Life is pretty scary right now. Here’s a sunset reflected in a rock polished by the waves.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wanted to have at least 5 Saudi universities among the top 200 in the world by 2030.

So he paid lots of scientists to falsely claim they worked in Saudi Arabia! Some got up to €70,000 a year just for pretending to work there.

Unfortunately they got caught. The newspaper El Pais exposed the scam.

In 2022, Saudi Arabia had 109 professors on the List of Highly Cited Researchers, compiled by Clarivate. After a bunch got caught, the number dropped to 26. 🤣

Someone should carefully check those 26 researchers.

In fact this "List of Highly Cited Researchers" is a fraud magnet. As of 2024, one in three apparently highly cited researchers has been caught engaging in bad practices.

This is a great example of Goodhart's Law: ""When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

Thanks to @mansr for pointing this out.

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-12-05/dozens-of-the-worlds-most-cited-scientists-stop-falsely-claiming-to-work-in-saudi-arabia.html

Experts detail how the Trump administration has seriously weakened the public-private partnerships that protect US critical infrastructure from cyberattacks (Eric Geller/Cybersecurity Dive)

https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/critical-infrastructure-cybersecurity-partnerships-disruption-trump-government-industry/751589/
http://www.techmeme.com/250628/p3#a250628p3

One of my least favorite items to find is the infamous 'spicy pillow'. When lithium batteries start to fail, gasses build up inside the cells and they expand. Because the breakdown process produces both it's own fuel and oxygen, they can explode or catch fire, at which point the fire is almost impossible to extinguish. They'll even burn in an airtight container or completely underwater.

@SecureOwl

In other news, I'd like to know:

It's 2025:
Why do we still NOT have any form of government-issued ID that can do challenge-response with a published API for it? (*)

(*) so that you can demonstrate to a 3rd party that you HAVE govt-issued ID without making it available to identity thieves.

Found this oddity while hiking today. After poking and prodding it, I think it's a russula that's been parasatized by another fungus of some sort, perhaps similar to the way lobster mushrooms form. #FungiFriday #athensoh #mushroom

And in a shocking twist that everyone saw coming, users of Ring are now reporting that their posts warning others about ICE raids are being restricted/removed.

I accidentally deleted a few gigs of data without knowing where I put the backups. I'm sure it's fine.

"For years, the country’s biggest banks lobbied against a post-2008 financial crisis rule that was intended to shore up their stability and ensure they could withstand steep losses in times of turmoil. This week, financial regulators ... agreed to ease the rule..." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/b...

Wall Street’s Regulatory Reins...

The stories about 10x engineers never include:
• Adding meaningful test coverage
• Updating outdated README sections
• Mentoring junior engineers
• Listening to burned-out coworkers
• Improving on-call runbooks

No glory in these things, but those that do them are the ones you desperately want to keep.

They plant trees they don't expect to sit under.

As Bill Goodykoontz points out, the defense secretary criticizing journalists for not focusing on military recruiting when the US is inserting itself into a war is like demanding reporters at a four-alarm blaze mention how shiny the firetrucks are. https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/media/2025/06/26/trump-hegseth-media-iran/84371183007/

On the CrowdStrike AI layoffs:

"These were not underperformers. Many of them were relatively new hires. [...] So, AI has literally killed many jobs at CrowdStrike this week. I'm fortunate to be among the survivors, but I don't know for how long."

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-ai-is-killing-jobs-in-the-tech-f39

Book authors made the wrong arguments in Meta AI training case, judge says
Judges clash over "schoolchildren" analogy in key AI training rulings.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/book-authors-made-the-wrong-arguments-in-meta-ai-training-case-judge-says/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

New from 404 Media: ICE is using a new facial recognition app to identify people, leaked emails show. Point camera at person, reveal their identity. It uses the CBP system that records peoples' faces as they enter or exit the U.S. Now, turned inwards to be used by ICE https://www.404media.co/ice-is-using-a-new-facial-recognition-app-to-identify-people-leaked-emails-show/

Reddit CEO pledges site will remain “written by humans and voted on by humans”
Reddit is in an “arms race” to protect its communities from AI-generated content.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/reddit-ceo-pledges-site-will-remain-written-by-humans-and-voted-on-by-humans/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Tesla is basically a memecoin at this point. This is from a real article in Fortune. Great news, everyone "Sales dropped ONLY 28% in May despite the overall EV market growing 27%". I can't think of any other company where people would write articles this delusional.

Holy #surveillance hell, Batman.

Let me get this straight:

First, they feed your video, which is already stored in their cloud, into an #AI transformer to write descriptions.

Then they feed your descriptions into a pattern learning system (ML, maybe?) to figure out your patterns and habits.

All of this is stored in the cloud. So they not only have your video, but a narrative about your habits, ready to be exfiltrated, monetized, and shared with law enforcement.

#ai #enshittification #RingCamera

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/25/amazons_ring_ai_video_description/

The Lowes corporate jet just landed at Boeing Field in Seattle. Nothing special about that, its just they requested the mainstream flight tracking apps hide the ID of their aircraft, and whenever some does that it triggers me to look harder and deeper into it than I ever otherwise would to see who owns it. Then I tell as many people as I can about it.

PSA: Vaccination schedules on the CDC website have already started changing under RFK Jr., so Scientific American published a guide to the evidence-based vaccine recommendations in place *before* all 17 members of the advisory panel were abruptly dismissed by the new administration.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-vaccine-recommendations-backed-by-science-in-these-handy-charts/

Is DOGE doomed to fail? Some experts are ready to call it.
Trump wants $45M to continue DOGE’s work. Critics warn costs already too high.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/is-doge-doomed-to-fail-some-experts-are-ready-to-call-it/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social