At the same time I heard from people at Automattic that they had successfully installed the new version of the FeedLand software on feedland.com which runs on their VIP system, so theoretically should scale as well as anything on the net. There was a serious performance problem, that, with the help of Ryan Neudorf who I met in Ottawa, and Scott Hanson, longtime contributor here, was fixed. It was a daring move, it meant that all the timeline-generating code in FeedLand had to be rewritten. It was worth it. If you've ever felt that FeedLand was too slow at displaying news, please try again, I think you'll be pleased.
404 Media
• Becky Ferreira
Chimps Are Capable of Human-Like Rational Thought, Breakthrough Study Finds
In a series of experiments, chimpanzees revised their beliefs based on new evidence, shedding light on the evolutionary origins of rational thought.
Just heard from Brent that the next version of NetNewsWire will support the Markdown in RSS. I wrote it up on my daveverse site, which I edit with WordLand, which means it has a special feed that contains source:markdown elements. You can be one of the first people with markdown-support in your feed, and in doing so, help the bootstrap. I'm pretty sure it's going to work at this point. If you have questions about this, you can post a comment here.
McSweeney’s
• Frank Lloyd Green
Dean of the Dead
Post Reports
• The Washington Post
Ghost Reports: They buried Mrs. Kyle twice
Since we launched “Post Reports” almost seven years ago, our production team has had an inside joke every time we reach this time of year. We start calling the show “Ghost Reports,” in honor of Halloween. We look for the spookiest and most thematic stories happening around our newsroom.
Today, we’re bringing you just such an episode. It’s a personal ghost story from Washington Post reporter Clarence Williams, who went to Foxcroft boarding school in Loudon Country, Virginia. Where, every Halloween, they tell the legend of Mrs. Kyle, a pre-Revolutionary spirit with unfinished business.
Subscribe to The Washington Post here.
The ‘Shadow President’ Dismantling The Government
Defector
• Luis Paez-Pumar
The Best Title Race Is, Once Again, In Serie A
The Brian Lehrer Show
• WNYC
ACA Open Enrollment Starting
Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of Health Initiatives at the Community Service Society and co-founder of the Health Care for All New York Campaign, talks about what people can expect with next year's health insurance costs and how the government shutdown over ACA subsidies will affect open enrollment.
The live-answer helpline to reach a Navigator at CSS is: 1-888-614-5400
The New York State of Health Marketplace phone number is: 1-855-355-5777
The Get Covered New Jersey (Official state health market place) phone number is: 1-833-677-1010
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WIRED
• Dell Cameron
ICE Wants to Build a Shadow Deportation Network in Texas
A new ICE proposal outlines a 24/7 transport operation run by armed contractors—turning Texas into the logistical backbone of an industrialized deportation machine.
Defector
• Jason England
‘One Battle After Another’ Isn’t Up For The Fight
To paraphrase the late, great Prodigy, there are wars going on outside no one is safe from. They are cultural, political, racial, class-based, and literal. It’s increasingly difficult to shake the feeling that across multiple fronts, I’m on the losing team. It is equally difficult not to be overcome by the anxiety that these battles might be marching through my neighborhood and up to my front door any day now.
In an effort to preserve my sanity, I made the decision “unplug” a couple weeks back—no news, no social media updates of egregious political dereliction and moral turpitude. My best friend since age 13 visited from Hawaii for my birthday, and we set about immersing ourselves in art. We started with a trip to the Carnegie Museum of Art on Saturday morning, where we were immediately greeted by white banners hanging ceiling to floor, one of which declared:
ActivityPumpkin
Since many of us now program with AI chatbot assistance, it seems it's time to think about higher level languages we can use to specify what we're doing, new kinds of computers because we now have bigger more capable minds at work.
404 Media
• Matthew Gault
Trump Orders Nuclear Testing As Nuke Workers Go Unpaid
Everyone loses and nobody wins if America decides to resume nuclear testing after a 30 year moratorium.
How To Prepare for Big Tech Interviews as an iOS Engineer

For most mobile engineers, interviews at big tech companies come with a mix of excitement and dread. Everyone’s heard the
The post How To Prepare for Big Tech Interviews as an iOS Engineer appeared first on The New Stack.
The Brian Lehrer Show
• WNYC
NJ Elections Update: Obama and Trump Weigh In
Nikita Biryukov, reporter who covers state government and politics for the New Jersey Monitor, talks about the latest in New Jersey elections news, including early voting turnout, how Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump are weighing in on the gubernatorial race and Justice Department election monitoring for Passaic County.
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WIRED
• Xiaowei R. Wang
“I Sweated So Much I Never Needed to Pee”: Life in China’s Relentless Gig Economy
In his newly translated memoir I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, Hu Anyan captures the brutal labor and quiet grace of life at the edge of China’s booming ecommerce industry.
Defector
• Sabrina Imbler
Exclusive! A Revealing And Not Made-Up Interview With A Two-Headed Worm
Matt Mullenweg
• Matt
50k Bounty
For smart, enterprising hackers Beeper is offering bounties of up to $50,000 for people who create open source bridges.
Defector
• Ray Ratto
Game 3 Is The Legend, But The Blue Jays Are For Real
404 Media
• Joseph Cox
Someone Snuck Into a Cellebrite Microsoft Teams Call and Leaked Phone Unlocking Details
The leaked slide focuses on Google Pixel phones and mentions those running the security-focused GrapheneOS operating system.