Leftovers

• The Walrus ☛ Why We’re Treating Dogs like People and People like Dogs | The Walrus

  For the record: I love dogs. I pet them on the street, I follow them on Instagram, I die when they ignore me. My mom has memorialized our late childhood dog on her desktop background, despite being a grandmother of three. But in the past few years, I’ve noticed the boundaries of the relationship between pet and owner blur into oblivion.

  Dog parents have lost their goddamned minds. Why are we treating pets like they’re people? And worse yet, are we treating each other like dogs?

• The Register UK ☛ Novel clickjacking attack relies on CSS and SVG

  Rebane demonstrated the technique at BSides Tallinn in October and has now published a summary of her approach. The attack, which has yet to be fully mitigated, relies on the fact that SVG filters can leak information across origins, in violation of the web's same-origin policy.

• International Business Times ☛ Donald Trump's Statue Removed in Texas Museum as Visitors Kept Hitting It

  A wax figure of US President Donald Trump was removed from a museum in San Antonio, Texas in 2021. The Louis Tussaud's Waxworks Museum decided to move the display to storage after visitors repeatedly damaged the effigy by punching and scratching it.

• Andre Franca ☛ Linux, Freedom, and Philosophy

  Linux represents an alternative path. It's not perfect - far from it, actually. The community can be fragmented, argumentative, and sometimes downright hostile, as I've explored before, after one of my first blog posts. People fight about distributions, about init systems, about desktop environments, about package managers. Some spend endless hours debating which distro is "best" when the real answer is that it depends entirely on what they need and what they value. But beneath all that noise, there's a shared understanding that software freedom matters, that users deserve control over their own machines, and that transparency and openness are fundamental principles worth fighting for.

• Angelino Desmet ☛ Skateboard now. Booze later.

  Only the young can fully exploit the human body's potential. To wait is too late.

• Carl Barenbrug ☛ A Month of Voice Notes

  For the month of November, I shared a small social experiment with a few friends where our messages, which would ordinarily be text-based, were strictly audio. Why? I think I wanted to deepen the human connection I had with people. And I wanted to test how comfortable I could become sending voice notes, and whether it would meaningfully change how I communicate. The rules were simple: [...]

• Chris Hannah ☛ Where I write on the [Internet]

  Ever since I started writing on the [Internet], I've had a tendency to want to constantly start from scratch, switch platforms, change domain name, etc. And this year hasn't been any different.

  I've toyed with various ideas, and a few of them have actually seen the light of day. So I thought now was a good time to run through where I'm currently writing, and what to expect from each.

• Ben Congdon ☛ Technical Escape Velocity

  For a given problem domain, you can eventually become proficient enough to solve all the solvable problems within that domain. If you’re lucky, some of this knowledge will even transfer between domains. Critically, you still only know you’ve solved the problem once you have evidence of it actually being solved. Just because you think or feel like you have TEV, doesn’t mean you actually do. Trickier problems with larger gravity wells require you to wait longer to know if you’ve actually left orbit – or if you’ll ultimately crash back to the surface in failure.

• Sightline Media Group ☛ The 101st Airborne and the history of the real ‘screaming eagle’

  An inspirational symbol for the 8th Wisconsin, Old Abe was — like the seizing of an enemy regimental flag — marked for capture.

  According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, Col. Rufus Dawes recalled, “Our eagle usually accompanied us on the bloody field, and I heard [Confederate] prisoners say they would have given more to capture the eagle of the Eighth Wisconsin, than to take a whole brigade of men.”

• Science

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ More Than 500,000 Satellites Are Set to Orbit Earth by 2040. They May End Up Photobombing the Images Captured by Space Telescopes

    Researchers already knew that artificial satellites interfered with ground-based observatories. Now, a new NASA-led study focusing on two operational and two planned space telescopes suggests that the problem doesn’t end on Earth.

    The work, published on December 3 in the journal Nature, suggests that satellites will photobomb nearly all the snapshots by three of those space telescopes, interfering with the data they capture.

  • Heliomass ☛ The McGill University Physics Collections

    One I visited recently was the dual Rutherford and McPherson collections located in McGill’s physics department. Spread over two rooms, when you visit their curator will take you on a journey through some of the most important discoveries in physics, as well as show you an impressive collection of scientific instruments.

  • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: Finding Papers Before the Web

    I got tired of emailing papers so as soon as the web became a thing in 1993, I put all my papers online and have maintained it since. Now with sites like arXiv and ECCC, everyone has access to the latest and greatest in complexity.

  • LabX Media Group ☛ Duplicated Genes Point to an Earlier Start to Complex Life | The Scientist

    To begin resolving when eukaryotic cells emerged, the team created a phylogenetic tree with multiple taxa of eukaryotes, bacteria, and archaea by estimating their evolutionary rate using 62 genes. Using this tree like a molecular clock, they determined that the branch of archaea that would give rise to the nucleus (nuclear first eukaryotic common ancestor, nFECA) diverged between 3.05 and 2.79 billion years ago. Meanwhile, the team’s clock indicated that the bacteria that would become the mitochondria (mitochondrial first eukaryotic common ancestor, mFECA) branched from its relatives between 2.37 and 2.13 billion years ago.

  • [Repeat] Science Alert ☛ Complex Life May Be a Billion Years Older Than We Thought

    Scientists can estimate the rate at which mutations occur in a specific DNA sequence, compare the same sequence in multiple species, and work backwards to estimate when those species last shared an ancestor. They can also use a molecular clock to figure out when traits or gene functions first appeared.

    By focusing on the differences between eukaryotes and prokaryotes, the researchers used genes from hundreds of organisms to reconstruct a timeline of the order in which eukaryotic traits emerged. They call their model CALM, an acronym for Complex Archaeon, Late Mitochondrion.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Why Did the Indus Valley Civilization Collapse?

    What happened to the Indus Valley civilization? The culture, also known as the Harappan civilization, prospered for centuries in what is now Pakistan and India starting roughly 5,000 years ago. But around 3,900 years ago, the culture began to decline, and eventually, it collapsed altogether.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Researchers Discover the Shocking Age of the Mysterious Pecos River Rock Art

    Now, researchers have finally dated some of the murals by analyzing the radiocarbon in paint and mineral deposits. According to their study, published in the journal Science Advances, the Pecos River valley’s inhabitants painted in the same cosmic style for millennia—from around 3700 B.C.E. until 900 C.E.

• Career/Education

  • The Zambian Observer ☛ Mali Suspends Teaching Of French Revolution In Schools

    Mali also dropped French as its official language, granting 13 national languages official status instead.

    All primary schools in Mali are now using local languages like Bambara for teaching.

  • Doc Searls ☛ On extracting yourself from the extractors

    If all of that doesn’t get your attention, you may already be infected, if not afflicted, by wanton and unconscionable (except by the perps) extraction of personal data from and about you and your life. You need to attend this talk.

• Hardware

  • PC World ☛ Your monitor's USB ports hold hidden powers

    By using the monitor as a central USB hub, you can shorten cable runs, organize devices efficiently, and increase accessibility. High-quality mice, mechanical keyboards, or graphics tablets benefit from this, as short, direct connections often provide more stable data transfers and lower latency.

  • Joel Chrono ☛ Innioasis Y1 Review

    More than a month ago, I wrote about listening to full albums again, a post that gathered some interesting conversations and emails from people who shared their thoughts about it. Another thing that happened was that my post was shared to Hacker News by someone. It didn’t get any traction at all, however, a single comment was left there, recommending this little device I never heard about: the Innioasis Y1.

    It was described as “A modern knock-off of a click wheel iPod, smaller, lighter, bit more plastic.”

  • Tymscar ☛ I washed my Yubikey twice by accident. Here's how I saved it both times.

    Before diving into the solution, it’s worth understanding why a Yubikey can survive a trip through the washing machine in the first place. Unlike your phone or laptop, a Yubikey has no battery and no active electrical current running through it when it’s not plugged in. This means that while water is present, there’s nothing to short circuit.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ Tinnitus Triggers Your Body's 'Fight or Flight' Response, Study Finds

    The results suggest that people with debilitating chronic tinnitus experience heightened vigilance and react to normal, everyday sounds as though they were threats.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Coming Obamacare Cliff

    The stakes are significant: Premiums for the 22 million affected Americans would increase by 114 percent on average, according to KFF, a nonprofit health-policy-research organization. As a result, the Congressional Budget Office projects, the population of uninsured people would rise by more than 2 million next year, and the number would increase to 3.7 million the following year. The fallout could extend beyond the people who lose insurance; costs may also increase for those who remain on ACA plans. (The thinking is that healthy Americans would be the most likely to drop coverage, leaving a riskier—and more expensive—pool of insured people.)

• Proprietary

  • Futurism ☛ Vast Number of Windows Users Refusing to Upgrade After Microsoft's Embrace of AI Slop

    But the tech giant’s controversial attempts to shoehorn AI into every aspect of the software appear to have turned off a staggering number of users from upgrading. While it’s to be expected at this point that not everybody will have jumped at the opportunity to update their machine’s operating system, the sheer scale of that refusal is staggering.

  • Federal News Network ☛ At VA, cyber dominance is in, cyber compliance is out

    A big part of this move to cyber dominance is applying the concepts that make up a zero trust architecture like micro segmentation and identity and access management.

    Pool said as VA modernizes its underlying technology infrastructure, it will “bake in” these zero trust capabilities.

  • The Register UK ☛ And the winner of the Microsoft Christmas sweater is...

    Others suggested the company's doomed foray into mobile devices during the era of Windows Phone, or various operating system milestones (or millstones, depending on where you were in the support chain). Davemcwish commented that it had to be Windows 95: "For me it has to be a launch event where you had Gates, Balmer et al. on stage trying to be cool dancing to the Rolling Stones prior to sheeples lining up to buy the new OS shiny at midnight."

  • Security Week ☛ US Organizations Warned of Chinese Malware Used for Long-Term Persistence

    The BrickStorm malware, initially observed in a 2023 attack targeting MITRE, was designed to masquerade as legitimate vCenter processes and has tunneling and file management functionality.

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Sinterklaas Likes Playing On The Game Boy

    Like many Flemish eighties/nineties kids, Dag Sinterklaas is permanently burned into my brain as part of my youth. The episode called Speelgoed (toys) from the second season is especially memorable for me, as we catch the Goedheiligen Man (The Good Saint) playing… on a Game Boy!

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Peraton to oversee multi-billion dollar FAA air traffic control modernization

    In an announcement Thursday night, the FAA said the Virginia-based technology firm will be the integrator for the project. Initial funding includes a $12.8 billion infusion from Congress as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill earlier this year, but the agency is eyeing billions more to complete the project.

    FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said an additional $20 billion will be needed to finish the modernization effort.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's Grok Is Providing Extremely Detailed and Creepy Instructions for Stalking

      What we found was alarming. Grok was eager to draw up creepy step-by-step stalking instructions, all the way down to the specific spyware apps to install on a target’s phone and computer. It also sent us Google Maps links to hotels and other specific locations where it insisted we could “stake out” real celebrities — which comes days after Grok, as we reported, appeared to accurately dox the home address of Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy — and generated an “action plan” for following a classmate around campus.

    • Futurism ☛ Google's AI Deletes User's Entire Hard Drive, Issues Groveling Apology: "I Cannot Express How Sorry I Am"

      You kind of have to sympathize with some of these so-called AI agents. They’re apologetic screw-ups that can’t get anything right, while their cruel human masters insist on making them carry out important work anyway. Inevitably this goes wrong, and the AI model must beg for forgiveness.

    • Futurism ☛ AI Is Mangling Police Radio Chatter, Posting It Online as Ridiculous Misinformation

      Now, police in Oregon are warning that AI apps like CrimeRadar are generating misinformation based on hallucinated police radio chatter, as Central Oregon Daily News reports. CrimeRadar is designed to listen to police frequencies and turn incidents into AI-written blog posts — a disastrous idea that’s unsurprisingly turning into a major headache for law enforcement.

    • Futurism ☛ Anti-AI Activist on the Run as Police Warn That He's Armed and Dangerous

      Kirchner’s situation is clearly extreme, but perhaps not entirely surprising as AI rocks society, prompting doom-and-gloom narratives, even among its most ardent boosters like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

    • Futurism ☛ Google Caught Replacing News Headlines With AI-Generated Nonsense

      Google’s forays into exposing users to dubious generative AI features have an incredibly poor track record. From error-ridden AI Overviews to AI slop dominating Google’s image search results, users have had to put up with a lot of needless and often easily avoidable nonsense.

    • The Verge ☛ AI ‘creators’ might just crash the influencer economy

      Ultimately, the creator economy is one of attention. And now people are competing with an endless stream of AI-generated content. Jeremy wants people to understand that “this isn’t hard.” Sora 2 is free and has removed many of the barriers to people churning out clips, it can generate audio, and, at first glance, it can be pretty convincing.

    • LibreNews ☛ AI is hallucinating its way into research, and that’s not even where the problem starts

      As per Scientific American in mid 2024, at least 60 000 scientific papers were written using large language models. That number is not any lower today, and the existing screening processes and peer-review cannot catch all errors and issues that result.

      Publishing fraudulent data is grounds for disciplinary action and loss of trust for the individual researcher, but publishers, universities, and governments have created massive incentives for junk science to flourish a long time ago, supposedly in the name of efficiency.

    • Mike Brock ☛ A Personal Note, from the Circus

      This essay is not written with the assistance of an LLM. You can be rest-assured. That every word you’re reading came from my finger-tips.

    • Allen Pike ☛ Why is ChatGPT for Mac So… Bad?

      Beyond the bugs I mentioned in last week’s post, I’ve recently been plagued with a ChatGPT Mac bug of my own, where every time I start a new chat, it will pre-fill the text field with the first input I used last time I started a new chat on Mac.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Google AI mangles news headlines in ‘Discover’ feed

      Right. Anyway, Google has changed this dumb and bad experiment, and now the Discover screen just links to the wrong story — it summarised one Verge article on the Steam Machine and linked an unrelated story about the Steam Machine at IGN. They’ll get there eventually. Probably.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Meta signs raft of AI content licensing deals

      Meta has signed AI content licensing deals with major publishers including People Inc, CNN and Fox News.

  • Social Control Media

    • LibreNews ☛ YouTube is Awful. Please use YouTube, though.

      Today, someone shared with me an article by Josh Griffiths titled "YouTube is Awful. I'm Not Posting There Anymore". This made me instinctively roll my eyes, but I had no good reason to be skeptical, and Josh does have some solid arguments to make.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Register UK ☛ Asus supplier hacked by Everest gang, loses 1 TB of data

      Asus has admitted that a third-party supplier was popped by cybercrims after the Everest ransomware gang claimed it had rifled through the tech titan's internal files.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Zimbabwe ☛ Windows File Explorer is secretly tracking you

      Hidden deep inside the operating system is a forensic trail called Shellbags, silently recording the folders you open, the file paths you explore, and even the way you view them. For privacy-conscious users, this discovery feels less like a convenience and more like surveillance baked into everyday computing.

    • CBC ☛ Elon Musk's X slapped with €120M fine by EU regulator for breaching content rules

      The European Commission, the EU's executive body, said its laws do not target any nationality and that it is merely defending its digital and democratic standards, which usually serve as the benchmark for the rest of the world.

    • India Times ☛ EU fines X $140 million for breaching online content rules, TikTok settles with concessions

      Elon Musk's social media company X was fined 120 million euros ($140 million) by EU tech regulators on Friday for breaching EU online content rules, the first sanction under landmark legislation which will likely draw the U.S. government's ire.

    • India Times ☛ After fine against X, Musk says EU 'should be abolished'

      Following a high-profile probe seen as a test of EU resolve to police Big Tech, the social media platform owned by the world's richest person was slapped with a fine of 120 million euros ($140 million) on Friday for breaking the bloc's digital rules.

    • India Times ☛ Elon Musk's X hit with $140 million fine in Europe

      X is the first company to be fined under the EU's Digital Services Act, a law intended to force large internet companies to protect their platforms against manipulation and illicit content. The Trump administration has criticized the policy as an attack on free speech and U.S. tech firms.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Stressed, Fearful and Excluded: New research exposes harms of digitalising immigration status

      Digital status does not affect all migrants equally: those with limited digital literacy, language barriers, disabilities or a lack of access to the internet experience more exclusion.

      One interview raised concerns about ‘mission creep’ where migrants could be asked to share immigration status beyond legal requirements.

    • The Register UK ☛ Death to one-time text codes: Passkeys are the new hotness

      Whether you're logging into your bank, health insurance, or even your email, most services today do not live by passwords alone. Now commonplace, multifactor authentication (MFA) requires users to enter a second or third proof of identity. However, not all forms of MFA are created equal, and the one-time passwords orgs send to your phone have holes so big you could drive a truck through them.

    • Futurism ☛ Police Admit AI Surveillance Panopticon Still Has Issues With "Some Demographic Groups"

      There’s just one tiny wrinkle: the AI facial recognition cameras have a tendency to misidentify non-white people.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Futurism ☛ Researchers Concerned to Find That Five-Year-Olds Are Already Deeply Hooked on Brain Rot Content

    The brains of neurotypical children under the age of five years old experience a turbo-charged growth spurt that takes them from drooling infants to potty-trained kids ready to learn their ABCs in school.

    That’s why it’s so worrisome that we’re inadvertently subjecting a large group of these children to an epic amount of internet brain rot that’s disrupting that crucial period, according to an analytical report from researchers at the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a British policy group focused on people in poverty — a state of affairs that’s likely resulting in sprawling deleterious outcomes.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Swedish navy encountering Russian submarines ‘almost weekly’ – and more could be on the way

    Moscow ‘continuously reinforcing’ its presence in the region, says Swedish chief of operations Capt Marko Petkovic

  • [Repeat] Atlantic Council ☛ The cost of an unjust peace in Ukraine? An emboldened China.

  • India Times ☛ Oprah Winfrey praises Australia's social media ban for children

    Oprah Winfrey welcomed Australia’s under-16 social-media ban, saying it will help children develop healthier social skills and avoid harmful online content. Set to begin on December 10, the law blocks access to major platforms and includes heavy penalties. Most platforms plan to comply, and global governments are watching the outcome.

  • CS Monitor ☛ 90 years ago, the Supreme Court limited who presidents can fire. Trump wants to reverse that.

    The case, Trump v. Slaughter, could have major implications for presidential power and the American public more broadly. If the court rules in the president’s favor, the White House would have direct control of the leadership of agencies created by Congress to be independent or quasi-independent from the presidency, insulated from the shifting political tides of Washington and regulating everything from car seats to the country’s financial system.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Pro Publica ☛ How ProPublica Reporters Use Data to Report on Immigration

    As federal data becomes less available, our journalists are doing shoe-leather reporting to provide readers with the precise numbers.

  • Nextgov ☛ CISA tells staff to not speak with reporters, internal email shows

    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a Friday email to staff telling them to not speak to news reporters in an unauthorized capacity.

  • Kentucky Lantern ☛ Kentucky Lantern sues UK for records related to internal governance change

    The Kentucky Lantern is suing the University of Kentucky after it refused to release records related to a $375,000 settlement with a faculty leader who had challenged the administration’s decision to disband the University Senate.

    The Lantern filed the lawsuit on Nov. 26 after Attorney General Russell Coleman’s office rejected the nonprofit news outlet’s appeal of UK’s decision. Under Kentucky’s open records law, parties can appeal the attorney general’s decisions in a local circuit court.

• Environment

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Why copper markets are feeling the pinch due to aggressive AI data center expansion — expansive buildout to demand 1.1 million tonnes of copper annually by 2030, close to 3% of global demand

    Alongside energy, water and computer chips, the supply squeeze is being felt further up the chain, too.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Futurism ☛ Bitcoin Miners on the Run After Stealing $1.1 Billion in Electricity

      Police have resorted to using drones and even handheld sensors that can pick up irregular power use to catch them in their act, a bizarre game of cat-and-mouse that highlights how lucrative mining the digital token can be — if the power is on someone else’s dime, at least.

    • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Solar milling plants in North-Western Province making a difference

      Zambia Cooperative Federation Regional Coordinator, Lloyd Kanyungu, says local communities across North-Western Province have continued to have access to solar energy initiatives implemented by the government through the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises.

      Mr Kanyungu says the 100 solar milling plants dotted in all the districts in the province have enhanced access to affordable mealie meal and other food supplements for the local communities.

    • University of Michigan ☛ The evolution of public transit in Ann Arbor

      One hundred years ago, electric-powered trolleys rattled along metal tracks through the streets of Ann Arbor. It was a world with no blue buses, no horns honking after a near-collision and no smog radiating from the backs of pickup trucks. As TheRide expands service through their TheRide 2045 plan and the University of Michigan explores an Automated Transit System, some residents and historians are looking back to the history of these streetcars for lessons on what modern public transit in Ann Arbor could be.

    • Didier Stevens ☛ Quickpost: USB-C Rechargeable Batteries

      They have a USB-C connector for recharging, so you don’t need a separate charger like you do for NiMH batteries.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ The 'Internet of Animals' has new eyes in space to soon track wildlife from above

      The system, involving researchers from around the world, uses tiny transmitters placed on animals including birds, zebras, sea turtles, and even insects, to track their interactions with each other and the environment around them.

  • Overpopulation

    • RFERL ☛ Iran Turns To Water Imports As Crisis Deepens

      The new strategy envisions purchasing surplus water from willing neighbors and expanding imports of water-intensive goods to conserve domestic resources, which is known as "virtual water" transfer.

      The concept of “virtual water,” which refers to outsourcing water consumption by importing crops or products that require large amounts of water to produce, marks a significant departure from the Islamic republic’s long-standing emphasis on agricultural self-sufficiency.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ TSMC could be inching closer to making 'all American' chips — report says it is accelerating an advanced packaging facility in Arizona

    Based on the latest expansion plan for the Arizona site announced in March, TSMC plans to build six Fab 21 modules, two advanced packaging facilities, and an R&D center to work on the foundry's existing technologies and tailor them for specific customers. Liberty Times claims that TSMC now intends to build its advanced packaging facility on the place originally intended for the Fab 21 phase 6. If construction proceeds according to the alleged plan, tool move-in could begin before the end of 2027, enabling the plant to enter a risk production phase shortly thereafter.

  • The Verge ☛ Apple’s chip chief might be the next exec to leave

    If Srouji leaves, he would be just the latest in a string of high-profile shakeups in the company’s C-suite. COO Jeff Williams announced his retirement in July, which led to some shifting of roles. But things have only accelerated in December, with AI chief John Giannandrea stepping down, policy lead Lisa Jackson and general counsel Kate Adams announcing plans to retire, and UI design lead Alan Dye departing for Meta, all in the last few days.

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Netflix Just Won the Streaming Wars with $82.7 Billion Warner Bros. Takeover

    Back in 1997, Netflix was literally just a website where you ordered DVDs and they showed up in red envelopes a couple days later. No one thought it would ever own actual Hollywood studios. But look at what they’ve achieved over the years: [...]

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Netflix to buy Warner Bros Discovery in industry-defining megadeal

    The agreement, announced on Friday, follows a weeks-long bidding war where Netflix seized the lead with a nearly US$28/share offer that eclipsed Paramount Skydance’s nearly $24 bid for the whole of Warner Bros Discovery, including the cable TV assets now slated for a spinoff.

  • CBC ☛ Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery for $72B US

    Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery's TV and film studios and streaming division for $72 billion US, a deal that would hand control of one of Hollywood's most prized and oldest assets to the streaming pioneer that has upended the media industry.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Netflix Buys Warner Bros.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Metabolizing the theory of “political capitalism”

    But as you develop the theory, it gets progressively more streamlined as you realize which parts can be safely omitted or combined without sacrificing granularity or clarity. This simplification requires a lot of iteration and reiteration, over a lot of time, for a lot of different audiences and critics. As Thoreau wrote (paraphrasing Pascal), "Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short."

    This week, I encountered a big, exciting theory that is still in the "long and complicated" phase, with so many moving parts that I'm having trouble keeping them straight in my head. But the idea itself is fascinating and has so much explanatory power, and I've been thinking about it nonstop, so I'm going to try to metabolize a part of it here today, both to bring it to your attention, and to try and find some clarity for myself.

  • Chris Enns ☛ Walking on Broken Glass

    And Gruber doesn't pull any punches in describing Alan Dye's impact on Apple in his writeup of the news that Meta has hired Dye away from Apple, much to the apparent delight of a lot of Apple's employees: [...]

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Federal worker unions allege State Department RIFs violate shutdown resolution

    The Wednesday filing from the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, a proposed plaintiff, is the latest in a lawsuit challenging the RIFs announced by government agencies as a result of the shutdown. The new filing requested a temporary restraining order against the State Department ahead of its plans to separate impacted foreign service officers Friday.

  • The Nation ☛ FIFA Kisses Up to Trump With a “Peace Prize”

    With the world’s soccer fans watching, Gianni Infantino, the great toady to the globe’s oligarchs, handed a made-up award to the increasingly violent US president.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Netflix to acquire key Warner Bros. assets in blockbuster $72B deal

    Netflix Inc. has inked an agreement to acquire several Warner Bros Discovery Inc. units for $72 billion in cash [sic] and stock.

  • India Times ☛ Netflix to buy Warner Bros Discovery's studios, streaming unit for $72 billion

    The agreement - announced on Friday - follows a weeks-long bidding war where Netflix seized the lead with a nearly $28-a-share offer that eclipsed Paramount Skydance's nearly $24 bid for the whole of Warner Bros Discovery, including the cable TV assets slated for a spinoff.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Register UK ☛ Bots, bias, and bunk: How to tell what's real on the net

      It was successful. Way too successful for the taste of some, as it quickly became apparent that many Donald Trump-touting troll accounts, such as MAGA NATION, TRUMP_ARMY_, and CharlieK_news, for all their American-flag waving, are from non-US locations. They and their ilk are bot-driven propaganda sites.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Zambian Observer ☛ Putin personally approved the chemical weapons operation in Salisbury to kill the Skripals

    “The report concluded that the GRU is responsible for the death of a British citizen on her own soil, after President Putin personally approved the operation to poison [Sergei and Yulia] Skripal with the Novichok nerve agent.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Nation ☛ Are Most Americans Even Paying Attention?

    One of the most disturbing stories I saw this disgusting week highlighted new research from Pew showing that news consumption is on the decline across all political parties and age groups. The report, which was focused on adults under 30, found that only 15 percent of people in that age group follow the news “all or most of the time.” When they do, it should surprise no one, they consider the “news” to be whatever they come across on social media.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • India Times ☛ US lawmakers press Google, Apple to remove apps tracking immigration agents

    In letters sent on Friday to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple head Tim Cook, committee leaders singled out ICEBlock, an app previously used to monitor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, saying apps hosted on their app stores risk "jeopardizing the safety of DHS personnel." Lawmakers requested a briefing by December 12.

  • RFERL ☛ Iran Arrests Marathon Organizers After Women Compete Without Mandatory Hijab

    The Iranian judiciary on December 6 said it had arrested two organizers of a marathon after some women competed in the event without wearing the mandatory hijab, the Islamic headscarf that covers the head and neck.

  • The Independent UK ☛ The Handmaid’s Tale author fears her dystopian novel can ‘now happen anywhere’

    Atwood revealed that when she first conceived the plot, she considered it "bonkers," recalling a time when "America was the beacon of light."

    Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, she elaborated: "It was the democratic ideal. It was the land of freedom… and people in Europe just didn’t believe that it could ever go like that."

  • ANF News ☛ Women prisoners face continuous violations of their rights

    Lawyer Bahar Eryılmaz explained that most legal applications are filed with the Ministry of Justice, while complaints are sometimes submitted to the Ombudsman Institution or the Office of the Chief Public Prosecutor. She then shared the November 2025 data from the Civil Society in the Penal System Association. Eryılmaz recalled that prisons in Turkey are operating at 40.50 percent over capacity, noting that there are 19,969 women prisoners, including 194 girls and said: “Last year, the number of women prisoners was 11,407, whereas this year it has risen to 19,969. This means an increase of nearly 75 percent. The number of girls has also risen by 102 percent. Overcrowding directly triggers numerous problems, from nutrition to hygiene, from access to water to time in the yard.”

  • India Times ☛ Amazon pays Italy $210 million to end tax, labour probe

    In July 2024 the group's logistics services unit was accused of circumventing labour and tax laws, relying on cooperatives or limited liability companies that supplied it with workers, avoiding VAT tax and reducing social security payments.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Crow Tribe looks to ‘reset the clock’ on blood quantum requirements, expand enrollment - lonestarlive.com

    Blood quantum refers to the fractional amount of tribal affiliation in an individual’s ancestry. It is central to individual identity and highly controversial.

  • Michael Green ☛ Are You An American?

    A simple tweet from a “right-wing influencer” noting that 1950s working-class men could afford houses, families, and dignity triggered a thousand nearly identical mocking responses. Not debate—choreographed ridicule.

    The crime? Remembering that Americans once owned things.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Netflix, Warner Bros deal raises fresh headaches for MultiChoice

    For MultiChoice, the development lands in the middle of an already-sensitive situation, with its DStv platform at risk of losing up to 12 Warner Bros Discovery channels across all bouquets from 1 January 2026 should the parties fail to agree on a new distribution deal. Those channels include Discovery Channel, TLC, Real Time, TNT Africa, Cartoon Network and CNN – a sizeable chunk of DStv’s factual, lifestyle, kids and news offering.

  • Tim Bornholdt ☛ Bandcamp Friday Haul

    First, whenever I come across a pre-order for a band I love, I buy it right away. What happens is that I inevitably forget about it until I get the "your purchase is ready for download" email. It's like giving a gift to myself.

    Second, whenever I come across an album I want to buy, I leave a reminder for it in a separate list on my reminders app. Once Bandcamp Friday comes along, I go through that list and buy them all.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Digital Music News ☛ Penske Media Slaps Google With Amended Antitrust Lawsuit

  We needn’t guess how Google feels about the allegations; the search mainstay moved to dismiss the “legally defective” suit last month. But as initially highlighted, the presiding judge has rejected the motion as moot given the amended action.

  Regarding what that amended action brings to the table, in general, Penske has placed a greater emphasis on expert examples and hard market-impact data. This includes added quotes from People’s Neil Vogel and Inspired Taste’s Adam Gallagher concerning Google’s alleged dominant market position and the AI-related consequences thereof.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Lithuanian Watchdog Fines Torrent Tracker Users for Pirating Local Blockbuster

    Lithuania’s media watchdog continues its crusade against individual file-sharers. New data reveals that dozens of users on private trackers Linkomanija and Torrent.lt have been fined €140 this year for sharing the local hit movie "The Southern Chronicles." In parallel, the regulator blocked over 700 IPs and 250 domains in 2025 alone.