"India’s Unified Payments Interface uses a different model: intervene before dominance rather than after. Instead of regulating private platforms that have already achieved lock-in, India built public payment infrastructure that any platform can connect to on equal terms. Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm compete on the same rails; none owns the customer relationship—that belongs to the user’s bank account. No single platform can raise fees on the underlying infrastructure because the infrastructure is public. Brazil’s Pix system follows similar principles, as do comparable approaches adopted by central banks in Ghana and Sri Lanka. The question today is not whether enshittification can be stopped, but why regulators in Canada, the US, and elsewhere choose not to stop it."
https://third-bit.com/2026/05/21/enshittification/

"Open Printer is an open-source, repairable inkjet printer designed for makers, artists, and anyone tired of throwaway hardware. Built with standard mechanical components and modular parts, it’s easy to assemble, modify, and repair. You can print on standard sheets or paper rolls and choose between black or color cartridges, refillable at your convenience.

"This project aims to reclaim our everyday tools. As such, it features no proprietary drivers, no cartridge DRM that locks you to a single vendor and is designed to never become obsolete. The Open Printer is built for longevity and customizability, ensuring that it remains fully under your control."

#openSource
https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer

"It’s not every day you see a video that starts with chickens and ends with a genuine national security concern, but then, these are strange times. The story starts with YouTuber, musician, and increasingly influential amateur cybersecurity researcher Benn Jordan’s attempt to get a robot dog from Chinese firm Unitree—also responsible for the questionable Gundam and the kung-fu deathbots—to guard his chicken coop. The robot proves an abject failure at doing this, and at anything else remotely useful. What it does turn out to be good at, according to Jordan, is sending data back to China.

"… the really interesting part of the video comes once Jordan starts to look into the robot’s information security features—or, more specifically, the alleged lack thereof. This section of the video starts strong with the revelation that Jordan was able to obtain root access to the dog—yes, that’s a phrase I just typed—by adding Curl commands to the end of his wifi password."
https://gizmodo.com/man-finds-robot-dog-is-bad-at-protecting-his-chickens-but-might-be-good-at-sending-data-to-china-2000758796

"Dexerto: California man uses elaborate drone show to help delivery drivers find his house. “To help with this issue, [Tom] BetGeorge programmed an army of drones to perform an extravagant light show to guide confused couriers in the right direction. In the viral video, the drones show messages like, ‘Wrong driveway, back up,’ ‘There you go, keep going,’ and ‘Over here’ with a giant arrow pointing down.”"

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/california-man-uses-elaborate-drone-show-to-help-delivery-drivers-find-his-house-3359267/

The "end" of the Oregon Trail is a 35 minute drive from my home.

"The FBI is now investigating the deaths and disappearances of thirteen scientists, researchers, and workers connected to America's nuclear weapons and aerospace programs, reacting to pressure from a public increasingly alarmed by what appears to be a troubling pattern. Nearly half of the thirteen people have direct ties to Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, large weapons science labs in New Mexico.

As of today, I’ve identified a potential fourteenth: Ingrid Coleen Lane. No other news outlet has yet tied her disappearance to the others. That’s probably because in news stories and press releases, Lane has only been described as 37-year-old married bipolar Buddhist musician struggling with her mental health. But that’s been an incomplete portrait of Lane, who was also a bioengineer and neuroscientist …"

#missingScientists
https://alisav.substack.com/p/breaking-news-exclusive-there-is

"GoDaddy is currently investigating claims that it handed complete control of a valid 27-year-old #domain to another customer, without requiring them to pass any authentication processes or upload any supporting documents. […]

"In a statement sent to Flagstream, #GoDaddy said: "After investigating the domain name(s) in question, we have determined that the registrant of the domain name(s) provided the necessary documentation to initiate a change of account… "

"… The issue here is that no documentation was provided, according to both Flagstream and the woman who received ownership of the domain. Ginder refers to her as Susan, but it is not her real name.

"… Susan is really the hero of this entire story," Ginder wrote. "Without her, Flagstream would still have no idea what happened to this domain. Lawyers would have gotten involved, but it would probably be months until anything was resolved."

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2026/04/29/godaddy_megagaffe_wrongly_transferred_27yearold/

"Researchers in Brazil have found that a simple vitamin D supplement may help chemotherapy work better in women with breast cancer. The study suggests that low doses of the vitamin could improve treatment outcomes …

"The research, funded by FAPESP, included 80 women over the age of 45 who were preparing to begin treatment … Participants were split into two equal groups. One group received a daily dose of 2,000 IU (international units) of vitamin D, while the other group was given placebo tablets.

"All of the women underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy, a treatment given before surgery to shrink tumors and make them easier to remove.

"After six months, the difference between the two groups was notable. Among those taking vitamin D, 43% experienced complete disappearance of their cancer following chemotherapy. In comparison, only 24% of those in the placebo group saw the same result."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/04/260428004119.htm

"Atul Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto documents how aviation-style checklists, which treat error as a predictable product of complex systems rather than individual failure, were resisted for decades by physicians who experienced them as an affront to professional judgment. The evidence that checklists reduced deaths in surgical settings was not in dispute. The resistance was to the implication that a physician’s individual competence and experience were insufficient, and that standardized protocols designed by committees should constrain clinical practice.

The legal profession’s relationship with access to justice follows a similar pattern. Legal ethics in the United States has historically focused on conflicts of interest, attorney-client confidentiality, and competence, but not on cost. The profession’s code of conduct treats affordability as a matter of individual attorney discretion rather than a structural obligation."
https://third-bit.com/2026/04/25/software-taboos/

"Through her research, she uncovered four key features that, when combined together, help hold people on the gambling devices. These features trigger a trancelike or dissociative state, known as a "machine zone" or "dark flow," in which people lose track of their sense of time and place.

"To Schüll's surprise, around the early 2010s, the same features began to appear on phone and tablet apps, including social media, games and video-streaming platforms. "These are not normal products for kids like a pair of shoes or a toy," she says. "They create a relationship with kids."

"Here are four features that create that superglue…"

#addiction #gambling #SocialMedia #screens
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/21/nx-s1-5776665/surprising-origin-features-superglue-kids-adults-to-screens