Article note: Oh good, sanity has prevailed before things got _really_ bad, and all we got was a market crash, a massive weakening of US foreign interests by damaging the dollar as a reserve currency, and a few weeks of crony capitalism exception/extortion shenanigans.
I suppose now Donnie Dipshit is going to announce what a brilliant and powerful negotiator he is and the cult members will believe him.
IT projects may remain in limbo due to deal being far from final, but markets are up, so Trump'll declare a win
world war fee The impending disaster of trade-freezing tariffs on Chinese imports to the US has been averted, but like a Chinese cargo ship anchored off the coast of California, it's not gone entirely.…
Article note: I'm very much a copyright minimalist, I think the terms should be shorter and private use exceptions broader... and even I think the mass infringement of recent works for commercial use by the AI douches is gross.
Some see an action to benefit Elon. The White House sees an agency obsessed with DEI
The head of the US Copyright Office has reportedly been fired, the day after agency concluded that builders of AI models use of copyrighted material went beyond existing doctrines of fair use.…
Article note: Super useful for putting together effective devices from questionable China export parts. Would love to have similar results for a range of sensing devices.
Oleg Tarasov has tested six temperature sensors for use in a thermostat project.
A crucial step towards my goal of individual room temperature control is to be able to measure current room temperature with precision and minimum amount of lag.
Important note: all of my sensors were sourced from China, and most of them from AliExpress. I did not get my sensors from official distributors, so there is a real possibility that all sensors I tested were unreliable knock-offs.
I thought that I’ll just slap together a couple of random sensors, write some code and be done with my per-room thermostats project. Instead, I’m doing this on and off for almost half a year and get a occasional raised eyebrow from my wife while dipping weird-looking stuff in ice water But it’s actually fun and I learn a lot of stuff in the process, and isn’t it this the true goal?
Article note: It's an absolute onion of incompetence.
Doing high-net shit over commercial software on the public internet.
Getting caught doing it by adding the most wrong people possible to your chats, and using your public phone numbers, and letting the media photograph the behavior.
Picking the most secure option... but using a version hacked by an Israeli spyware vendor to allow retention, so you can pretend to comply with records acts.
Getting hacked because said Israeli spyware vendor who appears to have hired a mediocre college student to do the modifications.
It's honestly hard to imaging someone fucking up harder.
A messaging service used by former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has temporarily shut down while the company investigates an apparent hack. The messaging app is used to access and archive Signal messages but is not made by Signal itself.
404 Media reported yesterday that a hacker stole data "from TeleMessage, an obscure Israeli company that sells modified versions of Signal and other messaging apps to the US government to archive messages." 404 Media interviewed the hacker and reported that the data stolen "contains the contents of some direct messages and group chats sent using [TeleMessage's] Signal clone, as well as modified versions of WhatsApp, Telegram, and WeChat."
TeleMessage is based in Israel and was acquired in February 2024 by Smarsh, a company headquartered in Portland, Oregon. Smarsh provided a statement to Ars today saying it has temporarily shut down all TeleMessage services.
Article note: This is really fucking cool.
It's an quite old idea, put together effectively by misusing fairly modern commodity hardware, by applying out-of-spec behavior determined by security research.
Article note: This is a thing folks I know have been hammering on for years and I agree.
Like all manufacturing technologies, 3D printers aren't replicators, there are at least heuristics for what will fabricate well.
It's not too hard to enumerate heuristics, but it turns out to be extremely hard to automate or even hint effectively.
I'm interested to see in the comments that no one else has had much luck automating 3D printing DFM.
Article note: This is a big part of how I design coursework (and _that_ is one of the ways that my having sought out some formal instructional design training differentiates me from many faculty).
The hard part is figuring out how to design exercises that have fronts in the ZPD for a range of students without inappropriately scraping anyone off.
Article note: Aaaand essentially all of my hobbies just got more expensive.
The de minimis exception, which has allowed businesses to import low-value goods without duties from China and Hong Kong, has expired as of 12:01AM ET today as part of President Trump’s executive order signed last month.
Many businesses in the US rely on the de minimis loophole. Any package valued under $800 — including electronics, toys, and clothing from companies like Shein — can come to the US duty-free under the exception, leaving the products supercheap for buyers. In 2024, about 1.4 billion packages entering the US claimed exemption from duties under de minimis. Retailers Shein and Temu have already raised prices to account for tariffs.
The Trump Administration’s new rules will add either a 30 percent fee to the value of every package shipped to the US, or $25 (with an increase to $50 starting June 1st) — a choice every postal carrier must make and apply to all parcels. The new fees are being implemented after Trump hit most Chinese goods with high tariffs last month, launching an escalating trade war that ended with a 145 percent import tax increase. In retaliation, China has added a 125 percent fee on US goods.
Article note: Oh man, Apple just lost _Hard_. This is gonna be fun.
Epic Games v. Apple judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers just ruled that, effective immediately, Apple is no longer allowed to collect fees on purchases made outside apps and blocks the company from restricting how developers can point users to where they can make purchases outside of apps. Apple says it will appeal the order.
The ruling was issued as part of Epic Games’ ongoing legal dispute against Apple, and it’s a major victory for Epic’s arguments. Gonzalez Rogers also says that Apple “willfully” chose not to comply with her previous injunction from her original 2021 ruling. “That [Apple] thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation,” Gonzalez Rogers says.
The judge also referred the case to the US attorney to review it for possible criminal contempt proceedings.
As part of the ruling, the judge says that Apple cannot:
Impose “any commission or any fee on purchases that consumers make outside an app”
Restrict developers’ style, formatting, or placement of links for purchases outside of an app
Block or limit the “use of buttons or other calls to action”
Interfere with consumers’ choice to leave an app with anything beyond “a neutral message apprising users that they are going to a third-party site”
Apple’s senior director of corporate communications, Olivia Dalton, sent a statement to The Verge that reads, “We strongly disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court’s order and we will appeal.”
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says that, following this ruling, the company will bring Fortnite back to the US App Store “next week.” Sweeney is also offering a “peace proposal” from Epic: “If Apple extends the court’s friction-free, Apple-tax-free framework worldwide, we’ll return Fortnite to the App Store worldwide and drop current and future litigation on the topic.”
We will return Fortnite to the US iOS App Store next week.
Epic puts forth a peace proposal: If Apple extends the court's friction-free, Apple-tax-free framework worldwide, we'll return Fortnite to the App Store worldwide and drop current and future litigation on the topic. https://t.co/bIRTePm0Tv
In many cases, Apple takes a 30 percent cut of purchases made in its apps, and Gonzalez Rogers’ 2021 ruling forced Apple to allow developers to point to alternative payment options. But Apple instituted a policy that demanded developers pay Apple a 27 percent commission on those purchases, which many companies, including Epic, were unhappy about.
“In the end, Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this Court’s Injunction,” Gonzalez Rogers says. She notes that, inside Apple, App Store chief Phil Schiller advocated for the company to comply with the injunction, but that CEO Tim Cook “chose poorly” by ignoring Schiller and letting CFO Luca Maestri “convince him otherwise.”
Article note: Neat! I hadn't seen intrusive reflow soldering before, but it's logical and seems like a great way to avoid both manufacturing costs and common sources of defects.
Getting the hang of through-hole soldering is tricky for those of us tinkering at home with our irons, spools, flux, and, sometimes, braids. It's almost reassuring, then, to learn that through-hole soldering was also a pain for a firm that has made more than 60 million products with it.
Raspberry Pi boards have a combination of surface-mount devices (SMDs) and through-hole bits. SMDs allow for far more tiny chips, resistors, and other bits to be attached to boards by their tiny pins, flat contacts, solder balls, or other connections. For those things that are bigger, or subject to rough forces like clumsy human hands, through-hole soldering is still required, with leads poked through a connective hole and solder applied to connect and join them securely.
The Raspberry Pi board has a 40-pin GPIO header on it that needs through-hole soldering, along with bits like the Ethernet and USB ports. These require robust solder joints, which can't be done the same way as with SMT (surface-mount technology) tools. "In the early days of Raspberry Pi, these parts were inserted by hand, and later by robotic placement," writes Roger Thornton, director of applications for Raspberry Pi, in a blog post. The boards then had to go through a follow-up wave soldering step.
But it’s actually fun and I learn a lot of stuff in the process, and isn’t it this the true goal?
