Content warning: food gross, sex, right wing goofiness

NEW: Governments are abusing online ads to infect people's phones and computers with zero-click spyware, per Citizen Lab. Al Jazeera had ~45 devices hacked this way, simply by visiting a website that displayed a malicious ad. Researchers say it's tip of the iceberg. Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/15/citizen-lab-says-governments-are-abusing-online-ads-to-hack-people-with-zero-click-spyware/ Ad-block bypass: https://archive.is/Smm3d

If you have not learned of the bouba-kiki effect in linguistics, where sounds are reliably and universally associated with rounded shapes and spiky shapes, you are in for a treat. A new paper shows that dogs (in addition to chimps and chickens) also show the bouba-kiki effect. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/293/2080/20261209/483619/Hearing-shapes-the-Bouba-Kiki-effect-in-adult

The leap second is dead. Long live the leap hour. From here on, clocks will not be adjusted by +-1 second every ~1.5 years, when UTC time differs from astronomical time UT1 due to changes in Earth's rotation period. Clocks will now be adjusted when the discrepancy reaches one hour, which won't occur for thousands of years. We will let future generations (robots?) deal with the headache of adjusting clocks without crashing their computers. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/oct/15/times-up-for-the-leap-second-as-scientists-swap-it-for-the-leap-hour https://www.bipm.org/documents/d/guest/cgpm-2026-draft-resolution-c-en 1/n

The planet’s widest glacier could contribute twice as much to global sea level rise as currently projected, according to new research by glaciologists.

Making the commute to the office just to sit on Zoom meetings everyday is the worst. Survey (N=1,835) finds on their most recent day in the office, 1/2 had no fully in-person meetings and 1/3 had exclusively online meetings. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/10/in-office-remote-work/688993/

Attached: 1 image On this day in 1999, Swedish syndicalist Björn Söderberg was murdered by nazis outside his home in Stockholm. He had raised the alarm that a nazi was infiltrating a union at his workplace, and was killed as retaliation. Every year since, he is remembered for his courage, and acts as an inspiration in the fight against fascism. Rest in power Björn.

Ukraine Has Dealt a Big Blow to Russia's AI and Cloud Infrastructure https://gizmodo.com/ukraine-has-dealt-a-big-blow-to-russias-ai-and-cloud-infrastructure-2000824731

Decade-old RAM is making a comeback https://www.theverge.com/games/1009140/ram-shortage-intel-amd-ddr4-comeback

"There was a significant drop-off in the solve rate for the group that had access to an AI tool" https://news.berkeley.edu/2026/10/09/using-ai-for-just-10-minutes-erodes-your-ability-to-persist-at-hard-things/