Leftovers

• Science

  • Hackaday ☛ Optimizing A Desktop, 3D Printed Wind Tunnel

    You’ve heard of wind tunnels– get some airflow going over a thingy, put some some smoke on, and voila! Flow visualization. How hard could it be? Well, as always, the devil is in the details and [toast] is down in there with him with this Hot-Wheels sized wind tunnel video.

  • Hackaday ☛ The ARCTURUS Computer Developed At Sydney University In The 1960s

    [State of Electronics] have released their latest video about ARCTURUS, the 14th video in their series The Computer History of Australia.

  • Hackaday ☛ Electronic Nose Sniffs Out Mold

    It turns out, that mold is everywhere. The problem is when it becomes too much, as mold infestations can have serious health effects on both humans and animals. Remediation is extremely expensive, too. So there are plenty of benefits to finding mold early. Now, German researchers are proposing an electronic “nose” that uses UV-activated tin oxide nanowires that change resistance in the presence of certain chemicals, and they say it can detect two common indoor mold species.

• Career/Education

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ U-M’s new president inherits host of challenges: What Kent Syverud faces

    U-M President-elect Kent Syverud to join school following a season of instability and grapple with many issues, including federal funding cuts to universities, athletic department scandals and student affordability.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Fixing A KS Jive DAB Radio With A Dash Of Fake ICs

    The exciting part about repairing consumer electronics is that you are never quite sure what you are going to find. In a recent video by [Mick] of Buy it Fix it on YouTube the subject is a KS Jive radio that throws a few curve balls along the way. After initially seeing the unit not power on with either batteries or external power, opening it up revealed a few loose wires that gave the false hope that it would be an easy fix.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Indonesia’s Greater Jakarta grapples with waste crisis amid mounting rubbish and landfill leaks

    Garbage has been piling up at several landfills in the region.

  • New York Times ☛ Nearly 15,000 Nurses Go on Strike at Major New York City Hospitals

    Workers are demanding more robust staffing levels and higher pay. The strike comes three years after a smaller job action won significant gains.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Corrupting LLMs Through Weird Generalizations

      Fascinating research:

      Weird Generalization and Inductive Backdoors: New Ways to Corrupt LLMs.

      AbstractLLMs are useful because they generalize so well. But can you have too much of a good thing? We show that a small amount of finetuning in narrow contexts can dramatically shift behavior outside those contexts. In one experiment, we finetune a model to output outdated names for species of birds. This causes it to behave as if it’s the 19th century in contexts unrelated to birds.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Global publisher Surveillance Giant Google traffic dropped by a third in 2025

      Dramatic decline expected to continue throughout 2026.

    • Tomas Tomecek: Ambient Code: first impressions

      Ambient Code is a platform (not covered here) and a collection of Hey Hi (AI) coding agents and workflows designed to help with software development. I decided to give it a shot and see how well their agents can analyze and contribute to one of our projects in Packit org.

      The first tool we are going to use is called agentready. It checks how well a project is maintained and suited for AI-assisted development.

  • Social Control Media

    • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Reportedly Realigns Stateside Staff Ahead of ‘TikTok USA’ Launch — Some Domestic Employees To Work Under a ByteDance-Owned Unit Post-Divestment

      TikTok is reportedly realigning its stateside staff ahead of the planned “TikTok USA” rollout – with certain team members transitioning to the new entity and others staying aboard a ByteDance-owned unit.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • It's FOSS ☛ Microsoft Open-Sources XAML Studio [Ed: Openwashing of abandonware from Microsoft entertained by "It's FOSS"]

      After 8 years, Microsoft's tool for designing backdoored Windows apps is now open source.

• Linux Foundation

  • Mitsubishi Electric becomes Linux Foundation gold member

    Mitsubishi Electric has upgraded its membership of the Linux Foundation to Gold Member status, marking a deeper commitment to open source software development and industry collaboration.

    The Linux Foundation said the move reflects Mitsubishi Electric's ongoing participation in its projects and activities. Mitsubishi Electric has held Silver Member status for more than a decade.

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ Iran's hospitals, morgues fill after deadly crackdown on anti-regime protests

    Videos verified by the FRANCE 24 Observers team show dozens of bodies at a morgue in Kahrizak, south of Tehran, following deadly anti-regime protests. Accounts sent by our Observers underscore the severity of the crackdown and the difficult conditions faced by those trying to treat injured protesters.

  • France24 ☛ Iranians being kept in the dark about crackdown, observer says

    Speaking with FRANCE 24's Mark Owen, Kevan Gafaïti, lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, who has just left Iran, says that many Iranians are being kept in the dark about the demonstrations and the brutal crackdown by the authorities due to the Internet blackout, which is preventing the population from organising.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Jihadis took over their towns. Many distrust Mali’s rulers just as much.

    In a refugee camp in Mauritania, displaced Malians describe fleeing both Islamist insurgents and their own military government.

  • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Explores Diplomacy With Iran While Weighing Strikes, Officials Say

    The Pentagon is presenting a wider range of strike options to the president than previously reported. Targets could include Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile sites.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania’s president defends Belarus sanctions, doubts government will last

      Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has said that any suggestion of resuming the transit of Belarusian fertilisers through Lithuania in exchange for political or economic concessions would be “fundamentally unacceptable”.

    • Meduza ☛ Whiteout in Russia Blizzards leave cities from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok buried in snow — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘They deliberately waited for freezing weather’: Hundreds of apartment buildings still without heat after massive Russian attack on Kyiv — Meduza

    • JURIST ☛ UN Secretary-General condemns Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine

      UN Secretary General António Guterres issued a statement Friday strongly condemning Russian missile and drone attacks in Ukraine following Moscow’s firing of its medium-range nuclear-capable “Oreshnik” ballistic missile.

    • New York Times ☛ Russian Missiles Failed in Venezuela During U.S. Attack

      The Venezuelan regime had high-powered air defense systems from its allies in the Kremlin, but failed to set much of it up.

    • LRT ☛ US seizure of Russian tanker puts ‘shadow fleet’ on notice

      The US seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic dramatically raises the stakes in Washington's naval blockade of Venezuela, blowing apart an apparent Kremlin strategy to reflag its shadow fleet ships to offer them protection and stoking wider tensions with Moscow.

    • Defence Web ☛ South Africa siding with “authoritarian regimes” in Will for Peace naval exercise lambasted

      Defence and Military Veterans Minister Angie Motshekga can brace for incoming verbal and written broadsides relating to the BRICS Plus [...]

    • Security Week ☛ Russia’s APT28 Targeting Energy Research, Defense Collaboration Entities

      APT28 was seen impersonating popular webmail and VPN services, including Abusive Monopolist Microsoft OWA, Google, and Sophos VPN portals.

    • LRT ☛ Estonia bars entry to 261 Russian citizens who fought in Ukraine war

      The Ministry of the Interior imposed an entry ban to Estonia last week on 261 Russian combatants who had taken part in the war of aggression against Ukraine.

    • France24 ☛ Police of the sky: How the French airforce helps NATO monitor the Black Sea

      ✈️ Above the #BlackSea, a silent and high-stakes contest is rewriting the rules of the European sky.

      The war in #Ukraine hasn't just redrawn maps on the ground - it has shattered the geography of the air. Since the start of #Russia’s full-scale invasion, NATO allies have been forced to patrol a volatile new frontier.

      Leading these "police of the sky" sorties over Romanian waters, the #FrenchAirForce is walking a diplomatic and military tightrope - sending a clear signal to Moscow that international law still exists.

    • Latvia ☛ 31,000 Ukrainians currently under Latvian protection

      On 30th November 2025, a total of 4.33 million non-EU citizens who fled Ukraine had temporary protection status in the EU. Compared with the end of October 2025, the total number of people from Ukraine under temporary protection increased by 30 615 (+0.7%), according to Eurostat figures published on January 12th.

    • Meduza ☛ ‘We speak of our friendship’: Newly declassified transcripts show a chummy Putin and Bush Jr. at the height of U.S.–Russia cooperation — Meduza

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Straits Times ☛ Heavy snow hits Japan, leading major airlines like ANA to cancel flights

      Thousands of travellers were affected by the flight cancellations.

    • New York Times ☛ Judge Blocks Convicted Felon Effort to Stop Rhode Island’s Revolution Wind Project

      The ruling means that construction can continue on Revolution Wind, a $6.2 billion project off the coast of Rhode Island, at least for now.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Seoul bus strike begins after wage negotiation breakdowns

      No agreement was reached after more than 10 hours of discussions.

• Finance

  • January layoffs begin: Citigroup to cut 1,000 jobs this week

    Citigroup will be cutting around 1,000 jobs this week, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. This comes as part of a plan announced two years ago, to reduce the workforce by 20,000 by the end of the year.

    The New York City-based investment bank had about 229,000 full-time employees as of Dec. 31, 2024, according to its latest annual report. While the exact number of cuts were not disclosed, Citigroup said in a statement that it would continue to reduce the headcount in 2026.

    [...]

    The latest change involved Gonzalo Luchetti succeeding Mark Mason as chief finance officer. Meanwhile, Shobhit Varshney, a longtime IBM executive has been appointed the bank’s new global head of AI, in a move that highlights the growing relevance of AI in the banking sector.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong court to hear mitigation pleas for Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai, 8 defendants

    A Hong Kong court will hold on Monday a mitigation hearing for pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai, as well as eight other defendants, in a landmark national security case. The other eight defendants include six former staff members of Apple Daily and its parent company Next Digital, as well as an activist and a paralegal.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Court watchers at Jimmy Lai mitigation hearing must register ID cards with police

    Court watchers queueing to observe jailed pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai’s mitigation hearing have told HKFP that they were required to register their ID cards with the police before entering the courtroom.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Clownflare measures TCP

    Clownflare looks at TCP flows as a 'man-in-the-middle' on your behalf, using a 1% global traffic sample to reveal session behaviour, congestion control, and surprising quirks of modern Internet connections.

  • APNIC ☛ APNIC registry services availability during Q4 2025

    The latest measurements on APNIC’s whois, RDAP, RPKI, IRR, and rDNS are now available.

  • AccessNow ☛ #KeepItOn coalition raise the alarm on potential shutdown during upcoming elections in Uganda

    As millions of people prepare to head to the polls in Uganda on January, 15 2026, Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition — a global network of over 345 organizations from 106 countries working to end internet shutdowns, has urged President Yoweri Museveni to ensure unfettered access to the internet, digital platforms, and all other communication channels on the run-up-to, during and post-elections.

  • AccessNow ☛ #KeepItOn: Government of Uganda must ensure unrestricted internet access throughout the upcoming elections

    Access Now appeals to you, President Yoweri Museveni, to ensure that people in Uganda have unfettered access to the internet, digital platforms, and all other communication channels throughout the upcoming elections on January 15, 2026

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ CAFC Affirms TTAB's HERE COMES THE JUDGE Section 2(d) Decision

    Michael P. Chisena struck out again in this appeal from the Board's April 2023 decision [TTABlogged here] sustaining an opposition to his applications to register the word marks ALL RISE and HERE COMES THE JUDGE and the design mark shown below, for "clothing, namely, t-shirts, shirts, shorts, pants, sweatshirts, sweatpants, jackets, jerseys, athletic uniforms, and caps." The Board found the proposed marks to be confusingly similar to the opposers' previously used marks for overlapping goods, and so it sustained the opposition under Section 2(d). The CAFC concluded that substantial evidence supported the Board's finding of priority, and it rejected Chisena's claim that the word marks fail to function as source indicators. Chisena v. Major League Baseball Players Association, Aaron Judge, Appeal No. 23-2073 (Fed. Cir. January 8, 2026) [not precedential].

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Lizzo Quickly Settles Infringement Claim Involving Sydney Sweeney ‘Good Jeans’ Spoof Track

    Lizzo reaches a settlement in a copyright monopoly infringement suit filed against her over a snippet of an unreleased song that references a Sydney Sweeney jeans ad. In October, Lizzo was hit with a copyright monopoly infringement lawsuit over an unreleased song snippet that referenced an American Eagle jeans ad featuring actress Sydney Sweeney.