Hovertext: During the book tour of A City on Mars, I did a talk with Randall Munroe in NYC, and he made, impromptu, a better joke than any of us have committed to paper. During a discussion of whether you could eliminate all life on Earth for a reasonable price, a person asked if there might be a way you could specifically annihilate Queens. To which he replied, 'regicide?'
Scientists have finally cracked a long-standing mystery about squid and cuttlefish evolution by analyzing newly sequenced genomes alongside global datasets. The research reveals that these bizarre, intelligent creatures likely originated deep in the ocean over 100 million years ago, surviving mass extinction events by retreating into oxygen-rich deep-sea refuges. For millions of years, their evolution barely changed—until a dramatic post-extinction boom sparked rapid diversification as they moved into new shallow-water habitats.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
They say we don’t choose our kinks- our kinks choose us. But what if you get turned on by a mundane, routine experience most of us either just tolerate or even dread? Meet Mitchell, who had to regularly suppress erotic excitement all his life, until his GGG girlfriend created the perfect scenario for him. Do … Read More »
Dutch journalist Just Vervaart, working for regional media network Omroep Gelderland, followed the directions posted on the Dutch government website and mailed a postcard with a hidden tracker inside. Because of this, they were able to track the ship for about a day, watching it sail from Heraklion, Crete, before it turned towards Cyprus. While it only showed the location of that one vessel, knowing that it was part of a carrier strike group sailing in the Mediterranean could potentially put the entire fleet at risk.
[…]
Navy officials reported that the tracker was discovered within 24 hours of the ship’s arrival, during mail sorting, and was eventually disabled. Because of this incident, the Dutch authorities now ban electronic greeting cards, which, unlike packages, weren’t x-rayed before being brought on the ship.
Struggle Session is a bonus column where I respond to comments from readers and listeners. I also share a question submitted to Savage Love and let my readers have the first crack at giving the advice. Wanted to kick things off by highlighting this pearl of wisdom from NoCuteName… There is no such thing as … Read More »
The FBI was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device’s push notification database….
The news shows how forensic extraction—when someone has physical access to a device and is able to run specialized software on it—can yield sensitive data derived from secure messaging apps in unexpected places. Signal already has a setting that blocks message content from displaying in push notifications; the case highlights why such a feature might be important for some users to turn on.
“We learned that specifically on iPhones, if one’s settings in the Signal app allow for message notifications and previews to show up on the lock screen, [then] the iPhone will internally store those notifications/message previews in the internal memory of the device,” a supporter of the defendants who was taking notes during the trial told 404 Media.
EDITED TO ADD (4/24): Apple has patched this vulnerability.
Are there rules to revealing a cheating ex on social media? Three weeks ago, I confronted my boyfriend about his repeated requests that we “find a time to talk.” These requests were never followed by any actual talk. We’d been together for three years by then. After his third futile attempt (“We still need to … Read More »
Sometimes the questions we get here at Savage Lovecast Industries™ are nothing but pragmatic. A man with a moldy home asks how he can properly dry his Fleshlight. Seems important. A woman fell off a trapeze 15 years ago and has suffered sexual dysfunction ever since. Dan brings on pelvic floor therapist Dr. Rachel Gelman … Read More »
It's been one of those months, and by that, I mean one of the 663 months since I was born. This won't be a long post, because I only have two things to say. First, I'm really glad we re-ordered the GMI (Guaranteed Minimum Income) rural study counties so Mercer County, WV, my Dad's county, went first in October 2025. I knew dad was close to the end, and sure enough, that was the last time I ever saw him.
You can kinda sorta meet my dad on this page, if you want to.
I knew this was coming, and so did he. There is no loss, because nothing ever ends.
All those experiences I had with my father, particularly that last October trip, will stay with me forever. Nothing was lost. Everything was gained. We won capitalism, then went back to help improve it for everyone. And believe me, I'm far from being done with my third startup.
Second, I want to take a moment to thank everyone – and I do mean everyone – who ever contributed to Stack Overflow in any way. And lucky you, it's not Starship this time!
Did you know that LLMs basically could not code at all without access to the extremely high quality creative commons programming Q&A dataset that all of us built together at Stack Overflow? Don't take it from me, ask the LLMs. They'll tell you themselves. Go ahead. G'wan. Ask. Really grill 'em on this one. I strongly recommend you use pro mode when asking, though, because those are the only decent LLM modes in my experience. It is incredible what you can do with global brain statistics and a strongly curated dataset created by we, the people!
One last thing. If the LLMs end up hollowing out the very communities that produce all their training data, they're going to really, really regret that. I'll give these LLM / GAI companies the same advice I gave Joel Spolsky when I left Stack Overflow to start Discourse – do not, for any reason, under any circumstances, kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, aka the human community around your product that does all the real work. It's pretty simple. Just treat the community with the respect they deserve... that we all deserve.
Hovertext: I read a guy the other day saying all cognitive tasks will be automated, so it's important to stay flexible, and all I can figure is he was imagining humans would make a good building material.
The New York Times has a long article where the author lays out an impressive array of circumstantial evidence that the inventor of Bitcoin is the cypherpunk Adam Back.
I don’t know. The article is convincing, but it’s written to be convincing.
I can’t remember if I ever met Adam. I was a member of the Cypherpunks mailing list for a while, but I was never really an active participant. I spent more time on the Usenet newsgroup sci.crypt. I knew a bunch of the Cypherpunks, though, from various conferences around the world at the time. I really have no opinion about who Satoshi Nakamoto really is.
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smbc_comics_feed at 11:20am on 25/04/2026
