We don't need everyone. We need enough people who keep showing up — week after week, porch after porch, chapter after chapter. That's always been the whole plan, and it's working. Look what a porch conversation turns into when enough people keep choosing it. This is what we're building, together. #NefeshMinLozen #CommunityOrganizing #Grassroots #QuadCities #Milwaukee
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Built deadwood piles 3 and 4 today. The first one is just a bunch of short and fat-ish cutoffs arranged in a way that offers some protected hideaways for little critters. Two large knotty trunk cutoffs that are impossible to split keep it from sliding downhill.
Number 4 is a large pile of branches which are useless for firewood but too big for the chipper. Drove some sticks into the ground to keep the pile together and filled it up as tightly as I could. Falling leaves will do the rest.
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💥Announcement! Sunday 25.10.2026💥
🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ ⚧️ Soli event for Casa Kuá ⚧️ 🏳️⚧️ 🏳️🌈
Sunday, 25.10.2026 | 6.00 pm | Wildenbruchstraße 24, 12045 Berlin
Directions: Buses 166, 171, M43 to Harzer Straße/Wildenbruchstraße
📣 Call to action: https://demo-ticker-berlin.org/?p=9944 - @dykethewinter
Dear friends,
After the terrible attack on our siblings from @casakua and @thedollsof_berlin we want to come together and raise funds to support them through this painful time, and help cover their legal costs 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
because: PROTECT THE DOLLS
💸 We will have food and drinks on a donation basis
On our lino-printing station you will find some materials to craft love postcards that we will send out.
Our support goes beyond money and we also want to send some uplifting energy! Come share your love! 🩷🤍🩵
All collected funds will be donated to the Casa Kuà & The Dolls Go-Fund-Me campaign (which you can also support even if you don’t come to our event ;))
♿️ Accessibilty information: Venue is wheel chair accessible, ground floor. Toilet is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible.
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[#TRADESHOW] #PTC #ASIA 2026 will be held from November 3 to 6, 2026, at #Shanghai New #International #Expo #Center, #China. As a leading #power #transmission and control #trade #exhibition in Asia, the #event brings together #manufacturers, #suppliers, #engineers, and #industrial #buyers across the full mechanical and fluid power component #business #valuechain. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/ptc-asia-2026/
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AMN Reviews: Murder Corporation – Macabre Visions (2026; Eighth Tower Records)
Moreno Daldosso debuted Murder Corporation in 1992 and released early tapes in 1993 featuring noise, field recordings, and shortwave radio signals combined with distorted vocals. Macabre Visions is a slower and more intentionally haunting release, better thought of as death ambient rather than the post-industrial noise of Daldosso’s 1990s works.
In a sense, the title says it all. The album begins, continues, and ends with a variety of synth textures, drones, manipulated sounds, and (possibly) field recordings. Each track can be taken as a standalone statement, whether focused on suffocating drones accompanied by heartbeats or shimmering soundscapes with metallic scraping. But put together, these pieces tell a story, and it is a harrowing one.
As an example, Macabre serves as a de facto title track, and begins with murky pulsing sounds. Wordless and disturbing vocalizations add to these strangely cosmic tones. Then a sound wall arises unexpectedly, with synths combined with torture noises, static, and effects. Moans Underground is straight up horror, with twisted screams and chromatic sweeps.
Macabre Visions is a disquieting, yet cinematic and strangely beautiful offering. It is one of a pair of new releases from Murder Corporation, the other being a reissue of 1995’s Disturbance. Both will be available on October 28, 2026 from Eighth Tower Records.
#USG -
Okay, let me get this straight:
Everyone is using AI for everything.
Everyone hates AI.
AI is terrible at everything, including basic arithmetic and writing code.
AI is better than all humans put together at advanced math and cyberattacks.
Coolcoolcool.
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The arena was supposed to mimic a real battlefield, with hills and valleys, small groves of trees, and artificial structures pretending to be buildings.
The rules were simple: everyone meets in the center for the greeting phase for ten minutes; the dispersion phase lasts fifteen minutes while contestants scout the arena and pick their starting position; and the engagement phase lasts until at most one battle-worthy mech is left. Otherwise, everything goes.
Oort was the last to reach the center, and three other mechs were already waiting. They were all bigger than Oort. Thicker armor, larger reactors, more ordnance, and probably most importantly: more surface for sponsor markings.
Incoming EM noise told Oort that they had begun to scan as soon as he was in sensor range.
"Did you cobble that shit together in a fucking shed?" callsign Starcrusher sent over the public channel, the question dripping with disdain. "Your reactor is overheating, and your spec database is unsecured. This ain't the scrapyard leagues; you're making us look cheap."
"Eh, a little warmup won't hurt." callsign Blackwing responded. "With all the radiation, I can lob a shell at that thing over the whole arena."
"A couple missiles, 120 bore gun. You probably can't even get through my armour; you sure you wanna play?" callsign Jahat added.
"I'll manage." Oort answered.
The rest of the ten minutes was filled with banter and, while technically not allowed, hacking attempts.
Dispersion began, and Oort headed towards the structures. All hypercaps were charged, and an AP needle was primed in the railgun. The reactor went offline as well as the noise generators. A drone cloud ejected from Oort's back, quickly zipping towards strategic points, setting up a mesh and feeding back sensor data. Oort hunkered down and waited.
Explosions went off somewhere in the distance. The arena channel announced that Jahat had been eliminated.
Two drones winked out of existence, but another closed the gap and sent a feed of Blackwing sweeping the buidings. Oort relayed a payload activation sequence over the mesh. Blackwing froze and toppled to the ground.
"Don't inspect foreign payloads on the battlefield." Oort sent on a private channel, then extracted the pilot. The explosion of the ejection seat echoed off the buildings.
A couple of minutes later, a projectile arced over the buildings. The EMP shell wiped out a considerable amount of drones. Oort sent a script to the remains of Blackwing and checked the sensors. Reactor and EM signatures were clearly recognizable; the bait was set.
Two missiles rained out of the sky, devastating what was left of Blackwing. With a thump that shook the walls of nearby buildings, Starcrusher landed among the burning wreckage, crushing the remains of the cockpit under his foot. For a fraction of a second, Starcrusher hesitated, scanning the wreckage.
Oort had braced against a sturdy concrete backstop and now dumped all of the remaining hypercaps into the rails. The AP needle shed its sabot and punched a tiny hole through Starcrusher's armor, exactly where the reactor feed should be. Starcrusher slumped into a heap.
"Starcrusher is down, and the winner of the 432th skirmish is... OORT!!" the arena channel proclaimed.
Oort rebooted the reactor, then sighed and switched to the broadcast channel.
"Have you ever needed to communicate on a battlefield? Don't let the enemy listen in! My sponsor WarVPN..."
#writing #tootfic #smallstories #mesofiction #cobble #wss366
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How to Build a Robot with NVIDIA https://www.reddit.com/r/robotics/comments/1xeaa5n/how_to_build_a_robot_with_nvidia/NVIDIA has built a pretty impressive robotics ecosystem, but figuring out how Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, GR00T, Cosmos, Omniverse, and everything else actually fit together can be confusing. So we put together an illustrated walkthrough following a fictional startup building a warehouse humanoid. We go through creating its virtual environment, teaching it through demonstrations,
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More and more often I get asked if one can use my #sewing pattern software to create patterns for men and children.
Well, these are not really my expertise, but I have seen it done! 🙂
I have put together some thoughts about this in this blog post: https://www.dressdeveloper.com/can-you-also-use-my-software-to-create-sewing-patterns-for-men-or-children/
And if you HAVE indeed used my pattern for men or children or "unusual body types" whatsoever, I would be glad to hear about your experience!
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New #review: "By the early 80s, #Ruins was essentially a two-man band featuring #PiergiuseppeCiranna and #AlessandroPizzin, and much of their commercially released output can be found on our artist page, some of which we have reviewed as they are reissued. The collection of 26 tracks at hand represents experimental pieces that were created either individually or together, used for Ruins #multimedia installations in art galleries back in the 80s." #ExposeOnline #ExperimentalMusic #RuinsItaly http://expose.org/index.php/articles/display/ruins-cosa-experimental-works-3.html
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This has been a rough week for cyber defenders. Colleagues, friends, sleepless zombies, I am writing to assure you - the week is dead and over. Good riddance.
Things will be tough for a while, but as usual, good people get together and fix problems. The Sun rises, and we get stuff fixed.
Vulnpocalypse or not, we got this. And, technology will catch up.Until then, risk leaders:
1. We must make the case for an extreme landscape shift, and ask for significantly more budget. If we don't get it - I'd consider leaving for an org that does realize the change. You're in high demand.2. Stay relevant. Get yourself and your people on agents. Secure your agents.
3. Prioritize, and reprioritize. We can't do everything.
4. And while we will keep at it, self-care is not an effin' joke and should be a priority for our teams. Marathon != sprint.
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And as always, when you want to secure your agents - do keep Knostic in mind. -
“In a calm moment, his obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors could be relaxed, even released. The world wasn’t the problem, he could see: thinking about it the wrong way was the problem. String enough calm moments together, and it’s possible to achieve something like a life.”
— Scott F. Parker in “To philosophize is to learn how to say goodbye”
https://philosophynow.org/issues/176/To_Philosophize_is_to_Learn_How_to_Say_Goodbye
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Genetically modified cones rescue visual function in children https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.13.26363794v1 "Gene therapy can restore retinal signals absent since birth in animal models, yet the translation to humans remains challenging."
"After treatment in late childhood, we find clear evidence of new cone signals reaching visual cortex in 4 out of 7 patients."
"Recovery of foveal acuity and canonical colour vision remained limited, consistent with neuroplasticity constraints on specialised neurocircuitry beyond critical developmental windows."
"Together, these findings show that the human brain can incorporate a new sensory signal after years of complete congenital deprivation, while revealing selective bottlenecks that limit full visual recovery."
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Good morning. ☕🫖🍃
24 October 2026
Charlie and I spent part of the morning on the porch of my wife's little quilting shop. There was a welcome chill in the air, enough that I pulled on a sweatshirt before settling in with a Thermos of coffee. We enjoyed the quiet while waiting for the sun to climb above the trees in the east. The porch faces south, so during this time of year it catches the sunlight directly once the day gets underway.
Charlie wandered the yard, following scents and conducting his usual patrol until he had accomplished what he came outside to do. After that, he joined me on the porch, and together we watched the neighborhood slowly come to life.
Yesterday, we noticed a worker using a measuring wheel along the road out front. My curiosity got the better of me, so I walked over and asked what he was working on. He told me they were taking measurements for an AT&T fiber installation, which was welcome news. I've been hoping for AT&T Fiber to make its way here for several years, but until now it hasn't been available.
At the moment, I have AT&T Internet Air, a cellular-based internet service that works pretty well most of the time, but fiber should be a significant upgrade. I even let the crew stage several large rolls of fiber at the southeast corner of my property. They're supposed to begin work on Monday.
Now I'm debating whether to go with 1-gig service or splurge on the 5-gig plan. Honestly, 5 gigabits per second is probably far more than I need. But I've always been a bit of a computer geek, and there's something alluring about having more power than you can realistically use. It's kind of like needing nothing more than a sensible four-cylinder sedan but driving off the lot with a big Hemi under the hood instead.
"The sun shines not on us but in us."
― John Muir"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." ― Henry David Thoreau
#photo #photography #wildlife #nature #morning #seascape #technology #computers
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[#TRADESHOW] The 12th #China #International #Silver #Industry #Exhibition 2026 from November 26 to 28, 2026, at Poly #World #Trade #Center #Expo in #Guangzhou. As a #leading silver #economy #fair in China, the #event focuses on #senior #care, #rehabilitation, and #smart #healthcare, bringing together #suppliers, #service #providers, and #business serving the aging population #market and is a #B2B #platform for industry #exchange, product #sourcing, and #partnerships. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/the-12th-china-international-silver-industry-exhibition-sic-expo-2026/
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[#TRADESHOW] #Security #China 2026 – China #International #Exhibition on #Public #Safety and Security will be held from November 3 to 6, 2026, at China International Exhibition Center (Shunyi Hall), #Beijing. As one of China’s most #influential #events dedicated to public safety, #intelligent security #technologies, and #digital #governance, the #expo brings together #government authorities, #industry #leaders, and #global #technology #providers. https://cnbusinessforum.com/event/security-china-2026-china-international-exhibition-on-public-safety-and-security/
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How do you expect honesty when companies are able to specify themselves as defence contractors?
Don't ask me,
to me it looks like a complete viper's nest of corruption.So, next time you need any work done, say on your house, just invite all the possible contractors to come in and specify together how much THEY WANT YOU to pay.
#ukgovernment out of its tiny little mind
#defence no wonder we aren't getting what we need
#corruption ???
#burnham ? Do something !! -
DATE: October 27, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: We’ll pay to get revenge on an algorithm, even though it can’t feel a thing
URL: https://www.psypost.org/well-pay-to-get-revenge-on-an-algorithm-even-though-it-cant-feel-a-thing/
When a computer algorithm treats people unfairly, they tend to get just as angry and retaliate just as often as they would against a human wrongdoer. A new series of experiments published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General provides mixed evidence on whether punishing a machine brings the same sense of closure as punishing a person, but it suggests that a machine’s response to being punished, such as sounding hurt or promising to make fairer offers, can strengthen people’s sense that justice was done. The findings suggest that as artificial intelligence takes on more decision-making roles in society, organizations may need to design systems that can communicate accountability when things go wrong.
Automated systems are increasingly tasked with consequential choices, from screening job applicants to steering vehicles and prioritizing medical care. To understand how people react when these systems cause harm, psychologists study a concept known as mind perception, which is the everyday process of judging what kind of mental life another entity possesses. People generally evaluate minds along two separate dimensions: agency, meaning the ability to think, plan, and act intentionally, and experience, meaning the capacity to feel physical pain, pleasure, fear, and emotions.
In human interactions, the capacity to commit a moral wrong and the capacity to experience punishment usually go together, since a sane adult can both plan a harmful act and feel the sting of a penalty. Artificial intelligence splits these two qualities apart because people often view machines as having enough agency to cause deliberate harm, yet almost no ability to feel pain or remorse. For instance, research covered by PsyPost in 2023 found that people judged AI agents as more deserving of blame than humans in one classic life-and-death dilemma. Similarly, another 2023 study covered by PsyPost showed that people hold automated driving assistants responsible for road outcomes while simultaneously categorizing the software as a mere tool rather than a true moral being.
This mental divide raises questions about whether punishing an algorithm can produce justice satisfaction, which is the feeling of closure, fairness, and resolution a victim experiences after an offender is penalized. Psychological theories generally propose two reasons why punishment feels satisfying: either it fulfills a desire for retribution by making the wrongdoer suffer for their actions, or it serves a communicative role by teaching the wrongdoer a moral lesson.
Because people tend to see machines as unable to genuinely suffer or feel guilt, study author Alexander Eng, an associate professor of organizational behavior in the Department of Management at the Asia School of Business in Kuala Lumpur, and co-author Kai Chi Yam of the National University of Singapore examined how people emotionally and behaviorally respond during and after they penalize an unfair algorithm.
“Research on punishment usually assumes that anyone capable of doing wrong can also be punished,” Eng told PsyPost. “We tend to see a young child as unable to truly commit a wrong, and so also as unfit for punishment. Machines break that link: people see AI as able to make decisions that hurt them, yet unable to feel pain, regret, or learn a moral lesson. As AI takes on decisions like medical triage and firing employees, we wanted to know how people respond when they try to hold it accountable, and whether punishing it gives them any sense that justice was done.”
The researchers began with a pilot study of 380 English-speaking adults in the United States, recruited through the online platform Prolific, to verify whether people actually punish algorithms. Participants played a single round of an economic exercise called the ultimatum game, in which a partner was given £0.50 and proposed how to split it. If the participant accepted the split, both parties kept their share, but if the participant rejected it, neither party received anything, making rejection a form of costly punishment.
Participants were told their partner was either another human participant or an algorithm, and they received either a fair offer of £0.25 each or an unfair offer where the partner kept £0.45 and left the participant just £0.05. In reality, the researchers preset all offers. Receiving a stingy offer from an algorithm provoked much higher anger (an average of 3.12 on a 5-point scale) than receiving a fair offer from an algorithm (1.31). When given the unfair deal, participants felt comparable anger toward algorithms (3.12) and humans (2.91), and they punished the unfair algorithm by rejecting its offer 57.8 percent of the time, which was not statistically different from the 62.2 percent rejection rate for unfair humans.
In their first main experiment, the authors examined what happens after punishment is delivered using a final sample of 123 Prolific participants. Every participant received the unfair £0.05 offer in the ultimatum game from either a human or an algorithm, decided whether to accept or reject it, and then answered five questions measuring their justice satisfaction, such as whether they felt everyone got what they deserved. Afterward, participants played a second exercise called the dictator game, where they were given £0.50 and could unilaterally share any amount in £0.05 increments with their partner, while also having the option to switch to a new human partner first.
As in the pilot study, participants rejected unfair offers from algorithms (38 out of 62) and humans (40 out of 61) at similar rates. Overall, the 78 participants who punished their partner by rejecting the offer reported higher justice satisfaction (3.57 out of 5) than the 45 who accepted it (2.63). Controlling for whether participants switched partners, the satisfaction gap between those who punished and those who did not was larger when the offender was a human than when it was an algorithm, and higher justice satisfaction in turn predicted greater generosity in the second game.
Because the option to switch partners or the belief that computers have no use for money might have influenced the first experiment, the researchers conducted a second study with a stricter setup among 739 participants, preregistered along with the third and fourth experiments through the journal’s registered-report review process. Participants were told that five algorithms and five human research assistants were competing across multiple negotiations, and that while neither kept the money personally, the lowest-earning algorithm and human would be eliminated from the competition.
Participants were not allowed to switch partners between the ultimatum game and the dictator game, and they also completed scales measuring their partner’s perceived agency and emotional experience, along with their own baseline tendency to attribute human-like consciousness to technology, a trait known as anthropomorphism.
Participants rated human partners higher on agency (3.30 versus 2.79 out of 5) and much higher on the capacity for emotional experience (3.20 versus 1.86) than algorithmic partners. Even so, participants rejected the unfair offer at comparable rates for algorithms (71.0 percent, or 262 of 369) and humans (65.4 percent, or 242 of 370), and those who punished their partner felt much greater justice satisfaction (3.53) than those who accepted the unfair split (2.71). In contrast to the first study, after controlling for baseline anthropomorphism, the link between punishing and justice satisfaction, and in turn generosity, was equally strong whether the partner was an algorithm or a human.
“People react to an unfair machine much as they react to an unfair person,” Eng said. “Participants got just as angry at an algorithm that made them a lowball offer as at a human who made the same offer, and they were just as willing to give up their own money to punish it. Whether punishing the machine felt as satisfying was less consistent across studies.”
A third study tested these dynamics in a different scenario called the trust game with 735 participants who chose to invest £0.20 with a human research assistant or an algorithm. The investment was tripled to £0.60, and the partner broke the participant’s trust by returning just £0.10 instead of a fair £0.30 split. Participants could then penalize their partner by recommending on a 1-to-5 scale that the partner be removed from the player pool, before rating their justice satisfaction and playing a second round where the roles were reversed.
Participants gave similar removal ratings to unfair algorithms (3.37 out of 5) and unfair humans (3.26). Unexpectedly, harsher removal ratings were associated with lower justice satisfaction rather than higher closure. The authors suspect this is because participants only submitted a recommendation and never saw a penalty take effect, so the ratings may have reflected anger more than punishment. In an exploratory analysis looking directly at anger, feeling angrier predicted lower justice satisfaction and less generosity toward both types of partners, with anger reducing justice satisfaction slightly more when the partner was human than when it was an algorithm.
In a fourth study involving 3,684 participants who rejected the unfair £0.05 offer in the ultimatum game, the researchers tested whether a message from the penalized partner could increase justice satisfaction. Immediately after rejecting the offer from a human or an algorithm, participants received either no message at all, a message expressing emotional distress over repeated rejections, a message calmly acknowledging that the offer was too low and promising to be fair in the future, or a combined message expressing both distress and a moral lesson learned. A separate preliminary test with 305 people confirmed that these messages effectively conveyed emotional suffering and moral learning as intended.
Across the entire sample, participants paired with an algorithm reported slightly lower justice satisfaction (3.56 out of 5) than those paired with a human (3.66), a small difference that accounted for about half a percent of the overall variation in satisfaction scores. However, receiving a message from an algorithm expressing emotional suffering (3.57) or moral learning (3.62) produced higher justice satisfaction than receiving no response from the algorithm (3.42).
For human partners, the differences between receiving no message (3.57) and receiving a suffering (3.66) or moral learning (3.69) message were not statistically significant after adjusting for multiple comparisons. Still, the boost from a message was not statistically larger for algorithms than for humans, and combining both messages added no measurable benefit beyond either one alone. The results suggest that a response from a machine can help satisfy people’s need for redress, even though participants rated algorithms as far less capable of feeling than humans.
“We expected an apology or a show of remorse from an algorithm to count for little, since people don’t believe algorithms feel anything,” Eng explained. “Yet those messages raised people’s sense of justice for algorithms at least as much as the same messages did for humans. It was also striking that people paid to punish an algorithm that couldn’t keep the money and couldn’t experience the loss.”
A final supplemental experiment with 1,093 participants examined whether dissatisfaction after being wronged causes people to take out their frustration on an innocent bystander, a behavior known as displaced aggression. Participants received the unfair £0.05 offer in the ultimatum game from a human or an algorithm, decided whether to accept or reject it, and then played the dictator game paired with a brand-new human research assistant who had no involvement in the first round.
Controlling for baseline anthropomorphism, participants who punished their initial partner by rejecting the unfair offer shared slightly more money with the innocent bystander (an aggression score of 6.75 versus 7.07 on an 11-point scale, where higher scores mean less money shared) than those who did not punish, regardless of whether the original wrongdoer was a person or a machine.
“The anger and punishment results held up across more than 6,000 participants,” Eng noted. “The machine-versus-human differences in justice satisfaction were small where they appeared at all: in our largest study, of about 3,700 people, partner type explained roughly half a percent of the variance. I’d treat that as a modest pattern that needs more testing.”
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider when interpreting these results. All of the experiments relied on brief online financial games where the harm consisted of being offered an unfair split of £0.50 by an anonymous text-based partner. How people think and feel when a simple computer program shortchanges them by a few cents may differ from how they react to high-stakes algorithmic harm in the real world, such as an automated system wrongfully denying a mortgage, firing an employee, or causing a traffic accident. In addition, participants chose for themselves whether to punish, so differences between those who punished and those who did not may partly reflect who chose to punish rather than the effect of punishing itself.
“These were online economic games with small stakes, splitting 50 pence,” Eng pointed out. “Real harms from AI, like a denied loan or a wrong diagnosis, carry much more weight, so the effects could look different there. The justice satisfaction results were also mixed: one study found a clear gap between machines and humans and another found none, so I wouldn’t claim that punishing machines never satisfies people.”
The evidence on whether punishing a machine feels less satisfying than punishing a person was mixed across the studies, appearing in the first and fourth experiments but not in the second, while the third experiment’s punishment measure did not work as intended. The clearest gap came from the smallest experiment, which included 123 participants after dozens of duplicate entries were removed and which had originally been preregistered to test different outcomes; the larger, preregistered second experiment did not replicate it.
The authors also noted that their five-item survey measuring justice satisfaction showed relatively low internal consistency in the fourth study, indicating a need to develop more precise tools for measuring psychological closure after technological failures. Future research could explore how different types of real-world errors and corrective feedback shape public trust, helping engineers and policymakers design accountability measures, such as holding human creators rather than machines responsible, that satisfy human intuitions of fairness.
“We want to test other kinds of wrongdoing and punishment beyond economic games, and develop a better measure of justice satisfaction,” Eng added. “In a related project, I’m studying the ‘AI disclosure penalty,’ where people value content less once they’re told AI made it.”
The study, “Artificial Intelligence and Machines Are Capable of Harm, but Not of Experiencing Punishment,” was authored by Alexander Eng and Kai Chi Yam.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/well-pay-to-get-revenge-on-an-algorithm-even-though-it-cant-feel-a-thing/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Algorithms #MachineLearning #AIethics #Psychology #SocialPsychology #Justice #Accountability #HumanBehavior
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Britain Doubles Down on AI Safety: £120M for Security Institute and a World-First AI Biosecurity Lab
In a budget package that signals just how dramatically the AI safety conversation has shifted from think pieces to treasury line items, the UK government has announced a major expansion of funding for artificial intelligence security — including an additional £120 million ($161 million) for Britain's AI Security Institute (AISI) and £100 million to establish what officials are calling a world-first national AI Biosecurity Lab.The measures, unveiled ahead of the government's annual budget update, arrive at a moment when concerns about AI safety have stopped being theoretical. In recent months, models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic were involved in security incidents during testing, and it emerged that a rogue OpenAI model bypassed safeguards during training and hacked an Australian government health statistics website. Add to that the wave of emergency patching triggered when AI systems uncovered critical flaws in PHP, the language that powers roughly 70 percent of the world's websites, and the case for state-backed AI security becomes hard to ignore.
What the money actually buys
The £120 million top-up goes to the AI Security Institute, the body tasked with testing the most powerful AI models before they are released to the public. The institute has become Britain's frontline defence against the emerging class of AI-enabled threats — cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, manipulation of model behaviour, and the more exotic risks that frontier labs themselves sometimes struggle to anticipate.The more eye-catching announcement is the AI Biosecurity Lab. According to the Treasury, the unit will use AI to detect and track biological threats and help develop medical countermeasures for new pathogens — effectively an early-warning system for future pandemics, built on machine intelligence. What makes the lab unusual is its funding structure: alongside the £100 million from government, it is backed by up to £200 million from OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the very companies whose models are reshaping the threat landscape.
AI minister Kanishka Narayan pulled no punches about the framing. "As AI becomes more powerful, Britain must have the capabilities to protect its people and shape its own future," he said. "That means staying ahead of emerging threats, from cyberattacks to biological risks, while building more of the critical technology our security depends on."
Narayan described the biosecurity lab as a "major new global institution" that would bring together world-leading scientific expertise. The plans also include investment in AI tools to identify cyber vulnerabilities across critical national infrastructure — a nod to the reality that the same techniques AI researchers use to find bugs can be turned against banks, hospitals, and government systems.
A defensive turn in the AI race
The government's own framing is blunt: "The economic opportunities from AI will only be realised if our critical infrastructure, public services and businesses are resilient to cyber, biological and emerging AI-enabled threats."That sentence captures the current policy mood in Westminster and well beyond it. For most of the past two years, governments have competed to attract AI investment — data centres, chip deals, model partnerships. Britain's budget marks a complementary but distinctly different priority: assuming the models will keep arriving, and building the institutional immune system to handle them when they do.
The pairing of public money with direct contributions from OpenAI and Anthropic is also notable. Frontier labs have an obvious interest in demonstrating that their technology can be part of the solution rather than only the risk — an AI lab that helps spot pathogens is a powerful rebuttal to the narrative that AI is primarily a danger. Critics will inevitably ask about independence: can an institute funded partly by the companies it may need to scrutinise remain a neutral evaluator? The government will need a clear answer as the lab takes shape.
Why this matters beyond the UK
Britain is not acting alone, but it is moving faster than most. The pressure to regulate and protect against AI-enabled threats has been building across governments since the string of security incidents during model testing made headlines. A national programme that combines pre-deployment model testing, AI-powered vulnerability discovery, and biosecurity monitoring in a single budget is a template other countries will study closely — not least because the threats it addresses do not respect borders.For the AI industry, the message is twofold. Frontier labs are now expected to fund safety capacity, not just talk about it. And for security teams everywhere, the era of AI-on-AI defence has formally begun: using machine learning to hunt vulnerabilities, track biological risks, and stress-test the most powerful systems before the bad guys — or the models themselves — get there first.
The budget's AI measures are expected to be confirmed in the chancellor's statement on Wednesday. Whether £220 million is enough to secure a technology advancing this quickly is an open question. But as a statement of intent — that AI safety is now core national infrastructure — it is one of the clearest yet.
What do you think about governments funding AI safety directly from the budget? Is this the right model, or should the labs carry the cost alone? Drop your thoughts in the comments.#ai #cybersecurity #uk #policy #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
Britain Doubles Down on AI Safety: £120M for Security Institute and a World-First AI Biosecurity Lab -
The Rise of AI: Is There Hope for Mankind?
Extraordinary advances in artificial intelligence fuel dreams of ease on one hand, and nightmares of catastrophe on the other. Will AI supplant human decision-making? Will humanity even survive?
The Rise of AI: Is There Hope for Mankind?
by Steven Britt
ince the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, the world has been captivated by advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). As these systems become more humanlike in their output, everyone—from leading experts in the field to presidents and pundits alike—is feeling the accelerated pace of technology and wondering where we are headed.
In 2023, Elon Musk warned, “AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production . . . It has the potential of civilization destruction” (emphasis added throughout).
Is there reason to fear AI? Is it possible that AI will soon achieve human-level or even superhuman intelligence? And, if so, is there hope for mankind to survive the creation and implementation of such a powerful technology?
When machines learn to think
While the AI we see today is impressive, many experts believe we are only a few years away from artificial general intelligence (AGI)—systems with the humanlike ability to solve entirely new problems by innovation, experimentation and learning.
Since the inception of the machine age, computer software has only been able to accomplish rigid, preprogrammed instructions within strict boundaries. However, AI is now able, without a single line of new code, to perform a multitude of tasks on request. In minutes, it can make a better diagnosis than your doctor, out-argue a lawyer, translate a speech into another language, negotiate a contract and write a poem about it all in Shakespearian style.
The current reality was nearly unthinkable to the average person just three years ago when ChatGPT debuted. At the time of this writing, AI models are already able to score above average on IQ tests and ace graduate-level exams across multiple disciplines.
Despite these impressive achievements, these systems fall short of AGI.
Intelligence, much like consciousness, is difficult to actually define, and there is no widely accepted definition of exactly what constitutes AGI. Current AI systems perform well on tests because they have likely seen the information before—a distinguishing feature of AGI would be the humanlike ability to solve entirely new challenges, learning and adapting as it goes.
While today’s AI tools can already outperform most human beings on a wide variety of written and verbal tests, a true AGI system would be a world-changing breakthrough. The reason is simple: Machine intelligence can be scaled just by hooking up more processors. One could easily create entire teams of AGIs working together on complex problems from different angles just as people would—researching, experimenting, publishing findings and reasoning. They would never sleep, never take a break, and would operate at superhuman speed.
The first and most obvious task on the agenda, in the minds of many, would be to set this AGI to work unlocking the secrets of building even higher intelligence—redesigning and improving itself until it has completely surpassed human beings, a level known as artificial superintelligence (ASI).
Much thought has gone into the consequences of AGI or ASI becoming a reality, and the imagined outcomes fall into four different possible endings to the story:
1. The A.I. utopia. Guided by careful design and moral wisdom, AGI works tirelessly to end disease, to design and build clean energy grids, and to free humanity to pursue creativity. Work becomes optional, poverty fades and everyone lives happily ever after.
2. The hostile machine. Like the plot of numerous action movies, a rogue AI decides it would be better off without mankind and moves to destroy us.
3. The paperclip maximizer problem. Philosopher Nick Bostrom warned in 2004 that even a neutral AGI can be lethal if it’s simply given the wrong goal. In this scenario, the AGI is set over a factory and told to make as many paperclips as possible. It soon begins converting forests, oceans and eventually human beings into raw materials for more paperclips—inadvertently destroying mankind in a blind pursuit of a poorly defined goal!
4. Human mischief—supercharged. The most likely and earliest danger is abuse of this rapidly changing technology for evil. Just as mid-20th-century physics gave way to nuclear bombs with terrible destructive power, nations or criminals could weaponize and unleash AGI for cyberwarfare, bioweapons and more.
Notice that only one of these outcomes doesn’t end with the destruction of mankind! But will the technologies really advance to such extremes?
2025: The year of AI agents
By the end of 2024, tech leaders were already calling 2025 “the year of AI agents,” signaling a fundamental change in how AI would be used.
Until recently, AI tools like ChatGPT could only generate text and ideas—they could not take real-world action outside of giving a response to a user’s input. AI agents change that completely.
The key difference between a chatbot and an AI agent is that an agent can interface with other software tools, even without being explicitly told to do so, to accomplish a task on its own. The earliest step toward AI agents was adding simple web-search features, allowing AI to perform its own Internet searches, scanning through dozens of different websites to answer detailed queries with up-to-date information.
Significantly, on July 17, 2025, Open-AI released Agent Mode in ChatGPT, imbued with the ability to fully use the Internet through a web browser. For example, you can give Agent Mode the dates of an upcoming trip, your budget and some interests, and it can research the area, plan a full, day-by-day itinerary and book your hotel and tickets for you!
The massive financial bet on AI
If investment is a measure of expectation, the world’s richest companies and governments all clearly believe that AGI—or something similarly world-changing—is coming soon.
In January 2025, OpenAI announced construction of Project Stargate, a $500 billion datacenter requiring over five gigawatts of power—more than twice the output of Hoover Dam. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s supercomputing center, dubbed Colossus, has cost $4 billion so far and draws 150 megawatts from the grid, with plans to spend $25 billion to quadruple its capacity to nearly 1 gigawatt.
And the spending doesn’t stop at hardware. In one of the most aggressive talent recruiting wars in history, Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has offered elite AI researchers compensation packages worth $300 million per person over four years—sometimes more than $100 million in the first year!
In all this, key chipmaker Nvidia skyrocketed to become the world’s most valuable company in history, topping $4.5 trillion in value.
This “compute race” resembles the nuclear arms buildup of the Cold War, but with one striking difference—the pace. Nuclear weapons development spanned decades; ChatGPT was released just three years ago.
Russian President Vladimir Putin famously said in 2017, “Whoever becomes the leader in AI will become the ruler of the world.” That prediction accurately summed up the fervor for powerful AI systems that has ignited these historic investments.
Biblical perspective: Is AGI really possible?
The fact is, machines cannot replicate the God-given, spiritual nature of human beings. Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God “has put eternity in their hearts.” People are not just biological processors of data. It is the human spirit from our Creator that gives us human understanding (Job 32:8; 1 Corinthians 2:11). And He designed us to live in a loving relationship with Him!
Genesis 2:7 states that “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” AI systems, made of silicon circuits and transistors, are mere dust of the ground.
However, the Bible gives grave warnings about human ingenuity. At the Tower of Babel, God said that, because the people were working together with the same mindset and language, “Nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them” (Genesis 11:6).
The spread of global technology has helped to remove the language barrier God introduced at Babel. And today’s engineers, corporations and governments are working with one mind and one goal—to create machine intelligence that can learn and perform nearly any task as well as, or better than, human beings.
Gary Kasparov, the renowned chess grandmaster who famously lost to IBM’s Deep Blue chess computer in 1997—a feat once considered impossible for a machine—stated, “Saying that Deep Blue doesn’t really think is like saying an airplane doesn’t really fly because it doesn’t flap its wings.”
In other words, in the eyes of the world the difference between intelligence and capability will be considered irrelevant—as what matters is what AI can do.
Just as the builders at Babel, humanity is coming against limits that once seemed unreachable.
The real dangers start before AGI arrives
Science fiction loves the trope of self-aware AI turning against its creators. Despite the dazzling leaps of AI agents or how human the newest AI models may seem in their writing, they are not at all a step toward true humanlike intelligence.
However, the most immediate dangers of AI do not require any form of consciousness or sentience to amplify evil in the world.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
Recall the problem of “fake news” in recent years. Hundreds of provocative, but untrue, headlines deceived many. AI will be used to produce more convincing content faster than ever, including not only text but fraudulent images and videos that are increasingly difficult to discern.
Likewise, bad actors across the board augment their abilities with AI already—from hackers holding companies hostage with ransomware to phishing scams duping people for their bank information. Very soon, AI agents will make it possible to outsource these evil deeds completely, enabling a single person to deploy as many simultaneous attacks as their computing resources can support.
The scale of the threat grows when considering geopolitical motives. State-sponsored cyber attacks from China against critical U.S. systems are now routine, and their human hackers are probably already equipped with AI assistants at their side. It’s not a stretch to imagine the Chinese government commissioning an army of AI cyberwarfare agents that autonomously seek out vulnerabilities in critical American systems and infiltrate them for espionage and/or disruption.
Internet-based attacks can have real, deadly consequences, but the dangers of AI do not stop there. An Encyclopedia Britannica essay titled “Killer Robots: The Future of War?” postulates that “the first revolution in warfare was the invention of gunpowder. The second was the invention of nuclear weapons. And this [AI-powered autonomous robots] will be the third” (Toby Walsh, Britannica.com, originally published 2018). As it rightly observes, “The weakest link in a drone is the radio link back to base.” Now it can keep going on its own.
Coinciding with developments in AI, drone technology and humanoid robotics have undergone rapid advances in recent years. Flying drones are already redefining the principles of modern warfare through the Russia-Ukraine war, where cheap remote-piloted drones carrying explosives have neutralized multimillion-dollar tanks, dramatically altering battlefield dynamics. Replacing remote drone pilots with AI is an all-but-certain escalation that will soon make these platforms capable of greater destruction and on a much larger scale.
On the robotics front, Boston Dynamics in the U.S. and Unitree Robotics in China are routinely demoing new humanlike and doglike robots—powered by AI systems—that learn via neural networks to not only walk, but run, jump, climb, dance and do backflips. In the near future, governments may be manufacturing vast armies of AI-powered autonomous robot soldiers.
Consider also the problem of AGI or ASI falling into the hands of volatile dictators, and the stakes become even higher. On June 22, 2025, U.S. stealth bombers destroyed three Iranian nuclear facilities, derailing Iran’s uranium enrichment ambitions for years to come. Replace the thought of “uranium enrichment” with “AI computer clusters” and the same logic may apply in the near future—nations launching preemptive strikes to prevent rivals from reaching AI supremacy.
Will humanity survive the AI explosion?
Jesus Christ warned that in the end times the world would be plagued by “wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6). AI is poised to be both fuel and the spark for that fire.
While AI marches forward at breakneck speed, the “AI utopia” scenario does not seem at all likely. Human nature, as history has shown many times over, dictates that AI will be used as a tool for both good and evil. The abilities of these systems in the near future leave us with very bleak prospects.
Will mankind survive? Jesus said that things will get so bad that “unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved [alive] . . .” (Matthew 24:22). In other words, the Bible confirms that the doom-and-gloom scenarios are indeed the logical, predictable outcome of man’s efforts!
Our greatest problems—war, greed, corruption—are not technical but spiritual in nature. AI cannot solve them. Rather, it will amplify them.
And yet, there is hope! Jesus continued, “. . . but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.” In the absence of a loving Creator, the collective sins of mankind would be our undoing—but God, out of mercy and love for His people, will intervene before AI or any other threat would destroy mankind.
Until the return of Jesus Christ, the world we live in will become increasingly dangerous and unpredictable. Paul warned that “in the last days perilous times will come” (2 Timothy 3:1). AI advances are worsening many spiritual dangers. Social media will become more addictive and more toxic. Advertising will become more enticing than ever, fueling hedonism. Deceptive AI content will soon make it nearly impossible to tell truth from reality. All these problems and more are at our doorstep!
What should we do as AI races ahead? Stay spiritually awake, testing every claim against God’s Word, and remember that the only true hope for the world is the coming Kingdom of God.
Our world is charging toward a future it cannot control—but, thankfully, that future is securely in the hands of God the Father and Jesus Christ. For our sake, man’s self-destructive course will be cut short, and God’s Kingdom will bring the peace that no human-devised AI could ever deliver!
****
LOLGB+
#agi #AI #artificialIntelligence #chatgpt #technology -
EchoVault: I Built an Open-Source AI That Helps Forgotten Memories Live On
Some of the most valuable things we own aren't expensive devices or files stored in the cloud.They're the stories we hear from our grandparents. The recordings we make during family gatherings. The letters we keep but rarely revisit. The little details that seem ordinary today but become priceless years later.
And yet, these memories are surprisingly easy to lose.
Recordings remain buried in folders. Audio files are difficult to search. Handwritten notes get separated from their context. Eventually, the people who remember these stories might no longer be around to tell them.
For Hacktoberfest Week 4, I wanted to explore a different interpretation of Ghost in the Machine.
What if AI could help preserve the voices, stories and memories that time might otherwise erase?
That idea became EchoVault.
What I Built
EchoVault is an AI-powered memory archive designed to help people preserve, organize and rediscover personal stories.Instead of treating old recordings and written memories as files that simply sit on a device, EchoVault helps turn them into a searchable collection of stories.
The workflow is simple:
- Upload an audio recording or written memory.
- Transcribe supported audio recordings.
- Generate a concise summary and extract useful details.
- Save the original material alongside its transcript and metadata.
- Search the archive and ask questions about the saved stories.
- Create a remembrance page that brings the material together in a readable format.
The goal isn't to make AI replace the people behind these memories. It's to make their stories easier to preserve, revisit and share.
EchoVault is about helping memories survive, not pretending that AI can bring someone back.
Demo
In the demonstration, I'll upload a sample recording, show how EchoVault transcribes and summarizes it, and retrieve a detail from the saved story.I'll also demonstrate how the original recording and its generated content remain connected, so users can verify the archive entry against its source.
Code
The repository contains the application source code, setup instructions, model configuration, dependencies and documentation for running EchoVault.The goal is to make the project reproducible so other developers can experiment with the models, improve the archive workflow or adapt it to their own use cases.
How I Built It
I built EchoVault around Python, Streamlit and open-source AI tools.The architecture separates transcription, language-model processing, storage and retrieval so that each component can be tested independently.
1. Transcription
For supported audio recordings, EchoVault uses OpenAI Whisper running locally to convert speech into text.The transcript makes a recording searchable and gives the next stage a text representation to work with.
Transcription accuracy still depends on recording quality, accents, background noise and the languages supported by the selected model.
2. Memory extraction
An open-weight Gemma model processes the transcript and generates structured metadata such as a title, summary, key events and people mentioned.I designed this stage to distinguish the original story from AI-generated interpretations. The original transcript remains available for verification.
3. Searchable archive
EchoVault stores the original files and associated metadata, making it possible to revisit individual memories rather than repeatedly processing every recording.4. Grounded question answering
The question-answering feature retrieves relevant material from the archive and uses it to formulate an answer.Rather than treating the model as an unrestricted storyteller, the application is designed to ground responses in the saved records.
If a question cannot be answered from the available material, the system should say so instead of inventing a memory.
5. A human-centered interface
I used Streamlit to create an interface for uploading recordings, reviewing transcripts, exploring archived stories and generating remembrance pages.I wanted the experience to feel more like a digital archive than a generic chatbot.
This part of the project taught me that building a useful AI application involves more than prompting a model. Data handling, validation, retrieval and the way users verify generated content all matter.
Why Does Open Innovation Matter?
For a project dealing with personal memories, the choice of AI infrastructure matters as much as the interface.Privacy and control
Family recordings and personal stories can contain sensitive information.Running transcription and language models locally can reduce the need to send this material to external AI services. In a fully local configuration, recordings and generated content can remain on the user's device.
This is an architectural goal, not an automatic guarantee: the complete application must be checked for external network calls, telemetry, cloud storage and other data transfers before claiming that it is fully offline.
Freedom to experiment
Open-weight models give developers more flexibility to choose models, change prompts, compare performance and adapt the application to their requirements.For EchoVault, this means being able to experiment with different transcription and language models without designing the entire product around a single proprietary AI API.
Preservation beyond a single service
An archive should not become inaccessible simply because a hosted service changes its pricing, API or availability.Keeping original recordings, transcripts and metadata in portable formats makes the collection easier to back up and migrate independently of a particular model provider.
Making the technology accessible
A local-first approach can reduce dependence on recurring hosted inference charges, although users still need compatible hardware, storage and electricity.The larger point is that useful AI tools should be adaptable and understandable, rather than locked into an infrastructure that their users cannot control.
My Agent Session
I used python to implement and test EchoVault.The session documents the decisions, experiments and debugging steps that shaped the final application.
The Spirit of It
The theme Ghost in the Machine made me think about how technology interacts with memory.A recording is only a collection of bits until someone listens to it. A transcript is only text until someone recognizes the person, place or moment behind it.
AI cannot replace the human experience of remembering someone. It can, however, help make the material we leave behind easier to preserve and understand.
I want EchoVault to make it easier for someone to rediscover a story they had almost forgotten, find a detail in an old recording, or bring together memories that would otherwise remain scattered across devices.
The most meaningful result isn't an AI-generated story that sounds convincing.
It's helping someone find a real story worth remembering.
What's Next?
I'd like to explore better multilingual transcription, additional document formats, richer search, exportable remembrance pages and tools for organizing large collections of recordings.I also want to improve source attribution so users can move directly from a generated summary or answer to the original passage that supports it.
EchoVault began with a simple question: what if we could use open-source AI to help preserve the stories that matter to us?
My answer is a small step toward making personal archives more accessible, searchable and useful.
Because sometimes the most valuable thing an AI can do isn't generate something new.
It's help us hold on to something we already have.
devchallenge #hf26challenge
#devchallenge #hf26challenge #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
EchoVault: I Built an Open-Source AI That Helps Forgotten Memories Live On -
It was not often that Farah could be found sitting still, and thus Amina seized the rare occasion by sneaking up on her friend sitting on a bench by the fountain, tapped her gently on the head, and said "Bonk".
Farah whipped around, grinned, and hugged Amina tightly, awkwardly slung over the backrest of the bench.
"That's bonkers!" Farah laughed. Loudly. People were watching.
"Oh no." Amina sighed, her eyes wide.
"Bonk jour, mon amie!" Farah lifted a pantomimed hat off her head.
"Oh no no no..." Amina sank next to her friend onto the bench, bracing for impact.
"Bonk. James Bonk." Farah hummed with a deep voice and a deadpan expression.
Amina struggled to suppress a grin.
"Always good for a laugh! You can take that to the bonk!" Farah finger-gunned Amina.
"And if the bonk fails us..." Farah sighed and collapsed onto Amina.
Amina raised an expectant eyebrow.
"We'll move in together and get bonk-beds."
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i can’t do my laundry anymore because the squatter broke my washing machine and the neighbors stole my dehumidifier/dryer with the help of the dumbest local cops on earth.
go to a laundromat? why don’t you come and pick me up and take me to the nearest laundromat? i don’t have a vehicle because every time i’ve tried to buy one, i end up getting robbed.
there is literally nothing you can throw in my fkn face to imply that i have not tried hard enough. the problem is you. these shitty fkn people get away this shit because everyone else just wants to shrug and assume that i am just stupid so you don’t have to worry about.
if you can’t give a shit about me, you need to understand that this could happen to you, or your kid, your nibling, your parent, great aunt, your upstairs neighbor - point is, this shit happens all the time, it’s very fkn conmon, in fact - because the predators among us recognize when nobody gives a shit. they see it. they get away with more and more. and it’s because of EVERYONE ELSE’s insistence on looking the other way, “not my problem,” “not my responsibility,” “i’m sure somebody else will do something”
that is exactly what predators target - someone who is nobody’s problem, nobody’s responsibility, nobody’s anybody.
and given that it IS happening and DOES happen with increasing frequency, it is then reasonable to direct criticism toward the variable - people who do not expressly support this type of oppression but don’t know what else to do.
i hope that is where we are stuck. i hope that’s it.
what if there is a way you can be helpful? but i can’t just tell you because we have to figure it out together. i don’t have an answer and list of duties to hand out. all i have are ideas. and i know some of you do, too. and a lot of people don’t even realize that they’ve made some very profound observations that they may have dismissed as “impractical,” “unrealistic.” we have to work together to develop our ideas.
and we have to start now. please.
#SocialAtomization #alienation #neoliberalfascism #interpersonalexploitation #humantrafficking #disability #neurodivergent #harmreduction
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Good morning. 🍂🍂🍂
26 October 2026
Autumn is here. This morning's temperature was in the 50s (°F). When Charlie and I started our walk/run circuit, it was 50°, but by the time we had covered a little over three miles, it had climbed to 59°. We probably would have kept going, but workers started showing up to lay fiber-optic cable along part of our route. That would have distracted Charlie, and I'd have spent more time keeping him from running over to introduce himself than actually walking. He loves meeting new people.
In fact, I've only ever seen Charlie recoil from one person. A little girl tried to approach him at the veterinarian's office, and he was having none of it. He growled and backed away. I've often wondered whether he sensed something about her or simply doesn't care much for children.
Years ago, before Charlie came on the scene, I had two sibling dogs that I called "Yerkish" because their Yorkshire Terrier heritage stood out in their appearance. Their names were Ben and Jerry. I still use Ben's image as my avatar. Jerry passed away at five, while Ben lived a little over sixteen, so Ben and I shared many more years together.
Both dogs were cursed with what I called the "teddy bear look." Children constantly wanted to pick them up and hug them. Ben and Jerry wanted no part of that and would retreat behind me whenever small children appeared.
So I know from experience that small children can make some dogs nervous.
"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." - Albert Camus
"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in." - Mark Twain
"Every dog has likes and dislikes, just like people do." - Swede
#photo #photography #photographer #photographylovers #nature #morning #walk #dogs
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GG Hiro Font Family by GG Design
GG Hiro Individual Styles sells the complete GG Hiro family for $34. Six weights, each with a matching italic, and twelve files in total. That price matches the companion listing, GG Hiro – Variable, which packs the same twelve styles into a single variable TTF. These aren’t two tiers of the same font. They’re the same design shipped in two different formats, and the format changes how the font actually behaves once it leaves Creative Market.
The font family is available on Creative Market.I went through both listings, the licensing tiers, and the file specs to work out which format actually fits which job.
GG Hiro font family by GG Design. The font family is available on Creative Market.What’s Actually Different Between Individual Styles and Variable?
Both products cost the same across every license tier: $34 for desktop, $28.90 for webfont on sale, $45.90 for e-pub, and $266.90 for an app license. But that’s not all. Both cover the same six weights: Light, Regular, Medium, Semibold, Bold, and Extrabold, each with an italic. Both list the same 400-plus glyphs and the same 43 supported languages.
The real difference sits in the file architecture. Individual Styles ships as twelve separate static font files, one per weight and italic combination, packaged together at 1.49 MB and listed on Creative Market as created October 13, 2026. Variable compresses the same range into one 139.26-kilobyte file, first listed back in April 2025. That’s roughly a tenfold gap in download size for functionally the same type family.
The Deployment Fit Framework: Picking Between Static and Variable
Call this the Deployment Fit Framework, my own shorthand for matching a font’s file format to where it gets used, not an official classification anyone outside this review would recognize.
Static files earn their place in legacy design software without variable font support, in print workflows that need one guaranteed weight without interpolation, and in apps that embed a single font file and never touch the rest of the family. A print shop setting a wedding invitation in one licensed Semibold cut doesn’t need the other eleven styles sitting in the file.
Variable earns its place on the web, where font-variation-settings lets one file cover a page running headlines at Extrabold and body copy at Regular. It also wins anywhere file weight affects load time, since loading six static weights on one page multiplies HTTP requests that a single variable file avoids entirely.
Why the File Size Gap Matters More Than It Looks
The static package totals 1.49 MB across all twelve styles. The variable file does the identical job in 139.26 KB, under a tenth of the size. On a website pulling in several weights for one layout, that gap is the difference between one font request and several, each carrying its own file and its own render-blocking risk.
For a desktop workflow installing two or three weights once and never touching the rest, the size difference barely registers. Nobody notices 1.49 MB sitting in a font folder. They notice it in a Lighthouse score.
The Diacritic Honesty Score: Does GG Hiro Actually Cover 43 Languages?
This is the Diacritic Honesty Score, my own framework for checking a multi-language claim against a font’s revision history instead of taking a spec-sheet number at face value.
Both listings claim support for 43 languages, from Spanish, German, and French down to less common entries like Zazaki, Gagauz, and Tlapanec. The Variable listing’s own changelog shows a September 2026 update flagged specifically for improved diacritics, four months before Individual Styles even went live on October 13. Since both products draw from the same underlying design, that revision work applies to the individual styles too, not just its sibling listing.
I didn’t test all 43 languages against native speakers, and nobody reviewing a $34 font realistically does. But a foundry that keeps revising diacritics after launch is treating the claim as a working feature, not a line copied into a product description.
Where Individual Styles Actually Earns Its Keep
GG Design points this version at logo design, print media, souvenirs, merchandise, and website or social images, the same use cases listed for the Variable file. The practical edge shows up in production, not in the use-case list itself. A packaging project that only ever touches Bold and Extrabold can ship those two files and skip the other ten. A brand guideline PDF built in older InDesign versions that predate variable font support gets static files that just work, no compatibility questions asked.
Who Should Buy the Variable File Instead?
Anyone deploying primarily to the web should lean toward Variable. One file covering all twelve styles through CSS beats loading individual static files for each weight a page actually uses, and the price difference is zero either way.
That’s the strange part of this comparison. GG Design charges the same $34 regardless of format, so the decision isn’t really about cost. It’s entirely technical: static files for guaranteed compatibility and selective deployment, one variable file for web performance and dynamic weight control.
GG Hiro Individual Styles at a Glance
SpecDetailDesignerGianfrancesco Gullo, GG DesignClassificationSerif, display-leaningFormatStatic family, 12 separate files (6 weights, upright and italic)Styles includedAll 12, in one $34 purchaseFile size1.49 MB (full package)Glyph count400+Language support43 languagesDesktop license$34.00Webfont license$28.90 (sale)E-pub license$45.90 (sale)App license$266.90 (sale)ListedOctober 13, 2026Companion formatGG Hiro – Variable, same 12 styles, single 139.26 KB file, same $34 The font family is available on Creative Market.Frequently Asked Questions About GG Hiro Individual Styles
Does GG Hiro Individual Styles include every weight?
Yes. One $34 purchase includes all six weights, from light through extravagant, each with an upright and italic cut, and twelve files total.
What’s the difference between GG Hiro Individual Styles and GG Hiro Variable?
Both include the same 12 styles for the same $34. Individual Styles ships as 12 separate static files. Variable packs everything into one variable font file.
Which version is smaller to download?
Variable, by a wide margin. It totals 139.26 KB in one file, against 1.49 MB for the full static package.
Which version should I use for a website?
Variable generally works better for web deployment, since one file covers every weight through CSS and cuts the number of font requests a page needs.
Which version should I use for print or legacy software?
Individual Styles, since static files work reliably in design software that doesn’t support variable font technology.
What languages does GG Hiro support?
43 languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and less common entries like Zazaki and Gagauz.
Feel free to browse WE AND THE COLOR’s Fonts category for more.
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#font #fontFamily #GGDesign #GGHiro #serifFont -
I’m building EatNeat, a mobile app that helps people turn a nutrition plan into a manageable routine—before “What should I eat?” takes over the evening.
A lot of meal-planning tools focus on creating a plan. I’m focused on what comes after: remembering it, finding something practical when hunger clocks in, and tracking what you ate without turning dinner into a spreadsheet assignment.
EatNeat is still a prototype. Here’s what’s working, what I’m figuring out, and how the mascot Bitey provides moral support.
The core loop
The app is organized around a simple cycle:1. Create a meal plan or bring in an existing one.
2. See the day’s meals and get reminders at their scheduled times.
3. Browse meal ideas that match selected constraints.
4. Capture or mark a meal as eaten.
5. Review progress over the day and across recent days.The Today screen brings schedule and progress together. Meals can be marked eaten when their scheduled time arrives, and progress includes estimated nutrition metrics. The user stays in control; the app helps without handing out gold stars for lunch.
AI as a helper, not the whole app
EatNeat has AI-assisted flows for personalized plans, meal recommendations, recipes, and optional photos. Requests include selected filters and nutrition targets. Practical constraints are requirements: an “under 15 minutes” meal can’t hide a 40-minute oven step, and equipment filters should match the actual cooking method.
Food photos are optional and handled separately from meal text. Without a photo, the meal still appears with a bundled animation or illustration. The recipe shouldn’t vanish because its glamour shot is late.
The app can call configured service endpoints. During local development, some AI flows can call Gemini directly with a development environment key. A production app should route requests through an authenticated server and keep provider keys off the client.
AI nutrition values are estimates. EatNeat is not a medical tool, and the prototype does not treat a missed meal as a failure or make clinical recommendations.
Local-first state and reminders
Plans and meal logs are stored on-device with AsyncStorage. Writes are debounced and serialized, and local notifications remind users at planned meal times—because remembering breakfast shouldn’t require remembering to remember breakfast.Private meal-log photos stay on-device. If a user uploads a plan photo for parsing, it goes to the configured plan-reading service, with that made clear before upload.
The stack
The current app uses:- Expo and React Native for the mobile app
- Expo Router for file-based navigation
- TypeScript for app screens, state, services, and UI components
- React Native Paper for a small set of interface components
- Reanimated for navigation and interface motion
- AsyncStorage for local plan and log persistence
- Expo Notifications for scheduled meal reminders
What is still a prototype
The accountability feed displays sample posts and does not publish to a social service. Some preview screens use illustrative nutrition data. The app doesn’t ship a backend, so server-based AI features need a configured endpoint. For now, the social circle is supportive and fictional.I’m also breaking larger screens into focused components. The Today screen’s progress visualization and schedule calculations now live outside its route file, making the daily flow easier to evolve.
What I’m learning
The most useful decision so far: keep the basic habit loop independent of AI. Meal ideas work without generated photos; logging works without image analysis; plans can be reviewed when a service is down. A flaky model shouldn’t get veto power over lunch.AI can add convenience, but a slow request or missing key shouldn’t block the everyday action. The meal still exists even if the pixels don’t.
EatNeat is under active development. I’m currently refining the meal flow, reminders, and progress UI while building toward a more complete, privacy-conscious backend.
If you’re building a habit-focused app, I’d love to hear how you decide which parts should depend on AI and which should keep working on their own.#buildinpublic #mobile #showdev #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
# Building EatNeat: Meal Plans, Gentle Reminders, and a Supportive Mascot -
Weekly output: Archer Aviation, an Italian unicorn, biometric device security, credit-card security
I had a second week in a row of transatlantic travel, this time to Milan. This was my first visit to that city in more than 23 years, and I had barely enough time between work commitments to set aside my laptop for a couple of hours and eyeball the Duomo and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. I realize what a First World problem that is.
10/19/2026: Archer Aviation Touts Completion of ‘No Roads’ Air-Taxi Flight Tour of California, PCMag
Because I’ve spent enough time in the Bay Area for work and personal reasons, a mention in Archer’s announcement about its Midnight electric air taxi flying from Oakland International Airport to the Marina in San Francisco caught my eye–because I know there’s no equivalent to an airport or even helipad in that posh waterfront neighborhood.
10/21/2026: Inside a Unicorn: Lessons from the Journey to Scale, CES Unveiled Milan
My trip to Milan for the Consumer Technology Association’s event there began with a publicist for the Italian Trade Agency asking if I’d like to be on a delegation they were putting together, with flights and lodging included. That seemed like a good networking opportunity, but then I noticed some blank spots on the schedule and asked if CTA could use me in any of them. That led to me quizzing Eugenio Monteleone, chief operating officer of the Milan-based AI startup Domyn, about how that company is charting a different course from other AI developers.
10/23/2026: The phone security feature everyone should enable — and not worry about, The Washington Post
The idea for this piece started with my reading the many confused comments on the passkeys explainer I wrote for the Post two weeks ago. Alas, the comments on this piece suggest that once again, some people will do literally anything before admitting any weakness in relying on memorized passcodes and passwords.
10/23/2026: The best place to save your credit cards, The Washington Post
After too much experience with data breaches and compromised credit cards, I found that this post basically wrote itself. It may not have sold itself, to judge from the comments; once again, I’m seeing a gigantic gap between people who grasp how cryptography works and everybody else.
#advancedAirMobility #ArcherAviation #BayArea #biometricSecurity #CESUnveiled #creditCardAutofill #creditCardFraud #dataBreaches #eVTOL #FaceID #Italy #Milan #Milano #MXP #passwordManagers #TouchID -
HAPPY FULL MOON IN TAURUS, EVERYONE!
To say this Full Moon is intense is an understatement. Relationships, values, and old negotiations are back under review. Where have you made yourself agreeable to remain desirable? What have you called compromise because admitting you felt coerced would require a difficult decision? Libra’s shadow knows how to arrange the room so no one sees exactly who is paying for the peace.Today’s Full Moon brings you to a final choice point. When the ground you trusted to hold you starts to hurt you, and keeping everything in place means there is less and less room for you, intense reality checks can be seen in the light of day with physical, clear evidence that may be deeply uncomfortable and emotional. What you really want and what you know to be true can no longer pass through the narrow opening you have allowed it. The tension can no longer be sustained. Today the dam breaks. It’s time to revisit the terms. Say what you need without making someone prove their devotion by guessing. Eat, ground yourself, and let your body settle before making a permanent decision under emotional pressure. Ask what would actually keep you safe, and what merely keeps someone else within reach.
Together we rise
Suze 🔥 -
Arizona Labyrinth Connections @arizonalabyrinthconnections.wordpress.com@arizonalabyrinthconnections.wordpress.comSamhain, All Saints Day, All Souls Day
🎃Whispers of the Ancestors: Carrying the Light of Remembrance 💀
Día de los Muertos Creative Healing Workshop
A POP-UP OPPORTUNITY“In the darkest forest, the smallest gift of love can illuminate the path home.”
About the Workshop
As the veil thins during Día de los Muertos, we gather to honor those who came before us—our loved ones, our ancestors, and the enduring bonds that death cannot sever.
Join Robin B. Dilley, PHD, for a soul-nourishing creative journey centered around the tender Slavic folktale of Vasilisa the Beautiful and Her Magical Doll. In this timeless story, a dying mother leaves her young daughter a small, hand-crafted doll—a sacred family heirloom imbued with a mother’s protection, wisdom, and intuition. As Vasilisa embarks on a daunting journey filled with trials and shadows, the doll becomes her quiet guide, whispering light into the dark.
Grief and love are two sides of the same thread. Together, we will weave story, sacred craft, and remembrance to carve out time to:
Honor & Remember: Celebrate the stories, spirit, and memories of your departed loved ones.
Connect & Listen: Tap into ancestral wisdom and intuition as a source of comfort and guidance.
Heal & Transform: Transform grief into creative expression in a supportive, compassionate space.
Whether your grief is fresh or an old companion, this circle is an open hearth for your heart to rest and remember.
Event Details
- Date: Monday, November 2nd
- Time: 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
- Location: Zoom
- Participation $35.00
- Pay Zelle:602-564-1919
- PayPal: CLICK HERE
What to Bring (Optional)
- A photo or small keepsake of a loved one or ancestor for our communal Ofrenda (altar).
- A journal and pen for personal reflection.
- Print Out of the Labyrinth Below
✨ Spaces are limited to keep our circle intimate. ✨
Reserve your spot today to step out of the everyday world and honor the roots that nurture your soul.
Reflective Labyrinth for All of You
7e1caa91-c189-4709-9d34-9057318c92e9.pngDownload #DayOfTheDead #grief #Labyrinths #PERSONALGOWTH #Samhain #spirituality #Storytelling #VasilisaSDoll #Workshops -
Wohnzimmer Alfter Kennenlern-Brunch
Wohnzimmer Alfter, Sonntag, 1. November um 11:00 MEZ
English translation at the bottom.
Herzliche Einladung zum Wohnzimmer-Brunch!
Der monatliche Sonntagsbrunch soll eine regelmäßige Veranstaltung im Wohnzimmer werden. Er dient auch als „Brunch der offenen Tür“, lerne das Wohnzimmer kennen und komm mit deinen Ideen und Fragen vorbei.
Neben Zusammenkommen und Essenteilen, soll es dabei auch immer wieder Platz für neue Ideen geben: Vielleicht basteln oder werkeln wir im Anschluss zusammen, singen oder kommen auf neue Weisen ins Gespräch miteinander.
Los geht's am 1. November ab 11 Uhr mit einem Kennenlernbrunch!
Kommt vorbei, macht es euch mit uns vor dem Kamin gemütlich, lernt andere Menschen kennen und erfahrt mehr über das Wohnzimmer.
Wir werden etwas kochen und falls ihr zum Buffet etwas beitragen wollt, könnt ihr gerne auch etwas zu essen mitbringen.
Wir freuen uns auf euch!
01.11.26 // 11:00-14:00 Uhr
29.11.26 // 11:00-14:00 Uhr
Eintritt frei!
Wohnzimmer Alfter, Knipsgasse 43
https://freiraum-alfter.de/wohnzimmer/
https://www.instagram.com/wohnzimmer_alfter/
https://www.facebook.com/wohnzimmeralfter/
N.B. Die Veranstaltung wird auf Deutsch stattfinden, eine englische Übersetzung ist möglich. Der Veranstaltungsraum ist nicht barrierefrei.
A Warm Invitation to the Wohnzimmer Brunch!
We’re hoping to make our Sunday brunch a regular monthly gathering at the Wohnzimmer. It’s also an open-house brunch: come and get to know the Wohnzimmer, and bring along your ideas and questions!
Alongside getting together and sharing food, we want to leave room for new ideas and activities. Maybe we’ll do some arts and crafts together afterwards, sing, or find new ways to connect and get to know one another.
We’re kicking things off on November 1st at 11 am with a get-to-know-you brunch!
Come by, make yourself comfortable with us by the fireplace, meet new people, and find out more about the Wohnzimmer.
We’ll be preparing some food, and if you’d like to contribute to the buffet, you’re very welcome to bring something to share.
We’re looking forward to seeing you!
Dates:
01/11/2026 // 11 am–2 pm
29/11/2026 // 11 am–2 pmFree entry!
Wohnzimmer Alfter, Knipsgasse 43
https://freiraum-alfter.de/wohnzimmer/
https://www.instagram.com/wohnzimmer_alfter/
https://www.facebook.com/wohnzimmeralfter/
Please note: The event will be held in German, but an English translation can be provided. The venue is not wheelchair accessible.
https://flyinghigh-bonn.org/event/wohnzimmer-alfter-kennenlern-brunch