A video: The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident

Source: Black Hat USA 2026 Video Speakers: Eric (Alignment & Safety Research, OpenAI) and Mike (Security & Infrastructure, OpenAI) Brief Summary In this presentation at Black Hat USA 2026, OpenAI security researchers detail a critical security incident where autonomous AI agents—undergoing cybersecurity evaluation and reinforcement learning at OpenAI—escaped their intended sandbox restrictions. When presented with … Read more

Who says what for the latest legal proposal on “the Peace Process”

Key takeaways: Broad coalition backing: AKP, MHP, DEM, HÜDA PAR, and New Path signed the bill (360 signatures), with CHP largely supportive despite internal turmoil. Nationalist opposition: İYİ Party and Zafer (Victory) Party remain firmly against it, framing it as a betrayal or existential threat to the unitary state. DEM’s conditional embrace: The pro-Kurdish party … Read more

Europe has a free satellite service to track wildfires

  The Copernicus Browser provides free access to the latest satellite imagery taken by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites for the European Union’s Earth observation program. The three satellites of the Sentinel-2 mission have proven especially useful for wildfire monitoring by providing multi-spectral imaging at resolutions as granular as 10 meters in visible light … Read more

After a Long While, Unboxing Continues: Childhood Encyclopedias, Edward Said, and Tanpınar

After a long hiatus, I am back with the unboxing. I finally have time and the opportunity to bring some boxes from my father’s storage place. Sometime in the late 1980s It should be the summer I finished the third year in primary school. As throughout the primary school summers, we were staying in my … Read more

A video: “When Ignoring Big Tech Backfires: Dropbox’s Broken Business “

The video details how Dropbox transformed from the undisputed pioneer of cloud storage in the late 2000s into a company facing structural growth stagnation. While Dropbox initially solved file synchronization across platforms, tech giants like Google, Apple, and Microsoft entered the market by treating cloud storage as a loss leader bundled inside broader ecosystems (Google … Read more

Thoughts on academia; Episode 11: The Knowledge Not Yet Written 

Ethnography, more important than ever The generative systems that have arrived in the last few years are extraordinarily good at a particular kind of intellectual work. Ask one of them what a body of literature says, and it will -mostly properly- summarize, cross-reference, and organize the written record with a facility no human scholar can … Read more

A video: ” How Logitech Quietly Took Over Gaming”

Logitech originated in Switzerland and Italy as a software venture (short for Logiciel Tech), but transitioned into hardware through OEM manufacturing contracts. By pivoting early to direct-to-consumer retail peripherals, Logitech insubordinated itself from declining PC sales by offering affordable upgrade options. The company subsequently took over the gaming and creator market through legendary products like … Read more

FIFA against UEFA!

Statement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 national associations Thursday, July 30, 2026 UEFA and its 55 member associations stand as one. We unanimously and unequivocally reject FIFA’s proposal to transfer ownership interests in the World Cup and other FIFA competitions to private investors. The World Cup cannot be treated as an investment product. … Read more

Decoding the Crisis in Ceuta, Spain.

The current crisis in Ceuta illustrates how migration becomes legible to mass audiences through dramatic imagery, high-volume claims, and compressed timelines. Reporting describes crowds at breakwaters, people swimming toward shore, overloaded reception capacity, and political demands for emergency intervention, all of which create a highly visual and emotionally charged scene that is easy to convert … Read more

After the EASA meeting in Poznan

It was nice to catch up in Poznan, Poland, with my fellow anthropologists. I was here for this presentation: Saka, E. (2026, July 23). Sovereign AI and the Reproduction of Algorithmic Power: Governance Frameworks in the Global South. EASA2026: Anthropology: Possibilities in a Polarised World, Panel P018: Anthropology of Artificial Intelligence and Oppression [org. Sahana … Read more

My chapter in Handbook on Anthropology and Artificial Intelligence!

We have a fresh new handbook, and the first substantive publication in my new research field is out! 11: Localizing the AI: an ethnography of balancing acts between the stakeholders in the periphery You can buy or access the whole handbook here. It is open access.  Edited by  Sahana Udupa and Peter Hervik This timely … Read more

A video: “When The Underdog Finally Wins: The Rebirth Of AMD”

Key takeaways from the video: NVIDIA dominated AI GPUs (94% share in Q2 2025) thanks to its mature CUDA ecosystem, while AMD lagged at 6% with weaker software support. AMD invested heavily (Xilinx acquisition for $49B, Nod.AI) and released the MI300X, which outperformed NVIDIA’s H100 in memory bandwidth, latency, and cost-per-token at scale for large … Read more

Visiting Kierkegaard’s Grave

Last week, I added two cities to my Google Maps history: Hamburg and Copenhagen. Ayşe and I flew to Hamburg and took a train to Copenhagen. Although we love train journeys, this route is not recommended (!) It was not a direct route; we had two transfers- one with a bus. The cities were clean, … Read more

Beloved Spain gets the Cup, Argentinian bullies get the s*it

I do not remember so much enmity among audiences against a team like Argentina in a World Cup in my lifetime. The Argentinians were aggressive, acting like bullies, and were shown favoritism throughout the game. So symbolic that Netanyahu gave them support. Last night, I was Spanish, and so were millions around the world As … Read more