Leftovers

• Michael Tsai ☛ David Lerner, RIP

• John J Hoare ☛ “I Don’t Own a Television Machine”

  The thing is, when it’s the writers of The Dick Van Dyke Show saying it, they have the benefit of being entirely correct. Virtually every single episode of the show is not only extremely funny, but is actually about something. And that’s with 30-odd episodes made a year, for five years. I’ve seen six-part sitcoms which struggle to do something worthwhile every week.

• Declan Chidlow ☛ Strongly Worded Emails

  There are few greater joys in life than the creation of a strongly worded email. I have an innate love for the medium. It is an art form that sits at the intersection of literature, warfare, and therapy. Strongly worded emails are, perhaps, the most completely backwards form of communication that the human race has ever created. Bureaucracy manifest. A primal scream typed in twelve-point Arial.

• Science

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] 3I/ATLAS is a comet, not aliens, NASA says

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Student launches German startup to tackle space debris

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ After nearly fifty years, Voyager 1 spacecraft approaches one light-day milestone — 25.9 billion km distance from Earth ensures one day of latency for commands

    Voyager 1, the farthest human-made object from Earth, is about to hit one light-day distance from us, or the distance that light travels in a single day. According to Science Clock, the satellite is going to be 16.1 billion miles or 25.9 billion kilometers away on November 15, 2026 — 49 years, 2 months, and 10 days since it launched. This means that the spacecraft travels at an approximate speed of 37,300 miles per hour (over 60,000 kilometers per hour) or more than 10 miles per second. At its current distance, it takes about a day to send commands to Voyager 1 and another day for it to respond.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Mysterious Viking Age Woman Found Buried With Scallop Shells Covering Her Mouth

    It’s not clear why the woman was buried with bird bones, nor why she had two large scallop shells on her face. Researchers found the shells with the curved side facing outward and the straight edge turned up, so that they covered part of her mouth.

    The scallop shells might have once been part of some larger artifact that has since disintegrated, though researchers haven’t found any evidence—such as holes in the shells—to support that theory, reports Live Science’s Kristina Killgrove.

    Later, in the Middle Ages, scallops had Christian significance associated with the cult of St. James. But they are very rarely found in pre-Christian graves, according to the researchers.

• Career/Education

  • Ava ☛ job market websites suck

    These services are not helping anyone, they are leeches. They have an interest in keeping you on their site searching jobs for a long time, and that goal is antithetical to connecting you with potential employers quickly. Companies are better off advertising elsewhere and keeping it on their own website so all potential candidates can access it. It’s a bad look seeing you on these enshittified platforms.

• Hardware

  • The Register UK ☛ HPC won't be x86 forever – and it's starting to show

    Supercomputing development has evolved in waves since Cray pioneered vector processors (which were excellent at conducting single operations across large data sets) in the mid-1970s.

    Later came reduced instruction set chip (RISC) architectures with chips like the 64-bit DEC Alpha, IBM POWER, Sun/Fujitsu SPARC, SGI MIPS, and HP PA-RISC. Each offered distinct performance characteristics. Their simpler instruction sets made for fast instruction decoding and pipelining, and also served more general-purpose use cases than vector-based systems.

  • The Register UK ☛ GPUs aren't worth their weight in gold

    For as long as I have been a reporter and analyst in the IT sector, November has always been supercomputing month. Way before there was a TOP500 ranking of supercomputers in June 1993 but just as I was leaving university, the first Supercomputing Conference was held in Orlando in 1988. And that November SC show set the cadence for high-performance computing for the decades that followed.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Fake Ozempic, Zepbound: Counterfeit weight loss meds booming in high-income countries despite the serious health risks

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Ultra-processed foods threaten public health — researchers

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] US: Baltimore bridge collapse caused by one faulty wire

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Can US health care solve its cost crisis by copying Europe?

    The US spends more per capita on health than any other country and health care is vastly more expensive for citizens than anywhere else. Can it learn anything from European systems?

  • The Atlantic ☛ A Smartwatch Is the Only Screen Your Kid Should Have

    Today smartphones are as widespread as the concerns about their effects on young people’s brains. Psychologists have written best-selling books about how bad phones are for kids, and many schools have banned their use. Despite all this, no one can dispute the fact that phones and phone apps have entered every aspect of contemporary life. Even Jonathan Haidt, who aims to end the phone-based childhood, floats policies that would allow for a phone-based adolescence. The question is not whether your kid will ever get a smartphone, but rather how to manage its adoption in a way that will preserve the integrity of child, parent, school, and home life. And to that end, I believe I’ve found a good solution: Get your kid a watch.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ OpenAI Responds to Suit on Suicide of Teen Who Got Advice From ChatGPT

    Jay Edelson, lead attorney in the Raines’ wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI, said in a statement shared with Rolling Stone that the company’s attempt to absolve itself of Adam Raine’s death didn’t address key elements of their complaint.

• Proprietary

  • [Repeat] Zimbabwe ☛ Microsoft admits Windows 11 is broken

    Microsoft has posted a new support article that officially confirms a recent Windows 11 update has completely broken several important core features. These are not small bugs – they stop the system from working properly. The main problems include: [...]

  • The Age AU ☛ 2025-11-24 [Older] Man reunited with Apple Watch after month-long journey

  • It's FOSS ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Microsoft's New Windows AI Feature Comes With Warnings About Malware and Data Theft

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] EU to Assess Whether Amazon and Microsoft Cloud Businesses Need Extra Scrutiny

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Mike Brock ☛ Why I’m Betting Against the AGI Hype

      There’s a specific kind of clarity you get from building systems that have to actually work. It’s a discipline of constraints, a respect for the difference between a beautiful theory and a stable architecture. It gives you a well-calibrated bullshit detector. And when I look at the breathless hype around Artificial General Intelligence, my detector isn’t just buzzing. It’s screaming.

      I’ve been trying to work through this question methodically, based on everything I know about how complex systems actually work, how energy and computation relate, what architectural constraints mean in practice. I’ve listened carefully to the skeptics—

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Epic CEO wants Steam to remove AI game disclosures

      The Steam game store is 75% to 80% of the market for video games. Since January last year, Steam has had an AI disclosure policy on games. This is instead of just rejecting games with AI in them, as previously.

      The disclosure is specifically about the use of generative AI — either pre-generated game elements, or generated during gameplay.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Nature’s latest AI-generated paper — with medical frymblal and Factor Fexcectorn

      The paper reads like it was written with a chatbot. It’s very big on rambling text, bits of it literally don’t make sense — this was absolutely not edited by anyone — and it contradicts itself. Such as when the author says he’ll make the private patient data sets available to other researchers by arrangement — which is normal — but then he says all the work was based on a “publicly available benchmark dataset for ASD diagnosis.”

      The crowning glory, though, is the absolute banger of an illustration: [...]

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Prompt Injection Through Poetry

      In a new paper, “Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models,” researchers found that turning LLM prompts into poetry resulted in jailbreaking the models: [...]

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Uh-oh, accounting concerns circle the AI boom

      In his Breaking Analysis this week, Dave Vellante makes the case that GPUs have plenty of legs, quelling most concerns that lengthening depreciation times are a red flag. That said, Meta is particularly, shall we say, creative, when it comes to accounting for, or not accounting for, its multibillion-dollar spending on data centers.

      Sharpening the concern over AI’s payoff is that the current generative approaches may soon reach their limit, as another AI expert opined this week.

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ Can you fall in love with AI? Digital partners prompt new debate on intimacy

      Mainstream social media sites like Facebook and Instagram have also begun introducing AI-generated personas into ordinary newsfeeds. In a recent podcast, Mark Zuckerberg also advocated for a future in which AI friends help fulfill the emotional connection needs of millions. What started as a novelty now looks like the next evolutionary step in social connection.

  • Social Control Media

    • Vox ☛ 2025-11-21 [Older] How TikTok, micro-dramas, and distracted viewers are reshaping TV

    • Make Tech Easier ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] Reduce AI Content in Your TikTok Feed Using the New Slider Tool

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-24 [Older] Senator Wants Cheeto Mussolini to Answer Questions on TikTok Divestiture Plan

    • The Local SE ☛ Swedish media body reports Mark Zuckerberg to police over scam ads

      Sweden's news media trade body, Utgivarna, has reported Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to the police for fake adverts posted on his company's social media platform Facebook, which purport to be from Swedish media companies or their journalists.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Austria: Rebel nuns reject Church's offer in convent dispute

      On Friday, the sisters rejected an offer from church officials to stay in the nunnery "until further notice," on the condition that they and their carers stay off social media.

    • New York Times ☛ Rebel Nuns Can Live in Old Abbey, if They Give Up Social Media

      In return, the abbot listed several conditions: The women must stop letting laypeople into their cloisters, and — most likely much more important — they must end their social media feed.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Most Popular Social Media in the US Isn’t TikTok or Instagram

      Adults under 30 are much more likely than older adults to use Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Reddit. YouTube and Facebook are the only platforms where a majority in every age group appear, although young adults are especially likely to use YouTube, while ages 30-49 are most likely to use Facebook.

    • Court House News ☛ YouTube’s gambling promos land in EU legal hot seat | Courthouse News Service

      In his opinion to the Court of Justice of the European Union, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar said YouTube’s role still falls within the EU’s online-services framework, but only if the platform truly acts as a bystander, hosting user videos without shaping or managing the ads tied to them.

      He drew a clear line between a neutral host and a publisher. If YouTube simply provides the space and technical tools for uploads, it keeps its legal shield. But if it starts steering the ads, deciding how they look, where they appear, or how they are promoted, that protection disappears and national regulators can hold the platform responsible.

    • Vox ☛ Why is there so much police body cam footage on YouTube?

      Like so much of the algorithm-driven [Interrnet], this particular subsection can be easy to miss. But it’s massive. A popular YouTube channel like Code Blue Cam averages over 10 million views a video, and has totaled more than a billion across hundreds of videos. Another, Midwest Safety, has totaled over 1.5 billion views. There are dozens like this, all with similar names: “Body Cam Watch,” “PoliceActivity,” “EWU Bodycam.” At least one channel is represented by an agency that represents more traditional influencers.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Facebook scam ads prompt criminal complaint against Zuckerberg

      Swedish publishers group Utgivarna includes the three public broadcasters Sveriges Television, UR and Sveriges Radio, commercial TV group TV4 and Tidningsutgivarna (the national newspaper association) and Sveriges Tidskrifter (the national magazines association).

      A report handed to police on riday, 28 November, by Utgivarna accuses Meta of fraud, complicity in fraud and preparation for fraud.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Register UK ☛ Scottish council still reeling from 2023 ransomware attack

      Audit sympathetic toward Comhairle nan Eilean Siar as staff stretched to capacity trying to recover

    • The Record ☛ Japanese beer giant Asahi says ransomware attack may have exposed data of 1.5 million people | The Record from Recorded Future News

      According to Asahi, attackers infiltrated its data-center network via equipment at one of its domestic sites and deployed ransomware that encrypted several active servers and personal computers. Some employee laptops on loan from the company were also compromised.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] EU proposes softening AI and data privacy regulations

    • EFF ☛ The UK Has It Wrong on Digital ID. Here’s Why.

      This is the latest example of a government creating a new digital system that is fundamentally incompatible with a privacy-protecting and human rights-defending democracy. This past year alone, we’ve seen federal agencies across the United States explore digital IDs to prevent fraud, the Transportation Security Administration accepting “Digital passport IDs” in Android, and states contracting with mobile driver’s license providers (mDL). And as we’ve said many times, digital ID is not for everyone and policymakers should ensure better access for people with or without a digital ID.

      But instead, the UK is pushing forward with its plans to rollout digital ID in the country. Here’s three reasons why those policymakers have it wrong.

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ Chat control evaluation report: EU Commission again fails to demonstrate effectiveness of mass surveillance of intimate personal photos and videos

      The EU Council’s current push to make Chat Control 1.0 (Regulation (EU) 2021/1232) permanent is legally and ethically reckless. The Commission’s own 2025 evaluation report admits to a total failure in data collection, an inability to link mass surveillance to actual convictions, and significant error rates in detection technologies. To permanently enshrine a derogation of fundamental rights based on a report that explicitly states “available data are insufficient” to judge proportionality is a violation of EU lawmaking principles.

    • Reclaim The Net ☛ EU Council Approves New “Chat Control” Mandate Pushing Mass Surveillance

      Unlike earlier drafts, this version drops the explicit obligation for companies to scan all private messages but quietly introduces what opponents describe as an indirect system of pressure.

      It rewards or penalizes online services depending on whether they agree to carry out “voluntary” scanning, effectively making intrusive monitoring a business expectation rather than a legal requirement.

    • Michael Tsai ☛ EU Council Approves New “Chat Control” Mandate

      It’s unclear to me whether iMessage’s existing Communication Safety features are compliant or whether Apple would have to add more aggressive scanning.

    • Bert Hubert ☛ Hello Europe, Joe Biden is gone

      tl;dr: European thinkers and policy makers are acting and talking as if the US federal government and courts are still “normal”, or will soon be so again. They will not, and we should update our world view. Secondly, when we discuss data retention, we often do not specify that this could be a 24/7 location database of all EU phones and cars. If that is the goal, everyone should be super clear about that. Please do read on for the full story & fun legal details.

  • Confidentiality

    • [Old] Ethan Heilman ☛ A Brief History of NSA Backdoors.

      In response to the recent revelations about the NSA backdooring RSA libraries I've compiled a brief, incomplete, history of NSA backdoors. Help me make it better by emailing corrections and additions

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Philippines: Ex-mayor who faked nationality sentenced to life in scam hub case

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini: 'Seditious' Democrat message 'punishable by death'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Opposition sidelined as Guinea-Bissau elections near

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Nigeria: Court convicts Biafran separatist leader for 'terrorism'

  • ANF News ☛ ISIS flags in the streets of Homs

    According to the observatory, the group stopped near the Mar Elias Church in Hewash, where Christmas tree decorations were being put up, and group members shouted “Allahu Akbar” slogans and used profanity.

  • Spiegel ☛ Project 2025 Author: "We Won't Let Anyone Stop US from Using Our Oil and Gas"

    She's not a big fan of electric cars and solar energy, but she does like coal: Diana Furchtgott-Roth wrote the blueprint for Trump's energy policy in "Project 2025." DER SPIEGEL wanted to know more about how the Heritage Foundation strategist thinks.

  • The Atlantic ☛ America’s Slide Toward Simulated Democracy

    In this conversation, Warzel and Higgins trace the incentives that broke the feed: how algorithms reward outrage, how “bespoke realities” form, why counterpublics can devolve into virtual cults, and what “simulated” accountability looks like in practice. They revisit Higgins’s path from early web forums to Bellingcat, look at the MAGA coalition as a patchwork of disordered counterpublics, and debate whether America is trapped in a simulated democracy. Higgins offers a clear diagnosis—and a plan for how we might begin to claw back a shared reality.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] At Europe's borders, cooperation trumps national politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Australian prisoner sues for right to eat Vegemite in jail

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Bangladesh: Will death penalty for Hasina kill Awami League?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] China lodges 'protest' in Japan talks over Taiwan dispute

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-23 [Older] Syrian refugees in Germany face pressure to return

  • Spiegel ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Remnants of the War: Syrians from Germany Helping with Reconstruction - But Remain Wary of Moving Back

  • The Local SE ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Swedish-Syrian charged for attempting to travel to Somalia to join IS

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Syria Sends First Swift Message to New York Fed, Central Bank Governor Says

  • The Local SE ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Syrian-Swedish man admits planned attack against Stockholm festival

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Syria Opens First Trial Over Coastal Violence After Assad's Fall

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] How the Nuremberg Trials prosecuted Nazi war criminals

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] How Kenyan activism is fueling Tanzania's democratic fire

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] How a Japan-Philippines pact is countering China

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] How criminals are trafficking illegal waste in Europe

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Germany news: New group of Afghans to land for resettlement

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Insight Hungary ☛ Putin praises Orban for "balanced views on Ukraine" during Moscow visit

      Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić before travelling to Moscow for talks with Vladimir Putin. Orbán, widely viewed as Putin’s closest ally in the EU, again positioned himself as a mediator, with Putin thanking him for suggesting Budapest as a possible venue for a "peace summit". The idea collapsed after Moscow refused to compromise on its conditions for ending the conflict. As his Fidesz party faces an election in April, Orbán has continued to frame himself as a champion of “peace,” while accusing EU leaders of “war-mongering” for resisting elements of Trump’s 28-point peace plan. 

      Energy concerns dominated the visit. Orbán has repeatedly opposed EU efforts to phase out Russian oil and gas, and has presented the Moscow trip as part of a regional strategy to secure winter supplies for Hungary, Slovakia, and Serbia. Earlier this month, in Washington, he obtained a one-year sanctions waiver on Russian fuel purchases. Hungary currently relies on Russia for more than 80% of its oil and gas and all of its nuclear fuel, and Orbán argues that without agreements with both Washington and Moscow, heating prices would surge. Despite recent deals to buy US LNG and nuclear fuel, which could reduce Hungarian demand for Russian energy, he is under EU pressure to end all Russian imports by 2027. Putin praised Orban's approach to the war during their meeting: “We are aware of your balanced position on the Ukrainian issue.”

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] Epstein's Accusers Grapple With Complex Emotions About Promised Release of Justice Department Files

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Polluters Will Say Anything to Hide Their Emissions Records

    California’s new laws, set to go into effect January 1, 2026, will require larger companies operating in the state to publicly state their “climate-related financial risk,” as well as issue emissions records and public assessments of their environmental impacts.

    This follows a growing legal trend that sees businesses fight transparency rules by citing the Constitution’s “compelled speech” protections. Corporations claim that the First Amendment shields them from being forced to speak out on issues and have used the principle to fight emissions disclosures, drug price caps, social media reforms, and a suite of other consumer and public health protections.

• Environment

  • BIA Net ☛ 2025-11-24 [Older] The ‘haunting’ face of the climate crisis: Ancient structures emerge from drought

  • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2025-11-24 [Older] Disruptive climate protests increase awareness but can trigger backlash, study finds

  • CBC ☛ 2025-11-23 [Older] Plug-in polluter? Why Canada may need to rethink 'transition' EV

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-11-23 [Older] COP30 Shows How Corporate Power Is Derailing Climate Justice

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-23 [Older] Indigenous People Reflect on the Meaning of Their Participation in COP30 Climate Talks

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-23 [Older] Developing Nations Push for Climate Action and Debt Relief at G20 Summit in South Africa

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-23 [Older] Many Hoped UN Climate Talks in Brazil Would Be Historic. They May Be Remembered as a Flop

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-23 [Older] Takeaways From the COP30 Climate Summit in Brazil

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] Biofuels Push at COP30 Could Accelerate Climate Crisis and Threaten Food Supply

  • CBC ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] 'Transcends incompetence': Critics blast COP30 compromise deal that omits mention of fossil fuels

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] COP30: Why a roadmap to move away from fossil fuels matters

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] A roadmap to move away from fossil fuels would be a big deal

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] Alaska Native Villages Have Few Options and Little US Help as Climate Change Devours Their Land

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] Analysis-What the COP30 Climate Summit in the Amazon Delivered for Forests and Indigenous People

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] Australia PM Says Formal Deal Reached for Turkey to Host COP31 Climate Summit

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] G20 Summit Declaration Stresses Seriousness of Climate Change in Snub to Cheeto Mussolini

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] Takeaways From the Outcome of UN Climate Talks in Brazil

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-21 [Older] Nations and Environmental Groups Slam Proposals at UN Climate Talks, Calling Them Too Weak

  • Vox ☛ 2025-11-21 [Older] What happened when America’s biggest meat companies got called out for greenwashing

  • Scheerpost ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] ‘Data Crunch’: AI Boom Threatens to Entrench Fossil Fuels and Compromise Climate Goals

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Climate Disasters Displace More Than 67,000 People Per Day

  • CBC ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] 3 tricks to get around if you don't own a car

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Rich Countries at COP30 Are Robbing the Global South of Climate Financing

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Fire disrupts COP30 climate summit in Brazil

  • Truthdig ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] After Industry Pushback, Gov. Shapiro Abandons Pennsylvania’s Landmark Climate Initiative

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] K-Pop Fans' Environmental Activism Comes to UN Climate Talks

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Exclusive-Europe Plans Service to Gauge Climate Change Role in Extreme Weather

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] COP30 Climate Summit Evacuated After Fire Disrupts Negotiations

  • Pro Publica ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini’s Anti-Green Agenda Could Lead to 1.3 Million More Climate Deaths. The Poorest Countries Will Be Impacted Most.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Belgian Farmer Sues French Energy Giant for Damage Caused by Climate Change

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] As US Skips COP30 in Brazil, the Global South Fights for Climate Financing

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] How China is Turning Climate Action Into Economic Strategy

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Cutting methane emissions: A fast, cheap climate solution?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Final push at the UN climate talks: What you need to know

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Global climate progress visible but major emitters lag, new report finds

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Analysis-Clamour for Change Inside the World's COP30 Climate Negotiations

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Artificial Intelligence Sparks Debate at COP30 Climate Talks in Brazil [Ed: Slop is wasted energy]

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Brazil's COP30 Slow Shuffle Climate Negotiation Turns Into a Sprint

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Brazil Releases Draft Text and Letter to Accelerate COP30 Climate Negotiations

  • Vox ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Scientists are racing to save these iconic animals in Madagascar

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-17 [Older] China: The reluctant climate leader

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-17 [Older] So many climate numbers. What do they all mean?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] The Paris Agreement is working — just ask Big Oil

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-23 [Older] Turkey's Erdogan Praises 'Meaningful' Deal With Australia on Hosting COP31 Summit

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] Turkey and Australia Confirm Agreement on COP31 Split-Hosting Deal

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Turkey to host COP31 after Australia concedes

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Vietnam: Floods, landslides kill at least 41 people

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] How can we reduce CO2?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Germany pledges €1 billion to Brazil's rainforest protection fund

  • FAIR ☛ Jean Su on Challenging COP30 Narratives

  • The Vietnamese Magazine ☛ Not a ‘Just’ Transition: Việt Nam’s Green Energy Push and the Silencing of Đặng Đình Bách

    In 2021, Bách was a candidate for the Domestic Advisory Group (DAG), a civil society body based in Việt Nam, created to monitor the government's compliance with the EVFTA's environmental and labor conditions. [4]

    On June 24, 2021, he was arrested, allegedly without a warrant, just before the first meeting between the Việt Nam DAG and its EU counterpart was set to take place. His home and the LPSD office were searched, and computers were confiscated, also without warrants.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Eel Populations Are Falling, and New Protections Were Defeated. Japan and the US Opposed Them

    Yet they're also valuable seafood fish that are declining all over the world, leading to a new push for restrictions on trade to help stave off extinction.

  • Michaël ☛ Oil spill

    There is a global oil spill dataset from 1967 to 2023 by Liu, Yin, and Cai (2025).

  • Matt Birchler ☛ These damn consumers won't update their phones fast enough

    What a positively insane article. In short, "the economy would grow faster if people would be less selfish and upgraded their phones and computers more often." Was this written by an iPhone?

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Southeast Asia grows wary of [cryptocurrency] mining

      As illegal [cryptocurrency] mining and scam compounds proliferate across Southeast Asia, governments are discovering that "cheap" power for bitcoin can mean billion-dollar losses, strained power grids and rising climate costs.

    • Santa Monica Daily Press ☛ Santa Monica Demands Waymo Cease Nighttime Operations

      The directive, approved unanimously by the City Council on a 6-0 vote last Tuesday, did not mention Waymo by name but targets the properties at 1222 Broadway and 1310 Broadway where Waymo stores vehicles overnight. Staff said the city would issue a demand to property owners, lessees and operators to immediately stop nighttime operations due to nuisance conditions at both sites.

      At the Council meeting, staff said that if the parties do not comply within an expedited timeframe, the city will initiate litigation to abate the nuisance. While the City does not have to provide details of negotiations regarding lawsuits, it will have to provide notification to the public if a lawsuit is filed, including the participants.

    • Futurism ☛ Waymo Forced to Halt Overnight Operations As Punishment for Causing Nonstop Ruckus

      If the two lots don’t stop buzzing around the clock by Wednesday night, the city has threatened to start litigation, the SMDP reports.

      The strong-arm measures are driven by a year’s worth of noise complaints lodged against Waymo’s facilities. As the Los Angeles Times reported back in the spring, state regulations require that all self-driving vehicles sound a noise when they back up — which evidently happens constantly as the vehicles navigate Waymo’s cramped charging lots.

    • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Using Energy Prediction To Better Plan Cron Jobs

      At 03:00 AM, our solar panels are asleep too. Why not run the job when the sun is shining? Probably because you don’t want to interfere with the heavy load of your software system during the day thanks to your end users. It’s usually not a good idea to start generating PDF files en masse, clogging up all available threads, severely slowing down the handling of incoming HTTP requests. But there’s still a big margin to improve the planning of the job: instead of saying “At 03:00 AM exactly”, why can’t we say “Between 01:00 AM and 07:00 AM”? That’s still before the big HTTP rush, and in the early morning, chances are there’s more cheap energy available to you.

    • Didier Stevens ☛ Quickpost: CR1225 vs CR1220

      So I just used that CR1220 in stead. This works, because a CR1220 and CR1225 differ in mechanical properties (dimension), but not in electrical properties (voltage).

    • Heliomass ☛ System Stories: The Stansted Tracked Transit System

      The Stansted Airport Track Transit System (TTS) will be decommissioned in 2026 after 35 years of airside operation at the London airport.

      This people mover system debuted as a novel piece of transit infrastructure when it was introduced in 1991, and in this post we’ll take a look at why it was built, what problems the TTS was intended to solve and why it’s being sunsetted a quarter of the way through the 21st century.

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Energy poverty increases across the Netherlands, hitting single-parent families hardest

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Energy-label bureaucracy blocks Dutch homeowners from securing accurate ratings

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-23 [Older] Portugal faces energy hurdles amid data center boom

    • CBC ☛ 2025-11-21 [Older] Ottawa, Alberta expected to sign new energy sector deal on Thursday: source

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Vox ☛ 2025-11-24 [Older] Colorado has wolves again for the first time in 80 years. Why are they dying?

  • Overpopulation

    • Overpopulation ☛ Silence about “överbefolkning” in Swedish public discourse, but is there a change in the media?

      Overpopulation generates numerous negative effects on resources and our environment, as explored on this website and its blogs. There is a substantial risk that those born today will experience a worse future, compared to present generations. The word overpopulation is at the centre of TOP’s work. Given its importance, I decided to investigate if and where the concept is used in my country. Hopefully, this blog inspires comments or research about the acceptance of the term “overpopulation” in other countries.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] China reclaims spot as top German trade partner from US

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Could the German government collapse over pensions dispute?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Germany news: Merz's pension headache threatens coalition

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] US Has Warned Others to Avoid Loans From Chinese State Banks. but It's the Biggest Recipient of All

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Europe considers cutting out Huawei and China for good

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • FAIR ☛ Sports Press Covers WNBA Negotiations From Owners’ Point of View

    Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) players have quickly become some of the most recognizable female athletes in the world, with ballooning ticket sales and record-breaking viewership over the past two seasons. As a result, league revenues have soared.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Brazil sentences military officers over plot to kill Lula

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Bangladesh ruling on Sheikh Hasina piles pressure on India

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-23 [Older] In Croatia, resurgent far right shifts political climate

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] What did Germany's chancellor say to make Brazil so upset?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Why is Myanmar junta pushing for elections?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Polish Church's gesture of reconciliation marks 60th anniversary

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Pope Leo backs US bishops' message rejecting Cheeto Mussolini's immigration policies

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-24 [Older] Optimism Ahead of Pope's Visit to Turkey for Reopening of Istanbul's Greek Orthodox Seminary

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Netherlands to give up control of Nexperia in China dispute

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Italy approves Nord Stream suspect's Germany extradition

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: (Digital) Elbows Up

    I'm in Toronto to participate in a three-day "speculative design" workshop at OCAD U, where designers, technologists and art students are thinking up cool things Canadians could do if we reformed our tech law:

    https://www.ocadu.ca/events-and-exhibitions/jailbreaking-canada

    As part of that workshop, I delivered a keynote speech last night, entitled "(Digital) Elbows Up: How Canada Can Become a Nation of Jailbreakers, Reclaim Our Digital Sovereignty, Win the Trade-War, and Disenshittify Our Technology."

    The talk was recorded and I'll add the video to this post when I get it, but in the meantime, here's the transcript of my speech. Thank you to all my collaborators at OCAD U for bringing me in and giving me this wonderful opportunity!

  • Mike Brock ☛ Notes of Gratitude from the Wilderness

    What we’ve built here—these Notes from the Circus, this space where philosophy meets politics and clarity emerges from complexity—this is what survives when everything built on convenience collapses. This is what remains when the comfortable abandon ship and only the committed stay aboard.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Getting Ready to Party Like It’s 2008

    The clear lesson of 2008 is that effective financial regulation is essential. For three generations after the great bank runs of 1930-31, America avoided “systemic” banking crises — crises that threaten the whole financial system, as opposed to individual institutions. This era, which Yale’s Gary Gorton calls the Quiet Period, was the result of New-Deal-era protections — especially deposit insurance — and regulations that limited banks’ risk-taking.

    But post 1980, finance was increasingly deregulated. In particular, the government failed to extend bank-type regulation to shadow banks that posed systemic bank-type risks. And the crisis came.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Trump, the Pope, and me

    It’s a cartoon, of course — both a utopian and a dystopian version of America — but the cartoon poses a choice that’s become all too relevant: Do we join together, or do we let the Potters of America — Trump and his billionaire backers — run and ruin everything?

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Project Censored ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] ‘A Direct Attack on the Freedom of Speech’: Cheeto Mussolini Takes On Higher Ed

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Is Making Inroads in His Sly Attack on Free Speech

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-11-17 [Older] Antisemitism, Campus Censorship and Freedom of Expression

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-11-21 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Adds Censorship to the Campaign Against Arms Control and Disarmament

  • Project Censored ☛ 2025-11-21 [Older] The Project Censored Newsletter—November 2025

  • University of Michigan ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] ‘Out of the public eye’: Artists accuse University Unions of unprofessionalism and censorship

  • Project Censored ☛ 2025-11-17 [Older] News that Didn’t Make the News: Atrocities in Sudan and Regional New Abuse

  • Pro Publica ☛ 2025-11-21 [Older] The Indian Health Service Is Flagging Vaccine-Related Speech. Doctors Say They’re Being Censored.

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-11-19 [Older] Prince Harry's Bald Spot: Meghan Markle Allegedly Insists On Photo Approval To Hide Husband's Thinning Crown

  • BoingBoing ☛ Public libraries fight private equity takeovers

    Instead of being run by unionized librarians as a community service, which means bad people and bad books, libraries can instead be operated like chain restaurants, toy stores, and Sears. In the end the public loses everything, and who gets it all is none of your business.

  • Literary Hub ☛ Literary Hub » A Virginia public library is fighting off a takeover by private equity.

    The Samuels Public Library has thrived for nearly all of American history; it was founded in 1799, making it the second oldest library in Virginia. The library was renamed Samuels in the ‘50s and has more recently operated as a nonprofit that partners with the local government. Its service record is impressive: it won the 2024 Virginia Library of the Year award and according to the local Royal Examiner, in the last year it added 2,204 new cardholders, hosted 542 programs, and had 401,859 checkouts.

  • [Old] New York Times ☛ As L.S.S.I. Takes Over Libraries, Patrons Can’t Keep Quiet

    Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort � and maybe not even then?

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • BIA Net ☛ Journalist Fatih Altaylı sentenced to over 4 years in prison over remarks about Erdoğan

    The case centered on these remarks by the journalist: "Seventy percent of the public opposes President Erdoğan remaining in office for life. This isn’t surprising. Apart from some AKP voters and members of the MHP, very few support this idea. This is a nation that, when displeased, has even strangled its own sultans. In Ottoman history, there are many sultans who were assassinated or are believed to have died by suicide."

    The segment containing these remarks was later clipped and widely circulated on social media. Shortly after, Erdoğan’s advisor Oktay Saral publicly targeted Altaylı, saying “your time is up.” Altaylı was eventually detained and arrested.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • NL Times ☛ 2025-11-18 [Older] Dutch company involved FIFA World Cup-linked in labor exploitation in Saudi-Arabia

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-11-22 [Older] In Courting Saudi Arabia, Cheeto Mussolini Emulates Mohammed Bin Salman’s Authoritarianism

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-11-20 [Older] Florida Retiree Detained in Saudi Arabia Returns Home Following Prince's Visit to White House

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ College freshman, flying home for Thanksgiving surprise, is instead deported despite court order

    The day after Lopez Belloza was arrested, a federal judge issued an emergency order prohibiting the government from moving her out of Massachusetts or the United States for at least 72 hours. ICE did not respond to an email Friday from the Associated Press seeking comment about violating that order. Babson College also did not respond to an email seeking comment.

  • Michaël ☛ Wealth boundaries

    There are still borders in Europe: wealth is not distributed equally. We can show the difference of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at the NUTS 2 level.

  • NL Times ☛ Brothers on trial for honor killing of sister Ryan Al Najjar; Father still a fugitive

    The Public Prosecution Service (OM) determined that Ryan’s murder was an honor killing. According to the OM, the three men killed the 18-year-old woman because she was dating, behaved too “Western,” and “shamed” her family.

  • [Old] Dutch News ☛ Five women a year need protection for fear of honour killing - DutchNews.nl

    At least five women a year need police protection from relatives because they are facing honour-related violence, according to information from two dedicated women’s refuges quoted by Nieuwsuur.

    The claim follows news that an 18-year-old girl killed by relatives last year had been receiving police protection but that it ended shortly before she was murdered.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Hidde de Vries ☛ Who wins when we filter the open web through an opaque system?

    The discussion was about threats to the open web due to the emergence of large language models (LLMs). Large parts of the web have always been open. Not just to users, but also to crawling. When search engines crawl, it's seen as a net benefit to websites, especially when it gets them viewers for the ads that support the content. But now there are crawlers aimed at training and answering LLMs. They are a threat when they increase hosting bills (it can be DDOS-like), but they are also a threat when they reduce human visits. When users can access the crawled content without coming to the source website, they may never leave the LLM.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Silicon Angle ☛ Google drops EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft amid cloud probe

  Google LLC has dropped an antitrust complaint that it filed in the European Union last year over Microsoft Corp.’s business practices.

  The search giant announced the move today. The development comes a few days after the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, launched an antitrust probe into Microsoft. The investigation will scrutinize the company’s conduct in the public cloud market, which was also the focus of Google’s antitrust complaint.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Digital Music News ☛ Johnny Cash Estate Sues Coca-Cola Over Ad's Soundalike Vocals

      In addition to suing for an alleged ELVIS Act violation, Team Cash is accusing the defendant company of violating the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act and the Lanham Act.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Site Operator's Appeal Goes Bad, Court Extends Prison Term By 50%

    The saga surrounding the former operator of NunuTV, once South Korea’s largest pirate streaming site, has taken another wrong turn for the defendant. After receiving a three-year prison sentence earlier this year, an appeal only made the situation worse. After noticing a history of recidivism and a lack of remorse, the court extended the former operator's original three-year sentence by 18 months.