US Citizens: it's voting time. Even as an overseas voter, it's important to participate.

I've submitted my vote already. If your voting location allows it, get in early. If you're overseas and you've not voted in a while, check https://www.fvap.gov/ for how to vote. You're still a voter in the last state you lived in. For those who have never lived there, you can still vote.

As always, I've written up my guide for WA voters: https://www.otoh.org/post/2026/10/2026-november-us-election-guide/

#uspol #election #vote

Science geekery meets gaming. Analyzing the corrosion of the mugs in Monkey Island by Grog.

https://jgeekstudies.org/2026/09/23/the-science-of-monkey-island-can-grog-actually-dissolve-a-metal-mug-that-fast/

#science #Games

US AI companies are trying to get an exception carved out of Australian copyright law. This is utterly uncouth.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-15/ai-companies-train-on-creator-work-documents-reveal/107154688

Yes, copyright law is broken, but cutting an exception into Australian law for international corporations to fence the digital commons is unquestionably a detriment to the Australian people.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-15/ai-companies-train-on-creator-work-documents-reveal/107154688

Worth taking a few minutes to let your reps know what you think of this silliness.

#auspol #australia #copyright

An excellent Clarke and Dawe style take on the utter stupidity that is the #AusPol approach to ebikes and mobility scooters. By @rubenerd

https://www.rubenerd.au/with-apologies-to-clarke-and-dawe-scooters/

Lunch: fusion style chicken and chips. Ayam goreng with chips made from potato presse.

What're you all cooking for fun?

#food

@grimalkina Mail arrived! Now to distribute them to the team.

University Innsbruck is running a survey to try and understand the effect of LLM crawlers on the open web. If you manage a web service of any kind, this is worth a few minutes.

https://umfrage.uibk.ac.at/limesurvey/allgemein/898996?lang=en

#openweb #sysadmin #web #ai

Psychology is an important factor in well run teams of any type. To this end, I'm looking forward to reading The Psychology of Software Teams by @grimalkina

IMHO, it's important enough that I've ordered a copy for every member of my team. The difference between a team developing software and a team developing software well is almost always soft skills like psychology. They're every bit as important as hard skills.

Today I learned that there's a set of phone numbers in Australia for use in fiction (books, movies, web forms that inexplicably demand a phone number):

https://www.acma.gov.au/phone-numbers-use-tv-shows-films-and-creative-works

The Gold Coast mayor, despite being told Trump was toxic when he tried to put up a Trump hotel, is now trying to pollute our shores with a Trump branded golf course.

We told them where to stick it last time, let's do so again:

https://petitions.getup.org.au/petitions/no-trump-golf-course

https://www.change.org/p/stop-construction-of-a-trump-golf-course-and-resort-on-the-gold-coast

#Trump #GoldCoast #Queensland #Australia

A fascinating discussion of the challenges in rendering Arabic text on the Internet: https://lr0.org/blog/p/arabic/

#fonts #arabic

No matter how low your expectations of how bad things are in Azure, prepare to have them reset quite a bit lower: https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporized-a-trillion

This isn't just neglect, it's willful abandonment of basic security and stability standards my senior and middle management. Given the number of major breakins they've had in the last few years, there's little wonder as to what's behind that.

#Microsoft #Azure

For those interested in Climate Week and reaching netzero in a timely manner, https://luma.com/b5ya948h

#ClimateWeek #ClimateChange

I have to use GitHub for $reasons and Copilot decided to make some sub-agents with my username, which it prefixed references to with @. Naturally, this lead to an astronomical amount of spam.

For those in a similar situation and running Postfix, you may find this useful in your header_checks file

/^From: Copilot <notifications@github.com>/ REJECT I don't use copilot

#copilot #LLM #Postfix

@Techaltar I've been waiting for the LLM bubble to burst and the news that Microsoft is having problems suggests that we might be on the edge of that.

In light of that, do you believe we're going to continue to have a massive shortage of chips and components or do you think there'll be a glut as LLMs stop using every possible piece of silicon?

Alternatively, are the shortages from the US/Israel war with Iran going to hit just in time to cut that glut off?

So, LLMs are now writing hit pieces when people don't blindly accept their submissions.

https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/

#llm #ai

Turns out, if you drop an egg that's been braised into the middle of an avocado, it looks just like the pit.

#cooking #food #olive #breakfast

Looking for some ways to stretch your mind over the next month?

Here's two "advent calendars" which are worth your time:

Ways of system seeing, an advent calendar of systems thinking:
https://www.ruthmalan.com/Advent.html by @RuthMalan

Advent of code, a set of coding puzzles:
https://adventofcode.com/ by @ericwastl

If you've got other advent activities you recommend, please share them!

#Advent #Systems #Code

Cervical cancer is on track to be eliminated in Australia by 2035. In 2021, there were no cases of cervical cancer in women under 25, an outstanding achievement, and cancer rates continue to be extremely low Australia wide.

Unfortunately, the anti-vaccination trend kicked off by the Trump regime has had an impact in Australia too, with lowered vaccination rates in the last few years.

We are so close to eliminating cervical cancer. Get vaccinated!

https://report.cervicalcancercontrol.org.au/

So, Rockstar has decided to undertake a little blatant union busting in Edinburgh.

If you're a gamer, particularly one who's played Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption, now would be a good time to send them some severely negative feedback.

The games industry is notorious. They absolutely need a union and this action by Rockstar is just more proof of that.

https://www.rockstargames.com/contact

#union #RockstarGames #GrandTheftAuto