on Tuesday its largest-ever investment in Asia – $17.5 billion over four years starting in 2026 – to expand cloud and AI infrastructure across India, fund skilling programs, and support ongoing operations in the country. The commitment adds to a $3 billion investment the company announced in January 2025 that is on track to be spent by the end of 2026. A new hyperscale cloud … ⌘ Read more

Sydney greyhound track to be bulldozed to make way for parkland
After more than 90 years, greyhound racing will end at Wentworth Park in Glebe, with the public land to be be transferred to the City of Sydney. ⌘ Read more

All of Russia’s Porsches Were Bricked By a Mysterious Satellite Outage
An anonymous reader shared this report from Autoblog:

Imagine walking out to your car, pressing the start button, and getting absolutely nothing. No crank, no lights on the dash, nothing. That’s exactly what happened to hundreds of Porsche owners in Russia last week. The issue is with the Vehicle Tracking System, a satellite-based sec … ⌘ Read more

My current PC is from 2013, so I never even bothered to check, but as it turns out: My motherboard still has a serial port. 🤯 I thought these had long died out by then. To be honest, I didn’t have the need for one, either, not until recently … So I completely lost track if PCs have these things or not.

All I needed was one of those slot-cable-thingies. (And if the order of pins is correct, then it actually works. 🤦)

Cool! One less USB device. 😃

Train derailment closes Townsville-Mount Isa rail line
A train locomotive is on its side and two others are off the track after a derailment on the Townsville to Mount Isa rail line. ⌘ Read more

India Reviews Telecom Industry Proposal For Always-On Satellite Location Tracking
India is weighing a proposal to mandate always-on satellite tracking in smartphones for precise government surveillance – an idea strongly opposed by Apple, Google, Samsung, and industry groups. Reuters reports: For years, the [Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s] administration has been concerned its agencies do no … ⌘ Read more

Still the #DigitalOmnibus :

Tech Policy says “What all of these changes point to is a shift away from empowering people and towards granting discretion to business. What makes the GDPR truly disruptive is that its rights-based approach puts power into the hands of data subjects, of people, and gives them tools to fight back against tech giants, powerful government agencies, and anyone else who uses their data to surveil, track or control them. In a broad sense, shifting towards a risk-based approach to digital regulation tends to allow discretion to powerful actors and creates a maze of loopholes, exemptions, and exceptions that all, ultimately, function as ways for powerful actors to avoid accountability.”

@accessnow.social@accessnow.social says “The new Commission’s decision to prioritize deregulation and securitization above all else is taking the EU in a dangerous direction; one where human rights, once seen as fundamental for the European project, are being sidelined. This will not make people’s lives easier, nor keep them safer. Rather it will transform the EU into a digital dystopia, and ultimately undermine the foundations of European democracy.”

Asbestos found along walking track near Great Ocean Road
Asbestos has been discovered scattered throughout parts of a coastal town near the Great Ocean Road, prompting land managers to close a section to the public. ⌘ Read more

Does working from home impact mental health? Here’s what 16,000 people say
Working from home can positively impact the mental health of Australian men and women in different ways, according to a new study of more than 16,000 people. ⌘ Read more

Microsoft ‘Mitigates’ Windows LNK Flaw Exploited As Zero-Day
joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: Microsoft has silently “mitigated” a high-severity Windows LNK vulnerability exploited by multiple state-backed and cybercrime hacking groups in zero-day attacks. Tracked as CVE-2025-9491, this security flaw allows attackers to hide malicious commands within Windows LNK files, which can be used to deploy malwar … ⌘ Read more

Wong will not say if further Islamic State family members on track to return
The Coalition seizes on meeting notes from June to claim the government is working to return Australian children and partners of Islamic State fighters. ⌘ Read more

Car falls from bridge, lands on train tracks sparking lengthy rail delays
A complex operation is under way to remove a car that crashed onto train tracks in the Blue Mountains. ⌘ Read more

New doco follows three Paralympians to Paris as we gear up for Brisbane 2032
Filmmaking siblings Tristan and Timothy Kenyon’s documentary Changing Track explores how competing in the Paralympics changes lives. ⌘ Read more

New satellite images show scale of China’s Philippine Sea flotilla
Private firm Starboard Maritime Intelligence says it has used satellite technology to track down the People’s Liberation Army Navy task group. ⌘ Read more

Woolworths accused of exploiting affordable housing schemes to ram through projects
The retail giant is using development fast-track schemes to push ahead with new supermarket and apartment projects opposed by local councils. ⌘ Read more

Intel Finally Posts Open-Source Gaudi 3 Driver Code For The Linux Kernel
The good news is that Intel tonight posted a pull request for open-source Gaudi 3 accelerator support for the mainline Linux kernel! The bad news is that it’s coming quite late in the product cycle, much later than the former excellent Habana Labs open-source track record, and their hopes of squeezing this code into the Linux 6.19 kernel may be dashed… ⌘ Read more

Killer abused location sharing apps before Lilie James murder
Experts on gendered violence have warned against the proliferation of everyday location sharing tools to control victim-survivors after NSW’s top coroner found Paul Thijssen used them to track Lilie James before her murder. ⌘ Read more

Ongoing heatwave to fuel further extreme weather on east coast
An ongoing heatwave along Australia’s eastern seaboard will fuel further extreme weather this weekend, and its longevity is now breaking long standing records. ⌘ Read more

Violent Conflict Over Water Hit a Record Last Year
Researchers at the Pacific Institute documented 420 water-related conflicts globally in 2024, a record that far surpasses the 355 incidents logged in 2023 and continues a trend that has seen such violence more than quadruple over the past five years. The Oakland-based water think tank’s database tracks disputes where water triggered violence, where water systems were target … ⌘ Read more

‘Moral distress’: Nurses, doctors groups warn policy puts ambulance patients ahead of drop-ins
Medical experts fear sick or injured Tasmanians who make their own way to emergency departments wait longer than others, due to pressures to fast-track ambulance patients. ⌘ Read more

Court to test claims mining exploration fast-tracked at expense of native title
Traditional owners in WA’s north launch legal action against the state government claiming it is fast-tracking mining and exploration projects using “expedited procedure” approvals at cultural expense. ⌘ Read more

Broken down on the Birdsville Track in search of a cattle-carrying boat
The ABC’s Landline crew discovers extreme kindness with a can-do attitude after a mechanical breakdown in South Australia’s outback. ⌘ Read more

#musiquinta “parece que foi para mim”

Empyrium - Ode To Melancholy

Não sei se estou a interpretar bem o tema desta semana, porque escolho uma música que é mais… “parece que foi escrita por mim”. Seja como for, é uma boa música, e uma boa ode. Ouçam-na:

https://empyrium.bandcamp.com/track/ode-to-melancholy

I’ll track the ASNs of those addresses and permanently ban them from my server.

Councillor warns another Tasmanian project on track for cost blowout
Launceston City Council recently received backlash over its redevelopment of Albert Hall. A councillor now warns another project will cost more than planned, as he calls out a culture of “secrecy”. ⌘ Read more

Britain Plots Atomic Reboot As Datacenter Demand Surges
The UK is seeking to fast-track new atomic development to meet soaring energy demands driven by AI and electrification. According to a new report published by the government’s Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce, excessive regulation has made Britain the most expensive place in the world to build nuclear projects. The report is calling for a sweeping overhaul to accelerat … ⌘ Read more

Poland Probes Apple Again Over App Tracking Transparency Rules
Poland has launched a new antitrust investigation into Apple’s App Tracking Transparency rules, questioning whether Apple misled users about privacy while giving its own apps a competitive advantage over third-party developers. AppleInsider reports: On November 25, Poland’s UOKiK has started another investigation into App Tracking Transparency, and w … ⌘ Read more

Trump Launches Genesis Mission, a Manhattan Project-Level AI Push
BrianFagioli writes: President Trump has issued a sweeping executive order that creates the Genesis Mission, a national AI program he compares to a Manhattan Project level effort. It centralizes DOE supercomputers, national lab resources, massive scientific datasets, and new AI foundation models into a single platform meant to fast track research … ⌘ Read more

Crease-Free iPhone Fold on Track for 2026 Launch as Development Advances
Apple is making progress on the development of the book-style foldable iPhone expected in 2026, according to a report from Chinese site UDN. The device has reportedly entered the engineering validation stage, and Apple is gearing up for mass production.

![](https://images.macrumors.com/article-new/2025/08/Apple-Foldable-Thum … ⌘ Read more

@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. 😅)

AI Nutrition Tracking Stinks
AI nutrition tracking features in popular fitness apps are producing wildly inaccurate calorie and macro counts despite promises to simplify food logging through automated photo analysis. The Verge tested AI-powered nutrition tools in Ladder, Oura Advisor, January and MyFitnessPal. Ladder’s AI estimated the outlet’s carefully measured 355-calorie breakfast at 780 calories and got the macro breakdown wrong even after the r … ⌘ Read more

Ancient tracks may record stampede of turtles disturbed by earthquake
Around 1000 markings on a slab of rock that was once a seafloor during the Cretaceous period may have been made by sea turtle flippers and swiftly buried by an earthquake ⌘ Read more

We Can Now Track Individual Monarch Butterflies
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For the first time, scientists are tracking the migration of monarch butterflies across much of North America, actively monitoring individual insects on journeys from as far away as Ontario all the way to their overwintering colonies in central Mexico. This long-sought achievement could provide crucial insights into … ⌘ Read more

Where Have All the TV Cameras Gone?
TV manufacturers are abandoning their attempts to turn TVs into interactive social devices through smart cameras. Sky announced this month that it will discontinue Sky Live, a camera accessory for its Sky Glass televisions that brought video calls, body-tracked workouts, and motion games to the living room. The device will stop working at the beginning of December. Sky will brick the cameras and … ⌘ Read more

Man linked to accused childcare abuser pleads not guilty to dozens of charges
Michael Simon Wilson, 36, faced Melbourne Magistrates Court, where he opted to fast-track more than 60 charges to a higher court. ⌘ Read more

World Still On Track For Catastrophic 2.6C Temperature Rise, Report Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The world is still on track for a catastrophic 2.6C increase in temperature as countries have not made sufficiently strong climate pledges, while emissions from fossil fuels have hit a record high, two major reports have found. Despite their promises, governments’ new emission … ⌘ Read more