Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• So-called 'FSFE'

  • FSFE ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] SFP#43: It is Youth Hacking 4 Freedom! [Ed: Child labour]

Leftovers

• Open Caucasus Media ☛ OC Media’s 10 best articles of 2025

  For OC Media, 2025 began with a bang as the ongoing protests begun late in 2024 in Georgia over the ruling party’s EU U-turn continued unabated. These protests, which are still continuing, albeit in a variety of new forms, took up a large chunk of our work this year.

  Elsewhere, Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine continues to have a profound impact on the Caucasus, while on the other hand, the Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict has reached a new landmark with the initialling of a peace treaty in August.

• Sophie Koonin ☛ 2025: The year in lists - localghost

• Nolan Lawson ☛ 2025 book review

  My reading appetite has been weak again this year, which I blame on two things: 1) Slay the Spire being way too good of a video game, and 2) starting a new job, and thus having more of my mental energy focused on that.

  But I did manage to read some stuff! So without further ado, here are the book reviews: [...]

• Matthew Weber ☛ What Is My Passion?

  I like to read. I like to listen to music. I like to watch other people build stuff and make cool things. I have a lot of likes. I think that’s true of everyone. The question I’ve been asking myself recently, however, is what am I passionate about?

  This feels like the wrong time to ask myself “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But that is essentially the question. 40 years old, and now it feels like I have no direction. I’m looking for new jobs, and I’ll be happy with whatever I can get, but will I be passionate about it?

  I doubt it.

• Vereis ☛ This Post Isn't For You

  At some point, I achieved the goals I had – the big ones, anyway – but I never really set new ones.

  My wheels have been spinning ever since.

• Cynthia Dunlop ☛ Advice for new tech bloggers

  We interviewed a dozen(ish) expert tech bloggers over the past year to share perspectives and tips beyond Writing for Developers. The idea: ask everyone the same set of questions and hopefully see an interesting range of responses emerge. They did.

  You can read all the interviews here. We’ll continue the interview series (and maybe publish some book spinoff posts too). But first, we want to pause and compare how the first cohort of interviewees responded to specific questions.

  Here’s how everyone answered the question “Your advice for people just getting started with blogging?”

• Artyom Bologov ☛ 2025: Never-ed(1)-ing Lisp, Writing, and Feelings

  I never reviewed my 2024, so I’m going to throw a short bullet list of what was there: [...]

• Ben Werdmuller ☛ 2025: a personal year in review

  After last week’s downer of a global year in review, I decided I’d like to go back and do a more personal review, as well as share a few hopes for the new year.

• Raymond Camden ☛ year plus plus...

  If you ever want to see how the blog is doing, stat wise, you can head over to my stats page and check it out yourself. This post will be number 146 for the year, slightly beating my count for last year. Of course, quality means more than quantity, but I try to keep a pace of a post a week at minimum and I had no problem with that in 2025.

• Career/Education

  • Matthew Brunelle ☛ I Read a Couple of Books in 2025

    You should read books too. Turns out they are actually pretty good. In 2025 I covered a lot of ground: Cal Newport, Triathlon training material, Cory Doctorow and a book on solar power.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ What did I read this year

    The year is about to end, and it’s unlikely I’ll finish more books, so I think it’s a good time to recap the books I read in 2025. I’m not going to include links to buy these books. There’s no point in doing that because you know better than I do where you like to buy books. Some I read in Italian, others in English, but I’ll list the English version here when possible.

• Hardware

  • The Register UK ☛ Why software will save Nvidia from an AI bubble burst

    That’s a lot of chips that are going to be left idle when the music stops and the finance bros come to the sickening realization that using a fast-depreciating asset as collateral for multi-billion dollar loans wasn’t such a great idea after all.

  • CCC ☛ Infrastructure Review

    39c3 is a big challenge to run, install power, network connectivity and other services in a short time and tear down everything even faster. This is a behind the scenes of the event infrastructure, what worked well and what might not have worked as expected.

  • CCC ☛ The Angry Path to Zen: AMD Zen Microcode Tools and Insights

    We also show some basic examples of how microcode programs work, from a simple CString strlen implementation in a single x64 instruction to a [subleq](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Subleq) VM implemented entirely in microcode. These show off the basics of microcode programming, like memory loads & stores, arithmetic and conditional branches. We are also currently looking at other examples and more complex programs.

    We hope this talk shows you how to start throwing random bits at your own AMD Zen CPU to figure out what each bit does and help us in further understanding the instruction set. We welcome improvements to the tooling and even entirely new tools to help analyze microcode updates and the ROM.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Vox ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] How to actually get kids off their phones

  • Vox ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] What podcasts do to our brains

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] TikTok Rival Hit by Cyberattack as Porn and Violent Videos Flood Chinese App

  • Futurism ☛ Doctors Say AI Use Is Almost Certainly Linked to Developing Psychosis

    Now, according to new reporting from The Wall Street Journal, we may be nearing a consensus. More and more doctors are agreeing that AI chatbots are linked to cases of psychosis, including top psychiatrists who reviewed the files of dozens of patients who engaged in prolonged, delusional conversations with models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ OSHA Wants to Cancel Protections for “Inherently Risky” Work

    In July, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced a proposal to exclude “inherently risky professions,” including those in sports and entertainment, from the agency’s General Duty Clause. The agency explicitly references Kavanaugh’s dissent in the proposal, saying it “preliminarily concurs with the dissent’s concerns.”

  • [Repeat] Science Alert ☛ Even Low Doses of Aspartame Could Have Alarming Health Effects, Study Finds

    "The study demonstrates that long-term exposure to artificial sweeteners can have a detrimental impact on organ function even at low doses, which suggests that current consumption guidelines should be critically re-examined," the researchers write in their published paper.

  • Chuck Carroll ☛ Ignorance is Bliss

    For example I really could not care less about football, celebrity news, daily political controversies, social media influencers, and so on. I have zero interest in these things and I certainly don't have my identity anchored to them. What may seem as obviously important to you could just be background noise to me. Yes, ignorance in the things I don't care about is bliss. My attention is finite, life is finite, so I choose to spend me time focusing on what I see as important or interesting - and it's fair that others may see what interests me as background noise.

• Proprietary

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Why Gmail SMS Verification Is Failing in Zimbabwe And What To Do

    You enter your details, wait for the verification SMS (which they might have labelled as OTP), and then nothing happens.

    Sometimes Google just says “Something went wrong.” Other times, it keeps retrying until you’re locked out completely.

  • The Register UK ☛ Banksy's Limitless limited by Windows Activation

    Windows complaining about activation can occur if there are licensing issues, or if there has been a hardware change that is enough to send Microsoft's finest into a cycle of despair. Responding to the request of the operating system to dive into the settings to deal with the issue is not something the average visitor will be able to do, and we suspect that the artist themself is likely far too busy creating a graffiti project lampooning the tech giant's obsession with AI to care much about a Microsoft whoopsie.

  • IT Wire ☛ Why are so many ERP systems so rubbish at user interface and design?

    If ERP systems were judged the way consumer apps are, most would have been deleted years ago. And yet, organisations continue to spend millions - sometimes tens or hundreds of millions - on ERP implementations, upgrades, re-platforming exercises, and “digital transformations” that somehow still leave users clicking through labyrinthine menus, exporting data to Excel “just to get a list,” and quietly cursing under their breath. This isn’t a new problem. In fact, it’s an old one. And that’s part of the issue.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Cyber Show ☛ Inappropriate language models: Fake people can't be sincere

      What is at issue is whether fake content can be considered "offensive". I think it is. In some palpable sense, fake words written by fake people are very insulting wherever they intersect human affairs that a reasonable person would suppose to be significant emotionally.

      Regardless that the eulogy was delivered by a human speaker - perhaps even more-so - its fakeness disturbed everyone. What could and should have been a deep, bonding family moment was betrayed, violated and turned into a pantomime of fraud.

    • Pete Brown ☛ Your LLM-generated shit makes me distrust you.

      Maybe the rest of Yu’s post is great? I have no idea, because I didn’t bother reading it, and I didn’t bother reading it because I don’t trust a guy who puts some bullshit like this right up at the top.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ IDC warns PC market could shrink up to 9% in 2026 due to skyrocketing RAM pricing — even moderate forecast hits 5% drop as AI-driven shortages slam into PC market

      The underlying driver is the same force distorting much of the tech industry in late 2025: AI infrastructure. Memory demand from hyperscalers has surged so aggressively that DRAM and NAND production has been structurally redirected away from consumer devices and toward high-margin enterprise components like high-bandwidth memory and dense DDR5. This is an economically rational choice on the part of memory manufacturers, but IDC is clear that this isn't a typical boom-and-bust cycle; it's a strategic reallocation of silicon capacity that could persist for years, not quarters.

  • Social Control Media

    • Evan Hahn ☛ Prediction: Mastodon will outlive Bluesky

      Mastodon and Bluesky are, in my opinion, superior to the centralized status quo. They’re built on important protocols: ActivityPub for Mastodon and the AT Protocol for Bluesky. These decentralized, interoperable networks sidestep some significant security threats and enable tremendous creativity. I like them both.

      But between the two, I predict that ActivityPub will outlast AT Proto. Specifically, I think ActivityPub will be relevant in 2050 and AT Proto will not. (I concede there’s a future where neither is relevant.)

      I expect this for two reasons: [...]

    • Ava ☛ enjoying media and fandom

      What I have never enjoyed are the ways fandoms operate on microblogging services and Discord servers, so I don’t participate. They are just not designed to discuss media well, because you’ll join as a new member and bring stuff up, and the seasoned veterans go “ugh we discussed that like 4 times last month I’m kinda over it”. I also don’t want to talk about these things all day long directly to strangers, or make it my personality, but I also don’t see why I should discuss other things with a stranger just because we enjoy the same game or show. I enjoy more elaborate ideas on media over being fed small crumbs via short messages by just anyone.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Danish postal service to stop delivering letters after 400 years

    Announcing the decision earlier this year to stop delivering letters, PostNord, formed in 2009 in a merger of the Swedish and Danish postal services, said it would cut 1,500 jobs in Denmark and remove 1,500 red postboxes amid the “increasing digitalisation” of Danish society.

  • CNN ☛ Digital age brings Denmark’s postal service to a historic end

    Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, will deliver its last ever letter on Tuesday, as the digital age brings its 400-year-run to an end. This makes Denmark the first country in the world to decide that physical mail is no longer either essential or economically viable.

  • ABC ☛ Denmark becomes first country in world to end letter delivery

    The number of letters being sent in Denmark has dropped by 90 per cent in the past 25 years.

    In the year 2000, PostNord delivered nearly 1.5 billion letters. Last year, it delivered 110 million.

  • Politico ☛ Please, Mr. Postman! Denmark bids farewell to letter delivery and mailboxes

    However, Danish law guarantees citizens have the right to send and receive physical letters. So, with PostNord no longer offering the service, shipping and distribution company Dao will be stepping in. From January on, Danes wishing to send letters at home or abroad will have to hand them in at the private company’s shops — which already processed 30 million missives this year — and affix them with its corporate stamps.

  • PostiNord A/S ☛ PostNord will deliver its final letter at the end of 2025 | PostNord

    Danes have become more and more digital, and what was once sent by letter is now received digitally by the vast majority of people. This means that there are very few letters left in Denmark. In fact, letter volumes have decreased by over 90 percent since 2000, and the volume of letters continues to decrease rapidly.

    On the other hand, Danes are shopping online like never before. This means, that there is a growing need for fast and good delivery of Danish parcels, and we at PostNord are well equipped to help. That's why we're now focusing on becoming even better where Danes need us most - on parcels.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • DMG Media ☛ Simon Harris says Ireland to lead EU drive for ID-verified social media

      The Government will use Ireland’s presidency of the EU next year to push for new laws to block anonymous ‘keyboard warriors’ from spreading hate and disinformation online.

      In an interview with Extra.ie, Tánaiste Simon Harris said that the Government will lead calls for the introduction of ID-verified social media accounts.

    • Michael Kjörling ☛ Can we please stop getting data breach severities the wrong way around?

      But your full legal name, home address, birth date, health-related habits, sexual orientation, government-issued identity numbers, phone number, photographs, social graph? Those are generally not things you can just change and move on with your life as if nothing otherwise happened. Once those are out of the proverbial cat bag, there is little to nothing that you can do other than to deal with the fallout; which may come years later, or which might never materialize. And even when it does, it might very well not be obvious that itʼs connected to that breach.

      Therefore, as we head into 2026, can we please start getting the relative severity of different classes of breached data straight?

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Millions of Wired user records leaked in claimed Condé Nast breach

      A hacker claims to have leaked a database containing millions of user records tied to Condé Nast Inc.’s Wired magazine, as the data appeared on the Breach Stars cybercrime forum and quickly spread across other underground marketplaces.

    • CCC ☛ We, the EU, and 1064 Danes decided to look into YouTube: A story about how the EU gave us a law, 1064 Danes gave us their YouTube histories, and reality gave us a headache

      We explore what happens when Europe’s ambitious data access laws meet the messy realities of studying major digital platforms. Using YouTube as a central case, we show how the European Union’s efforts to promote transparency through the GDPR, the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) are reshaping the possibilities and limits of independent platform research.

      At the heart of the discussion is a paradox: while these laws promise unprecedented access to the data that shape our digital lives, the information researchers and citizens actually receive is often incomplete, inconsistent, and difficult to interpret.

      In this talk, we take a close look at data donations from over a thousand Danish YouTube users, which at first glance did not reveal neat insights but sprawling file structures filled with cryptic data points. Still, if the work is put in, these digital traces offer glimpses of engagement and attention, and help us understand what users truly encountered or how the platform influenced their experiences.

    • CCC ☛ Watch Your Kids: Inside a Children's Smartwatch

      But how much are the vendor's promises of safety, privacy, GDPR compliance, apps made in Europe and cloud servers in Germany actually worth?

      We take you along the process of hacking one of the most popular children's watches out there, from gaining initial access to running our own code on the watch. Along the way, we find critical security issues at every turn. Our PoC attacks allow us to read and write messages, virtually abduct arbitrary children, and take control over any given watch.

  • Confidentiality

    • APNIC ☛ Three of the best: RPKI

      The use of Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) to secure Internet routing is increasingly standard practice. While there were many significant events in the region throughout 2025, readers maintained an interest in local, regional, and global RPKI stories throughout the year.

    • Ted Unangst ☛ using lava lamps to break RSA

      We achieve a success rate exceeding 99.9% when factoring 15. Larger values such as 21 are also factored 66% of the time. Even more challenging targets such as 35 can be factored with a 33% success rate.

      Ongoing experimentation suggests this technique is capable of factoring 46% of all positive integers. We hope to improve on this result with further refinement to the factor extraction stage. Theoretical calculations suggest a three bit extractor may be sufficient achieve a 77% success rate.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Jerusalem Post ☛ Why is the West still turning a blind eye to the Islamic challenge? - opinion

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Hundreds of thousands newly displaced as Islamic State insurgency expands in Mozambique

    Neither the Mozambican army nor a Rwandan intervention have managed to quell the insurgency, which has ravaged northern Mozambique since October 2017, when militants from Islamic State-Mozambique, an affiliate of the main IS group in the Middle East, carried out their first attacks, in Mocímboa da Praia in Cabo Delgado province in the north-east.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Five ways to make more than a billion dollars

    Rubbish. There’s no such thing as a “free market” to begin with. Today’s so-called “free market” is the outcome of political decisions over monopolization, labor organization, private property, finance, trade, taxes, and much more.

    Who’s behind these political decisions? Increasingly, the same small number of ultra-rich who have gained disproportionate influence over our politics. They’ve created five ways for themselves to accumulate a billion dollars or more.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ The Heritage Foundation Shows How MAGA Will Die

    My guess is that there have long been many people at Heritage who were privately disgusted at what the organization had become. I never said they were stupid. But they lacked the courage to leave until they saw their colleagues jumping ship. Then there was a mass rush for the exit.

    Roberts may imagine that he and Heritage can ride out this storm, but I don’t believe they can.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Nigeria: Can US airstrikes weaken Islamist militants?

    "The number of terrorist casualties is not yet known because these territories are not where people can go easily," DW's Abuja-based reporter Ben Shemang said, adding that militant silence could be strategic to maintain resilience.

    The Nigerian government emphasized that foreign so-called "Islamic State" elements working with local affiliates were using the targeted camps to plan large-scale attacks inside Nigeria.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-12-29 [Older] Police boats, hundreds others search for Ukrainian boy missing since Christmas

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-29 [Older] Ukraine: Peace plan includes 'strong' US security guarantees

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-29 [Older] Explainer-Is Peace in Ukraine Any Closer After Cheeto Mussolini-Zelenskiy Talks?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-29 [Older] Kremlin Says Ukraine Should Withdraw Troops From Donbas, and a Putin-Cheeto Mussolini Call Expected Soon

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-29 [Older] US Offers Ukraine 15-Year Security Guarantee as Part of Peace Plan, Zelenskyy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-29 [Older] Zelenskiy Says 20-Point Peace Plan Should Be Put to Referendum in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Ukraine updates: Cheeto Mussolini, Zelenskyy to meet in Florida

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Putin and Cheeto Mussolini Do Not Support European-Ukrainian Temporary Ceasefire Idea, the Kremlin Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Repairs Start Near Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Plant After IAEA-Brokered Local Ceasefire

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Ukraine's DTEK Says Power Restored to 1 Million Kyiv-Area Households

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Zelenskiy to Meet Cheeto Mussolini in Florida for Talks on Ukraine Peace Plan

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Canada to Provide $2.5 Billion in Economic Aid for Ukraine, Prime Minister Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Explainer-What Lies Ahead for Ukraine's Contested Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant?

    • CBC ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Carney announces $2.5B in economic aid to assist Ukraine during meeting with Zelenskyy

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Ukraine updates: Zelenskyy says he plans to meet Cheeto Mussolini

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Putin Sends a Signal to Cheeto Mussolini on Ukraine Proposals

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Zelenskiy Says He Will Meet Cheeto Mussolini on Sunday to Discuss Ukraine Territory, Guarantees

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini-Zelenskyy Talks Will Address Security Guarantees and Reconstruction, Ukraine Leader Says

    • CBC ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskyy says latest peace talks with U.S. negotiators were positive

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] From Ukraine to US: Germany's 2026 foreign policy challenges

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Ukraine, US Negotiators Discussed How to Bring Peace Closer, Zelenskiy Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Ukraine: Zelenskyy unveils revised US-backed peace plan

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] France's Macron Says He Discussed Ukraine With NATO Head Rutte

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Putin Has Been Briefed on U.S. Proposals for Ukraine Peace Plan, the Kremlin Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Ukraine Unveils 20-Point Peace Proposal Under Discussion With US

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Zelenskyy Says He's Open to a Free Economic Zone in Ukraine's East but It Must Be Put to a Vote

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy Says Several Draft Documents Ready After Miami Talks

    • CNN ☛ 2025-12-29 [Older] Russian authorities detain suspect over St. Petersburg cafe blast

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-29 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini-Zelenskiy Talks Yield No Progress on Ukraine-Russia Territorial Issues

    • 2025-12-28 [Older] Ukrainian Teen Sentenced for Sharing Military Data with Russian Spy

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini expects outcome for Russia-Ukraine talks in weeks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Russia Sends 3 Iranian Satellites Into Orbit, Report Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Zelenskyy to Meet With Cheeto Mussolini as Efforts to End Russia-Ukraine War Remain Elusive

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Central African Republic Votes, Russia Ally Touadera Seeks Third Term

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Russia Opposes Taiwan Independence in Any Form, FM Lavrov Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Central African Republic's Incumbent President, a Russian Ally, Eyes a Third Term in Key Elections

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Russian Attack Damages Kherson Heating Plant

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Ukraine: Russia attacks Kyiv ahead of Zelenskyy-Cheeto Mussolini talks

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia pummels Kyiv, Zelenskyy heads to US

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Russian Drones, Missiles Pound Ukraine Before Zelenskiy-Cheeto Mussolini Meeting

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Ukrainian Capital Kyiv Under Massive Russian Attack, Officials Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Putin Says Russia Will Achieve Its Ukraine Aims by Force if Kyiv Doesn't Want Peace

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Russia Attacks Kyiv With Missiles and Drones, Killing 1 and Wounding Many Ahead of Ukraine-US Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Russia Downs 111 Ukrainian Drones in Three Hours, Defence Ministry Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Russian Drones, Missiles Pound Ukraine Ahead of Zelenskiy-Cheeto Mussolini Meeting

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-27 [Older] Two Polish Airports Reopen After Temporary Closure Due to Russian Strikes on Ukraine

    • CBC ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Zelenskyy, Cheeto Mussolini to meet in Florida on Sunday amid efforts to end Ukraine-Russia war

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Russia Likely Placing New Hypersonic Missiles at Former Airbase in Belarus, Researchers Find

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Key Issues Unresolved in US-Ukraine Talks on Ending Russia's War, According to Zelenskyy

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Putin Indicated Russia Could Be Open to Territory Swap as Part of Ukraine Deal, Kommersant Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Russian Drones Damage Foreign-Flagged Vessels in Southern Ports, Ukraine Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Russia Says It Captures Village in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine Defending Major Town

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Moscow Sentences Russian Diplomat to 12 Years for Passing Secrets to U.S. Intelligence

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-26 [Older] Zelenskiy Says Russia Using Belarus Territory to Circumvent Ukrainian Defences

    • CBC ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Russia is about to start staging plays at the Mariupol theatre it bombed

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] European Union and Russia: on the Verge of War

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Polish jets intercept Russian spy plane

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Ukraine updates: Kyiv hits Russian refinery with UK missiles

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Ukraine updates: Polish jets intercept Russian spy plane

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Poland Intercepts Russian Plane Over Baltic, Reports Airspace Breaches From Belarus

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Russia-Ally Touadera Seeks Third Term in Central African Republic

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Russia Compares US Blockade of Venezuela to Piracy

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Russia Is Analysing US Documents on Ukraine Peace Deal, Kremlin Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Russia Made a Proposal to France on Jailed French Researcher Vinatier, the Kremlin Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Russia Sees Slow but Steady Progress in Ukraine Peace Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] The Kremlin Says Moscow Made an Offer to France Regarding a French Citizen Imprisoned in Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-25 [Older] Ukraine Fires Storm Shadows, Drones to Hit Russia's Oil, Gas Facilities

    • CBC ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] U.S., Ukraine reach consensus on key issues to end war, but territorial disputes remain

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Russia: Police officers killed in new Moscow explosion

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Pro-Russian Hackers Claim Cyberattack on French Postal Service

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Russia's Air Defence Units Destroy Drone Flying Towards Moscow, Mayor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Blast in Moscow Kills 2 Police Officers and a Bystander. Ukrainian Official Claims Responsibility

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Majority of Russians Expect Ukraine War to End in 2026, State Pollster Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Russia's Putin Sent a Message to North Korea's Kim to Celebrate New Year's Day, KCNA Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-24 [Older] Ukraine Drone Attacks Target Moscow at Night, Spark Industrial Fire in Tula, Russia Says

    • CBC ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Russian air attacks pound Ukraine, killing 3 and knocking out power in most regions

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Ukraine updates: Deadly Russian air attacks force power cuts

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] What interest do China and Russia have in Venezuela?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Russian Air Attack on Ukraine Kills Three and Sparks Sweeping Outages

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Ukrainian Drone Attack Sparks Fire at Industrial Site in Russia's Stavropol Region, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Central African Republic's Touadera, Friend of Russia and Crypto, Vies for Third Term

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Two Police Officers Killed by Bomb in Moscow Near Site of Russian General's Killing

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Major Russian Drone and Missile Attack on Ukraine Kills at Least 3 People and Cuts Power

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Poland Scrambles Aircraft After Russia Strikes Ukraine, Polish Armed Forces Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Russia and US Discussed 'Irritants' in Relationship, Key Issues Unresolved, Interfax Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Russia's Lavrov to Meet Syrian Counterpart for Talks in Moscow, TASS Cites Foreign Ministry

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] WhatsApp Complains About Restrictions in Russia After Reported Slowdown

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-23 [Older] Insight-Why the Boss of a Russian Defence Factory Set Fire to Himself on Red Square

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-12-22 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy Says Border Residents Taken to Russia Had Long Interacted With Neighbours

    • Meduza ☛ Russia’s conscription system will become year-round starting January 1. Here’s what that means for Moscow’s call-up capacity. — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Stalling growth, falling oil prices, and the civilian sector sacrificed Meduza’s top five takeaways on the Russian economy heading into 2026 — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ A ‘palace’ fit for an occupier: New investigation reveals luxury residence built for Putin in Ukraine’s Crimea — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Cui bono? With no evidence offered, Russia’s claim of a Ukrainian attack on Putin’s residence looks designed to derail peace talks — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Pro Publica ☛ ProPublica Investigations You May Have Missed in 2025

    We published hundreds of long-reads this year. Here’s a reading list of some to revisit.

• Environment

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Contributor: Photos of the dirty 1970s will make you appreciate the EPA

    Growing up in the 1970s, I took for granted the trash piles along the highway, tires washed up on beaches and smog fouling city air.

    Such scenes are why the first Earth Day — on April 22, 1970 — energized the nation. In the largest single-day public demonstration in U.S. history, roughly 10% of the population took to the streets to shout together: “Enough is enough!”

  • BoingBoing ☛ America’s anti-litter campaign was corporate PR in a recycling costume

    The "Keep America Beautiful" campaign taught us that litter is a moral failure. A personal flaw best corrected with shame, mascots, and finger-wagging slogans. But Current Affairs lays out, in an infuriating deep dive, how the anti-litter movement wasn't born of environmental concern so much as corporate self-defense, designed to redirect blame away from companies that flooded the country with disposable packaging and place it on you and me.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Russia cracks down on 'illegal' cryptomining with prison terms up to five years — Kremlin will begin prosecuting in 2027

      Under the proposed legislation, basic offenses could be punished by a fine of up to 1.5 million rubles ($18,870), compulsory labor for up to 480 hours, or forced labor for up to two years. However, mining conducted by an organized group, mining activity that results in especially large damage, or income obtained on an especially large scale would carry significantly harsher penalties. These includes fines ranging from 500,000 to 2.5 million rubles ($6,289 - $31,445), forced labor for up to five years, or imprisonment for up to five years with an additional fine of up to 400,000 rubles ($5,031). In addition, Russia wants to charge for illegal intermediary activity in the cryptocurrency market.

    • David Rosenthal ☛ Sabotaging Bitcoin

      Of course, just because they aren't "economically meaningful" doesn't mean they aren't worth attacking! The average block has ~3.2K transactions, so ~$121.6M/block. As a check. $121.6M * 144 block/day = $17.5B. So to recover their cost for a 51% attack would require double-spending about 8 hours worth of transactions.

      I agree with their technical analysis of the attack, but I believe there would be significant difficulties in putting it into practice. Below the fold I try to set out these difficulties.

    • McSweeney’s ☛ I’m in Charge at This Hertz Location, and Buddy, You’re Not Getting a Car Today

      Okay, now you’re getting upset. You’re getting upset despite the fact that we have strict rules against getting upset at this Hertz location. But tell me, honestly, when you reserved a rental car through Hertz, you thought… what? That we were going to set aside a special little car just for you? Seriously? Oh my god.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2025-12-28 [Older] Birders flock to Vancouver beach to see rare bird native to Russia

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Invitation to live next door to George and Amal Clooney

    The story of secret ordinations taking place in the church reminded me of the secret demotions used to hide the Debian suicide cluster. What an uncanny coincidence. One of the victims died on our wedding day and it was Palm Sunday.

  • Euractive ☛ Ireland eyes EU social media age checks laws for 2026 Council presidency

    Ireland is looking to push for EU-level rules on social media ID verification and a ban for children during the country’s rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2026.

    In an interview with the Irish news site, Extra, Vice-Prime Minister Simon Harris said that his colleague in charge of media, Patrick O’Donovan, was considering proposals for an Australian-style social media ban for children.

  • CBC ☛ Meta just acquired a Chinese-founded AI startup for $2B. Here's why that matters

    And — unlike much of the industry, which is highly valuated for its future potential but not yet widely profitable — it actually makes money, which it earns by selling its product through subscriptions.

  • Techdirt ☛ Judge Says Trump Can’t Strip Lawyer’s Security Clearance Just Because He Doesn’t Like His Clients

    He’s also gone after a number of law firms who’ve represented people suing Trump and the administration. He’s also targeted lawyers who represent people he personally doesn’t care for, like the FBI agents who investigated the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt by his supporters.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ SoftBank stakes $4B on securing AI data center power and capacity — DigitalBridge purchase indicative of AI industry's increasing investments in energy supply

    SoftBank's deal comes days after Alphabet announced that it would acquire Intersect — another provider of data center and energy infrastructure solutions — for $4.75 billion in cash [sic]. Taken together, the two deals demonstrate how AI infrastructure planning is moving upstream into power origination and grid access, rather than continuing to focus solely on server procurement.

  • The Register UK ☛ New York’s incoming mayor bans Raspberry Pi at inauguration

    There’s obvious potential for miscreants to use a Flipper Zero to make mischief at large events, perhaps by cloning ID cards to gain access to secure areas, or by messing with wireless communications.

    A Raspberry Pi could do all that and more, but the single-board devices aren’t as neatly packaged as the Flipper Zero and would therefore be more conspicuous.

    Adafruit laments that listing the Raspberry Pi as a forbidden item besmirches a brand beloved by educators and artists, and also points out that banning the single-board machine is futile given that miscreants could program a smartphone to perform evil deeds at the inauguration.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ SoftBank reportedly finalizes OpenAI investment with $22.5B cash infusion

    OpenAI will use some of the funds to finance its Starlink data center initiative. The project, which the company launched at the start of the year, aims to deploy 10 gigawatts of computing capacity in the U.S. by 2029. The effort is supported by Oracle Corp. and SB Energy, a SoftBank unit that develops renewable energy installations.

  • CNBC ☛ Softbank fulfills $40 billion OpenAI backing, sources tell CNBC

    SoftBank had previously invested $7.5 billion in the ChatGPT maker and syndicated another $11 billion with co-investors, the Japanese conglomerate confirmed in a press release, with the final aggregate commitment at $41 billion. The investment takes SoftBank's stake in the company to around 11%.

  • Inside Towers ☛ SoftBank Acquires DigitalBridge to Scale Next-Gen AI Infrastructure

    Under the terms of the agreement, SoftBank will indirectly acquire all outstanding shares of common stock of DigitalBridge at $16.00 per share in cash [sic]. The transaction received a unanimous recommendation from an independent special committee of DigitalBridge’s Board of Directors, as well as full approval from the entire Board. This acquisition reflects a 15 percent premium over DigitalBridge’s closing share price on December 26, 2025, and a 50 percent premium compared to the unaffected 52-week average closing price as of December 4, 2025.

  • CCC ☛ Who runs the www? WSIS+20 and the future of Internet governance

    Abbreviations such as WSIS+20, IGF, IETF, DIEM, ICANN, PDP, ITU or W3C regularly appear in discussions about the Internet, yet often remain vague. This talk provides an update on the current state of Internet governance and explains why decisions made in United Nations processes have direct implications for technical standards, digital infrastructure, and power asymmetries.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Five lessons about misinformation from ancient Greek and Roman scientists

      Because these scientific beliefs are so different from our own, it may seem we have nothing to learn from long-dead scientists. However, thinkers 2,500 years ago already faced many problems that are today amplified by social media and artificial intelligence (AI), such as how to tell truth from fiction.

      Here are five lessons from ancient Greek and Roman science that ring surprisingly true in the face of misinformation in the modern world.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Protests calling for ‘death to the dictator’ erupt across Iran

    The protests began on Sunday afternoon after mobile phone and electronics shopkeepers in Tehran shut their stores as the rial currency fell to a record low of 1.42 million to the dollar.

    Riot police in full gear confronted hundreds of demonstrators near Tehran’s Grand Bazaar and in the Saadi Street area on Monday afternoon.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • RFERL ☛ Iran In 'New Phase Of Turmoil’ As Protests Spread Beyond Capital

    Demonstrations were reported in several cities, with markets and shops shuttered and students holding rallies at universities, on December 30.

    This follows two days of demonstrations that saw security forces launch volleys of tear gas to disperse crowds. People were chanting anti-government slogans to protest a sharp weakening of the currency.

  • Vox ☛ How disaster recovery became privatized and why it’s failing climate victims

    That a service like Bright Harbor found a strong foothold in the US is not surprising. The private sector’s creeping influence over disaster recovery has been noted since at least 2007, when Naomi Klein published The Shock Doctrine, the book that injected the term “disaster capitalism” into a broader lexicon. But as climate change accelerates and hammers the United States with more billion-dollar catastrophes than ever before, privatization has become more common — and complicated. Private interests can quickly mobilize huge volunteer networks, giving campaigns, and rebuilding efforts in the wake of extreme weather. But, whatever their intentions, such measures are a consequence — and sometimes a cause — of the corrosion of public institutions originally intended to safeguard Americans.

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ Trump administration crosses constitutional line with sectarian Christmas messages

    “These posts are not harmless greetings,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “They send a message that the federal government aligns itself with Christianity and that Americans of other faiths, or of no faith at all, are outsiders in their own country. That is divisive, unconstitutional and un-American.”

  • BoingBoing ☛ Pilot lands on reservation and gets his plane seized

    When the Air Force wanted to set up low-altitude training flights over Red Lake, the tribal council had finally had enough, enacting a resolution "prohibiting the flying of any airplane over the lands of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians at an altitude of less than 20,000 feet." While they have no real way of enforcing this while planes are in the air, once they land, the tribal police can take action.

    In a previous incident, a pilot landed on a frozen lake in the reservation to look for fish. LaDuke again explains, "His plane was seized by Red Lake because that's what a closed reservation means, even if you have some of the best walleye in the world. It's almost like watching dumb tourists try petting a buffalo at Yellowstone. No one is surprised by the results."

  • Jerusalem Post ☛ After Iraq legalizes child marriage, Baghdad bridal market booms as young girls sold to older men

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Three of the best: Geoff Huston

    APNIC’s Chief Scientist, Geoff Huston, continues to share his research and expertise on Internet operations throughout the world. Below are three of Geoff’s best posts in 2025.

  • APNIC ☛ Three of the best: IPv6

    The IPv6 transition continues in economies and organizations throughout the Asia Pacific region at different rates. Experiences were captured and misconceptions about IPv6 were debunked. Here are three of 2025’s best IPv6 posts: [...]

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • BoingBoing ☛ In case you missed it, Sony just patented AI-generated tutorials

      Such is the thesis of Sony's "AI-Generated Ghost Player" system. As outlined in the diagram below, the system would be able to generate AI-powered "ghosts" trained on gameplay of every compatible game capable of assisting you with every facet of them through a variety of selectable modes (and a 'Full Game' mode that presumably includes them all). Struggling with a combat encounter or a puzzle in an open-world game? Just call on your ghost buddy to take care of it for you.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Premier League Targets Dozens of Pirate Streaming Sites through Cloudflare Subpoena

    England’s Premier League has obtained a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare, hoping to curb the seemingly unbridled growth of sports streaming services. The filing in the Central District of California identifies dozens of infringing domains and demands that Cloudflare produce identifying data, including account history and physical addresses.