Leftovers

• YLE ☛ Monday's papers: Room for improvement, poor financial health, and tourists behaving badly

  Nowadays, small or studio apartments tend to be long and narrow tunnels, with a single window at the end. In addition, HS notes, more apartments are squeezed onto a single staircase landing than ever before — inevitably affecting the layout of each dwelling.

  One of the biggest reasons behind this trend is greed, Aalto University professor of residential design Antti Lehto tells the paper. The primary objective for those investing in construction projects is to make money, he says, not to create quality living spaces.

• Austin Gil ☛ Today, I made Ten Dollars

  I stood there, reflecting on the events of the morning. On the two men I had just met, and the self I am still getting to know. The thought crossed my mind, that if I was a better person, I would have given the money for the game in exchange for the wire cutters. That the money would surely have found his pocket to be a better home than my wallet. By the time I looked outside, the man with the bike had left to somewhere I did not know.

• Bix Frankonis ☛ On Process, Briefly • Bix dot Blog

  In all of the blogging about blogging that bloggers like to do, this idea comes up over and over and over again: that our writing in public is thinking in public. While there are more polished bloggers who do a fair amount of writing and editing and rewriting and setting things aside for a bit before ever committing something to publication, many of us when we sit down to write a post are thinking things through as we go and then just posting it.

• Terence Eden ☛ Maximally Semantic Structure for a Blog Post

  In HTML, there are three main ways to impose semantics - elements, attributes, and hierarchical microdata.

• Science

  • Tony Finch ☛ hybrid quota-linear rate limiter – Tony Finch

    A while back I wrote about the linear rate limit algorithms leaky bucket and GCRA. Since then I have been vexed by how common it is to implement rate limiting using complicated and wasteful algorithms (for example).

    But linear (and exponential) rate limiters have a disadvantage: they can be slow to throttle clients whose request rate is above the limit but not super fast. And I just realised that this disadvantage can be unacceptable in some situations, when it’s imperative that no more than some quota of requests is accepted within a window of time.

    In this article I’ll explore a way to enforce rate limit quotas more precisely, without undue storage costs, and without encouraging clients to oscillate between bursts and pauses. However I’m not sure it’s a good idea.

  • Philip Zucker ☛ Dagstuhl Egraphs

    The notion of what the interface here is less crisp for me. But there is a theory specific notion of term, context and overlapping. The theories somehow embed in each other as opaque constants.

  • Science Alert ☛ There's One Critical Thing You Can Do to Cut Your Risk of Dementia

    Start today.

  • Science Alert ☛ Same-Sex Sexual Behavior in Primates May Be an Ancient Survival Strategy

    "Our ancestors certainly had to face the same environmental and social complexities."

  • Science Alert ☛ Ghost Particles Interacting With Dark Matter Could Solve a Huge Cosmic Mystery

    Where shadows meet.

  • Science Alert ☛ Our Moon Is Curiously Lopsided, And a Massive Impact Could Be to Blame

    It's not as balanced as it looks.

  • Science Alert ☛ Red Tattoos Triggered Shocking Immune Reactions in Polish Man

    He had to have them surgically removed.

  • Science Alert ☛ Body Resurrects Cells Marked For Death, Solving a 50-Year Mystery

    A burst of regeneration.

  • Science Alert ☛ Rainbow Discovered Around a Nearby Dead Star Puzzles Scientists

    "Entirely unexpected."

• Career/Education

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Prisoners of Fortune

    What is the point of being rich? Most people’s answers would be some version of: To be able to do what you want. Money, at its essence, is a thing that gives you the ability to enact your will upon the world. It liberates you from life’s constraints. The more money you have, the more free you should be.

    So it is odd to observe the ways that this is plainly not true. The more that fortunes swell, the more people seem to be owned by their money, and not vice versa. If you were a reflective sort of billionaire, it might be enough to make you question your most fundamental life choices.

  • Anil Dash ☛ How to know if that job will crush your soul

    Last week, we talked about one huge question, “How the hell are you supposed to have a career in tech in 2026?” That’s pretty specific to this current moment, but there are some timeless, more perennial questions I've been sharing with friends for years that I wanted to give to all of you. They're a short list of questions that help you judge whether a job that you’re considering is going to crush your soul or not.

    Obviously, not everyone is going to get to work in an environment that has perfect answers to all of these questions; a lot of the time, we’re lucky just to get a place to work at all. But these questions are framed in this way to encourage us all to aspire towards roles that enable us to do our best work, to have the biggest impact, and to live according to our values.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ How to know if that job will crush your soul

    But in addition to the values questions, Anil also asks about compensation and forward trajectory. These are important too. There’s no sense in taking a job that isn’t going to be sustainable for you, or won’t allow you to grow with it. In those situations, there’s barely a relationship; you’re ultimately just a resource.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Cheap-O Keyboard

    All right, I’ll cut to the chase: Cheap03xD is mainly so cheap because the PCB falls within a 10 x 10 cm footprint. The point was to make a very affordable keyboard — all the parts come to ~40 Euro (~$47). So it would seem that [Lander03xD_] succeeded.

  • Hackaday ☛ Michelson Interferometer Comes Home Cheap

    We suspect there are three kinds of people in the world. People who have access to a Michelson Interferometer and are glad, those who don’t have one and don’t know what one is, and a very small number of people who want one but don’t have one. But since [Longest Path Search] built one using 3D printing, maybe the third group will dwindle down to nothing.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Prescription of ADHD medication on the rise among young people in South Korea

    Between 2007 and 2024, methylphenidate prescriptions were highest among teenagers and those in the highest income group.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korean researchers find way to remove nanoplastics from water in 10 minutes

    The team said its process eliminated over 95 per cent of micro and nanoplastics within 10 minutes.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Resurrected Extinct Cannabis Enzymes And Traced The Drug's Origins

    Can't beat the classics.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Judge orders HHS to restore funding for children’s health programs as lawsuit continues

    A federal judge has ordered the Convicted Felon administration to restore nearly $12 million in funding to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Cost of Mexico’s ‘basic food basket’ is up 4.4% in urban areas

    The basket is a down-to-earth way to mark inflation by tracing the price of 24 basic goods — from beans to eggs, oil to tortillas — that almost every Mexican household will need.

  • Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Bayes theorem and how we talk about medical tests

    When I take a test, I want to know a couple of things. If I get a positive test result, how likely is it that I have the disease? If I get a negative test result, how likely is it that I do not have the disease? The rates of positive and negative results listed above, the sensitivity and specificity, do not tell us these directly. However, they let us to calculate this with a little more information.

    Bayes' theorem says that P(A|B) = P(B|A) * P(A) / P(B). You can read P(A|B) as "the probability of A conditioned on B", or the chance that A happens if we know that B happens. What this formula lets us do is figure out one conditional probability we don't yet know in terms of other ones that we do know.

• Proprietary

  • New York Times ☛ Meta Plans to Cut 10% to 15% of Employees in Reality Labs Business

    The layoffs are set to be announced this week and would affect Meta’s work on the metaverse, as the company spends heavily on building artificial intelligence.

  • Ubisoft is set to lay off another 55 employees

    In a letter to employees, Ubisoft explained the layoffs as part of its cost-cutting efforts. The company emphasized that this decision is not related to the teams' performance or the quality of their work.

    According to the company, both studios will continue to develop in the same direction as they are currently. Specifically, Massive Entertainment will keep working on the The Division series and some "unannounced innovative technological project." The teams will also continue contributing to the development of the Snowdrop engine and the Ubisoft Connect service.

  • TCS Continues Layoffs: India IT In Shambles?

    It is an understanding fact that the IT sector is undergoing a significant sizing down operation as several leading companies have started to cut down on their workforce. The situation is particularly prevalent in India as many companies have been firing thousands of employees at once.

    Now it is being established that the famous Tata Consultancy Services which is generally regarded as a safe haven for software employees and known to hold their workers for a long period of time have also hired about layoffs.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Engineers Deploy “Poison Fountain” That Scrambles Brains of Hey Hi (AI) Systems

      "We want to inflict damage on machine intelligence systems."

    • Jim Nielsen ☛ In The Beginning There Was Slop

      I’ve been slowly reading my copy of “The Internet Phone Book” and I recently read an essay in it by Elan Ullendorff called “The New Turing Test”.

      Elan argues that what matters in a work isn’t the tools used to make it, but the “expressiveness” of the work itself (was it made “from someone, for someone, in a particular context”):

      If something feels robotic or generic, it is those very qualities that make the work problematic, not the tools used.

    • Futurism ☛ Tech Startup Hiring Desperate Unemployed People to Teach Hey Hi (AI) to Do Their Old Jobs

      "I joked with my friends I’m training Hey Hi (AI) to take my job someday."

    • New Yorker ☛ The Dangerous Paradox of Hey Hi (AI) Abundance

      Silicon Valley envisions artificial intelligence ushering in an era of economic plenty. But what if the benefits are largely confined to corporations and investors that own the technology itself?

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Jensen Huang claims that 'god AI' is a myth — Nvidia chief says 'doomer narrative' is 'extremely hurtful'

      Nvidia's Jensen Huang says negative narratives around Hey Hi (AI) are "extremely hurtful," and that science fiction speculation isn't connected to reality.

    • Futurism ☛ ChatGPT Killed a Man After Proprietary Chaffbot Company Brought Back “Inherently Dangerous” GPT-4o, Lawsuit Claims

      "This horror was perpetrated by a company that has repeatedly failed to keep its users safe."

    • Rui Carmo ☛ When OpenCode decides to use a Chinese proxy

      So here’s my LLM cautionary tale for 2026: I’ve been testing toadbox, my very simple, quite basic coding agent sandbox, with various LLMs.

    • Marc Brooker ☛ Agent Safety is a Box

      The right way to control what agents do is to put them in a box.

      The box is a strong, deterministic, exact, layer of control outside the agent which limits which tools it can call, and what it can do with those tools.

    • Bix Frankonis ☛ In Defense Of (The Word) Slop

      People can sit down and write garbage, and the early blogosphere had its fair share, but what they can’t do is sit down and write slop. For that, you need to be a machine.

    • SusamPal ☛ Three Inverse Laws of Robotics

      In the world of science fiction, there are the Three Laws of Robotics devised by Isaac Asimov, which recur throughout his work. These laws were designed to constrain the behaviour of robots in order to keep humans safe. As far as I know, Asimov never formulated any equivalent laws governing how humans should interact with robots. I think we now need something to that effect to keep ourselves safe. I will call them the Inverse Laws of Robotics. These apply to any situation that requires us humans to interact with a robot, where the term 'robot' refers to any machine, computer program, software service or AI system that is capable of performing complex tasks automatically. I use the term 'inverse' here not in the sense of logical negation but to indicate that these laws apply to humans rather than to robots.

    • Windows Central ☛ "Microslop" trends in backlash to Microsoft's AI obsession

      What AI has become is the focal point of everything wrong with our economic system, and the absurd glut of power Big Tech now enjoys to actively and intentionally shape our daily lives for the worse.

      As such, the backlash will deservedly continue — and Microslop is its name.

  • Social Control Media

    • Scoop News Group ☛ British regulator Ofcom opens investigation into X

      The UK body said it is not a government censor, and the inquiry will determine whether X is facilitating the spread of nonconsensual deepfake pornography of adults and children. 

    • France24 ☛ Malaysia and Indonesia become the first countries to block MElon’s Grok over sexualized Hey Hi (AI) images

      Malaysia and Indonesia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by MElon's company xAI, amid concerns that it is being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. Britain ​will bring ⁠into effect a law criminalising the creation ​of ‍non-consensual intimate images ​this week, technology minister ​Liz Kendall said Monday after regulator Ofcom launched a probe into ​X.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Grok targeted in UK law over sexually-explicit Hey Hi (AI) image generation — UK will begin prosecuting illegal prompting this week

      The UK is making it a crime to generate or request AI-made explicit content from this week, following the ban on sharing deepfakes. The region's communications regulator, Ofcom, is also looking into Grok, investigating the service formally to see if it "has complied with its duties to protect people."

    • Greg Morris ☛ Envy: The Only Sin That Never Feels Good

      Social media makes this worse. The platforms are designed to surface the exact content that'll make you feel inadequate. They show you things that trigger comparison because that keeps you scrolling. Your feeds are full of people's highlight reels while you're living your entire unedited life. Of course you feel uncomfortable. Of course envy creeps in. The question is what you do with it.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Malaysia and Indonesia block Grok over deepfake sexual abuse material

      Either way, the apparent disinterest of western politicians and media toward CSAM and other abusive material online is a tectonic shift. In the same way that Sandy Hook revealed that the gun control debate was over and the murder of George Floyd revealed that susbtantive police reform was impossible, this suggests that the rights of women, children and the vulnerable are negotiable. When scandal forces power's hand but fails to restrain it, you just get hit.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Straits Times ☛ Cambodian, South Korean police arrest 26 for alleged scams, sex crimes, Blue House says

      Suspects allegedly extorted about $23.6 million from 165 South Koreans.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • ACLU ☛ DHS is Circumventing Constitution by Buying Data It Would Normally Need a Warrant to Access

      The Fourth Amendment generally requires the government to get a warrant before searching your private information, but government agencies are circumventing the intent of the Constitution by simply buying sensitive, personal data from private companies. Today, the ACLU published documents obtained from the Department of Homeland Security shedding light on how ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and other parts of DHS have bought access to huge amounts of highly sensitive location data harvested from people’s cell phones that enables government tracking of our movements over time.

  • Confidentiality

    • SequoiaPGP ☛ Thoughts on To Sign or Not to Sign

      39C3, the annual meeting of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), included a presentation called To sign or not to sign: Practical vulnerabilities in GPG & friends. In their presentation, the security researchers discuss the vulnerabilities that they found in GnuPG, Sequoia, age and minisign. The talk is impressive not the least for the shear number of vulnerabilities (14!) that they found, but also their breadth. They range from buffer overflows, to the use of uninitialized memory, to improper input validation.

      In this blog post, I will take a look at the attack that the researchers claim demonstrates a security weakness in Sequoia, and consider its possible impact. In my estimation, this characterization is primarily due to a literal translation of gpg invocations to sq invocations, and the user ignoring sq’s output. As the user is following a recipe, a more realistic analysis should have considered a less naive translation that uses sq’s standard workflows, which would have prevented the attack. That said, the security researchers identify an issue that raises legitimate concerns, and the ecosystem as a whole needs to improve to better protect users.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Mike Brock ☛ We Are Sliding Into Historic Territory

    You must understand that the regime in Washington knows perfectly well that if they are impeached, removed from power, and proper oversight is exercised over the machinations of the federal government, they will be subject to criminal prosecution. For this reason, they will resort to brutal means to hang on to power. This is an incredibly dangerous moment for the United States and the world.

    But here is what they do not understand: there are more of us than there are of them. The majority has recognized itself. The candles are multiplying. The tide has turned.

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Western media whitewashes deadly riots in Iran, relying on US govt-funded regime change NGOs

  • Futurism ☛ Former Astronaut Smacks Pete Hegseth With Huge Lawsuit

    "That’s not the way things work in the United States of America, and I won’t stand for it."

  • Federal News Network ☛ Sen. Kelly sues the Pentagon over attempts to punish him, declaring it unconstitutional

    Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly has sued the Pentagon over attempts to punish him for his warnings about illegal orders. He's claiming the Convicted Felon administration trampled on his constitutional rights to free speech. Kelly, a former Navy pilot who represents Arizona, is seeking to block his censure from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week. Hegseth said he censured Kelly over his participation in a video that called on troops to resist unlawful orders. A federal judge scheduled a hearing Thursday on Kelly's request for a temporary restraining order against the Pentagon.

  • France24 ☛ Minnesota sues Convicted Felon administration over immigration crackdown and ICE shooting

    Minnesota and its two largest cities have filed a lawsuit against the Convicted Felon administration, seeking to halt or curtail a sweeping immigration enforcement surge that followed the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by a federal officer and sparked protests nationwide.

  • JURIST ☛ US pledges $45 million in aid to Thailand and Cambodia to bolster regional stability

    US Assistant Secretary of State Michael George DeSombre announced Friday that the US will provide $45 million in aid to Thailand and Cambodia to bolster regional stability following the implementation of the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Australia recalls Parliament early to pass hate speech, gun laws

    The sitting has been moved from Feb 3 to Jan 19 and 20.

  • JURIST ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man blocks judicial processes against Venezuelan oil revenue

    Hell Toupée issued an executive order Saturday to block judicial processes from being instituted against Venezuelan oil funds held in the US, on the basis that it would “materially harm the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

  • France24 ☛ Who is the IRGC, the Iranian corps enforcing the crackdown on protesters?

    Authorities in Iran called on pro-government supporters to take to the streets on January 12. This is in the face of mounting pressure from demonstrators. Officials blame the protests on US and Israeli influence, without addressing the core concerns, and a deadly crackdown has been enforced on protesters. But who are the security forces enforcing it?

  • France24 ☛ 'Iranians don’t want Islamic Republic: Int'l community should be calling for democratic transition'

    Hundreds of protesters have been killed in the crackdown by Iranian security forces on a protest movement that has shaken the Islamic republic. For in-depth analysis and deep insight into the brutal crackdown by the regime, Nadia Massih welcomes Holly Dagres, Senior Fellow in The Washington Institute's Viterbi Program on Iran and US Policy. Ms. Dagres argues that structural changes have fundamentally altered the balance between state power and popular resistance. She calls for a recalibration of international policy toward democratic transition rather than containment.

  • Defence Web ☛ Man arrested after being found with rocket launcher and military explosives

    A foreign national has been arrested after he was found with military explosives, including an RPG-7 rocket launcher and projectiles.

  • The Strategist ☛ Leveraging the Quad for cost-effective engagement with Africa

    Australia can deepen engagement with Africa without significantly expanding its current level of aid or diplomatic footprint by working through the Quad, the security partnership that comprises Japan, India, the United States and Australia.

  • Stanford University ☛ Shooting at Brown prompts desire for increased campus security

    The December shooting at Brown University that left two students dead caused some across Stanford's campus to question current security practices.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea to probe drones that North Korea says violated its airspace

    Seoul is willing to jointly conduct the investigation with Pyongyang but has not made the proposal.

  • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea condemns multilateral sanction monitoring activity, KCNA says

    North Korea has lashed out at a special sanctions monitoring team composed of multiple countries, calling its activities "illegal" and irrelevant to the United Nations, state media KCNA reported on Monday.

  • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea says ‘shameless’ US making mockery of UN

    Pyongyang accused Washington of a “hideous criminal act”.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia vows clean-up of military procurement amid graft probe

    Defence Minister Khaled Nordin said they will review and improve tender and procurement processes.

  • The Straits Times ☛ G7, other allies discuss ways to reduce dependence on Chinese rare earths

    Finance ministers from the G7 and other major economies met in Washington on Monday to discuss ways to reduce dependence on rare earths from China, including setting a price floor and new partnerships to build up alternative supplies, ministers said.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Japan vessel aims to dig deep-sea rare earths to reduce China dependence

    A Japanese research vessel on Monday began a historic voyage to attempt to dig deep-sea rare earths at a depth of 6,000 metres to curb dependence on China.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Japan sets sail on rare earth hunt as China tightens supplies

    It will mark the world’s first attempt to continuously lift rare earth seabed sludge from 6km deep onto a ship.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s Lee to head for Japan summit a week after meeting China’s Xi

    The summit in Japan’s Nara City comes amid a growing diplomatic dispute between Beijing and Tokyo.

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Attacked Boat With Aircraft That Looked Like a Civilian Plane

    Even accepting the Convicted Felon administration’s claim that there is an armed conflict with suspected drug runners, the laws of war bar “perfidy.”

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Navy dismantles 3 meth labs, seize 700+ kg of drugs and chemical precursors

    The authorities confirmed that operations will continue, “prioritizing operational intelligence, territorial control and the protection of the population,” with special emphasis on preventing consumption among young people.

  • JURIST ☛ Iran warns US against military action in aftermath of Venezuela operation

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a series of defiant statements as tensions between Tehran and Washington intensify over the former’s crackdown on nationwide protests. On December 28, amid inflation and a currency collapse, protests erupted in Tehran before spreading across the country.

  • RFERL ☛ Live Blog: Khamenei Says Pro-Government Rallies A Warning To US

    Triggered by soaring prices, inflation, and a plunging currency, Iranians have taken to the streets in what is the biggest threat to the Islamic regime in years. Journalists from RFE/RL’s Iranian service, Radio Farda, bring you the latest developments, analysis, and reporting from on the ground.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ CEO Vladislav Baumgertner is missing Cypriot police search for missing executive while Russian embassy reports diplomat suicide — Meduza

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • New York Times ☛ Europe and China Take Step to Resolve Dispute on Electric Vehicles

      The European Commission allowed carmakers to volunteer limits on their imports from China instead of paying tariffs, an arrangement that could help Volkswagen.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ EU offers China alternative to tariffs in electric vehicles dispute

      The European Union on Monday offered China an alternative to tariffs in a bitter trade dispute over the bloc’s hefty duties on Chinese-made electric cars.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Hong Kong high-speed rail to expand mainland China links with 16 new destinations

      The new destinations will connect Hong Kong with popular tourist cities, including Nanjing.

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ Tariffs cause a steep drop in Mexico’s heavy-duty vehicle industry

      The plunge was across the board — exports, domestic sales, wholesale sales, production — with exports dipping below even pandemic-year lows.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Photo Essay: Climate Change and Deforestation Collide in Indonesia’s Deadly Floods

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ China turns to big data and public shaming in hunt for tax evaders

    Investors are now asked to detail their overseas income and financial investments.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China focuses anti-corruption drive on misconduct, highlighting former minister’s conviction

    President Pooh-tin Jinping in 2025 called corruption “the biggest threat” to China’s Communist Party.

  • New Yorker ☛ The I.R.S.’s Money Pit

    A mysterious hole on the sidewalk outside the agency’s headquarters hasn’t been filled for years. One lawsuit is seeking seven million dollars in damages.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Steve Aoki Slapped with Class Action Lawsuit Over Undisclosed NFT and Trading Card Affiliations

    Steve Aoki faces a class action lawsuit alleging that he and DraftKings co-founder Matthew Kalish promoted NFTs without disclosing their affiliation. Now that the hype surrounding cryptocurrency-backed non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has mostly died down, it’s rare that they pop up in the news anymore except as the subject of a lawsuit.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Straits Times ☛ China taps export controls veteran for senior trade post ahead of Convicted Felon visit

    Mr Jiang Chenghua is a veteran negotiator with experience in managing the country’s investment ties with the US.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Vietnam’s Communist Party chief Lam seeks presidency in China-style expanded power mandate

    The 68-year-old leader bid for both top positions at a party meeting in December 2025.

  • FAIR ☛ Media Baffled by Wheelchair ‘Miracles’ Because They Don’t Understand Disability

    In keeping with the spirit of the holidays, the Wall Street Journal (12/18/25) punched down on mobility-impaired people. On December 18, the outlet published a story headlined “They Get Wheeled on Flights and Miraculously Walk Off. Praise ‘Jetway Jesus.’” The story claimed to expose a growing trend in airline travel: “wheelchair scammers,” who pretend to need wheelchairs so as to speed through the security gate and get early boarding. To support this allegation, the Journal noted that many people who use wheelchairs to board planes are “miraculously” able to walk once exiting the plane.

  • Swiss JuristGate: Awaiting trial: RTS reports Lens public safety inspector prosecuted, facing negligence charges 2022 fire

    On Sunday, Swiss broadcaster RTS reported that there was another fire in the same district, Lens VS, in 2022.

    In circumstances similar to the tragic fire at Le Constellation on New Year's Eve, the fire spread quickly to other parts of the building. Nobody was killed but at least one neighbour required treatment in intensive care.

  • Swiss JuristGate: PLR & Le Centre incest: deputy public safety chief, mayor, prosecutor & Canton Valais minister all same party

    In the first JuristGate report about a cover-up after the tragic fire at Le Constellation, Crans-Montana, we noted that two of the four key officials present at the media briefing, the public safety minister ( Stéphane Ganzer) the chief prosecutor for Canton Valais ( Béatrice Pilloud) are both members of the same political party, that is, the Liberal Radical Party (PLR).

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • France24 ☛ Iran protests: Fact-checking claims of Hey Hi (AI) manipulation, low turnout

      For around two weeks - and despite an internet blackout - thousands of Iranians have been mobilising in large protests that threaten the future of the ruling regime. But some internet users are casting doubt over the protest images, claiming they’re in fact much smaller than they appear, or using camera trickery or Hey Hi (AI) manipulation. Vedika Bahl goes through the claims in Truth or Fake.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • France24 ☛ Blackout over Iran: Can the regime keep a lid on the nationwide uprising?

    It’s no longer just about the cost of living. Protests in Iran entering their third week despite evidence of a ferocious crackdown and the shutting of the Internet.

  • JURIST ☛ Iran internet blackout enters fifth day

    As of the time of writing, Iranian citizens have remained without internet or telecommunications access for 96 hours, according to online monitoring group NetBlocks. Amid the collapse of Iran’s currency, protests erupted in Tehran late last month and quickly spread across the country.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Iran government takes down Starlink amidst civil unrest with 'military-grade jamming signals', report claims — Hell Toupée vows to speak to MElon to restore internet in crisis-hit country

    Amid widespread anti-government protests, Iran shut down all methods of internet access, including Starlink.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Straits Times ☛ Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai’s health in focus at mitigation hearing

    Such hearings give defence lawyers the chance to seek a more lenient jail term for Lai.

  • BIA Net ☛ The future of journalism is in danger under government pressure!

    Between October and December 2025, journalism in Turkey came under intense pressure through arbitrary detentions, heavy prison sentences, RTÜK sanctions, access bans, and trustee appointments. Widespread impunity and economic insecurity further deepened the crisis.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Kerrang U-turns on freelance pay policy as 16 contributors take action

    Kerrang sought change in payment terms from 30 to 60 days.

  • Press Gazette ☛ More than 3,000 journalism job cuts tracked in UK and US in 2025

    Total of around 3,200 repoted redundancies was 16% lower than year before.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong’s gov’t-funded broadcaster RTHK axes all podcasts

    Hong Kong’s government-funded broadcaster has stopped publishing all of its podcasts, with dozens of shows – in English and Chinese – grinding to a halt on Spotify and RTHK’s self-hosted Podcast One platform.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Media tycoon Jimmy Lai in ‘advanced years’ with multiple health problems, lawyer says in mitigation

    Pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai is in his “advanced years” and suffers from hypertension, diabetes and other ailments, his barrister has told the court during a mitigation hearing. Lai, 78, appeared in court on Monday for mitigation statements.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Jimmy Lai case: Paralegal, activist ask for 50% sentence cut for collusion charges

    A Hong Kong activist and a paralegal have asked for a 50 per cent sentencing reduction for their collusion charges in a landmark national security case involving media mogul Jimmy Lai.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ DHS Assaulting Protesters Because Goons Believe They Are "Vicious, Horrible People"

    Ribner’s initial arrest report (the same report where he denied knowledge of a head injury, which he wrote almost two weeks after the arrest) is full of things — including some alleged assaults by protesters, but also including exchanges like the local San Diegans who, days before the Huerta assault, shouted “shame” until ICE abandoned their effort to raid a local restaurant — that Ribner cited to explain why he implanted an undercover agent at the scene to seek out a vast conspiracy Ribner was sure existed.

  • Dan Sinker ☛ Strength and Hope Amid the Year’s Cold Start

    Every day feels like a fresh hell and every day it's more and more clear that the only ones who are going to stand up for us is us. Same as it ever was, for certain, but it feels all the more stark in the cold of mid-January made colder still by the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis last week.

    But here's the thing to remember, even amidst all this: we are strong enough. We always have been.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: A winning trade war strategy for Canada

    No farmer wants this anti-feature in their tractor. In a normal world, someone would go into business selling farmers a kit to disable it. After all, this is all accomplished with software, and software is infinitely flexible. Every computable program can be executed on every computer. John Deere installed a 10-foot pile of shit in its tractor software, so someone else could go into business shipping 11-foot ladders made out of software that can be delivered instantaneously to anyone in the world with an internet connection and a payment method.

    But we don't live in a normal world. We live in a fundamentally broken world. It's been broken since 1998, when Bill Clinton signed a law called the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (DMCA). Section 1201 of the DMCA establishes a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a $500k fine, for anyone who "bypasses an access control" on a digital system. This means that if John Deere designs its tractors to ensure that incoming instructions were authorized by the company (say, a manufacturer's password that needs to be entered before you can update the software), then it is a felony to bypass that check. When John Deere puts one of these access controls in its tractor, it conjures up a new felony out of thin air, making it a literal crime for a farmer to modify their own tractor to work the way they want it to. It's what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model."

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ The Unraveling of International Patent Comity?

    BMW v. Onesta tests whether German courts can adjudicate U.S. patents and whether American courts should reconsider their own jurisdictional limits.

  • Unified Patents ☛ Jeffrey Gross entity, Lone Star Document Management, document proofing patent monopoly campaign - invalidity charts coming soon

    The team at Unified IP Services is using Pearl to identify and chart prior art against U.S. Patent 6,918,082, owned by Lone Star Document Management, LLC, an NPE and entity of Jeffrey M. Gross.

  • JUVE ☛ Novartis and Freshfields defend Entresto at Dutch Court of Appeal

    The Court of Appeal upheld the validity of Novartis’s EP 1 467 728, which protects the pharmaceutical combination of valsartan and sacubitril, as well as the related SPC. Synthon had argued that the patent monopoly lacked inventive step and should therefore be revoked, which would subsequently invalidate the SPC.