solrize

They were able to de-anonymize posters from collections with 10,000's of users, tested with scrapings from Hacker News, LinkedIn, and Reddit. Not good from a privacy perspective.

They are making LEDs less than 100nm across, for use in ultra high dpi displays. That's way smaller than the wavelength of light that they emit!

The new program, called “masked engagement,” allows homeland security officers to assume false identities and interact with users—friending them, joining closed groups, and gaining access to otherwise private postings, photographs, friend lists and more.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official tells me that over 6,500 field agents and intelligence operatives can use the new tool, a significant increase explicitly linked to more intense monitoring of American citizens.

A tiny keychain knife with an Exacto style blade, nice for precise cutting but too delicate to be called general purpose. I just got two of them, pretty cool. Dimensions about 50mm long, 14mm wide, 4.5mm thick with the slider bulging up another 1.5mn or so. It's a pretty no nonsense design unlike some fancy and expensive ones I've seen in similar formats. Photo of the back side below:

Added: another good alternative, Derma-Safe folding razor, 7.6g, lacks a lanyard hole. I'm not sure if there's a good place to drill one. Review. The Derma-Safe is too long to fit into an Altoids tin "crossways" while the Ghost EDC will fit that way, if that matters to you.

Abstract: Life evolved under broad spectrum sunlight, from ultraviolet to infrared (300–2500 nm). This spectrally balanced light sculpted life’s physiology and metabolism. But modern lighting has recently become dominated by restricted spectrum light emitting diodes (350–650 nm LEDs). Absence of longer wavelengths in LEDs and their short wavelength dominance impacts physiology, undermining normal mitochondrial respiration that regulates metabolism, disease and ageing. Mitochondria are light sensitive. The 420–450 nm dominant in LEDs suppresses respiration while deep red/infrared (670–900 nm) increases respiration in aging and some diseases including in blood sugar regulation. Here we supplement LED light with broad spectrum lighting (400–1500 nm+) for 2 weeks and test colour contrast sensitivity. We show significant improvement in this metric that last for 2 months after the supplemental lighting is removed. Mitochondria communicate across the body with systemic impacts following regional light exposure. This likely involves shifting patterns of serum cytokine expression, raising the possibility of wider negative impacts of LEDs on human health particularly, in the elderly or in the clinical environment where individuals are debilitated. Changing the lighting in these environments could be a highly economic route to improved public health.

"Quantum theory provides a foundation for describing systems that are probabilistic, interdependent, and evolving (Busemeyer & Bruza, 2012; Haven & Khrennikov, 2013). Translating these ideas into tourism produces a model that explains how behaviour, feedback, and innovation interact across cognitive, relational, and systemic levels. This complements entropy reduction in tourism (Li et al., 2025), which conceptualises tourism as an open system that shifts between stability and disruption. While entropy theory focuses on energy and order, the quantum perspective explains the structure of uncertainty: how multiple possibilities, relational ties, and networked feedback generate adaptation and innovation."

Annals of Tourism Research Volume 117, March 2026, 104115 (nothing about April 1). No mention of Sokal in the article or its references. Not the Onion. I'm at a loss.

Matthew Lee of Wurkkos mentioned this to me by email last week and it's on the site now. I'm glad that Wurkkos is continuing to make Anduril lights since I thought they had given up on them.

This seems to be an Anduril version of the existing non-Anduril TS26S. It has a boost driver, flashing pads, and reverse charging which is handy in larger lights like this. Supposedly runs 520 hours in 1 lumen low mode. Come to think of it, that is fairly inefficient. Some energy might be getting lost in the boost converter at very low current. Anyway, it's ok, 520 hours is a lot, and most of us don't buy flashlights this large to run them at 1 lumen. It also says 135 hours at 15 lumens, which is much better in terms of efficiency. And it claims 2 hour charge time, pretty good for a 5000mah 21700 light. That means charging at 2.5 or maybe 3 amps.

Weight and dimensions are in tiny print on page 2 of the pdf manual: 122mm long, 35mm diameter, 175g including battery. It has an interesting swirl pattern machined into the battery tube and it generally looks nice.

Launch date mentioned is 1/13 (tomorrow) so right now they aren't taking orders, but maybe by the time you read this they will.

I don't feel likely to order right away since I generally prefer smaller lights, and I just got the TS11 for when I want a thrower. But, this certainly fills a popular niche and it looks like a good implementation.

For those not familiar, the HA11 is a small Nitecore headlamp that uses AA-sized batteries, reviewed in detail by Parametrek here:

http://parametrek.com/blog/ha11.html

The reviewed version (the same one I have) had a shock cord headband, and I'm pretty sure it couldn't run on 3.6v, or at least wasn't advertised that way. So I only run it on Eneloops and L91 non-rechargeable lithium. Being able to run on 14500 is a new upgrade. I don't know if I like the new headband but it's interesting. Also, I think they have reprogrammed the brightness settings somewhat.

If anyone is in contact with Parametrek, can they let him know about this? I don't post on Reddit these days. Thanks.

This service is run by online buddies of mine who ran VPS hosting for a long time. I expect it to be pretty good, though I'm not currently using it. mxroute.com is also around and comparable, though I think it is only sited in the US for now. Cranemail also has a US location.

Posting because people have been asking about non-Google email. I'm not connected with the company, I just know some of the guys running it. They have an affiliate program that I haven't signed up for, though maybe I should ;). The above link is non-affiliated.

Edit: link is from May 2025, not brand new, still works.

This is a 2x CR2032 magnet light that HF has had on sale for $1 a bunch of times. I missed the sale, so splurged on one at the full retail price of $1.79, still not too bad, as I figured that at worst I could use the pair of 2032's. But my more interesting idea was adding a minimal headband and using it as a cheap lightweight headlamp. I think this is a borderline practical idea, but overall, meh.

Weight of this light is 28g of which a few grams is probably the magnet on the back. The magnet looks like it could be pried out easily. The beam is a wide and even flood, good for close-up illumination but probably useless for distance. Stated output is 30lm and I guess I can believe that, at least with fresh batteries. Two 2032 at 200mah each is 1.2WH which is comparable to a single AAA cell. UI is crap: press button for high, press again for low, once more for flashing, then finally off. You must cycle through all the modes to turn it off. Low is visible PWM but I'm not too bothered by that. Light source is 6 tiny leds on a COB strip.

The light is bulbous and bulkier than I'd prefer, but fine. Width is about 88mm not counting the keychain post, height 34mm, thickness 24mm. The battery cover is on the back, a circular plug with a coin slot. The light itself is in a shell of two halves that I guess are welded together. It might be possible to split the halves, then stick them back together with super glue or similar, but I haven't tried this yet. It might alternatively be possible to drill holes in the ends and thread some shock cord through the light without doing that disassembly. I might pop this light open to photograph the internals in order to check this possibility.

Anyway, another day, another crappy light. As a random utility light to toss in Mom's kitchen drawer in case of a power outage, it's nice because the lithium batteries have very long shelf life and are unlikely to corrode like alkalines. It's basically a smaller version of the 3AAA magnet light that HF used to regularly give away for free with a purchase, but which the now sell for a few bucks.

My rating: given what it is, 3 stars / 5.