Saturday Sounds - Tedeschi Trucks Band - Future Soul

This week's musical treat is Future Soul, the latest album from the Tedeschi Trucks Band. I've featured them several times here and will probably continue to do so if they keep putting out albums of this quality. It's a tighter, more focused production than 2022's I Am the Moon with velvety smooth sound that begs to be cranked loud. I have been trying to think of a favourite track or two, but I can't. I like them all. Enjoy. 

2026 Aurora Awards Finalists

The finalists for the 2026 Aurora Awards have been announced by the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFSSA). The awards are nominated and voted on by members of CFSSA. Winners will be announced during a ceremony to be streamed on YouTube on August 9.

These are the finalists for Best Novel.

The Bewitching, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Del Rey

Blight, Rachel A. Rosen, The BumblePuppy Press

Direct Descendant, Tanya Huff, DAW Books

The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine, Robert J. Sawyer, Audible Originals/Shadowpaw Press

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales, Heather Fawcett, Del Rey

A Shift of Time, Julie E. Czerneda, DAW Books

Written on the Dark, Guy Gavriel Kay, Viking Canada

2026 Hugo, Lodestar and Astounding Award Finalists

The finalists for the 2026 Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards have been announced. The winners will be announced at LAcon V, the 84th World Science Fiction Convention over the last weekend in August. 

These are  the finalists for best novel.

• A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)
• Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz)
• Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)
• The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK)
• The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK)
• The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)

I've not read any of them, though there are two or three that might end up on my iPad one of these days. I was glad to see "Automatic Noodle" by Annalee Newitz, which I have read, is a finalist for the Best Novella award. 

Featured Links - April 22, 2026

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Boats at the marina waiting for summer

• Game of drones. "As the federal government spends billions on military modernization, Canadian drone innovators are vying to meet the moment in the sky, on land and in the water." Good coverage of a new industry with lots of photos. 
• Power imbalance. "James S.A. Corey on The Captives War, The Book of Daniel, and how the only way to survive an alien invasion might be appeasement." A fascinating interview with the authors of the wonderfu Expanse series. 
• What Discoveries Might Be Hiding in the Artemis 2 Images and Data? "NASA’s Artemis 2 mission produced a wealth of data that experts will be analyzing for years to come."
• They Are Killing Our People. "This past week, the Mikisew Cree First Nation of Alberta released a report on the massive cancer rates in their community. The Alberta government withheld key medical statistics, and the federal government dragged their feet. The Feds promised to fund a study that would take 10 years to complete. And so, the community paid for their own research." This is what happens when you live downstream from the biggest polluter in Canada. 
• 'For All Mankind' alternative timeline vs reality: How Apple TV's sci-fi show diverges from history.. "How do "For All Mankind"'s six decades of space exploration "history" compare with the real thing?" Spoiler warning for those who haven't watched the show,
• Why Medieval Bread Was A Superfood While Your Modern Bread Makes You Sick (YouTube). "There's a significant issue with the bread we consume today. While bread was once a fundamental part of civilizations, sustaining families and armies, modern bread often causes gut issues, blood sugar spikes, and leaves us feeling unsatisfied. This food history explores how the bread industry has changed, contrasting today's offerings with the traditional bread that nourished our ancestors. We conduct a food industry case study, examining how the history of bread, including ancient grains and sourdough, shows a stark difference from what we find on shelves now."
• The Making of Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool".  A long essay on one of the true classics of 20th century music. 
• Facebook and Instagram Tighten Censorship Rules for Saying “Antifa”. 'Meta’s new rules let it ban users or suppress comments that include the word “antifa” alongside “content-level threat signals.”'
• How two mathematicians created an equation that quietly runs the planet. "The Diffie-Hellman key exchange secures everything from your text messages to government secrets." This article has the best explanation I've seen ofhow public key cryptography works. 
• Winner of top Sony World Photography Awards $25,000 prize revealed. "With nearly half a million entries, the judges must have had a tough job choosing the winners of this year’s Sony World Photography Awards. The competition is now in its 19th edition, and the overall Photographer of the Year 2026 title has been named as Citlali Fabián with the series ‘Bilha, Stories of My Sisters’."
• Inside the stunning fall of the Maple Leafs: Chaos, dysfunction and AI. For the (probably few) hockey fans reading this blog, a deep dive into the latest pathetic season of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I was in high school the last time this team won the Stanley Cup. The way they are playing, I may not live long enough to see them win one.
• How Ukraine became a drone factory and invented the future of war. "Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to the research labs, factories and military training schools behind Ukraine’s drones."

The Mythos Problem

Last week, Anthropic announced that its Mythos AI tool had found multiple serious problems with many open source software programs, including some that are core services on the internet and were long thought to be secure. They are not releasing Mythos publicly, instead opting to provide it to several major internet companies (Microsoft, Apple, Google, and the like) so that they can use it to test their software for vulnerabilities. 

This has not escaped the notice of the press. (BBC, Scientific American and many more).

Security expert and long-time podcaster, Steve Gibson, thought Mythos significant enough that he devoted the entirely of last week's Security Now! podcast to it. It's the best coverage of the topic that I've seen. And he has concerns. From his show notes (which are extensive):

Okay. Let me interrupt here to insert a “Holy EFF” explicative. What Mythos autonomously did, without any explicit guidance beyond just being asked to, was to discover and invent an exploit which deeply manipulated FreeBSD’s Network File System server by using Return Oriented Programming. Since FreeBSD’s NSF server is already so secure, the AI pseudo-attacker was not able to insert its own code. So it caused the server to selectively re-execute its own code, code it already contained at the tail ends of a series of 20 different existing subroutines. This enabled it to manipulate the internal state of the NFS file server to grant root access to an unauthenticated remote attacker who was unknown to, and had no account on, the machine.

Let me be very clear: This capability is truly nothing short of terrifying. If Project Glasswing has the side-effect of launching Anthropic’s forthcoming IPO into the stratosphere then as far as I’m concerned they’ve earned and deserve it. 

And this:

 And this admits to the MUCH bigger problem. I suppose we should have seen this coming. But it’s here: We all know that only a small fraction of the world’s already deployed code can and will ever be made “Mythos safe”. It’s great that AWS, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Palo Alto Networks will all get to have access. And apparently some 40 others who are equally deserving, or who are presumably the owners of many of those thousands of other bugs that Mythos found. But what of everyone else?

We could truly be poised upon the precipice of some seriously rough times. As I said, I suppose we should have seen this coming. The biggest surprise is that everything about this brave new AI world is coming at us much faster than we expected, or even still now expect. 

I've only touched on some of what he discussed in the podcast. For me, the biggest worry is all of the IOT and embedded devices that either can't or won't be upgraded and which may now be at risk because they contain embedded code libraries that are now insecure.

Interesting times indeed.

Photo of the Week - April 19, 2026

This week's photo is of a stand of e-scooters ready for someone to hop on. I think this is a project of the City, and no, it doesn't compenste for the lack of public transit. I have no urge to try one; my eyes and my balance preclude that. 

An addition to public transit

Saturday Sounds - Stan Rogers - Rebecca Cohn Halifax 1982 Concert

This week's musical treat features the great Canadian singer-songwriter, Stan Rogers, who tragically died in an Air Canada airplane fire in Cincinnati in 1983. The recording is of a famous concert at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax, NS in 1982 that was broadcast nationally on CBC radio. I remember listening to it when I was living in Alberta. 

I knew Stan from when I was living in Hamilton in the early 1970s and was lucky to see him perform many times as his career developed from performing in coffee houses to becoming a national folk music icon. Most of the concert was released after his death on the album, Home in Halifax though the version here has several songs not on the album. 

1:25 Witch of the Westmoreland

6:26 White Collar Holler

9:10-13:21 Field behind the Plow

16:41-19:45 Night Guard

22:59 - 25:40 The Idiot

26:24 - 32:00 Lies

32:52 - 36:19 Workin' Joe

39:25 - 42:47 The Giant

45:50 - 49:31 Dark Eyed Molly

49:43 - 55:10 Northwest Passage

57:25 - 1:02:04 The Last Watch

1:05:12 - 1:10:00 The Mary Ellen Carter

1:11:16 - 1:15:17 Barrett's Privateers

1:17:00 - 1:22:27 Sailor's Rest

If you don't know Stan's music, you're in for a treat. I particularly recommend "Lies", a song that still makes me weepy, and the anthemic "Northwest Passage".