First Monday in October 2024

The extreme-right-wing US Supreme Court begins a new term today, which we can all expect to continue the trends they have been on for the last 30 years. All we need is a razor-thin margin in one or two swing states on the 5th, and then, as George HW Bush said once, "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah! Now it's off to the races!"

Meanwhile:

• A new book argues that the "originalism" practiced by many Republican judges, like Justices Alito and Thomas, has absolutely no basis in historical fact. But we knew that already.
• Josh Marshall wants everyone to calm down about the Harris campaign: "[Y]ou thinking she’s screwing up or stalling or whatever, if you are, is probably your angst talking more than some real analysis of what’s happening in the campaign."
• Republican-leaning columnist Matt Bai thinks Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R) made a strategic error by choosing to run for the US Senate as a Republican instead of as an independent.
• Consumer DNA analysis company 23andMe doesn't seem to have a plan for what to do with my personal data if they get into trouble or shut down.
• Kate Kaplan of the Nielsen-Norman Group has some excellent advice about iconography in software.

Finally, Cloudflare announced late last week that it blocked the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in history. The attack, whose packets came mainly from Russia, peaked at 3.8 Tbps, beating the previous record of 3.47 Tbps against a Microsoft Azure customer.