Leftovers

• Daniel Pocock ☛ Crans-Montana: Le Constellation ownership, Jacques Moretti and Jessica Maric, Lens (CH)

  Switzerland has 26 cantons and each canton maintains its own business register.

  I previously had to research the scandal involving an illegal legal insurance scheme being operated across the border between Switzerland and France. The presence of records about multiple nominee owners and business entities in different cantons made it hard to find the truth. Nonetheless, the truth came out on the JuristGate web site.

  Le Constellation is in the Canton of Valais and the business records can be searched in this public database.

  The search reveals the owners are Jacques Moretti, a French citizen domiciled in Lens and Jesicca Macif, his spouse, who is also a French citizen.

• Jan Lukas Else ☛ My December ‘25 and my 2025 in Review

  Some in my blogging circle have already published their 2025 year in review, so I want to continue my tradition since 2019 and write a review of my own. But first, a few words about the past month.

• James G ☛ The new year

  Having a few directions for last year served as a guide, but left room for all the moments in the middle – those times when I think oh! and have an inclination to try something new, or to explore new paths and build conviction in what I want to do next. Indeed, many of the things I want to do have actually been in my mind for a while – to learn German, for example – and that started last year. Change can happen at any time.

• Dominik Schwind ☛ Fuck it, let’s do pink

  So screw them, we’re doing the most pink I could find.

• Heliomass ☛ State of the Blog 2025

  And as a result, the backlog of ideas is now massive and therefore overwhelming, which has created a vicious cycle where it just feels like a gargantuan effort to get something done.

• [Old] Hazel Russman ☛ Xmas and Christ-mas

  It’s that time of the year again and, all over the English-speaking world, Christians are complaining about the growing commercialisation of Christmas. The complaints are partly justified, but what has happened is not really so much the commercialisation of a Christian festival, as the separation (in time and in character) of two feasts that have coincided for centuries. Only one of these is in any sense Christian. The other was once a pagan festival that meant something important for the non-Christian world, and whose pagan holiness bled over into the Christian festival in a powerful nexus of symbols, but which has now been stripped of any holiness at all and of most of its fun too.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Hackaday ☛ Bringing A Yagi Antenna To 915MHz LoRa

    If you’re a regular reader of Hackaday, you may have noticed a certain fondness for Meshtastic devices, and the LoRa protocol more generally. LoRa is a great, low-power radio communications standards, but sometimes the antennas you get with the modules can leave you wanting more. That’s why [Chris Prioli] at the Gloucester County Amateur Radio Club in the great state of New Jersey have got a Yagi antenna for North America’s 915 MHz LoRa band.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ January's Wolf Supermoon Is Getting a Rare Triple Brightness Boost

    That distance is a little farther than the Cold Supermoon of 4 December 2025, but the brightness kick from another timely feature will likely make up for the lack of distance.

    This year's Wolf Supermoon will also fall just hours from a perihelion – the point in Earth's orbit at which it is closest to the Sun, about 3.4 percent closer than its farthest point. This means just a tiny bit more sunlight reaches the Earth-Moon system, giving another brightness boost.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ China Planning Crackdown on Hey Hi (AI) That Harms Mental Health of Users

    The doctrine "highlights a leap from content safety to emotional safety."

  • Hackaday ☛ Rectal Oxygenation Could Save Your Life One Day

    Humans have lots of basic requirements that need to be met in order to stay alive. Food is a necessary one, though it’s possible to go without for great stretches of time. Water is more important, with survival becoming difficult beyond a few days in its absence. Most of all, though, we crave oxygen. Without an air supply, death arrives in mere minutes.

• Proprietary

  • Farid Zakaria ☛ Bespoke software is the future

    At Google, some of the engineers would joke, self-deprecatingly, that the software internally was not particularly exceptional but rather Google’s dominance was an example of the power of network effects: when software is custom tailored to work well with each other.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The New Stack ☛ How To Build a Developer Career When the First Rung Is Gone

      As AI tools become increasingly integrated in many industries across all levels, there has been a quiet but undeniable shift. The tasks that used to be prevalent at the start of a developer’s journey are now disappearing because human performance is becoming increasingly unnecessary here.

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ The next big thing in 2026 will be...

      In other words, it’s going to be the squishy human stuff that is going to become central to tech. In many ways it really always has — tech has always been a people business at its heart — but putting it at the center of the discourse is a change. And in a world where AI is becoming more and more prevalent, particularly in transforming how code is written and deployed, it makes sense that it would be.

    • Futurism ☛ Godfather of AI Warns That It Will Cause Job Market Devastation This Year

      During the CNN interview, Hinton was asked whether he was more or less worried about AI since making that now infamous declaration.

      “I’m probably more worried,” Hinton replied. “It’s progressed even faster than I thought. In particular, it’s got better at doing things like reasoning and also at things like deceiving people.”

    • Austin Z Henley ☛ I canceled my book deal - Austin Z. Henley

      A bit later they come back basically saying The Powers That Be are requiring AI to be part of every book. I offered a few compromises (i.e., a chapter about implementing an ML algorithm or a note at the end of each chapter about leveraging AI in the creation of the projects). I got a mixed response.

      "All of our future books will involve AI."

      In the end, I firmly told them no. It is antithetical to the premise of the book (classic programming projects!) that they agreed to publish. They went away.

    • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ ICYMI: Just Over 50 Percent Of The Internet Is Now AI Slop

      Rejoice, netizens of flesh and blood, for only a little over half of all new articles on the internet are AI-generated, according to a new report highlighted in Axios, says an article from Futurism. Believe it or not, this is kind of good news. Since the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, we’ve been battening down the hatches amid an absolute deluge of AI slop. But it hasn’t quite drowned us all yet, evidently. The report, published by the SEO firm Graphite, analyzed a random sample of 65,000 English-language articles published between January 2020 and May 2025. Using an AI detector called Surfer, any article that was found to have 50 percent or more of the content written with a large language model was considered AI-generated. As expected, the analysis showed a rapid spike in AI-generated articles coinciding with the release of ChatGPT, from roughly ten percent in late 2022, to over 40 percent by 2024, before slowing to a more steady climb. Now, for the good news: it looks like the influx of AI articles has hit a plateau. After AI-generated articles hit a peak in November 2024, the share of newly-published AI and human-written content has been hovering around a fifty-fifty split, As of this May, the share of new AI articles is at 52 percent, trading places from just a month ago when human written articles enjoyed a brief majority.

  • Social Control Media

    • Don Marti ☛ but I want to turn people into dinosaurs

      Somehow the recent news from Meta reminds me of that. Meta doesn’t want to fight scams, they want to keep growing their share of the advertising business. When scams are a part of that, Meta would rather turn you into a dinosaur than leave money on the table. The purpose of a system is what it does, and the scam load that’s optimal for Meta revenue is higher than the scam load that’s optimal for everybody else.

    • Aethrvmn ☛ i hate ‘thought leadership’

      In my experience on social media, specifically LinkedIn and X/BlueSky, there are two main ways to create and regurgitate content.

      The first, the zero order regurgitation (gurgitation?), is the primary sources. These gurgitators often are acknowledged scientists or accomplished businessmen that have a track record of providing value, originally to their customers, but possibly also to shareholders, owners, or even to no one at all1.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • International Business Times ☛ The International Space Station Is Retiring: Meet the Private Space Stations That Will Replace It

    The International Space Station (ISS), the icon of international collaboration and scientific success, is approaching the end of its working life. Having spent over twenty years in Earth orbit, the ISS will be retired by 2030, marking the end of an era of human spaceflight. NASA has verified that the station will be deorbited and steered into the Pacific Ocean, concluding a period that started back in 1998.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Last letters from Denmark: Danes write to Devon artist as postal service ends

    A British artist has been collecting some of the last missives sent through the 400-year-old Danish postal system, which delivered its final letters on 30 December.

    PostNord has cited the “increasing digitalisation” of society and has said it will continue to deliver packages, but its decision to stop delivering letters has made headlines across the world.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ What is Instagram’s Adam Mosseri really saying in his year-end memo?

      This isn’t just about AI and advisers preferring to be associated with real content: we’re starting to see age verification laws take hold in various jurisdictions, and there are likely more to come. By preparing users for more identity verification and tying it up with a “this way we know who’s real” bow, they’re able to get ahead of these rules. And being the primary identity broker in the social space during this new era will provide some business security.

• Defence/Aggression

  • JURIST ☛ UN Security Council holds emergency meeting over Israel recognition of Somaliland

    The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) held an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss Israel’s announced recognition of Somaliland, a self-declared independent region of Somalia. The move drew widespread condemnation from world leaders over the weekend, and the UNSC session provided a forum for all member states to present their positions.

  • New York Times ☛ Most of Iran Shuts Down as Government Grapples With Protests and Economy

    Amid mounting street protests, businesses, universities and government offices stayed closed Wednesday under government orders, in 21 of 31 provinces, including Tehran.

  • New York Times ☛ Merz Says Relationship Between U.S. and Germany Is ‘Changing’

    Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, making his New Year’s Eve address, said the change would force Europe to do more to defend itself.

  • BIA Net ☛ Rising racism in football stadiums threatens the peace process

    In a country where racism has developed alongside a nationalist culture over the years, hate speech is often accepted as the normal discourse of daily life. Politics is built on conflict, and "others" are frequently addressed with insults. Therefore, the rise of racist chants in the stands should not be surprising.

  • New York Times ☛ Suicide Bomber in Syria Kills Security Officer in New Year’s Eve Attack

    The attacker likely had links to the Islamic State and was possibly targeting a Christian church in the center of Aleppo, according to a government spokesman.

  • RFERL ☛ Vessel Held In Finland After Suspected Baltic Cable Sabotage

    The ship is registered to St. Vincent and Grenadines but crewed by Russians, Georgians, Kazakhs, and Azerbaijanis, authorities said on December 31. All 14 were being held by Finnish authorities.

    According to MarineTraffic data site, the ship had left the Russian city of St. Petersburg and was traveling to the port of Haifa in Israel.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Finland seizes vessel suspected of damaging undersea cable

    A Finnish border guard vessel and helicopter located the ship and ordered it to stop, raise its anchor, and move into Finnish territorial waters.

    "Finland is prepared for security challenges of various kinds, and we respond to them as necessary," President Alexander Stubb wrote on X.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ France plans social media ban for children under 15: reports

    France will attempt for a second time to ban children under 15 from using social media in 2026, local media and news agencies reported on Wednesday.

    The country has already placed curbs on mobile phones in schools attended by younger children, but they are not always strictly enforced.

  • France24 ☛ France proposes social media ban, following the Australian model for under-15s

  • The Atlantic ☛ Britain Should Have Read the Tweets First

    That delight was short-lived. Within hours, Abd el-Fattah’s tweets from the time of the Arab Spring, when he was around 30, resurfaced on X. In these, he reportedly wished violence on “all Zionists, including civilians”—read: Jews. He also called for the murder of police officers, and sarcastically described his dislike of white people. In a 2010 discussion of the death of one of the terrorists who had tortured and killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, he declared, “My heroes have always killed colonialists.”

  • The Nation ☛ Who’s Responsible When a Military Order Is Illegal?

    On enlistment, everyone in the military takes an oath of loyalty not to a person, a party, or any form of politics, but to the Constitution. Enlistees in all branches also pledge to obey orders from their officers and the president. As stipulated in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), it’s clear that this means only lawful orders. Officers take a slightly different oath: they, too, swear to support and defend the Constitution, but their oath doesn’t include anything about obeying orders from their superiors or the president, presumably because they’re responsible for giving orders and ensuring that those orders are lawful. Officers reaffirm their oath whenever they’re promoted. Across the board, the UCMJ, the Nuremberg Principles, and the US Constitution establish the right and responsibility of servicemembers to refuse illegal orders or to refuse to participate in illegal wars, war crimes, or unconstitutional deployments.

  • NPR ☛ Capitol [insurrection] 'does not happen' without Trump, Jack Smith told Congress

    "The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit," Smith said, bristling at a question about whether his investigations were meant to prevent Trump from reclaiming the presidency in 2024.

  • BBC ☛ Channel migrant crossings for 2025 highest in three years

    A total of 41,472 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats in 2025 - almost 5,000 more than the previous year.

    Home Office figures showed a 13% rise on the 36,566 total in 2024.

  • Le Monde ☛ France seeks to ban social media for children under 15

    The draft law has two articles. One would make illegal "the provision by an online platform of an online social media service to a minor under 15." The second calls for a ban of mobile phone use in secondary schools.

    Macron has said that the digital protection of minors is a priority for his government, but enforcement and compliance with international law have been issues. An ban on mobile phone use in preschools and middle schools came into force in 2018, but is rarely enforced.

  • Reuters ☛ Macron wants to ban under-15s from social media from September 2026, Le Monde reports

    France plans to ban children under 15 from social media sites and to prohibit mobile phones in high schools from September 2026, local media reported on Wednesday, moves that underscore rising public angst over the impact of online harms on minors.

  • New York Times ☛ President Macron of France Backs Social Media Restrictions for Children

    The plan, which has already been proposed by other French politicians and is expected to be debated in Parliament in January, envisions implementing the ban by next September, according to French news outlets. It will also extend an existing ban on mobile phones from primary and middle schools to high schools.

  • ABC ☛ France reportedly planning social media ban for under-15s

    Speaking to media on Thursday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese welcomed France's reported changes, saying it was a policy area in which "Australia has proudly led the world".

    He said the number of social media accounts being closed as a "direct result" of the ban introduced on December 10 "shows that it has been working".

    "We know that social media is doing social harm to young people in particular," Mr Albanese said.

  • RFI ☛ Macron mulls social media ban as mother challenges platforms over son’s suicide - RFI

    His mother, a 55-year-old shopkeeper from in Brittany, north-western France, and her husband Sébastien are now seeking to reopen the investigation into his death and to hold social media companies to account.

    In September, they filed a complaint against TikTok, Meta (the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) and other platforms, alleging offences including incitement to suicide.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Moscow’s evidence Russia’s military has offered what it claims is proof that Ukraine attacked Putin’s Valdai residence. It ain’t much. — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Do you think Putin is doing a good job?’ A state-linked pollster is asking Russian university students to share their views on the war, politics, and sex — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ How We Tracked Abuses in the Russian Army

      President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the Russian society can tolerate the high human cost of the war in Ukraine. But we’ve analyzed more than 6,000 official complaints by soldiers and their loved ones that paint a very different picture. Our international correspondent Paul Sonne explains how the documents offer rare insight into a violent military apparatus willing to abuse its own men to keep up the assault in Ukraine.

    • New York Times ☛ In New Year’s Speech to Russia, Putin Says Little About Ukraine War or Peace Talks With US

      The Kremlin leader kept his speech short, spoke only briefly about the fighting in Ukraine, and did not mention U.S.-mediated talks on ending the war.

• Environment

  • The Register UK ☛ Mitigating pollution from satellite RF transmissions

    The photobombing of ground- and space-based telescopes by proliferating satellites in Low Earth Orbit has long vexed astronomers. As well as optical annoyances, radio astronomers are also encountering interference due to satellites communicating with ground stations.

  • 404 Media ☛ Researchers Are Hunting America for Hidden Datacenters

    A team of researchers at Epoch AI, a non-profit research institute, are using open-source intelligence to map the growth of America’s datacenters. The team pores over satellite imagery, building permits, and other local legal documents to build a map of the massive computer filled buildings springing up across the United States. They take that data and turn it into an interactive map that lists their costs, power output, and owners.

  • Energy/Transportation/Mining

    • Hackaday ☛ Tick, Tock, Train Station Clock

      We’ve seen a few H-bridge circuits around these parts before, and here’s another application. This time we have an Old Train Station Clock which has been refurbished after being picked up for cheap at the flea market. These are big analog clocks which used to be common at railway stations around the world.

    • Hackaday ☛ Virus-Based Thermoresponsive Separation Of Rare-Earth Elements

      Although rare-earth elements (REEs) are not very rare, their recovery and purification is very cumbersome, with no significant concentrations that would help with mining. This does contribute to limiting their availability, but there might be more efficient ways to recover these REEs. One such method involves the use of a bacteriophage that has been genetically modified to bind to specific REEs and release them based on thermal conditions.

    • Positech Games ☛ A calendar year of solar farm ownership

      So yup, I somehow built a solar farm, and it was tricky, but now is the relatively easy bit, where I just have this huge capital asset sat on a hillside somewhere, and hopefully it makes some money? Lets look at what an actual real uninterrupted solar farm ownership year looks like. Which obviously means looking at the annual combined chart from the 10 Solis inverters: [...]

    • Sebastiaan Andeweg ☛ 2025

      At the end of June I sold my car. With my new job in the centre of Amsterdam, I was using it less and less, and since I’m politically against cars, it made sense to let go. (Also, owning a car is expensive.)

    • India Times ☛ As Google, Musk, Bezos, Altman back space data centres, can sky really be the next frontier for AI

      The notion has gained traction as the AI race hits a fever pitch, fueling fears of a potential bubble. Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon and other big tech companies are investing hundreds of billions in data centres worldwide, with OpenAI alone committing $1.4 trillion to such projects. Saudi Arabia and other nations are also pouring money into these efforts, while smaller companies pile up debt and take on financial risks to join the frenzy.

    • Herb Sutter ☛ Software taketh away faster than hardware giveth: Why C++ programmers keep growing fast despite competition, safety, and AI – Sutter’s Mill

      If you answered exactly “power and chips,” you’re right — and in the right order.

      Chips are only our #2 bottleneck. It’s well known that the hyperscalars are competing hard to get access to chips. That’s why NVIDIA is now the world’s most valuable company, and TSMC is such a behemoth that it’s our entire world’s greatest single point of failure.

      But many people don’t realize: Power is the #1 constraint in 2025. Did you notice that all the recent OpenAI deals were expressed in terms of gigawatts? Let’s consider what three C-level executives said on their most recent earnings calls.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Science Alert ☛ We May Be Misreading Our Dogs' Emotions in Surprising Ways

      Paws for thought.

    • BBC ☛ 'Being in the house is normal' for Lars the reindeer - BBC News

      Lars was hand-reared by his owner, as his mother could not produce enough milk to feed him.

• Finance

  • Federal News Network ☛ Judge blocks White House’s attempt to defund the CFPB, ensuring employees get paid

    At the heart of the case is whether OMB Director Russell Vought, also CFPB acting director, can effectively shut down the agency and lay off all staff.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Damon Dash’s Film Company Sells for a Paltry $100 in Bankruptcy Auction

    Former Jay-Z business partner Damon Dash’s filmmaking company was sold for a paltry $100 at a bankruptcy auction held to offset the million he owes. Damon Dash, former Jay-Z business partner and hip-hop mogul, owes nearly $1 million from defamation lawsuits.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Jazz Musician Who Canceled ‘Dihydroxyacetone Man Kennedy Center’ Performance Faces $1 Million-Plus Lawsuit

    The cancellation of a jazz performance on Christmas Eve at the newly renamed ‘Dihydroxyacetone Man Kennedy Center’ has prompted a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages. Musician Chuck Redd called off the performance after the Kennedy Center was renamed to include current Insurrectionist.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Bulgaria joins eurozone despite opposition

    Bulgaria became the 21st member of the currency union, bringing the number of people using the single European currency to more than 350 million.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Bulgaria Celebrates Entry Into Euro Zone, Lev Currency Banished Into History

    As of ​midnight the euro became the country's currency and the lev was ​banished into ⁠history.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ Technology is culture

    If you like my model, I submit that it has a few interesting consequences. The most immediate one is that if you want to understand how and where technological progress happens, you have to look at cultural drivers—not at what professors at MIT are publishing.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • New York Times ☛ He Is Being Sued in the U.S. for Human Rights Abuses. He Could be Deported First.

    Rafael Quero Silva faces a lawsuit brought by five people who say he oversaw their abuse and mistreatment as a military officer in Venezuela. But he could be deported before the case is heard.

  • RFERL ☛ Several Protesters Reported Dead In Iran As Anger Builds Over Dismal Economy

    Several people have died during a fifth day of protests across Iran, state-affiliated media and rights groups said, as anger builds over the country's economic woes despite pledges from the Islamic republic's clerical leaders to take "new decisions" to improve the situation.

  • RFERL ☛ Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi: Iranians Have Nothing Left To Lose

    Protests over spiraling inflation and the plummeting value of the local currency, the rial, began with shopkeepers in Tehran closing their doors on December 28. The uprising has continued each day, spreading to several universities in the capital, as well as to other areas around the country.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Several people killed as protests spread across Iran

    With Iran mired in economic crisis, the country has been gripped by protests that began with a merchants' strike in Tehran and have since spread to other cities.

    The semi-official Iranian media agency, Fars, reported Thursday that two people had been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces in the western city of Lordegan.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Iranians Have Had Enough

    Like previous waves of demonstrations, the protests have quickly acquired a political character. Protesters have chanted, “Death to the dictator,” targeting the octogenarian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has held the top post since 1989 with little accountability. As a statement read out by students at Tehran’s Beheshti University put it: “This criminal system has taken our future hostage for 47 years. It won’t be changed with reform or with false promises.”

  • RFERL ☛ Iran Braces For More Protests As Death Toll, Arrests Rise

    The Fars news agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), reported protests in the city of Lordegan in the southwest, saying clashes with security forces had occurred. It cited "an informed source" as saying that "two people had lost their lives.

    Norway-based human rights group Hengaw also reported deaths in Lordegan, saying security forces had opened fired on protesters, killing two and wounding several. The group also said a protester was killed in Isfahan Province in central Iran on December 31.

  • El País ☛ Is porn for women different from conventional porn? We spoke to those who make it

    However, this type of pornography remains a very small part of what is produced in the industry. Simply typing the word “porn” online will bring up — in a matter of seconds — more than 7.6 billion results that provide access to sites with free content. “The change in consumer behavior is evident: today, viewers are more intentional about what they watch, how they access it and whether they decide to pay for content,” the production company states.

  • New York Times ☛ Phone Searches at U.S. Borders: What Travelers Need to Know

    The short answer is yes. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have broad authority to look through travelers’ phones, laptops and other electronic devices under an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s protections against warrantless searches.

    C.B.P. conducted 55,318 searches of electronic devices at ports of entry in fiscal year 2025, according to the agency. That’s up from the previous two years, though the number represents only about 0.01 percent of the nearly 420 million travelers who entered or exited the country by air, land and sea in fiscal year 2025, according to the agency.

  • BBC ☛ Saudi Arabia: Rights groups condemn new record number of executions in 2025

    At least 347 people have now been put to death this year, up from a total of 345 in 2024, according to the UK-based campaign group Reprieve, which tracks executions in Saudi Arabia and has clients on death row.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Saudi Arabia sets executions record in 2025, putting 356 people to death

    The Saudi authorities executed 356 people in 2025, according to an AFP tally, setting a new record for the number of inmates put to death in the kingdom in a single year.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The Post-American Internet

    On December 28th, I delivered a speech entitled "A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet" for 39C3, the 39th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, Germany. This is the transcript of that speech.

  • Henry Desroches ☛ A Website To End All Websites

    But that’s not what we use the Internet for anymore. These days, instead of using it to make ourselves, most of us are using it to waste ourselves: we’re doom-scrolling brain-rot on the attention-farm, we’re getting slop from the feed.

    Instead of turning freely in the HTTP meadows we grow for each other, we go to work: we break our backs at the foundry of algorithmic content as this earnest, naïve, human endeavoring to connect our lives with others is corrupted. Our powerful drive to learn about ourselves, each other, and our world, is broken into scant remnants — hollow, clutching phantasms of Content Creation, speed-cut vertical video, listicle thought-leadership, ragebait and the thread emoji.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Variety ☛ MTV Did Not Shut Down Despite Social Media Posts

  Here’s where the confusion is coming from: On New Year’s Eve, Paramount Skydance did indeed shut down several MTV-branded music channels in the U.K. According to a source, “MTV’s specialist music channels in the UK will no longer operate as linear channels. The flagship MTV UK channel will continue to broadcast… Paramount is reviewing and adjusting its international Pay TV portfolio, given shifts in audience behavior towards streaming and digital platforms.”

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • teleSUR ☛ USMCA Review Unlikely to Result in New Trade Agreement - teleSUR English

      She explained that businessmen would participate in the process and that the Mexican government would provide additional support if needed. Sheinbaum pointed out that the review will be technical, not a replacement of the existing treaty.

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ TTABlog Test: Is LA PACHANGA MARGARITAS Y FIESTA Confusable with PACHANGA MEXICAN GRILL for Restaurant Services?

    The USPTO refused to register the proposed mark LA PACHANGA MARGARITAS Y FIESTA in the word-and-design form shown below, for "providing of food and drink via a mobile truck; restaurant services" [MARGARITAS disclaimed], finding confusion likely with the registered mark PACHANGA MEXICAN GRILL (in standard characters with a disclaimer of MEXICAN GRILL) for “restaurant services." Applicant argued that the term PACHANGA, which means "a (lively) party" in Spanish, is a weak formative, further evidenced by third-party use of that word and of the English word PARTY in connection with restaurant services. How do you think this appeal came out? In re O&R Franchise Group LLC, Serial No. 98134084 (December 30, 2025) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Thomas W. Wellington).

• Copyrights

  • MJ Fransen ☛ Best of the Gutenberg books I read in 2025

    Project Gutenberg is a fantastic treasure trove filled to the brim with over 75,000 books.

    In 2025 I read several books and short stories that are now in the public domain. Here are the most noteworthy.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Nancy Drew, Betty Boop and more: 26 notable works entering the public domain in 2026

    So-called "Public Domain Day" is important because it offers community theaters, youth orchestras and other groups content without licensing agreements, but it also gives these creative pieces a chance for new life, saving them from being "lost to history," said Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle, co-directors of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University.

    "1930 was a long time ago, and the vast majority of works from that year are not commercially available. You couldn't buy them, or even find them, if you wanted," they wrote in an article published by the center. "When they enter the public domain in 2026, anyone can rescue them from obscurity and make them available, where we can all discover, enjoy and breathe new life into them."

    The center celebrates this every year by listing off many of the works heading into the public domain. These are 26 of the more notable works that are joining the long list in 2026.

  • Techdirt ☛ Let’s Go! The Public Domain Game Jam Starts Today

    As you hopefully know by now, we are once again hosting our annual game jam celebrating the works that enter the public domain in 2026, a.k.a. today! This year, that means we enter a new decade, as works originally published in 1930 finally exit copyright protection and become free to remix, repurpose, and build on. Gaming Like It’s 1930! begins today and runs until the end of the month, and we’re calling on designers of all stripes to help us show why a robust and growing public domain is so valuable and important.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Happy Public Domain Day to All Who Celebrate! You Can Now Use Betty Boop, Nancy Drew and 'The Maltese Falcon' for Free

    Only the version of Betty Boop introduced in 1930 is entering the public domain this year. With her signature kiss curls and strapless dress, she is unmistakably Betty with one major exception: She’s an anthropomorphic French poodle with long, floppy ears. These ears would become hoop earrings in later iterations. In the mid-1930s, the Hays Code restricted “indecent or undue exposure” and “suggestive postures” from the silver screen, forcing more changes to Betty’s appearance. Her hemlines lowered while her necklines inched higher, and her plots became less trippy and more traditional.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Betty Boop and 'Blondie' Enter the Public Domain in 2026, Accompanied by a Trio of Detectives

    The coming decade will bring a true bounty of Hollywood Golden Age films into the public domain. 2027 will be a truly monster year, literally, with the original 1931 Universal Pictures versions of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” among the titles due.