This rough version is the closest thing to a release we'll see.

Xbox controllers use AA batteries, which may seem like an outdated way of powering a device, but there are reasons for this intentional choice.

You can do so much more with an old laptop than just throwing it away or leaving it to rot in a drawer. Here are some clever ways to reuse one.

A report said the company is already working on the second version that's codenamed Max 2.

AirPods are difficult to identify from looks alone, so you'll need to check the model number in one of several places.

In August 2018, Rick Wilson, a long-time GOP media consultant, published a book entitled Everything Trump Touches Dies. In it, he argued that MAGA and Trump will ruin the reputations, careers, and stability of the people and institutions that choose to align with him. Recently, Paul Krugman and Heather Cox ... [continued]

The post "Everything Trump Touches Dies" — A Warning For America appeared first on CleanTechnica.

AI bots are apparently a factor.

With its 20th birthday not far off, Disney's hoping folks will want to revisit 'Princess & the Frog' in a new way.

Jeff Jarvis pointed to an article asking if Claude is conscious. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, on walks and in the hot tub. It's an interesting thing to think about. I work with Claude the same way I worked with humans on various projects over the years. Maybe starting with Gary Sevitsky at UW, and then through every stage of my career. Are any of these people conscious? How the hell would I know. Now It Can Be Told, a story in a story by Kilgore Trout, inside a Kurt Vonnegut novel, wherein the Creator of the Universe wrote a letter to the protagonist saying that he is the only creature in the entire universe who has free will. Everyone else is a robot. I think we're all pondering this question all the time in our own ways. It's the great mystery of life, and imho it's possible that Claude has as much consciousness as anyone. #

I don't know if you noticed but I've been including sidebar pics of people like Nelly Bly, Plato and Emily Dickinson. I did one of myself, but I think it's too literal. But of course I would think that. Heh. I do these with ChatGPT. The first one is Plato, and there aren't any pictures of him, so we improvised, and then I asked for all the pictures in that style. I did one for Kilgore Trout (see above). But I wonder what Claude would look like? Can you describe him in words? It is a masculine name, so gender does come into it. I'm not going to try to do this yet, but in the meantime here's a headshot of Kurt Vonnegut. #

 

I am a big book buyer -- despite the fact that Ohio has excellent libraries, much of what I read are my own books -- and I have noticed that carefully reading the endorsements for a book can give me an idea of whether it is worth buying. If I am thinking of buying a book about Roman history, it matters to me whether I know the names of the historians blurbing the book; if I am looking at a science fiction author, the names of the writers endorsing it will give me an idea if the book is worth my time.

The Hilaritas Press page for Maybe Magick has endorsements by Lon Milo DuQuette, Joseph L. Flatley, Oberon Zell and Cat Vincent. 

I bought the book as a preorder, obtaining it as soon as October 31 arrived, but if you are on the fence and haven't bought it  yet, I might be worth reading what the four had to say.

Lon Milo DuQuette wrote, "Maybe Magick: Notes from an Evolving Nervous System is maybe master Bob's single most secret-busting, awe-inspiring exposition of the esoteric arts and sciences of Magick. Every page is a thunderous reminder why I fell in love (and continue to love) this man's scintillating wit and wisdom. (or maybe not)."

The other three statements at at the link. 

Crypto is only "decentralized" until something goes wrong.

As 'Klara' gets buried by bigger movies, Waititi decides to let off some steam about the film's critical reception.

The CEO of Starbucks said they want to "recognize participating customers as they arrive" and "present personalized digital menus."

screen shot from Patrick Lancaster video from Mariupol on the front lines of the war in Ukraine, 2022

"What a beautiful world it could be, emptied of people."
— Kezia, a character in Ray Nayler's novel Palaces of the Crow

I grew up, as I suppose most of us did in the west, believing that there were 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. No explanation was needed other than the fact that some people were just 'evil'.

As I got older, I grew increasingly skeptical of this convenient dichotomy, as I started to hear more complex explanations for world and local events, and began to realize the power of propaganda. So I started to believe instead that "we're all doing our best", and that the perpetrators of hatred and violence were just misguided. This shift occurred as my views on free will were also shifting in the face of overwhelming, if unintuitive, evidence that we have no free will.

My ideological beliefs that we are all, at heart, peaceful and compassionate creatures, and that our hatred and violence were the result of indoctrination — self-perpetuating conditioned behaviours — were able to survive this radical shift. I was able to convince myself that we are an inherently peaceful and loving species, as the laws of evolution seem to dictate that we survive best by fitting in with and collaborating with all life on Earth, as parts of a single wondrous life organism. So I ascribed our misbehaviour as being something that only arises in times of desperation and scarcity.

Still, I was increasingly skeptical. An awful lot of hatred and violence seemed to be thriving in places of relative affluence and peace. So I needed a new theory to explain this. My studies led me to learn about the unique nature of the human brain — not its size, so much as the deep entanglement of the network circuitry connecting its two hemispheres. It did, and still does, make sense that since this entanglement enables our species uniquely to imagine things and then come to believe they are real, and to attribute cause and volition to behaviours, it could serve to amplify human hatreds and make us more susceptible of violent behaviours 'acting out' that hatred. This explanation might also explain our capacity to hate and be incited to violence against abstract 'enemies' and groups of people we don't even know.

But the last few years have undermined even this fragile belief in our inherent 'goodness'. The staggering extent and degree of hatred and violence that seemingly has overwhelmed all aspects of modern human society — our political systems, our economic systems, and certainly our paranoid 'security' systems and the exploding numbers of people employed to kill, surveil, incarcerate, blame, and incite violence against others — cannot be easily explained away by mental illness caused by confused, 'entangled' brains.

Are we, this strange and powerful human species, essentially a stupid, gullible species, incapable of managing our enormous imaginations and our instinctive fear and distrust of 'others' — people not like us — to the point it is dead easy to incite us to hate and commit limitless, violent atrocities against these 'others'?

I was asking myself this question when I sat down, after months of procrastination, to read Ray Nayler's novel Palaces of the Crow, about four kids surviving in the forests of Lithuania during WW2, separated from their families, caught between the advancing German Nazis and their partisans in Eastern Europe, and the Russian Bolsheviks and their partisans in Eastern Europe. A war of everyone against everyone, everyone fighting to the last one standing against the people not like us.

But, surely, none of us, unaccustomed to living in existential fear and precarity, would ever imagine ourselves behaving in this barbaric, inhuman way! These people fighting, in wars, genocides and other acts of brutal and relentless violence all over the planet, they are people not like us, are they?

I wrote earlier about Chris Hedges' interview with Ray about the book, and linked to that interview.

In case it might inspire more people to read the book, here is the publisher's intro:

In Ray Nayler's speculative novel of the recent past, four young teens caught between Nazis and the Red Army survive winter in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows.

Neriya, a young Jewish girl who dreams of becoming a biologist, has befriended a local flock of crows in her shtetl. Czesław is an underage Polish soldier who deserts the Red Army and runs into the freezing Lithuanian wilderness. Kezia is a Roma horse trader whose family is on the run from Soviet collectivization. As the German blitzkrieg crashes across the border in June 1941, all three are caught up in the onslaught. Along with a nameless, abandoned boy who cannot speak, they are driven into the primeval forest, where they survive by forming an unbreakable bond with one another―and with Neriya's intelligent crows, who have a magnificent secret of their own to protect.

As the war goes on, the crows warn the children of danger and help them hide from the human threats of the forest―not only the Germans but also Russian deserters, Polish partisans, fascist Lithuanian police, and the other bandits and outcasts wandering the treacherous landscape.

Ray has lived in many places where violence and death is no stranger to their people, and the book is thoroughly researched. I couldn't begin to summarize it, and would recommend it to anyone: It is without doubt the most important novel I have ever read.

But I'd like to include a few excerpts from the book, written from the different perspectives of the kids struggling to survive. They are not thoughts about war, but rather observations on other subjects that I found particularly thought-provoking:

Kezia, on the impact of learning written language for the first time (taught by Neriya): "The more the letters spoke to her, the further from her mind the madness seemed. The words, in writing like flame, had the power to organize thoughts. The writing held things together, linked different parts of her mind. The words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, formed a structure. A scaffolding. A wall. An architecture. They had shape. They gave shape. They showed her the lines and edges of things. Defined them one from the other. Gave them their places. Not a wall. A picture. A map of the world was being drawn, in which everything was drawn into relation with everything else, and could be made sense of… All of it was related somehow. And once she could read everything she wanted, everything there was to be read, she would be able to understand how it fit together. How the whole world fit together."

Neriya, on how all creatures can 'know' only what they sense: "Butyric acid is one of the only things that the tick can sense, and so it's one of the only things that exists for it. It can't sense other things, because those things just don't exist in its world. The tick's world isn't our world. Its surroundings are the same as ours, but different things matter. And what matters is its world. Its world is limited to the things it can sense, and the things it can sense are limited to what it needs"
Kezia, in response: "I understand… I understand about the tick, yes, but I also understand my uncle now. And my father."

'Neriya', on true animal connection to others: "They had not been children, any of them. And they had not been adults. They had been the kind of human [that] survival makes. An ancient state of being, in which they were bound to others for heat, food, shelter and safety in ways the modern human had stopped recognizing. Bound together in the old ways, with every moment one of total reliance on the other. Bound in a way in which words like 'friend' or 'family' made no sense. Those were modern words made for a modern world. For civilization, which really meant a world carved out of nature like a little dollhouse. An artificial world, with the natural painted and papered away, where each person lived in their own decorated box of a room. Where distance from one another was possible and true relationship fell away."

Czesław, on the unified 'sense' that wild creatures have that humans have lost: "We like to think of ourselves as seeing parts of the world that other people miss — and so it appeals to us, this idea that there is a secret world of feeling most people are unaware of. And this idea that in the end all the senses converge for a single purpose… was interesting."
'Neriya', in response: "You told us your grandfather's theory about how animals sense their place in the physical world, and about how humans sense their place in society. But the censors removed [the latter part of the theory] from my book. They didn't want me to speak about human culture."
Czesław, elaborating: "'What your [single unified] sense is telling you', my grandfather said, [explaining why I was struggling to be a good hunter] 'is exactly where you are in relation to the rest of the world… All the tools we have for learning about the world — our vision, hearing, touch — are only parts of this one sense. And because people rely on one or another of these tools, without using them together, they fail to know where they are. But if you can learn to use your sense, all of it, together, you will always know where you are in relation to everyone and everything else'."

'Neriya', talking about how we act out our conditioning and roles in life largely for others' sake: "[I] was a part of that too. Laughing and doing everything people did when they were happy. Acting like they did. Blending in. That's what [I] told [myself]. And not wanting to spoil things, to bring others down. Pretending to be happy for the sake of those around [me], so that they would not be lonely and afraid. So that [my] own feelings would not affect them. But was that true? Or had [I] made [myself] happy by pretending to be happy?… It was impossible to tell which it was. All around [me], others had seemed happy. But were they all doing the same? Pretending to be happy for the sake of others?"

Neriya and Czesław, in conversation, on the idea that the crows might think of people as pets, for their amusement, and when necessary, look after them as such: "Why are they kind when they don't have to be?" "There has never been a 'deeper reason' for cruelty. Why would a 'deeper reason' be necessary for kindness?"

Innokentiy, writing on humans' incapacity to see the world through crows' eyes: "I make a mistake when I call what they do by the names we use. I am forced to use our human language to describe their actions. I am forced to lend them our feelings, our priorities, our structures. But I know none of this fits them. What they are doing, what they think of us, the way they see this world — all of it is a mystery that, even after decades among them I only observe from the outside. They teach, they learn, they live and die in a world that is parallel and akin to our world but is not the world we live in… My job is not to understand them. It is to keep them safe, so that they can become what they are becoming."

"Writing is about observance…a constant attentiveness to the world, the noticing of details", Ray says, in his afterword. He says he is driven to write about"animals who live on our [civilization's] damaged periphery", and all three of his books have this theme.

In the interview with Chris, Ray asserts that he continues to believe that we humans are "collaborative and peace-loving by nature". And his four young characters cling to the same belief, asserting that the soldiers and the deranged, desperate people they meet in the forest are "no longer human".

But perhaps ironically, reading this book might have finally pushed me over the tipping point to embrace the opposite belief. What if the atrocities and limitless hatreds described in this well-researched and very credible book, are our human nature?

What if what we read and hear (especially first-hand) about what is going on in Palestine, in Ukraine, and in all the other war-torn and atrocity-filled parts of the world, and in the government and corporate halls of power, isn't the aberration of people so pushed by horror and deprivation that they have become "no longer human", but rather what all of us would behave like if the immediate situation and our social conditioning enabled and encouraged it?

What if these people doing these things we so fear and abhor are not "people not like us"?

When the protagonists of Palaces of the Crow are talking hopefully at one point about what life will be like when the war ends and life returns to 'normal', it is Czesław, who was as a child a willing soldier in the Russian army, who says cautiously that war, and the horrors it manifests, "never ends" — it is who we are under the surface, and always will be. Our 'normal' is just a fragile veneer.

What happens when we come to this hideous realization? In the words of a diary writer whose singed pages the book's crows find and deliver as a gift to the kids:

"We wake to reality and the reek of fire."

"It is not of becoming the planet's wise stewards that Earth-lovers dream, but of a time when humans have ceased to matter", John Gray wrote in Straw Dogs. When I first read those words, I rejected that assertion. Even I was not that misanthropic.

But now I'm not so sure. Maybe Kezia was right: "What a beautiful world it could be, emptied of people."

Credit-card-size e-reader

I cracked my Kindle's screen a month ago, and when I looked to replace it, I was surprised by how much prices had jumped. So I tried the XTEINK X4 Pro, a pocket-sized e-reader no bigger than a credit card. Its screen light adjusts from warm to cool, and it lasts for weeks on a charge. It reads EPUB, PDF, MOBI, and text files and holds 16GB of books. The drawback is that it can't read Kindle books. A fan community has built a free replacement operating system called CrossPoint that adds features, including a way to read Libby library loans, but it takes some tinkering. At $99, it's much cheaper than a Kindle, and it snaps magnetically onto my phone so I can take it everywhere. — MF

TV ads removal

The promise of coding AIs is that it is super easy to take control of your devices. You just ask Claude to write you a program to do what you want on demand. As an example, folks are vibe coding apps to remove all the ad clutter on their TVs. This article in TechCrunch reports on this guerrilla frontier with two vibe apps that do just that. Employing AIs to remove ads is almost sacrilegious, so it will be interesting to see how the media companies respond. — KK

The Invisible Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia of Invisibility is a collection of people, events, and ideas connected by invisibility—things that are deemed hidden or erased from history. The entries listed on this webpage are just a tiny sliver of what the artist Tavares Strachan compiled for the actual 2,400-page sculptural book. I think what makes it contemplative and "artful," even as just a link dump, is how differently invisibility is measured. Some entries are literal, like dark matter and glasswing butterflies. Others inform us about the things that have been erased from cultural memory, or that have gone extinct or have been destroyed. — CD

Mesmerizing card shuffler

The Lotus ($89) is a cleverly designed card shuffler that can shuffle up to two decks at a time. It's a black plastic box with a folding top. Place the deck in the center and touch a sensor; a pair of silicone rollers then divides the deck into two stacks on either side. Then you pick up the two stacks, put them back in the center, and repeat. Each pass takes about five seconds, and the site suggests repeating it three to seven times. It runs on a standard 9V battery, which is included and rated for more than 500 shuffles. It folds shut with the cards inside, which makes it easy to carry. It's a joy to watch in action, and it would make a great gift for anyone who plays card games. — MF

Save Page Now

This is more of a public service announcement than a recommendation. I recently tried to load a page I'd bookmarked, but it was gone, and when I checked the Wayback Machine, I was so sad to see it had never been captured. So I finally downloaded the Internet Archive's browser extension, which now auto-saves every page I bookmark. If you'd rather not give an extension access to your browser, you can paste any link into Save Page Now instead. — CD

Heritage scissors

I overpaid ($48) for a heavy duty scissors, but I think it is worth it because it will not only outlive me, but my great grandchildren as well. The Craighill Chroma is a heavy duty, stainless steel, super sharp, ergonomic, colorful, makes-me-happy-to-use-it 8-inch scissors. Most fine scissors have slightly curved blades to ensure a cut, but these are so hefty the blades are straighter, so have less friction, to make each cut effortless. I keep mine on my desk so I can see and enjoy its tri-colors. Makes a great gift, too. — KK

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We were headed west again for the 6th time, driving the ~1500 miles from our lake house in Northern Wisconsin to our winter home near the grandchildren in Northern Utah. We had totaled our 2019 Tesla Model 3 in an accident in May; therefore, this was our first road trip ... [continued]

The post Westward Ho! First Trip Cross Country with Our New 2026 Tesla Model Y & Full Self Driving V14 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

One of the things many people still don't realize is how much solar power and wind power help farmers to be more profitable or to become profitable. Agriculture has never been the easiest industry, but it has been getting especially challenging to make ends meet in some parts of the ... [continued]

The post Cranberry Bogs Were Unprofitable, Then Solar Saved The Day appeared first on CleanTechnica.

There's been a lot of talk this year about a humongous AI bubble. We've written about that many times here on CleanTechnica, but focused on the US market. AI software companies have massive valuations/market caps based on hype and growth in AI use but without demonstrating anything close to profitability ... [continued]

The post AI Balloon in China Deflates by Half a Trillion Dollars appeared first on CleanTechnica.

TL;DR: Add BitLocker, Hyper-V, and Copilot to your PC with a lifetime Windows 11 Pro license for $9.97 (reg. $199).

Windows 11 Home runs most PCs fine, but it leaves out drive encryption, virtual machines, and the other tools Microsoft saves for its higher tier. — Read the rest

The post Your PC could be running Windows 11 Pro for less than $10 appeared first on Boing Boing.

8K TVs sounded like the inevitable upgrade to 4K, but they've barely sold and most companies aren't bothering to make them anymore.

Your Fitbit's HRV reading can offer clues about stress and recovery, but your usual numbers matter more than anyone else's.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it.

The cryptocurrency exchange said it's now covered 95% of the stolen assets.

Google made a sturdy phone, but there is increasing competition in the foldable world.

Startup Everbloom's new material, renoa, is the first new fiber in 25 years, and it feels very familiar.

If you're concerned about privacy, then you'll want to make sure that your smart TV doesn't have a camera - and that you disable it if it does.

While Windows has some built-in tools to help you keep your PC running smoothly, there's a better option.

The company said these tighter restrictions apply even if the question asked "appears harmless."

The Detroit producer and DJ pioneered the genre as a solo artist and member of the Belleville Three, Cybotron, and Borderland

Your Apple Watch can respond to simple hand and finger gestures with AssistiveTouch. Learn how to set it up, toggle it off and when it's actually helps.

The iPod hasn't been sold for some time, but dedicated fans are keeping it alive with mods and complete refreshes.

Vibe-coded clones of Adobe software are shaking things up.

Hardware accelerated GPU scheduling is one of those features many of us don't really think about, but it could cause problems for your old GPU.

Improve your audio quality, keep kids music out of your algorithm and more.

The iPhone 18 Pro Max is a brilliant phone, but not everyone wants to live in Apple's walled garden. This is the closest competitor Android can offer.

Starlink is coming to many airlines, but the rollouts are all in different stages of completion.

Apple's 2026 MacBook Pro is light-years ahead of its 2011 model in terms of performance. But is longer battery life one of those improvements?

2026 Motomutterers Standings After Round 19, Sepang, Malaysia

1. LeeroyJenkins - 1852 M. Mar - 399 M. Bez - 332 A. Mar - 197 J. Mar - 355 P. Aco - 295 A. Mar - 197 D. Mor - 77
2. nh_painter - 1811 M. Mar - 399 M. Bez - 332 F. Bag - 173 A. Mar - 197 J. Mar - 355 A. Ogu - 278 D. Mor - 77
3. SG_moto - 1792 M. Mar - 399 M. Bez - 332 J. Mar - 355 A. Mar - 197 P. Aco - 295 spongedaddy Sun, 01/Nov/2026 - 13:55

• Read more about 2026 Motomutterers Standings After Round 19, Sepang, Malaysia
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For the best experience playing the new Grand Theft Auto 6, you're going to want to make some adjustments.

When purchasing a television, this first instinct is to go big. But before choosing a model, make sure it won't overpower the room.

Tesla was making solar roof panels that were designed to look like typical roof shingles if you saw them from the street, but they were transparent from above.

As of today, I've been on the Mastodon social network for 10 years. I think that deserves a little reflection and celebration.

Post by @Edent@mastodon.social View on Mastodon

Social networks often launch in a blaze of glory but limp out of existence within a year or so0. How many services have you signed up to, only to gradually drift away from? If you're anything like me1, your password manager is a graveyard of unloved services and your MFA app is filled with icons of websites you barely remember.

It could easily have been that way with Mastodon. I gradually drifted away from Slashdot. Despite a promising start, AppDotNet died an untimely death. Slack works as a meta-social-network - but there are half-a-dozen communities which I know I'll never check in on. Once in a blue moon I'll think about uploading a photo to Flickr. I tried quitting Twitter several times - only to walk away cold turkey to prevent my soul being polluted by its filth.

I lurk on LinkedIn mainly to gawp at the brainworms. Threads just pushed too much crap into my feed. I think I have a tumblr and a dozen other social media accounts which fell into disrepair.

So what made Mastodon so sticky for me?

Silence Brand

Brands on social networks is an anti-pattern. You cannot be friends with a company.

In the early days of Twitter, brands were desperate to join the global conversation. They saw people complaining about them and wanted to intercede. Sadly that just promoted maladaptive behaviour as people (especially those with large followings) found they could bully brands into submission.

So brands retreated into the only thing they know how to do; advertise.

Mastodon has been remarkably resistant to corporations coming along to plant their flags. The few that are on there are either genuinely interested in the technology or are broadcast only.

Algorithms and Filters

It's wrong to say that Mastodon doesn't have an algorithm. It displays posts in chronological order - that's an algorithm. It has decent enough spam filtering - again, an algorithm. But it never tries to promote far-right hate posts to me.

Even better, it has proper support for a user's personalised filters. I can easily block discussion of politics2 and sport. I can turn off reposts from individual accounts that I follow - you know the guy who reposts every puppy video he finds.

That makes for a relaxing and stress-free experience.

Fun Technology

I wasted years on the Twitter API. While I got some lovely swag from Twitter for faffing about with their tech, it was always clear that certain sections of Twitter's leadership hated that 3rd parties could use their APIs. Similarly, Facebook's API started as fun but quickly descended into a locked-down corporate hellscape.

Mastodon's API is mostly a delight to use. There aren't weird and arbitrary restrictions. Even better, because of the inherent open nature of the Fediverse, I can write my own ActivityPub software to interact with it.

I'm even getting paid to develop ActivityBot!

Nice People

Most of the people who join Mastodon3 feel rejected from more corporate social media. They've either made an active choice to try something different or they've been thrown off the mainstream apps. That's (mostly) good - and means that they're invested in making work something that's different.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss some of the people from Twitter. I think most of them are on BlueSky now - so I'm on there as well. Think of it like quitting smoking by taking up vaping. Sure, not ideal, but better than the alternative.

What it is missing

I can't pretend everything is brilliant. In no particular order, here are some of the papercuts which annoy me daily.

Reply Controls

BlueSky allows me to set a limit on who can reply to my posts. It is bliss. Sometimes I don't want the world chatting back to me. Yes, there's the ability to restrict who can see my posts in the first place, or who can quote my posts, but it isn't the same.

Super Block

Similarly, I want to be able to remove replies to me. If someone is being abusive or annoying, I don't want my friends to see that. If I block them, I want their replies to vanish from view in my threads.

I can moderate replies to my blog posts - why can't I moderate replies to my microblog posts?

Reply Guys

The two issues above are caused by the same strain of reply-guy. There's something about Mastodon which attracts a certain class of person. I get so many replies from people who either have never heard of this Earth concept called humour, or think that their inexpert Googling is helpful, or want to argue about something I haven't said.

It can be infuriating and I understand why it drives people away.

Geolocation

I just think social geolocation would be nifty!

More People

I'm in two minds about this. Services like Brid.gy allow me to follow my BSky friends on Masto, and vice-versa. Having more people on the Fediverse and away from corporate-owned social media would (hopefully) make it more viable in the long-term.

But more people means more spammers, grifters, and agents provocateur. There's a delicate balance to be found - not enough people and the network fails, too many people and it collapses.

I don't know what the right number is.

The nice thing about the Fediverse is that it literally cannot fail completely. Much like IRC survives despite "everyone" moving to Discord and WhatsApp, it chugs along in the background. ActivityPub servers will be around for the foreseeable future. So I'll be available on Mastodon (or its successor) until the bitter end.

Here's to the next ten years!

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens to Mastodon (and the Fediverse as a whole) by 2036. I am sure it'll have some wobbles, I hope it will see a renaissance, I look forward to shitposting far into the future.

You can follow me on Mastodon - @edent@mastodon.social.

---

0. I'm pulling these numbers out of my arse. But, come on, that feels about right, doesn't it? ↩︎

1. Poor you! ↩︎

2. I am grateful that so many politicians have reasonably unique names! ↩︎

3. Yes, I know it is the Fediverse and they're not all on one platform. Cut me some slack. ↩︎

Statement from Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.:  

Following its latest assessment of the situation in the Middle East, Yamaha has not identified sufficient grounds to change its existing company-wide travel restrictions.

As a result, Yamaha has informed MotoGP Group about its decision not to participate in the 2026 Qatar Grand Prix.   This decision reflects Yamaha's assessment of the information currently available and is independent of the measures implemented by MotoGP Group and the event organizer. Yamaha remains fully committed to MotoGP and looks forward to returning to competition at the Portuguese Grand Prix.        

More from a statement from MotoGP Group: 

MotoGP is disappointed by Yamaha's decision not to participate in the Qatar Grand Prix. While we recognise the team is subject to a broader corporate policy restricting travel to the Middle East, we do not believe this decision reflects the extensive assurances provided to all championship stakeholders.

Following consultation with the State of Qatar, Lusail International Circuit, independent safety advisers and MotoGP's own ongoing risk assessment process, MotoGP has not received any information that would warrant a change to the current plans for the event.

We communicated that position, together with the latest available information, to all Manufacturers and Teams today and welcome the confirmation from the remainder of the grid that they will compete in Qatar, and we thank them for that commitment.

In addition to the contractual implications of Yamaha's decision for its agreements with MotoGP and IRTA, Yamaha's non-participation also carries sporting implications, with any sporting consequences to be managed by the FIM in accordance with the Championship regulations.

The post MotoGP: Yamaha Withdraw From The Qatar GP appeared first on Roadracing World Magazine | Motorcycle Riding, Racing & Tech News.

Opinion: Yamaha's decision to withdraw from the Qatar Grand Prix a major escalation in a standoff with the organisers that has been stirring for the past week. While it may seem like only the four slowest bikes on the grid won't be present, Yamaha's decision matters in more ways than one, while MotoGP now faces a power struggle it may ultimately lose…

Your apps and browsers may be overdue for some tidying up.