Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

The PSF isn't a huge organization, but they do a lot of work. They have an annual budget of about $5 million and applied, and were close to receiving, a grant for $1.5 mil from the National Science Foundation to “address structural vulnerabilities in Python and PyPI.". PyPI is a library used by TONS of Python projects and has been subject to what's known as supply-chain attacks.

So what's a supply-chain attack? In brief, you take a library that's commonly used. Let's say it let's you send output to a PDF within your Python program, a fairly common task, and something that most programmers don't want to reinvent and won't bother inspecting the library for vulnerabilities. The attack happens when a bad guy changes the code for that PDF library then uploads changes to the master, and now, in addition to generating the PDF, it sniffs around your computer and does... stuff. Infects it with malware, perhaps. Gains admin access and strolls around the network. Looks for crypto wallets and steals them. It can do all sorts of stuff. That, in very simplified form, is a supply-chain attack. And if the program you are writing is released as open source and lots of people download it, THEY all are capable of being subverted!

The PSF was going to use the money to implement some automatic code inspection systems so any changes uploaded into the PyPl library would automatically be inspected, etc., to reduce the threat of supply-chain attacks. Lots of good stuff.

But there was a problem...

The grant application was close to being approved when the board that reviews such applications noticed that the "...foundation’s mission statement includes a goal “to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers,” which conflicted with the grant requirements."

And there was another problem. The grant application, if you agreed to accept it, you also accepted that the NSF could claw-back funds if they wanted to! Basically, you take the $1.5 mil, spend it, and a few years later they decide you're too woke and take it all back, directly out of your bank account. And if your cash flow was a little tight at that time, well, sorry! Your foundation just went negative and is no longer solvent!

The board of the FSF decided to withdraw their grant application with the NSF and pursue other avenues to complete their missions.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/python-foundation-rejects-1-5-million-grant-over-trump-admins-anti-dei-rules/

I was adding a recipe to my iCloud Notes, and the top recipe came up, which was this! I haven't made it yet, but I thought I'd share it. And also give you the story of how I got it!

There's a podcast that's a lot of fun called The Sporkful. It's a fun listen that features interesting guests. As their tag line goes, it's not for foodies, it's for eaters. Anyway, they had on, IIRC, a librarian/archivist who came across this recipe in the collection that he manages. And it's become his go-to popcorn salt. And here it is!

J.D. Salinger popcorn salt

Ingredients:
6 tsps sea salt
2 tsps paprika
1 tsp. dry mustard
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp celery powder
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp marjoram
1/2 tsp curry
1/2 tsp dill powder

This is definitely going to have a bit of a kick to it! For me, I'm going to leave out the dill powder: I just don't care much for the taste of dill. You might also want to process this in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle as the thyme and marjoram can be on the large/leafy side if you want things down to a more uniform consistency.

Have fun, and report back if you try it!

A true feel-good story.

Cards Against Humanity (CAH) is a very fun, and potentially very rude, party card game. A few years ago they decided to tweak President 45's nose and bought an acre of land in Texas in the path of a proposed wall building. And sold 1" parcels of it to fans of their game, making the acre so subdivided that any attempt to purchase it or to seize it through exercising eminent domain over it that it would be insanely complicated.

Well, the site just so happens to be near Boca Chica, the location of a certain space company's launch platform. And said space company moved in a bunch of trucks and dumped gravel, debris, and all sorts of stuff on this acre that they didn't own. CAH had posted no trespassing signs on it, which said space company's trucks ignored and drove over. CAH complained to said space company and was ignored, so they sued.

And got a settlement! Shortly before the suit would have gone to trial before a jury, the space company blinked.

Sadly the terms of the settlement are sealed and CAH can't talk about it, but the space company cleaned up the acre, remediating it back to its original state. And the owners of said acre will be receiving a CAH card pack extolling the many manifold virtues, or lack thereof, of Leon Muskbrat.

I don't know if said card packs will be available to buyers outside of those acre property owners, but I'd love to have one. Had I known about this land purchase, I would have liked to have been a part of it.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/cards-against-humanity-gets-settlement-from-spacex-plans-pack-of-elon-musk-cards/

Hint: it's not the Nobel.

He was awarded the Richard Nixon Foundation's Architects of Peace Award.

Yeah. Tricky Dick is back in the news!

Previous recipients: Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney. I'm sure he'll be proclaiming that it's a much better award than the Nobel.

Good company there, Li'l Donny! Irony doth know no bounds.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-wins-peace-prize_n_68f88ee0e4b0dbac459201ca

As an extremely brief backgrounder, both the Raspberry Pi and Arduino are fundamentally microcontrollers, single-board computers programmed to control processes or other devices. As a basic example, an industrial robot, a home security system, etc. They have astounding capability limited by your imagination and programming/electronics skills.

First, the good news.

The Raspberry Pi people are/have released a new Pi 500+ with a redesigned Pi in a keyboard with mechanical switches for $200! The Pi board is of a new design with "...16GB of RAM instead of 8GB, a 256GB NVMe SSD instead of microSD storage, and a fancier keyboard with mechanical switches, replaceable keycaps, and individually programmable RGB LEDs." Like all Pi's, it runs their version of Linux by default, though other versions of Linux can be booted on it.

This is VERY cool! The SSD can be swapped for higher capacity devices, and it can still be booted from MicroSD cards.

It also sports "... integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, two micro HDMI ports that support 60 Hz 4K output, a microSD slot, and a user-accessible 40-pin GPIO header for additional expandability."

Here's the best part: TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS! An absolutely screaming deal for a full-on hobbyist computer that is also fully-expandable for a controller system to do whatever the heck you want to do with it!

I am definitely going to get me one of these puppies. I was interested in the relaunch of the Commodore 64, but then I started thinking about whether or not I wanted to bother with programming in Basic, and the answer to that was a solid NO. But this? I can have some fun with this! Now, if the Commodore people succeed in launching an Amiga - that's a different story! Time will tell if that happens.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/raspberry-pi-supercharges-its-keyboard-pc-with-16gb-ram-ssd-mechanical-switches/


Now the bad news.

Qualcomm is buying Arduino.

They claim that they are keeping a hands-off approach, we shall see if that stays true. They completely burned all faith and goodwill of the VMWare customer base in that particular acquisition, and already Arduino hobbyists are looking to new platforms and clones to move away from Arduino-branded microcontrollers in anticipation of what they think is likely to happen.

While the obvious jump would be to Raspberry Pi since they're both microcontrollers, the two platforms are apples and oranges and a lot of Arduino projects are not correctly served by trying to port over to Pi. Those people are likely in for a more difficult if they want to move to a different hardware platform. Some people can move their projects over to Pi with some work, and good for them.

And it's not just hobbyists using these controllers, for some people it's their profession and livelihood. If Qualcomm starts jerking them around, then they may have the unhappy prospect of making a business case to management to change vendors and possibly controllers. If their use is strictly in-house, that's one thing. If they're selling products using these controllers, it's quite another.

From one angle, it's not a bad acquisition for Qualcomm as they already make the CPUs for Arduino. And clearly the Arduino company folk benefit by getting many very large buckets of cash. The question will be in how well Qualcomm treats the customer base, and considering how they treated the VMWare folks over the last couple of years....

Time will tell.

From the Slashdot summary:
Smartphone processor and modem maker Qualcomm is acquiring Arduino, the Italian company known mainly for its open source ecosystem of microcontrollers and the software that makes them function. In its announcement, Qualcomm said that Arduino would "[retain] its brand and mission," including its "open source ethos" and "support for multiple silicon vendors." Qualcomm didn't disclose what it would pay to acquire Arduino. The acquisition also needs to be approved by regulators "and other customary closing conditions."

The first fruit of this pending acquisition will be the Arduino Uno Q, a Qualcomm-based single-board computer with a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor installed. The QRB2210 includes a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU and a Qualcomm Adreno 702 GPU, plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and combines that with a real-time microcontroller "to bridge high-performance computing with real-time control."

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/arduino-retains-its-brand-and-mission-following-acquisition-by-qualcomm/

https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/07/2032219/qualcomm-is-buying-arduino-releases-new-raspberry-pi-esque-arduino-board

Or, for all intents and purposes, zero.

And how much of that was spurred by the artificial intelligence bubble? Um, pretty much all of it.

From the Slashdot summary:
"U.S. GDP growth in the first half of 2025 was driven almost entirely by investment in data centers and information processing technology. The GDP growth would have been just 0.1% on an annualized basis without these technology-related categories, according to Harvard economist Jason Furman. Investment in information-processing equipment and software accounted for only 4% of U.S. GDP during this period but represented 92% of GDP growth.

Renaissance Macro Research estimated in August that the dollar value contributed to GDP growth by AI data-center buildout had surpassed U.S. consumer spending for the first time. Consumer spending makes up two-thirds of GDP. Tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Nvidia poured tens of billions of dollars into building and upgrading data centers. (emphasis mine)

Let me repeat that. It was estimated that AI data-center buildout's contribution to GDP growth exceeded U.S. consumer spending in August.

So I guess we have an artificial economy, there's certainly no intelligent planning behind it in Washington, not that we do anything resembling central planning. Of course, that's obvious with the tariffs and cancelling renewable energy projects and destroying the federal government from the inside-out.

I previously posted about the AI bubble actually being three bubbles, according to one prognosticator. Which means when those bubbles start bursting, to varying degrees, data center construction will collapse. Which means GDP is going to crater in an absolutely huge way.

Fun times ahead! Might want to pick up a couple of cases of beans. And, of course, a can opener.

https://fortune.com/2025/10/07/data-centers-gdp-growth-zero-first-half-2025-jason-furman-harvard-economist/

https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/07/2012240/without-data-centers-gdp-growth-was-01-in-the-first-half-of-2025-harvard-economist-says

Another old tab from May.

This is quite interesting. Researchers set up multiple LLMs and configured them to run a vending machine simulator, described as "Agents must balance inventories, place orders, set prices, and handle daily fees – tasks that are each simple but collectively, over long horizons." Basic business process.

The LLMs behaviors were, shall we say, interesting.

As the run went on over multiple simulated days, one decided it was the victim of cybercrime and 'reported' the event to the FBI (it had an email simulator but no external connection), another declared its quantum state as collapsed, yet another threatened suppliers with "ABSOLUTE FINAL ULTIMATE TOTAL NUCLEAR LEGAL INTERVENTION".

Basically it was a demonstration of how such large-language models are terrible for long-term runs and shows their ability to hallucinate and make poor decisions. I'll have some more posts on that soon, particularly concerning Canada and Australia.

The paper is quite interesting, detailing how some of the LLMs melt down and can't prioritize tasks. For example, a person knows that we must receive orders from suppliers before we can send someone out to refill a machine. The LLM might assume that on the date the order is promised, as soon as that date arrives the orders are suddenly there and the stocker can be immediately dispatched, even if there is no product or a shortage. Now the vending machine is understocked and the LLM doesn't understand why.

LLM no thinkie good.

The paper:
https://arxiv.org/html/2502.15840v1

The Slashdot article:
https://slashdot.org/story/25/05/31/2112240/failure-imminent-when-llms-in-a-long-running-vending-business-simulation-went-berserk

A bit of a story. And you know I like telling stories!

In the past, I was using an Alamogordo tire shop to get the oil changes on our two cars done. Then they did one thing that ticked me off, and a second thing that utterly [EXPLETIVE DELETED] me off, so I stopped using them. The first was they used the wrong wrench type to tighten the plug on Russet's car's oil pan, which damaged the threads. It took them absolutely forever to get a correct replacement.

The second was they accidentally drained some transmission fluid from my car, thinking it was the oil fill. This was my 2015 Subaru Crosstrek. The transmission is sealed: you cannot manually add tranny fluid to it without a computer. Which they did not have. I made them bring up a mechanic with the computer from El Paso the next day to service it properly. But what really made me mad was no apology, no discount on the oil change.

So that was it for them. They had another long-standing strike against them regarding some snow tires that I wanted, so that was actually three strikes. Back prior to 2015 I had a Toyota Matrix, good car. All-wheel drive, and I knew I was going to need snow tires. I asked them for a recommendation, and they said and they said "Buy THESE tires!" The time came when snow season was proverbially around the corner and it was time to order new tires. But I decided to do a little online research before calling them to order them. And review after review said 'DO NOT buy THESE tires - they are horrible in snow and mud!' I ended up calling a tire shop in Ruidoso - they're at an elevation of approx 7,500' and told them what I needed, and he said 'Buy THESE OTHER tires, I equip the Ruidoso Downs Police Department with them and they're very happy.' I told him okay, let me do a little internet digging, and I'll call you back. Review after review were along the lines of 'I'm a first responder, and THESE OTHER tires are so incredible that I've equipped every car in my family with them!' After I got THESE OTHER tires on my car, after our first decent snow there was maybe 4-5" of snow on the ground and we decided to go down the mountain for dinner. I had Russet drive my car, and we took the long way out of the village. She very quickly remarked 'These are really good tires!' I ended up buying two sets of tires from them. I now get tires from another place in Alamogordo and have been very satisfied, but all they do for me is tires.

ANYWAY....

Started using another place for oil changes, I'd used them before and they'd been consistently good, and they continued to be good. For whatever reason the site they were in kicked them out, or they went out of business, I don't know what. The guy moved to another location which felt kinda skeevy. I needed new brake pads done all-around: the rears didn't really need 'em, but they were down over half-way, so I figured why not. After I got home, I found out that two or three of my lug nuts had been replaced! I have aluminum rims, it was quite obvious. The factory lug nuts were nice chrome dome caps, these replacements were standard nuts where the remainder of the bolt was exposed.

So that was it for him.

I started using the Toyota dealership since basically an oil change is an oil change, and as long as they used the right filter and weight of oil, it was fine. No worries there.

While driving to/from Las Cruces, I noticed a new oil change place next to the interstate. I looked them up, and they're a nationwide chain that's a drive-up and you stay in your car. I decided to try them, and I've been pretty happy. They give us a fleet discount on our cars since we work for the university, which is cool, and they're going to build a location in Alamogordo - eventually. I know where it's going - I thought, could be a second site that's now under prep - we'll see how soon it opens.

ANYWAY, they do a variety of services. Engine air filters, cabin air filters, wiper blades, tranny fluid, differential fluid, and probably some others of which I'm not aware. Last change, perhaps a month ago, they offered to do the differentials on my Crosstrek, now ten years old with 170,000+ miles on it. In my brain I did an 'OOPS! Shoulda done that a long time ago!' So I had it done. And they showed me the drain plug which has a magnet embedded in it to act as a trap for metal shavings that are kind of a normal thing when you have metal-on-metal contact.

Not long after that, I started hearing a speed-dependent whine from my car. Not a good thing. Speed goes up, whine pitch goes up. No other symptoms: no acceleration hesitation, RPMs are steady, speed is steady, mileage is nominal.

On October 11, I'm heading for Phoenix. I'm probably going to be driving approximately 1,200 miles round-trip on this little jaunt. And I wanted to know what's going on before I hit the road. Today I took my car to Firestone. I figured the probable suspect was that the oil change shop didn't tighten the differential drain plug sufficiently and it was low on fluid.

I was wrong. It's the transmission.

It's a continuously-variable tranny, a CVT. For the most part, Subaru doesn't do conventional manual transmissions anymore, most car makers are moving to CVTs as they're more fuel efficient. (Yes, I can drive a stick, no problem. I've owned three cars with sticks, and driven two of Russet's with manual transmissions.) Anyway, the guys at Firestone took my car for a test drive and heard the noise, but being much more experienced and trained mechanics, decided to test the transmission, and found that it was shifting late. Like when it should have been shifting at around 2,500 RPM, it was shifting at around 4,300.

Not good.

So Russet's car, having just gotten back from a jaunt to Phoenix then on to Las Vegas and back, is returning to Phoenix next week. It changes my planning a bit as I was needing to get a different repair done on my car, and also wanted to get the seats shampooed or maybe the entire interior detailed. Clearly that's not going to happen. The Firestone manager gave me the name of an excellent transmission guy in Las Cruces who has the needed equipment to diagnose and repair CVTs and is really good at them - and specifically has worked on Subaru CVTs before! - I'll be calling him Monday. The Firestone manager said that as far as he'd heard, transmission repairs took about four days, there's no way we can accommodate that before I leave, so it'll probably be late October before we can get my car serviced properly and we'll have to hope for the best. It's not going to be cheap: I've never had to deal with a transmission problem, this will be my first major repair on a car, basically since forever!

But the best thing? FIRESTONE DIDN'T CHARGE ME ANYTHING! They don't do transmission work beyond changing fluid and filters, and what I need is far beyond that. The manager said that they could go ahead and do another flush and fill on the differential, but it wasn't needed, so they weren't charging me for the diagnostics.

I was a very happy customer leaving there. I've used Firestone a lot in the decades that I've been driving, I'm particularly fond of their lifetime alignment and have used that often. Needless to say I shall be going on Yelp and Google to leave five-star reviews for the place.

But Monday and Thursday, I'll be cleaning up Russet's car and my car so hers is ready for me to drive and mine is ready for her to drive.

And after mine is fixed up after I get back, then I'll have to set up the other repair that I need, and the seat shampoo/detailing that I want done, and deal with that. Maybe at the Tucson dealership that we bought it from.

Russet is out of town right now, she's up near Las Vegas at a fanfic gathering this weekend. I stayed home as I have to go to Phoenix in a few weeks to deal with some unpleasantness and didn't want to overly deprive the library of my glorious presence. Fortunately the gathering will rollover my membership from this year to next, so we'll save a little on that. ANYWAY, on Saturday nights normally they'll go out and see a movie if something fun is showing that's particularly fannish or slashy, and not much is out right now of that ilk. So they fired up Netflix and showed K-Pop Demon Hunters!

And since I also have Netflix.... I fired it up and watched it at pretty much the same time they were watching it two states away!

This is an animated movie that released theatrically a month or so ago. And it was a blast. A trio of young women (older teens?) are a pop group called Huntr/x that are hugely famous and popular. Secretly they are demon hunters, keeping Korea (and the world?) safe from the demon horde of Gwi-Ma as their songs reinforce a shield called the Honmoon. Gwi-Ma sends a boy band of demons - the Saja Boys - to interfere with Huntr/x and destroy their plans to finalize the seal of the Honmoon. Things go great, things go bad, total chaos - cats and dogs living together. Well, birds with hats and too many eyes and cat/tigers that look to me like they came from a Miyazaki film (very cool).

It was riotously funny, I was laughing out loud at it (but I have notoriously questionable taste). The music was great, and they did a fantastic job with the mix so that you could actually hear and understand the singing! They really played up the tropes of: girls instantly falling in love with boy band performers, automatic choreography and singing synchronization, etc. But you did actually get to see the girls rehearsing for an important performance.

I thought it was a lot of fun for a very silly, animated movie. Russet didn't care for it as much, saying (via text): "Well. That was. Something". If you're interested but hesitant, I'd suggest watching the four or so trailers that Netflix has with it. That should set your opinion firmly one way or another.

"Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels today ended the professional careers of five 'Aryan' actors and cabaret announcers by expelling them from the Reich's Chamber of Culture on the grounds that 'in their public appearances they displayed a lack of any positive attitude toward National Socialism and therewith caused grave annoyance in public and especially to party comrades.'"
-- New York Times, Feb. 3, 1939

A friend of mine sent me a copy from the archive. Fun times, eh?