Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Pope Leo issues an encyclical about artificial intelligence

2026-05-28T19:48:07Z

This came out two weeks ago, and I'm not commenting on it as I'm reading it right now: I just converted it to an epub and at 43,000 words it's about 80 pages long in a double-page format on my laptop. It's going to take some time to chew through and form opinions on. There's definitely a lot to think about.

In it, he quotes Gandalf! Some commentators have proclaimed it as a slam against Peter Theil who created the Palantir [company/system] and is decidedly using it not for the betterment of humanity.

If anyone would like a copy of an epub of the encyclical, send me your email address as a private message and I'll send it to you. It's only 95k, so easily fits as an attachment.

An Ars Technica article on the encyclical:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/citing-gandalf-pope-leo-says-we-must-disarm-ai/

The inevitable Slashdot page on the encyclical:
https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/26/0441241/pope-leo-warns-of-risks-from-ai-in-42300-word-encyclical

And the actual encyclical!
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

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S. Korea Starbucks CEO sacked after disastrous Tank Day promotion

2026-05-25T08:20:56Z

Oh, boy!

This guy is apparently an ultra-nationalist type and decided to do a Tank Day promotion. In South Korea, this was something that happened in 1980, a time when South Korea was being ruled by a military dictatorship. There was a brutal crack-down on pro-democracy protesters and a lot of people died when an unidentified person ordered troops to open fire on the protesters. A lot of people also just disappeared and still haven't been accounted for.

The CEO decided to 'celebrate' Tank Day, obviously a severely tone-deaf idea, which included special Tank Day tumblers and mugs. The public responded with videos of said tumblers and mugs being destroyed with hammers and such, along with other Starbucks merch being destroyed. The article goes on to report people getting refunds on prepaid gift cards and deleting their Starbucks smartphone apps. When word finally reached the USA HQ, he was fired. Starbucks Global announced that the CEO was no longer employed by the corporation and was no longer in that role.

The company that owns just over 2/3rds of Starbucks South Korea, Shinsegae Group, saw their stock take a 5.5% dive in trading.

From the article, "...Shinsegae Group Chairman Chung Yong-jin also issued a public apology.

“I deeply bow in apology as the representative of the group,” Chung said. The marketing “deeply hurt the public, the bereaved families, and the victims of the May 18 demonstration.”

Also from the article, the President of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung said on Twitter that "...he was “enraged” by Starbucks’ campaign and demanded it apologize to families of people killed during the uprising."

One more lesson on how to utterly ruin your high-paying career.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/19/starbucks-korea-head-fired-after-tank-day-promotion-sparks-public-uproar.html

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Functional strength vs body builders

2026-05-21T23:46:24Z

This is hilarious! You only need the first six minutes until you get to his first commercial, the rest of the video is just more of the same. But it is funny.

I saw another video that explained. "Anatoly" is actually named Vladimir and placed 3rd in his weight class in a world championship. He's a pretty serious lifter, just happens to be a bit on the small side at 78 kg. So basically it's world champion-class vs gym rats.

But I love the mop!

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Anthropic AI attended a multi-faith religion confab after hosting one with Christian leaders

2026-05-18T20:41:39Z

In early April, Anthropic hosted a two-day gathering of 15 Christian leaders to discuss Claude's "morality and spiritual development" at its HQ. Ignoring the concept of coding morals into software and the fact that different groups of the same religion who ostensibly follow the same core book have different interpretations, you do have the problem of this being just one core religion. And Anthropic took some heat for just meeting with representatives of Christian religions,

In early May, Anthropic and OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, joined a conference that included scholars from the "...New York Board of Rabbis, the Hindu Temple Society of North America, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the U.S.-based Sikh Coalition, and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America...". I note the absence of Hindu, Buddhist, atheists, Native American and Shamanistic traditions, Druidic and Wiccan traditions, and any number of other faiths. Heck, having the Church of Satan present would have certainly livened things up! But this was an invitational gathering called the Faith-AI Covenant, so they're just being a little representative, not remotely all-inclusive.

LLMs have a 'rule book' that are supposed to dictate some of their behavior. In the case of Anthropic's Claude, it's called a constitution. As of a month ago, it was 29,000 words. That's probably pretty complex. Considering how self-contradictory religious texts can be, do you want to code that into a rule book?

The companies making chatbots have a big problem. People using them have been talked into committing homicide, suicide, experimenting with drugs to the point of fatal overdoses, etc. While they say their programs are designed to be protective, their behavior shows that it is anything but.

Martin Luther King Jr. had a great quote: 'Our technology has so out-stripped our morals that we now have guided missiles and un-guided men.' It's relatively easy to guide a missile with radar, GPS, and terrain-matching optics/computers. But to code morals into a computer, based on religion - especially with several competing religions contributing?

I think you're going to end up with an almost HAL-9000 scenario, or any number of other scenarios where the program is paralyzed by the contradictions and mismatches within and between the various faiths. Ethics and morality are tricky codes, and they don't have to come from religion, and if you try to dictate them from religion, it's a great way to get the Crusades and any number of other horrible things.

I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think this is it.

Gizmodo article from last month on the Christian gathering:
https://gizmodo.com/how-do-we-make-sure-that-claude-behaves-itself-anthropic-invited-15-christians-for-a-summit-2000743766

Washington Post article re: Christian gathering, much more in-depth:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/04/11/anthropic-christians-claude-morals/

Gizmodo article on latest multi-faith gathering:
https://gizmodo.com/anthropic-has-added-several-more-religions-on-its-quest-to-inject-perfect-morals-into-claude-2000756740

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Lake Tahoe residents abandoned by its energy supplier who wants to power AI data centers

2026-05-16T18:30:53Z

Ah, capitalism at its finest!

49,000 California residents of the area get their power from California-based Liberty Utilities, who get their power from Nevada-based NV Energy, and come May 2027, NV is going to start sending its power to data centers because it can make more money.

Lake Tahoe is an Alpine lake that is divided by the California/Nevada border, most of it on the California side. It looks to me like most of the residents are on the western/California side.

California regulators can't do much because it's a Nevada utility. Nevada won't do much of anything because it's California residents that have the problem and thus is not their ~~voters/tax-payers~~responsibility.

From the article, emphasis mine: "However, NV Energy representatives pushed back on the idea that data centers are the main culprit behind the decision to stop supplying energy to the Lake Tahoe community, telling Fortune that it was part of a long-term transition predating the AI boom. After NV Energy initially sold its California assets to Liberty in 2009, it struck a series of temporary agreements to keep providing power to Lake Tahoe until Liberty could secure another energy supplier.

Now, for whatever reason, NV Energy has decided it cannot keep extending such agreements. That leaves Liberty scrambling to find a new energy supplier as it plans to offer a replacement contract for any bidders capable of meeting California’s renewable energy requirements." *cough* more money from data centers *cough*

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/energy-supplier-abandons-lake-tahoe-residents-to-serve-data-centers/

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Do router reboots help home network performance?

2026-05-12T15:10:40Z

Short answer? Probably not.

This writer has a complex home network. Mesh-enabled, lots and lots of devices plugged into it, a decent-sized family using it heavily. And he did some benchmarking at various times of the day, testing throughput with multiple benchmarks, resetting the router, then doing it again. Not rigorously scientific, but still demonstrative. The result? Didn't make much of a difference.

So he talked to some router manufacturers. And the responses were pretty uniform: modern routers are highly engineered and pretty robust, they're designed to be reliable and have high uptime. If you're having performance issues, the problem most likely lies elsewhere: computer needs a restart, network issue with your ISP, poor network design (you might benefit from a mesh or a faster connection). Or you may need a better/newer router. And, of course, keep your router's firmware updated for performance purposes and to ensure it's patched for the latest security updates.

Do I reboot ours very often? Nah. We have occasional power outages, in which case I'll shut off our UPS which will power off the router. The funny thing is that I read this article last night in bed before I went to sleep, and during the night Russet was working and our ISP had a network shutdown for maintenance. The first thing she did? Reset the router. Didn't make any difference since the upstream network was dead.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3125791/i-rebooted-my-router-and-busted-reddits-favorite-tech-myth.html

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Researcher shows Microsoft's Edge browser stores saved passwords in memory in plaintext!

2026-05-07T19:36:35Z

A security researcher did some poking around and discovered a bad thing with the Edge browser. Every browser wants you to trust them with your passwords and credit card data. At least in the case of Edge and passwords, that trust may be unwarranted.

The researcher stored a password and then captured all the memory. And found the password in plaintext. Unencrypted, unhashed. Completely readable. Microsoft dismissed this finding, saying that the computer would have to be compromised by malware for this to be a vulnerability.

Well, guess what. COMPUTERS GET COMPROMISED BY MALWARE ON A REGULAR BASIS. THIS IS A PROBLEM.

The Edge browser is based on Google's Chrome browser. There are many browsers based on Chrome, and apparently they take the very minimal resources required to encrypt or hash said passwords.

No word if this problem exists on Edge browser on other operating systems such as Mac.

Now, here's the really bonus extra-stupid thing. If I'm a user on a computer, and I want to view a password for a web site, I HAVE TO ENTER MY LOGIN PASSWORD TO VIEW IT. It's already been decrypted and stuffed into memory in plaintext, but I have to authenticate myself to view it!

This is quite an amazing level of stupidity. The amount of CPU resources required to decrypt one password for one web site is miniscule. There is zero reason to decrypt all of those passwords and stuff them into ram where any malware can steal them.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/researcher-finds-microsoft-edge-stored-passwords-load-in-plaintext

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/06/2014204/microsoft-edge-stores-passwords-in-plaintext-in-ram

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The new Murderbot novella(?) is out!

2026-05-05T07:00:02Z

It released Tuesday at midnight, the title is Platform Decay. One thing that's nice about buying mostly ebooks is instant access. :-) The author, Martha Wells, recently announced that the next book may be the last in the series, especially since she only has one more under contract. She said that she's happy where SecUnit is and she doesn't want the series to go on indefinitely, plus she's happily at work on a new fantasy series, of which she has two books out right now.

She also has the Murderbot Apple TV show to work with, we shall see how long that series continues.

This book is clocking in at 170-180 pages.

https://www.polygon.com/murderbot-diaries-series-finale-martha-wells-interview/

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Fight fire with.... infrasound?

2026-05-03T23:51:43Z

This is pretty cool. A startup founded by a former NASA engineer has created a device for extinguishing fire with infrasound: super low frequency sound waves that literally push the oxygen away from the fire, denying the fire of one of the things that it needs for combustion!

It's safe to be around when it's in operation as it doesn't destroy or deplete the oxygen in the area, i.e. you won't asphyxiate, and being low frequency it won't damage the hearing of people or pets. In the video there's a demonstration of the device in use on a simulated oil pan kitchen fire, which it extinguishes in under 30 seconds.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, such as will it activate again if the fire reignites, what are long-term maintenance requirements, what about furniture, mattress, or electrical fires, crosswinds, etc. So far, the company hasn't released any specifics as to how its testing is being conducted, nor have any units been released for third parties to verify testing conditions or parameters.

The company also hopes that the unit could be used to fight wildfires, such as mounted on the front of bulldozers. It's working with one California wildfire agency to see if such testing can be done.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/startup-says-sound-waves-can-replace-fire-sprinklers-experts-arent-so-sure/

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Terry Pratchett's Discworld ebooks on sale!

2026-04-28T16:05:04Z

Today is his birthday, Amazon and the Apple bookstores are selling the Discworld ebooks for $1.99. I don't know if this offer is only good in the USA.

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Good news for book store lovers

2026-04-28T15:18:49Z

There's an online book seller, Bookshop.org, started in January 2020. They give EIGHTY PERCENT OF THEIR PROFITS BACK TO INDEPENDENT BOOK STORES! 80%! That is pretty darn cool!

And it's having an effect.

When Amazon launched in 1995, there were 5,000 members in the American Booksellers Association. In 2019, 1,889.

The ABA has now grown to over 3,200 members, and Bookshop.org has donated over $47 MILLION to independent bookshops! When you make a purchase from them, you can designate the donation part of your purchase to go to sellers in your area or into a general pool.

What's even better is people are changing Amazon Affiliate links to links going to Bookshop.org!

In my area, the only place that you can buy new books is still Walmart, used books it's thrift shops and the Friends of the Library site at the mall. 90 minutes to Las Cruces or 2+ hours to El Paso to get to B&N. I doubt that's going to change here.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91529634/independent-bookstore-day-bookshop-org-founder-on-how-small-retailers-are-taking-on-amazon

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/27/052242/america-now-has-70-more-bookstores-than-in-2020-says-bookshoporg-founder

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I did something mildly clever with my iPhone recently

2026-04-27T18:30:53Z

I have a recurring problem with my phone at work/the university. It doesn't want to maintain its registration with the campus WiFi. And this is a problem because I use it as a part of my work process. I run the Apple iCloud app on my desktop PC and copy book information into the Notes app so that when I'm working in the stacks to pull books that I need, I can just look at my phone. But since it's not connecting to the WiFi, I have to manually turn OFF the WiFi in order for Notes to sync!

So I did some querying, and aside from having to adapt it from old information (older version of IOS), I set up an automation!

Now my phone watches for geofencing, and when I arrive at school, it automatically turns off WiFi! And when I leave school, turns it back on!

It's working quite reliably. I only wish I'd thought of it a couple of years ago. Fortunately my laptop doesn't seem to have a problem maintaining its WiFi registration.

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Happy Blog Bday to me!

2026-04-26T08:21:12Z

I just got an email that my Live Journal blog is 22 years old now! Started it in ~~2002~~2004 after my friends and I did a mass exodus from Network 54 when they went weird. Then in 2017 on the 13th of January, I started my Dreamwidth side and ported everything over when LJ was not only sold to a Russian company, but the servers were relocated to Russian territory. So I'll get my 10-year anniversary with DW in the middle of the forthcoming January. Yay. ;-)

And I'll continue manually cross-posting to my LJ blog as DW will remain my primary blog. I wish the automatic cross-post would start working again, but I expect that won't happen until Russia loses the war in Ukraine once and for all and withdraws and loosens up on the information flow chokehold that it maintains on its people.

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There's a new Penric & Desdemona book out!

2026-04-25T06:42:52Z

The title is Darksight Dare and it dropped a couple of days ago.

HOWEVER, there may be a problem with the Kindle release. There are reports that the edition that was available as soon it released was only about half there. The Apple edition was complete.

I haven't read it yet, I'm working on a 'making of' book of Monty Python's Life of Brian! As it is one of my absolute favorite books of all time, it has a little priority. I'll read the Bujold next.

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RIP: Dave Mason, 79

2026-04-22T03:19:55Z

If you're into older rock, Dave Mason is a name a name that you'll either recognize right off the bat or you won't. But when you hear the people whom he's worked with, and what he's done, then you start to wonder if you haven't heard of him.

Here's the first two paragraphs from the Variety obit:
"Dave Mason, solo artist, a founding member of the band Traffic, writer of the classic rock songs “Feelin’ Alright” and “Hole in My Shoe” and sideman to the Rolling Stones, George Harrison and Jimi Hendrix, has died, according to an announcement from his publicist. He was 79.

Mason was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the other original members of Traffic in 2004. In the 1970s he enjoyed solo hits with “Only You Know and I Know” and “We Just Disagree,” and over the years he also performed or recorded with David Crosby, Graham Nash, Michael Jackson, Cass Elliot, Leon Russell and others."

Let me repeat some of those names. A founding member of Traffic. The Rolling Stones. George Harrison. Jimi Hendrix (he played 12 string guitar on All Along The Watchtower). Crosby and Nash. Michael Jackson. Momma Cass. He also was a member of Fleetwood Mac. Feelin' Alright was not a hit for Traffic, but it pretty much launched Joe Cocker's career.

AND inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

A singer, writer, and performer. Triple threat. Definitely a formidable and accomplished artist. Cause of death was not released, though two years ago he cancelled a tour due to unspecified heart issues.

A great one has taken his final bow.

https://variety.com/2026/music/obituaries-people-news/dave-mason-dead-traffic-feelin-alright-rock-hall-fame-1236727460/

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Doonesbury Say What

2026-04-19T17:59:00Z

"I think it's time [the pope] starts to get questioned. Donald Trump takes questions all the time. Nobody gets to ask the pope a single thing. And I think it's time and I would like to offer myself as the person to go interview the pope. I think I'm uniquely qualified. I studied Latin, theology, went to Catholic Church for 12 years."
-- Sean Hannity

And you've been spreading lies and distorting news for 27 years on Fox. You may have studied it, but clearly you didn't absorb it and don't practice it except possibly in a superficial way.

And perhaps the brain-dead POTUS does take questions all the time. He deviates and avoids answering them at all costs, insults those who asks them, and lies to avoid any possibility of accurately answering them. You really can't compare him to the Pope. And if you think you can, then your much further gone than I thought.

I expect people ask the Pope questions on a regular basis. There's a difference between asking a question and questioning the basis of their reasoning, which is what you want to do. You want to ask entrapping questions, "gotchas", to score points with the MAGA base and prop up your boss in the White House. There's no way you want to honestly debate theology because you'd be left a charred pile of ash.

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I just found a cool Excel function!

2026-04-14T19:43:40Z

Well, it's not a cool function, it's an option on a function. Specifically, the Weekday function.

I'm finishing up our taxes. Normally I'd finish them in February or March, but it's been a heck of a few months. One of the things that I do is dump all my prescription drug purchases into a spreadsheet and calculate the day of the week, so I can take a mileage deduction on my state taxes for weekend pickups since I'm not working those days.

Nevermind whether or not we're going to dinner or a movie....

Anyway, the function ends up being:

=IF(WEEKDAY(A1,2)>5,42,"")

A1 is my date field of when the transaction takes place. By default, i.e. without a number changing the day of the week for the date the starting DOW is Sunday = 1. By supplying the 2, you're telling Excel that Monday = 1, therefore if the DOW is greater than 5, it's Saturday or Sunday, therefore the weekend! If that's true, plug in 42 (round trip to Alamogordo and back), otherwise make it a blank cell.

Five trips for an additional 210 miles, at $0.21 per mile towards my state taxes! I have to manually eliminate dupes for multiple transactions on the same day, being multiple drugs refilled and picked up at the same time.

I use spreadsheets a fair amount, but not for anything particularly complex, just as a general purpose tool, so I was kinda chuffed to find this. The question is whether or not I'll remember it for next year!

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Kanye blocked from entering the UK, festival cancelled

2026-04-07T15:23:56Z

Heh. Actions can have consequences, who knew!

He applied for an Electronic Travel Authorization, basically a short-term entry visa to headline the Wireless Music Festival this summer in London. And the Home Office noped out of it, saying "Antisemitism in all its forms is abhorrent, and we recognise the real and personal impact these issues have had. As Ye said today, he acknowledges that words alone are not enough, and in spite of this still hopes to be given the opportunity to begin a conversation with the Jewish community in the UK."

Already purchased tickets will be refunded.

The UK has a policy that convicted felons will not be admitted, I wonder if it will be applied to a certain felon after he leaves office.... one can but hope.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gxk3kxjr0o?utm_source=buzzfeed&utm_medium=iframely

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Assistant Atty General issues opinion saying the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional

2026-04-05T16:50:56Z

Here's a bit of irony. President 45 claimed the PRA as a defense for him keeping records to himself at the end of his first term, now he's got someone in the 'Justice' Dept to say that the law is unconstitutional. Now, the beauty of this is they're not filing a lawsuit in court challenging the law to get it overturned, they're just claiming it's not valid and therefore we're not going to follow it, neener neener.

Pretty clever way of trying to dodge that particular law, scumbags that they are.

The PRA was voted into law in 1978, four years after Richard 'Tricky Dick' Nixon resigned from office in the wake of the Watergate Scandal. The argument that this AAG is making is actually kind of humorous: "The PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress's Article I authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II," he found. "The Act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose.". Funny how the eight presidents since Nixon, including four other Republicans, didn't seem to find it too terribly burdensome.

There's a basic flaw here, in my non-legal opinion. The Constitution and Bill of Rights (which is part of the Constitution) seemingly has always been interpreted sequentially. Amendment 1 (Freedom of Speech) prevails over subsequent Amendments in most cases. Seems to me that Article I authority should prevail over Article II authority: checks and balances.

But IANAL, much less a constitutional attorney. I don't know how people would go about challenging an opinion issued out of the blue. I thought that normally opinions were issued relevant to court cases, in support of one side or the other, or to illustrate a point of law. This opinion is just thrown out there: 'Not gonna do it!' If a case is in front of the SCOTUS and the Justice Dept issues an opinion, then others, such as the ACLU or EFF, can file an amicus brief with a counter-opinion saying 'The Justice Dept's opinion is full of crap and here's the reasons why'.

But what do they do when the opinion is just floated out there without it being attached to a specific case? It's just 'HEY! This is what we now believe!'

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justice-department-presidential-records-act-unconstitutional/

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Recent court decisions don't go The Felon's way!

2026-04-01T06:02:17Z

Ah, sometimes life takes a good turn.

A District Judge ruled that construction on the White House Ballroom must stop, and that it can only continue if approved by Congress! The ruling is notable in the number of exclamation marks present. I do love this quote: ""The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!" Leon wrote."

The Rose Garden can be reconstructed, I have no idea if those were the original rose bushes that Mrs. Kennedy planted all those years ago. But rebuilding the East Wing? That will be one huge job. Of course, guaranteed The Felon will go whining to higher courts and ultimately to the SCOTUS, so we'll see if he gets his way.

His latest White House project is to tear out Tennessee (IIRC) flagstones on a walkway and replace them with black marble. No slip hazard there! It would be nice if he were forced to walk that every day next winter and during rain storms.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/judge-orders-trump-administration-to-halt-white-house-ballroom-construction-unless-congress-oks-it_n_69cc1df6e4b039d10fc770c5

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/31/nx-s1-5768446/judge-rules-white-house-ballroom-construction-must-halt-until-congress-oks-it

Another District Court ruled that The Felon violated the First Amendment when he ordered funding for NPR, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to be withdrawn which had already been approved by Congress. Again, it'll be appealed to infinity. If the funding should be reinstated, what happens with CPB? They've shut down, their people scattered to the winds. I suppose it can be resurrected, but a lot of institutional knowledge has been lost forever.

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/31/nx-s1-5768399/npr-pbs-trump-federal-funding

On March 2, a Federal Appeals Court rejected an appeal from the administration to delay refunding people and companies from the excessive tariff fees that they paid that were found unlawful by the Supreme Court in a ruling in February. The administration asked for 90 days to make plans to start the refunds and to appeal, the court said no. Theoretically they could appeal to the Supreme Court, but since they were the ones who found the tariffs unlawful in the first place, I would expect that they would refuse to hear the case.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-appeals-court-rejects-trump-tariff-refund-delay-supreme-court/

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Babylon 5 is available on YouTube! And other science fiction TV news.

2026-04-01T04:51:36Z

A very seminal science fiction series from the '90s was removed from Tubi and is now available on YouTube starting February 10 this year. They are releasing an episode a week from the beginning, encouraging people to view it at a leisurely pace just like when it originally aired.

With 110 episodes aired, it'll take two years to be fully released. I really enjoyed this show and might re-watch it. I don't know that I've seen the entire series, I think I've seen most of it. LOVE Walter Koenig's character!

The one thing that I wish the article mentioned was whether or not these are the remastered editions. I would expect they are, but who knows. I don't have time to be digging into YouTube right now.

And an interesting trivia fact about the show - which I've mentioned before within the last year - was that all of the space and battle effects were rendered on Amigas! I think that's pretty cool. Not the first use of CGI, but perhaps the first television use of CGI rendered on computers that could pretty much be bought by anyone!

https://cordcuttersnews.com/babylon-5-is-now-free-to-watch-on-youtube/

In sad news, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, tentatively titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale, is currently dead. The rights are still held by Hulu, so there's always a possibility that they might get a shot at another pilot.

One of the main reasons for its failure to fly: the Hulu executive WAS NOT A FAN OF THE SHOW AND NEVER WATCHED IT. Also, it's possible that Hulu was expecting Sarah Michelle Geller to be the star of the remake and they didn't realize that it was to launch a new generation of scoobies with Buffy putting in occasional cameos. False expectations plus a hostile exec in charge = DOOOOOOM.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/buffy-reboot-dead-why-hulu-killed-sarah-michelle-gellar-chloe-zhao-series/ar-AA1YVIZX

In the good news department, Firefly is (theoretically) returning to our TVs again! Nathan Fillion's production company is producing an animated series: the first script is complete, they have the blessing of Disney (the rights holder), and the ENTIRE crew is on board with it! With one exception. The character Shephard Book will be there, but the actor has to be recast as the original actor, Ron Glass, passed away over a decade ago.

This series will be set between the end of the original and the Serenity movie.

Joss Whedon has no involvement in this production, nor did he have involvement in the Buffy relaunch.

As of the Parade's article writing, about two weeks ago, the series was being shopped around for a network home.

Shiny!

https://parade.com/news/firefly-coming-back-as-animated-series

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The heat island effect of data centers!

2026-03-31T16:17:35Z

Two things up front - not all data centers are AI data centers. And this article is a pre-print and has not yet been peer-reviewed.

A recent article in New Scientist, sadly pay-walled, shows that a data center can warm the surrounding area by 9C - that's 16 degrees Fahrenheit! It's ground-level, it's in the air. This completely ignores the noise pollution, including subsonic, of the enormous amount of cooling fans. A lot of the heat is from water-cooling, and the heated water is frequently directly released as steam with no attempt to cool it or reclaim it before direct venting.

One researcher said follow-up needs to be done to see how much is the systems internal to the building generating heat versus the sun directly heating up these huge buildings with large direct surface areas heating up. More than a bit of both, in my casual estimation.

As I said, the New Scientist article is pay-walled. Frequently Slashdot posters will post alternate links, but none have appeared yet. I think it's likely this might be picked up by Ars Technica or Gizmodo today or tomorrow, I'll post an additional link if I can.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2521256-ai-data-centres-can-warm-surrounding-areas-by-up-to-9-1c/

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/03/30/2337240/ai-data-centers-can-warm-surrounding-areas-by-up-to-91c

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Another source of microplastics: the gloves that researchers wear!

2026-03-31T16:02:56Z

Researchers have just discovered that the latex and nitrile gloves that they wear while researching microplastics shed... microplastics!

*facepalm*

So now in addition to the lab equipment sensitivity being questionable, we now have the concept of the readings having a thumb on the scale from the scientist's attempts to keep a sterile environment while unintentionally shedding the very thing that they're trying to measure.

The solution is clear. The researchers should be wearing leather or asbestos gloves. That would be easy to subtract out from the findings.

Okay, I'm overstating things. It's not the gloves per se.

From the article: "The contamination comes from stearates, which are not plastics but can closely resemble them during testing. Because of this, scientists may be detecting particles that are not true microplastics. To reduce this issue, U-M researchers Madeline Clough and Anne McNeil recommend using cleanroom gloves, which release far fewer particles.

Stearates are salt-based, soap-like substances added to disposable gloves to help them separate easily from molds during manufacturing. However, their chemical similarity to certain plastics makes them difficult to distinguish in lab analyses, increasing the risk of false positives when studying microplastic pollution.

The researchers emphasize that this does not mean microplastics are not a real problem."

I didn't know there was an additional category of clean-room gloves, but this isn't really my field. Cool stuff. I'm sure there are other types of these gloves, too.

The Science Daily article is an interesting read and doesn't get excessively sciency.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260329222938.htm

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Thanks, AI! "Sony Shuts Down Nearly Its Entire Memory Card Business Due to Flash Shortage"

2026-03-30T16:59:59Z

The subject says it all. Due to the on-going shortage of RAM, Sony is shutting down production of CFexpress and SD memory cards effective last Friday.

The only cards remaining in production are: "960GB CFexpress Type B card and the lowest-end SF-UZ series SD cards remain in production. However, those UHS-I SD cards are discontinued in the United States outside of a scant few retailers and resellers." So if you are truly devoted to Sony memory cards, buy them NOW!

In other Sony news, they've had TWO price increases on the Play Station 5 this year already!

https://petapixel.com/2026/03/27/sony-shuts-down-nearly-its-entire-memory-card-business-due-to-ssd-shortage/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/03/30/0345230/sony-shuts-down-nearly-its-entire-memory-card-business-due-to-ssd-shortage

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RIP: Chuck Norris, Nicholas Brendon, and Robert Mueller

2026-03-29T23:36:56Z

Two weeks ago saw some notable deaths. Starting with Walker, Texas Ranger.

Chuck Norris was admitted to a hospital in Hawaii with an undisclosed condition and passed away the next day. He was 86. Chuck was the real deal when it came to martial arts: he was a genuine fighter and invented his own style. He fought Bruce Lee in one movie and went on to starring in his own action series, becoming quite a viable icon on his own. Delta Force was one shoot-'em-up what was pretty big for him. Later he moved to television in Walker, Texas Ranger, slowing down his moves a bit as he aged.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/chuck-norris-dead-obituary

Nicholas Brendon, 54, to older fans, will always be Xander Harris on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, initially a slightly buffoonish character in the 'damsel in distress' role who gained some competency as the series went on. He had an identical twin who co-starred in one memorable episode. He had previously suffered a heart attack from a then-unknown heart condition, had several spinal surgeries for a congenital condition, and like many young actors, he was also known to have addiction problems which may have hastened his demise. He is the second Buffy actor to pass away after Michelle Trachtenberg (2025). Brendon also appeared in Criminal Minds, Without A Trace, and Private Practice.

https://gizmodo.com/buffy-star-nicholas-brendon-has-passed-away-at-age-54-2000736404

Robert Mueller. The former director of the FBI and a special prosecutor passed away at 81, he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's four years earlier. He served in Vietnam and was wounded rescuing another soldier, earning a Bronze Star. He became a lawyer after leaving the military, ultimately joining the Justice department prosecuting homicides in DC. Later he was appointed to head the FBI by George W. Bush a week before the 9/11 attacks. He then shifted the focus of the FBI to fighting terrorism, an understandable reorientation considering the times, and left the Bureau in 2013.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein brought him back in 20917 as a special counsel to investigate the Russian involvement in the 2016 elections after the President fired the director, James Comey, and that's when the fun began. Mueller's final report on election interference did not exonerate President Trump, but he felt that it was not proper for criminal charges to be brought against a sitting President, that the Senate should fist remove him from office, then charges should be levied. Trump, of course, viewed the report as a full exoneration.

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/21/nx-s1-5755800/robert-s-mueller-iii-ex-fbi-director-who-led-2016-russia-inquiry-dead-at-81

Our "Beloved" President, the class act that he always is, said on a 'Truth' Social post minutes after Mueller's death was announced - direct quote - "Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!".

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/trump-rejoiced-i-m-glad-he-s-dead-just-minutes-after-it-was-announced-robert-mueller-had-died/ar-AA1Z8lVW

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