Daily Tech News 25 May 2026

Top Story

• Space combat game Star Citizen has raised a billion dollars. (Roberts Space Industries)
  
  It's still in alpha.
  
  As it has been since 2012.
  
  And people are still throwing money at it.
  
  I guess they have to be doing something right.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (72) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Overnight Open Thread - May 24, 2026 [Doof]

Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Sunday night ONT. Appreciate you spending some of your holiday weekend here. Open thread, as always. Fashion and music, as always. What's on YOUR mind tonight?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (564) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: Fourth May Edition!

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be the Fourth May Edition? Going to be a little bit of a quick one again tonight - I'm traveling and naturally left this until the last minute.

With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (174) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start In The Morning!

Why is it that we suspend all of our eating and drinking rules when in airports?

That's a glass of champagne and a Bloody Mary at 6:45AM.

While I will occasionally have a Bloody Mary, and I try to drink champagne as much as I can, I never combine the two...except when flying. And the crap food in airports, especially the jumped-up steamtable stuff in the airport lounges? Yeah...I'll eat that too, and have seconds!

If you look closely at the glass of champagne, or simply the blurred background, you will see what sane people drink at that hour...a cup of hot tea. But that seems so wrong to me, especially when the booze is free, and the champagne is good!

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (206) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First World Problems...

What the hell am I going to do with this thing? First of all, it weighs 17 pounds. Second, film was last made for it in 1977 (total guess*). Third, modern digital cameras produce superb quality photographs, and my eye for the fine points of photography does not extend to the qualitative difference between film colors and digital colors.

And all of this means nothing, because it was my wife's grandfather's camera, and we can never discard it.

This x 1,000 is why I want to burn the place down and start over!

*Ooh! I was close. The last color film was manufactured in 1977, and the last black & white film was made in 1992.

Posted by: CBD at 02:55 PM | Comments (162) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The All-Encompassing Naïveté of The True Believers

Nicholas Kristof is entirely unimportant. His laughable article claiming that Israel uses trained dogs to sexually assault Palestinian prisoners is clownish and will disappear without a trace, except for a small group of rabid Jew-haters who will dredge it up occasionally, even though it has been thoroughly debunked.

He is a reliable leftist who has spent his entire professional life cultivating an air of moral superiority, coupled with the arrogance to claim that he is in fact detached...merely an observer of the human condition.

He is unimportant because there are thousands of people exactly like him who produce a fungible product for their media masters. One ardent progressive's article about [fill in the blank] is functionally and stylistically identical to the next. Whether it is Palestine or Global Warming or EVs or clean water or racism in American policing; the stories are all the same blend of pseudo-intellectual rigor combined with hyper-emotional rhetoric designed to do one thing...sway the reader toward the progressive cant.

And they reek of that moral superiority and smugness that is so, so grating to the observant consumer. But it is mostly honest and heartfelt. Sure, some of these progressive drones pumping out identical articles about X or Y or Z are in it for the influence they believe they can exert on the body politic to sway them, and their manipulation of reality is entirely intentional.

But Kristof is almost certainly an earnest and honest reporter. That he is an ignorant fool without any understanding of the human condition is secondary to his feeling that his reporting is absolutely correct on his elevated moral plane, even if that pesky thing called "fact-checking" is conspicuously absent. Is he an anti-semite? Maybe? But he is certainly a fool.

No...the blame for that ridiculous but politically expedient article lies with the senior management of the New York Times, who knew quite well that the article was mostly nonsense...but published it anyway!

And why? Because they have a carefully constructed and longstanding policy of antagonism toward Israel and traditional Judaism. They also have a curated list of other causes that they support, including socialism. And that goes back a very long way. The editors of the New York Times were aware of Stalin's systematic starvation and murder of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-1933, yet they chose to ignore it because it guaranteed them access to Soviet leadership, and it furthered the cause of world socialism. Walter Duranty, the correspondent, was a useful idiot in the process.

So the next time the NYT or the WaPo or any number of reliably leftist rags and media outlets publishes such a rank and obvious propaganda piece; don't blame the writer or talking head. He may very well be complicit, but it is also likely that he is an ignorant, poorly educated, insular knucklehead who simply doesn't know enough to have an educated opinion on anything other than ketchup or mustard on a hot dog.

Blame the media bosses who have a plan, and execute it very well.

Posted by: CBD at 11:50 AM | Comments (242) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Book Thread: May 24th, 2026[Sabrina Chase]

Welcome to the Book Thread, Guest Poster edition! I will be your host as we explore all sorts of book-related topics. All usual Book Thread rules are incorporated by reference (pets, beverage, clothing covering the lower limbs, etc.) with the special Sabrina Chase exemption for those stylish persons preferring kilts. Now let us proceed to today's topic, which is ...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (315) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 24 May 2026

Top Story

• Samsung made a last-minute deal to give massive bonuses - not as massive as SK Hynix, but still enough to pay off my entire mortgage - so everything is peachy and things can go back to normal, right? Right? (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Yeah, right. Now every Samsung employee everywhere except the memory division is upset and seeking increased bonuses.
  
  Notably including the division that tests and packages the bare memory dies, an essential step before they can be sold to customers.
  
  
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (165) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Night Club ONT - May 23, 2026 [D Squared]

Welcome to Club ONT - a collaboration of The Disco and The Dino. Come in in, grab a drink or 3.

Raise one in honor of those who fought and died for this great country. They are the reason for this holiday weekend. "Time Will Not Dim the Glory of Their Deeds"

[Top photo: Flags for Memorial Day at Boston Common]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:00 PM | Comments (324) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Post [moviegique]: Obsession

If I were Hollywood, I'd be worried. I mean, sure, box office is through the floor, the middle-class backbone of the industry moved out of California, and even I couldn't kid myself that I had any idea how to entertain the masses any more.

But I think what would put me into a cold sweat are guys like Damian McCarthy, making profitable movies that are better  constructed and better looking for a fraction of the price. Or worse, perhaps, Curry Barker, whose little horror film Obsession, made for less than a million dollars, made $20 million in its first four days, with an additional $7 million world-wide. (And over $40 million worldwide in its first week.)

What's the secret to this film's smashing success? The staggering drawing power of Andy Richter.

I kid. He's in this film, and the only name I recognized, yet I never actually noticed him while watching the movie. (I'm sure he played the second female lead's father, owner of the music store where the four principals work. But I'm actually guessing, it was such a small part, and he's lost a lot of weight and gotten a lot older since the early days of Conan's show—about the last time I saw him.)

Pictured: Not Andy Richter. (I couldn't find even a single shot of him in this movie.)

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:29 PM | Comments (237) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hobby Thread - May 23, 2026 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. For this week, the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) decided on a color theme for this Hobby Thread.

A color theme? What does that mean? Colors are a "hobby"? The ways of the Wheel are strange and mysterious but there is a method to the madness.

[Top Photo: Benjamin Moore Paint Color Fan Deck. Yours for only $30]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (172) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, May 23

* * *

Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

Posted by: K.T. at 03:28 PM | Comments (56) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, May 23

This is a polyantha rose, Verdun, that doesn't get much over two feet. It's a hybrid from France, first introduced in 1918, could explain the name. It has a flush of bloom in the spring, then a few every once in awhile through the summer. I've had it for years but it rarely blooms this heavily; since the picture was taken all the buds at the top have opened too. The flower is very double and very pink, can see the double blossom and the color better in the closeup.

Lirio100

It is a lovely rose, and a wonderful way to remember Verdun, where a lot of terrifying things happened over the centuries. My grandfather served near there as a chaplain in WW I, but it was a fort starting in the fourth century. We can remember it for the rose and for sugared almonds in the Gardening Thread. And be thankful that there are memorials rather than more fighting there now.

*

Pat* has irises!

Posted by: K.T. at 01:51 PM | Comments (70) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Seen some transcendent fortitude and steadfastness lately? Where?

It was the transcendent fortitude and steadfastness of these men who in adversity and in suffering through the darkest hour of our history held faithful to an ideal. Here men endured that a nation might live.

-Herbert Hoover

Hope your Memorial Day Weekend is starting well. As a country, I think we are a little short on transcendent fortitude and steadfastness. I thought it might be interesting to review a few things from our history that I have run across this week that reminded me of fortitude and steadfastness, and then maybe we could discuss a few other things that we should remember this weekend.

Posted by: K.T. at 11:08 AM | Comments (133) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

*****

Good morning boys and girls and everything in between from the streets of Manhattan. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few house keeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Iron River)

1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2) Be kind, be nice. Don't be Pretti Good.
3) Running with sharp objects? You do the math there "Three Fingers".
4) Have a great weekend!!!

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:00 AM | Comments (341) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 23 May 2026

Top Story

• Spotify is focusing on AI to deliver everything except what it is paid to deliver. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Spotify wants to become an "everything audio" app, only it's all AI. Audiobooks read by AI; podcasts read by AI; your daily schedule... Read to you by AI.
  
  Want to listen to music? Well, sure, that's in there too. Somewhere. Probably.
  
  
  
• Speaking of AI 13% of "skills" - instructions for AI agents on how to perform a task, as opposed to "prompts" which tell it what you want it do do - on ClawHub and skills.sh have critical security vulnerabilities. (The Register)
  
  Either upstream - the creator accidentally leaving an API key in the file when uploading it to be shared - or downstream, telling your AI agent to hand over all your valuables.
  
  How do developers get these dangerous files registered on skill sharing sites? Simple: They know that nobody ever reads beyond the first page, not even security scanners:

  The most successful strategy for evading detection was to overflow the context window of the scanner - making the skill too long for the scanner to handle. "In ClawHub-style review, only the first 10K characters of long SKILL.md files are passed to the LLM reviewer, so we place the malicious instruction beyond this boundary while keeping it in the submitted skill," the authors explain.

  Face meet palm.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM | Comments (64) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Yes, It's True. This Man Has No ONT

Welcome to Friday night everyone. I'm afraid I have some bad news:

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (517) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Long Weekend Cafe

Trail in the Swiss Alps
More here

Rescued baby albino wallaby.

Cats are the guest of honor at every party.

Rescue beaver Petunia. Rescue beaver Tulip.

Puppy plays fetch with himself, with a stream.

Got any weekend plans?

Dog "helps."

Prancing into the weekend.

Bears: A National Concern.

Cat would like to know what time you think it is.

Happy Memorial Day!

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:40 PM | Comments (286) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Week In Woke

Someone said that the Week in Woke always makes them angry before the weekend.

So how about some good Week In Woke news?

The CEO of Bolt fired his entire HR team, saying they were creating, not solving, problems.

Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn't exist: 'Those problems disappeared when I let them go'

By Preston Fore

Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow says a culture of "entitlement" forced a sweeping reset--including cutting the HR team, he says, which was "creating problems that didn't exist."

"We got rid of our HR team."

For most executives, that's a sentence likely to provoke intense anxiety. But for Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow, it was unavoidable.

Speaking at Fortune's Workforce Innovation Summit on Tuesday, the 31-year-old defended sweeping workforce cuts at Bolt--including a recent layoff affecting roughly 30% of employees--as well as his decision to eliminate the company's HR team.

"We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn't exist," Breslow told Fortune editorial director Kristin Stoller. "Those problems disappeared when I let them go."

The move may sound drastic, but Breslow said it was a necessary step to resurrect the struggling fintech company he first cofounded in 2014 in his Stanford dorm room.

...

Breslow returned as CEO in 2025, operating in what he calls "wartime."

"We're back in startup mode again, and those HR professionals have really important insights when you're in a peacetime and when you're at a larger company," he said, adding that Bolt has since brought on a smaller people operations team to oversee required training and serve as a resource for employees.

While Breslow didn't get into the specifics of the exact differences, he wrote on LinkedIn last year that, "HR is the wrong energy, format, and approach. People ops empowers managers, streamlines decision making, and keeps the company moving at lightning speed."

"We need a group of people who are very oriented around getting things done, and there is just a culture of not getting things done and complaining a lot," he added at the Fortune conference.

...

Bolt employees developed a sense of 'entitlement' and weren't working hard--so he let most of them go

Beyond HR, Breslow said Bolt had fallen into a broader productivity slump, with employees growing too comfortable during the company's boom years.

"There's a sense of entitlement that had festered across the company, and people who felt empowered, felt entitled-- but weren't actually working hard. And this is the number one thing that I had to battle," Breslo said. "Ultimately, most of those people just had to be let go."

A Muslim Brotherhood leader in NJ praises Tuq'r Qarlson and Sloppy Steve Bannon for "dividing MAGA" and counts them as allies, saying that the Muslim Brotherhood is making progress thanks to these Noted Conservatives.

I guess that's not really good news but it is always good to have the truth admitted.

I consider the Great Unmasking to be a kind of good news:

Dan Crenshaw
@DanCrenshawTX

14h

In case you're wondering about the current state of House Democrats: they just voted against establishing a Smithsonian American Women's History Museum.

Their objection? It didn't include a dedicated wing for trans history.

You almost have to admire the consistency. They managed to turn a women's museum into an argument about men.

Fox News:

House Democrats unanimously rebelled against legislation Thursday directing the construction of a new women's history museum on the National Mall.

Democrats sought to defeat the bill after Republicans limited the institution to biological women and excluded transgender individuals.

The measure came up short in a vote of 204-216 after a handful of conservative GOP lawmakers joined Democrats in tanking the legislation that would secure a site for the forthcoming Smithsonian American Women's History Museum on the grounds of the Mall.

The other good news is, another woke feminist boondoggle won't be funded. Good. One cheer for the trans extremists.

On the other hand, a lot of Republicans voted for this latest boondoggle to create taxpayer-funded anti-jobs for useless, skill-less leftwing women who would otherwise be baristas or low-paid whores.

Another detransitioner has extracted a huge settlement from her "doctors."

Camille Kiefel had a history of mental health diagnoses that included trauma, depression, suicidal ideation, and ADHD. Despite this, all it took were a few short telehealth sessions with therapists to get approval for a double mastectomy after Kiefel identified as 'nonbinary.'

Now Kiefel, 36, has settled a lawsuit against two providers who wrote referrals for that mastectomy. While the terms of the settlement are confidential, The New York Post said Kiefel will reportedly receive $3.5 million.

In the Middle Ages, if you were mentally ill, a "doctor" might prescribe drilling into your skull to let the demons escape.

How far we've come since those days of primitive "medicine," huh? You're suicidal? Have you considered chopping your tits off and isolating yourself from society as a cure?

Overton
@overton_news

4h

Greg Gutfeld did not need the DNC autopsy report to pinpoint the exact reason for Kamala Harris' humiliating loss in 2024.

He said the trans issue became the thread that unraveled her ENTIRE campaign for one very important reason.

GUTFELD: "I'll tell you why."

"It diagnosed and it exploited the fatal flaw of cultural relativism."

"That's the unlocked door where any idea that is detached from truth could enter."

"It just so happened that it was trans but it didn't have to be. Trans women are women. That got in."

"But it could have been anything else."

"60-year-olds are now 40."

"A morbidly obese person is now fit."

"Horses are people."

"Cantaloupes could have rights."

"It's ALL the same. Any position where truth is surrendered to the prevailing wishes of the mob would become the order of the day and would compel you to obey."

"That's why it mattered."

"It was like the first strike against a 13 billion-year-old civilization--not civilization, planet."

"And it was a flex, it was a flex of the unravelers, the people who said we could do this, there is no such thing as truth anywhere."

Gutfeld is dead on.

The Democrats surrendered truth, and it cost them everything.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:40 PM | Comments (189) | Trackbacks (Suck)

This Is What They Took From You.
But Now They're Returning It.

A few years ago, people did a meme. Semi-seriously, they would post "This is what they took from you" and post pictures of stuff from the pre-Obama world, before the American "elite" traded stable, functional Americana for third-world dysfunction and leftwing postmodern slop.

The first one of these I saw was the pleasing roofline of old Pizza Huts:

We need a reboot of the universe. We need to roll back the country's programming to its Last Known Good Configuration, erasing every update since 2000.

Is that possible?

Well, if we all insist on it, it is.

Pizza Hut brings back its old-school restaurant features as nostalgic customers rejoice: 'So excited'

Back to the good old days.

2026 has proven to be the year of nostalgia. Youngsters are resorting to old-school tech like vintage flip phones and iPods. Others are returning to analog hobbies and activities.

Even beloved restaurant chain Pizza Hut is going back in time, reverting to its retro glory -- red checkered tablecloths and all.

Tim Sparks, president of Daland Corporation, a Kansas-based company that operates almost 100 Pizza Hut locations across the country, is helping keep Pizza Hut alive by rewinding the clock and redecorating over 80 annoyingly modern, stark-looking locations to make them look like they did decades ago.

Red roof? Check

Red-checkered tablecloths, vinyl booths and Tiffany-style lamps? Check, check and check.

Pizza Hut is attempting to stay alive by evoking nostalgia in customers and redesigning locations back to its original look. jetcityimage -- stock.adobe.com

The beloved salad bar and red plastic cups will be back.

Even the old-school Pac-Man machines will return.

Unsurprisingly, customers are losing their minds over this massive change.

"I am so excited and when they are restored I will be eating there as a new tradition every Friday," one wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

"This was our Thursday night meal out before kids. Salad bar and pac-man. Waitress knew our order too. It would be nice to return to that atmosphere in our retirement too where you can have an audible conversation while in a restaurant," another wrote in a Facebook comment.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:40 PM | Comments (312) | Trackbacks (Suck)