Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ Trash Theory discusses Tears for Fears

  Today’s Music Monday is less a specific song, and more an exploration of a band that was a huge part of my childhood. Mad World! Sewing the Seeds of Love! Everybody Wants to Rule the World! Shout (Let it all out)!

• MB ☛ Mastodon Year 2 in Review - jarunmb.com

  Today is the second anniversary of joining Mastodon. I wanted to take a moment to answer the same questions I posed to myself in my year 1 review.

  TLDR; A lot of my year 1 answers evolved more than changed, which is (for the most part) a very good thing…

• James Stanley ☛ The Principles of Mr. Harrison's Time-keeper

  This post is a transcription, plus some commentary, of the Board of Longitude's 1767 document "The Principles of Mr. Harrison's Time-keeper", from scans on the University of Cambridge Digital Library.

  I was trying to learn more about the escapement in H4, and I came across a great article on "watchesbysjx": In-Depth: The Microscopic Magic of H4, Harrison's First Sea Watch, from which the scans were linked.

• Allen Downey ☛ Zipf’s Law

  In almost any book, in almost any language, if you count the number of unique words and the number of times each word appears, you will find a remarkable pattern: the most common word appears twice as often as the second most common – at least approximately – three times as often as the third most common, and so on.

  In general, if we sort the words in descending order of frequency, there is an inverse relationship between the rank of the words – first, second, third, etc. – and the number of times they appear. This observation was most famously made by George Kingsley Zipf, so it is called Zipf’s law.

• Science

  • The Register UK ☛ Voyager space probe closes in on a 50 year mission

    "We're definitely going to make the 50th anniversary," says Professor Garry Hunt, one of the scientists responsible for NASA's Voyager mission, as Voyager 1 recovers from an unexpected pause in communications.

    Launched when Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, the two Voyager spacecraft have endured almost half a century of spaceflight and, according to Hunt, should still be in contact with Earth in 2027, 50 years after leaving the planet.

  • Wired ☛ The Incredible Power of Quantum Memory

    In order to study, say, a particular collection of electrons, researchers have to be clever about it. They might take a box of electrons, poke at it in various ways, then take a snapshot of what it looks like at the end. In doing so, they hope to reconstruct the internal quantum dynamics at work.

  • [Repeat] Science Alert ☛ Computers Find Impossible Solution, Beating Quantum Tech at Own Game

    The problem involves simulating the dynamics of what's known as a transverse field Ising (TFI) model, which describes the alignment of quantum spin states between particles spread across a space.

    Given the nature of the problem, it was regarded as a perfect subject to test the current limits of quantum computing, which utilizes the mathematics of probability behind unobserved particles existing in an undecided blur of states.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Big Bang Is Beyond Doubt. An Expert Reveals Why.

    The explosion that started it all.

  • Science Alert ☛ DNA From Beethoven's Hair Reveals a Surprise Nearly 200 Years Later

    A tragic irony.

  • Science Alert ☛ An Early Sign of Dementia Risk May Be Keeping You Up at Night, Says Study

    Sleep tight.

  • Science Alert ☛ World's Largest Predation Event Ever Recorded Captured in Norway

    Staggering.

• Career/Education

  • Copenhagen Post ☛ Should I stay or should I go?

    But for some reason—and despite Copenhagen and Denmark in general being a lot more international than they used to be—many of the foreigners working as expats don’t stay for as long as we would like them to.

• Hardware

  • CNX Software ☛ Giveaway Week 2024 – iKOOLCORE R2 Core i3-N300 mini PC and quad 2.5GbE router

    Let’s end CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2024 with a bang! The last prize is an iKOOLCORE R2 mini PC and router powered by an defective chip maker Intel Core i3-N300 Alder Lake-N CPU, equipped with 8GB RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD, and featuring four 2.5GbE ports.

  • Hackaday ☛ Building A DIY Nipkow Disk Display

    Before flat screen technologies took over, we associate TV with the CRT. But there were other display technologies that worked, they just weren’t as practical. One scheme was the Nipkow disk, and [Bitluni] decided to build a working demonstration of how such a system works.

  • Hackaday ☛ Component Tester Teardown

    In the modern age, when you hear “component tester” you probably think of one of those cheap microcontroller-based devices that can identify components and provide basic measurements on an LCD screen. However, in the past, these were usually simple circuits that generated an XY scope plot. The trace would allow an experienced operator to identify components and read a few key parameters. [Thomas] tears down an old Hameg device that uses this principle in the video below.

  • Hackaday ☛ Cheap Sensor Changes Personality

    If you want to add humidity and temperature sensors to your home automation sensor, you can — like [Maker’s Fun Duck] did — buy some generic ones for about a buck. For a dollar, you get a little square LCD with sensors and a button. You even get the battery. Can you reprogram the firmware to bend it to your will? As [Duck] shows in the video, you can.

  • CNX Software ☛ iBASE IB962 3.5-inch SBC features defective chip maker Intel Core Ultra 5/7 SoC, up to 64GB SODIMM memory, and three M.2 slots

    iBASE Technology has unveiled the IB962 3.5-inch single-board computer (SBC) powered by the defective chip maker Intel Core Ultra 5/7 100 Series processor family (formerly Meteor Lake U/H) and delivering an “optimal balance of performance and power efficiency.”

  • Hackaday ☛ Building A Motor Feed For The UE1 Vacuum Tube Computer’s Paper Tape Reader

    Building a paper tape reader by itself isn’t super complicated: you need a source of light, some photoreceptors behind the tape to register the presence of holes and some way to pull the tape through the reader at a reasonable rate. This latter part can get somewhat tricky, as Usagi Electric‘s [David Lovett] discovered while adding this feature to his vacuum tube-era DIY reader. This follows on what now seems like a fairly simple aspect of the photosensors and building a way to position said photosensors near the paper tape.

  • Hackaday ☛ Welcome To SubTropolis: The Limestone Mine Turned Climate-Controlled Business Complex

    After extracting all the useful stuff from a mine, you are often left with a lot of empty subterranean space without a clear purpose. This was the case with the Bethany Falls limestone mine, near Kansas City, Missouri, which left a sprawling series of caverns supported by 16′ (4.9 meter) diameter pillars courtesy of the used mining method. As detailed by [Benjamin Hunting] in a recent article on the Hagerty site, this made it a fascinating place for a  business complex development now called SubTropolis that among other things is used for car storage by Ford and long-term stamp storage by the US Post Office. (Check out their cool period photos!)

  • CNX Software ☛ Signaloid C0-microSD is an iCE40UP5K FPGA SoM in the microSD card form factor (Crowdfunding)

    Cambridge-based hardware and clown computing company, Signaloid has begun crowdfunding for the C0-microSD – a tiny, programmable iCE40UP5K FPGA system-on-module (SoM) in a microSD card form factor.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Take a seat — standing desks aren't better for you, says new study

    Just get up and move around every 30 minutes or so, suggest scientists.

  • New York Times ☛ How Technology and Loneliness are Interlinked

    To put it another way, even though the teenagers were on break from school and spending plenty of time on social media apps, most of them were not socializing at all.

    Americans now spend more time alone, have fewer close friendships and feel more socially detached from their communities than they did 20 years ago. One in two adults reports experiencing loneliness, the physiological distress that people endure from social isolation. The nation’s surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, declared loneliness an epidemic late last year.

  • [Old] Harvard University ☛ Show and tell: Partnering with content creators for study recruitment | Center for Health Communication | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

    Why it matters: This is the first example (that we know of) where teens are being recruited for a study in partnership with social media creators. Partnering with creators allows us to get information to teens in the digital spaces that they already spent their time, which helps us to (1) improve teen awareness about how social media use can impact their mental health and (2) improve recruitment for our study.

  • The Washington Post ☛ How to move past post-election depression

    That process might mean examining your own blind spots and media diet, even sitting with some uncomfortable truths but avoiding cynicism. Then you can get back to trying to be understood better by others.

  • New Yorker ☛ Into the Phones of Teens

    A typical scene in “Social Studies” might center on a real-life interaction between two teens who are, say, hanging out and smoking weed at a park, but might also include the Instagram or Snapchat stories that they’re showing each other, or TikToks that they’re each scrolling through, or a shot of a selfie that they’re taking together, a series of D.M.s one of them is exchanging with an offscreen peer. All this makes for a viewing experience that manages to capture the hectic, surveilling, A.D.H.D.-style life so many of us—and especially young people—live nowadays. Social media’s addictive algorithmic pull, and the fact that it doesn’t have an off switch, means that kids find it very difficult to escape from its negative manifestations: cyberbullying, slut-shaming, toxic comparing. “People are going to watch this and think how dystopian and far gone our world is,” a girl named Stella tells Greenfield in an interview.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Sting operations, whistle-blowers and detailed menus: China doubles down on food safety

    They are part of the central government’s push to promote the F&B sector amid soft domestic demand.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Take a seat — standing desks aren't better for you, says new study

    A recently published study casts serious doubt on the touted health benefits of owning a standing desk.

  • JURIST ☛ Interim report recommends prosecution of former India ministers for alleged corruption during COVID-19

    An interim report from a commission led by retired Karnataka High Court judge Michael D’Cunha on Sunday recommended the prosecution of former Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa and former Health Minister B. Sriramulu for alleged corruption during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The Register UK ☛ An introduction to fine-tuning LLMs at home with Axolotl

    You could, of course, get around this by training your own model, but the resources required to do that often far exceed practicality. Training Meta's relatively small Llama 3 8B model required the equivalent of 1.3 million GPU hours when running on 80GB Nvidia H100s. The good news is you don't have to. Instead, we can take an existing model, such as Llama, Mistral, or Phi, and extend its knowledge base or modify its behavior and style using their own data through a process called fine-tuning.

    This process is still computationally expensive compared to inference, but thanks to advancements like Low Rank Adaptation (LoRA) and its quantized variant QLoRA, it's possible to fine-tune models using a single GPU — and that's exactly what we're going to be exploring in this hands-on guide.

  • Chris McLeod ☛ Next steps with Bluesky - hosting your own data and more on the API

    One of the big gripes against Bluesky is that it looks like another corporately owned social media network and not as open or federated as, say, Mastodon. That’s partially true in my view[2], but the situation is improving. The thing to remember is that it works in a different way to ActivityPub/Mastodon. The common comparison is ActivityPub = email, ATproto = websites. There’s a bit more to it that I’m not getting into right now, but there’s a decent write-up by Rich MacManus on The New Stack. The important bit to understand is there are a few important components to ATproto: [...]

  • The Register UK ☛ Windows Server 2025 snafu was like a supply chain attack • The Register

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Jason Becker ☛ The only data tracking that works is incidental and pervasive

      I’ve never taken to most of the various tracking apps. I’ve never really taken to posting most forms of this sort of data to my blog either. I think it’s quite fun to track things and have data about patterns. And of course, data about things like the media I watch can be quite helpful for discovering new things.

      But I don’t find the process of tracking to be fun– in fact, I find it tedious. For tracking to work in my life, it has to be both incidental and pervasive. Anything short of this is too hard to maintain and too incomplete to be useful.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Straits Times ☛ S. Korean court upholds 8-year sentence for mother who killed newborns, stored bodies in freezer

    The mother admitted to killing the babies, claiming financial hardship while raising her three other children.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Jim Jordan No Longer Worried About Election Fraud After Trump Won

    “In the run-up to the election, even on election night itself, Donald Trump baselessly accused Democrats of cheating. Soon as the results started to come in and showed them going his way, he stopped,” Bash said. “I haven’t seen you or your colleagues claiming any election irregularities, no rampant voting fraud this time. It seems to me that Republicans claim voting fraud and election integrity when you lose and not when you win.”

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Downed Russian drone used at least 30 chips from Western companies — silicon from Xilinx, TI, Marvell, Micron, and others found in the wreckage

    Analysis of Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik-B drone revealed vital Western components.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ November 9 pogroms showed coming Nazi brutality

    On the night of November 9, 1938, Jews throughout Germany and Austria were the victims of mob brutliaty: 1,300 synagogues and 7,500 businesses were destroyed and countless Jewish cemeteries and schools were vandalized.

    The police watched as Jews were humiliated in the street, beaten and, in at least 91 cases, murdered. The local fire departments did not stop the synagogues and Jewish shops from burning; they merely prevented the flames from spreading to neighboring buildings.

  • CBC ☛ The man behind the mask

    At more than 100 years old, this is a surviving hypo helmet that was Macpherson once owned.

    This item is special because it is the only one of its kind, Greeley said.

    “More than anything, it's a prototype. So this is him deciding, ‘OK what? How? How can I make that helmet and what materials [am I] going to use?’” he said.

    “And then figuring out, ‘Oh, this is not working and then going to another one. So we actually have three or four of these prototypes.”

  • The Hindu ☛ Patole says won’t be drawn into ‘Hindu-Muslim fake narrative’ as Shah claims Congress leader accepted Muslim quota demand

    The 10% reservation for Muslim community would eat into the benefits of Dalits, tribals and Other Backward Classes since there is a 50% cap on reservation and any increase would come at the cost of existing ones, Mr. Shah told the gathering.

  • RFERL ☛ Russia Reportedly Suffered Record 1,500 Casualties Daily In October

    An average of around 1,500 Russian soldiers were killed or injured per day in October -- Russia's worst month for casualties since the beginning of the invasion, according to Britain's Chief of the Defense Staff Tony Radakin.

    "Russia is about to suffer 700,000 people killed or wounded -- the enormous pain and suffering that the Russian nation is having to bear because of [President Vladimir] Putin's ambition," Radakin told the BBC on November 10.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Nine boats carrying 572 people intercepted while crossing Channel

    Total number of arrivals by small boats reaches 32,691 this year, up 22% on same time last year but fewer than in 2022

  • RFERL ☛ Burkina Faso Says Russia Partnership 'Suits' Better Than France

    [...] Following a 2022 military coup, Burkina Faso's new leadership broke with Paris and has embraced Russia, which has sent army instructors to help Ouagadougou's fight against an Islamist insurgency. [...]

  • VOA News ☛ Chad says airstrikes kill scores of Boko Haram fighters

    Chad planned the operation against the Islamist militant group after Boko Haram fighters killed 40 Chadian soldiers in an attack on a military garrison last month.

  • The Washington Post ☛ How Trump won over millions of young male voters with memes and influencers

    Long podcast interviews have a second life in clips, which circulate on social media and in stories in traditional news outlets, Republican digital strategist Eric Wilson said. In an interview with comedian Theo Von, Trump candidly discussed how his older brother Fred’s struggle with addiction shaped his own decision not to drink, use drugs or smoke. A clip from the interview had nearly 3 million likes on TikTok.

  • France24 ☛ Netanyahu says he approved pager attack targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon

    France 24's correspondent in Beirut, Rawad Taha, reports on developments in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Israeli air strikes killed more than 40 people in Lebanon on Sunday and Binyamin Netanyahu said he approved the September pager attack targeting Hezbollah in which hundreds of devices exploded, killing nearly 40 people and wounding around 3,000.

  • France24 ☛ What does life look like in Northern Gaza right now?

    Dozens of people were killed and wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip at dawn on Sunday, Palestinian medics said. What exactly does life look like in Northern Gaza at the moment?

  • France24 ☛ Israeli airstrikes on Gaza's Jabalia kills 33, including 13 children

    Israeli strikes killed dozens of people on Sunday in Lebanon and the northern Gaza Strip, where the military has been waging a major offensive for more than a month that aid groups say has further worsened the humanitarian crisis in the besieged enclave.

  • JURIST ☛ US judge strikes down Illinois assault weapons ban over Second Amendment violations

    A US federal judge struck down Illinois’ Protect Illinois Communities Act (PICA) on Friday, ruling it unconstitutional under the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. US District Judge Stephen McGlynn ruled that PICA infringes on an individual’s Second Amendment rights, citing recent US Supreme Court interpretations of the Second Amendment.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Strike in Gaza Kills Over 30 Palestinians, Emergency Services Say

    The strike hit a house in the city of Jabaliya, which has repeatedly come under attack as the Israeli military has pressed an offensive in northern Gaza.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Strike Kills 23 People North of Beirut, Lebanon Says

    The strike in the Jbeil district of Lebanon came amid an apparent diplomatic push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

  • NYPost ☛ Brutal Hamas torture tactics caught in CCTV footage: IDF

    Hamas operatives hung Palestinian civilians from ceilings with chains, put their heads in sacks and beat their feet with sticks in a series of CCTV videos recently uncovered by the Israel Defense Force.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China opposes new Philippine maritime law, vows to protect South China Sea ‘sovereignty’

    Beijing said the new legislation "severely infringes on" its territorial sovereignty and rights in the South China Sea.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China’s J-35A stealth fighter is ‘black box’ despite splashy debut

    The first public appearance of the land-based J-35A will take place on Nov 12.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ U.S. ordered TSMC to halt shipments of advanced Hey Hi (AI) processors to China: Report

    It turns out that TSMC did not voluntarily stopped supply of advanced Hey Hi (AI) processors, it was told to by the American government.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Taiwanese law prevents TSMC from producing 2nm chips overseas, Taiwanese govt official confirms

    TSMC cannot transfer its leading-edge technologies abroad in accordance with Taiwanese laws, says Minister of Economic Affairs.

  • New York Times ☛ Trump’s Presidency Could Spell a Lonely and Dangerous Stretch for Europe

    Internal political squabbles — and the fallout from a global backlash to inflation, immigration and ruling elites — are hobbling Germany and France.

  • New York Times ☛ Will Trump Prosecute His Foes? Allies and Adversaries Expect a Wave of Revenge.

    President-elect Donald J. Trump’s momentary talk of unity on election night may underestimate the depth of his resentment after multiple impeachments, investigations, indictments and lawsuits.

  • JURIST ☛ Public Demonstrations banned in Amsterdam following attacks on Israel football fans

    Several restrictive measures were taken this Friday in the Netherlands’ capital Amsterdam by the mayor, chief public prosecutor, and police chief, following a series of allegedly antisemitic hit-and-run episodes aimed at supporters of the Maccabi Tel Aviv football club.

  • France24 ☛ Paris to deploy 4,000 police for France-Israel match following Amsterdam violence

    After visiting Israeli football fans were attacked last week in Amsterdam, French police are increasing security for Thursday’s France-Israel match at the Stade de France near Paris.

  • France24 ☛ Russia finalises defence cooperation pact with North Korea

    The defence cooperation deal signed by Russia and North Korea obligates both states to provide military assistance “without delay” in the case of an attack on the other. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin struck the deal during a visit to North Korea in June. It was ratified by Russia’s parliament and signed this weekend by the Russian president.

  • New York Times ☛ Monday Briefing: Russian and North Korean Troops Assemble

    Plus, does tech make us feel lonely?

  • Meduza ☛ Starmer and Macron reportedly planning ‘last-ditch’ attempt to convince Biden to authorize cruise missile strikes deep inside Russia — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Refugees from occupied Kursk protest Russian government’s failure to deliver promised assistance, such as adequate housing — Meduza

  • RFERL ☛ Report: Trump Tells Putin In Call Not To Escalate War With Ukraine

    U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed the war in Ukraine, the Washington Post reported on November 10, citing sources close to Trump.

  • Meduza ☛ Trump spoke to Putin last week (without U.S. State Department interpreters and with no warning to Kyiv) and threatened Moscow against escalation in Ukraine — Meduza

  • France24 ☛ Ukraine attacks Moscow with 34 drones, the biggest strike on the Russian capital

    Ukraine attacked Moscow on Sunday with at least 34 drones, the biggest drone strike on the Russian capital since the start of the war in 2022, forcing flights to be diverted from three of the city's major airports and injuring at least five people. Details with FRANCE 24 correspondent in Kyiv, Ukraine, Emmanuelle Chaze.

  • France24 ☛ Russia and Ukraine fire drones at each other in the biggest drone attacks of conflict

    Russia and Ukraine both launched record drone attacks on each other overnight, as the Kremlin said it saw "positive signals" from US president-elect Donald Trump over his desire to strike a deal to end the conflict.

  • France24 ☛ Russia and Ukraine launch record overnight drone attacks

    Russia's defence ministry on Sunday said that it downed 70 Ukrainian drones over six regions, including 34 over the region around Moscow, forcing the temporary closure of three airports. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia had fired 145 drones at Ukraine.

  • JURIST ☛ Russia military court charges men who shot sleeping family in Ukraine with life in prison

    A military court in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Friday charged Anton Sopov, 21, and Stanslav Rau, 28, with murder and sentenced them to life in prison for their killing of a sleeping family in Ukraine, according to the local newspaper Kommersant.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Ukrainian drones strike Moscow as Russia looks toward Trump’s presidency

    A massive drone strike has rattled Moscow and its suburbs, injuring several people and temporarily halting traffic at some of Russia’s busiest airports. Meanwhile a huge nighttime wave of Russian drones targeted Ukraine.

  • New York Times ☛ 50,000 Russian and North Korean Troops Mass Ahead of Attack, U.S. Says

    Ukrainian officials expect a counteroffensive in western Russia to begin in the coming days as North Korea’s troops train with Russian forces.

  • New York Times ☛ Russia Says It Shot Down Waves of Ukrainian Drones Above Moscow

    Officials said more than 30 drones had been intercepted over suburban areas of the Russian capital in what was the biggest such attack since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

  • The Strategist ☛ International trade is dividing between blocs. Australia could be in the middle

    Australia risks being caught in no man’s land as the world divides into rival economic blocs in what the International Monetary Fund describes as a new cold war.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • The Korea Times ☛ North Korea blamed for 331 GPS disruptions in October

      North Korea was identified as the source of 331 cases of GPS disruptions reported this month, the science ministry said Sunday, noting that no major issues or damage occurred.

      The Ministry of Science and ICT said it had "consistently detected radio interference originating from the Kaepung and Haeju areas of North Korea." Radio interference involves transmitting jamming signals within the GPS frequency band, disrupting the use of GPS signals.

    • VOA News ☛ North Korea jams GPS signals, affecting ships, aircraft in South

      "North Korea conducted GPS jamming provocations in Haeju and Kaesong yesterday and today," Seoul's joint chiefs of staff said in a statement Saturday, adding that several vessels and dozens of civilian aircraft were experiencing "some operational disruptions."

      The military warned ships and aircraft operating in the Yellow Sea to beware of such attacks.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Alex Ewerlöf ☛ Cargo culting

    Many indigenous societies of Melanesia had a big man cultural element. Big men were individuals who gained prestige through gift exchanges. The more wealth a man could distribute, the more people were in his debt, and the greater his renown.

    When these cultures were exposed to seemingly unlimited supply of goods for exchange, they experienced "value dominance". That is, they were dominated by others in terms of their own (not the foreign) value system.

    The language (and potentially security) barrier prevented their understanding of the truth.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Will a life-size hologram of a murdered sex worker finally solve this Amsterdam cold case?

    The life-sized rendering of 19-year-old sex worker Bernadett “Betty” Szabo leans forward and breathes on the glass, unveiling the word “help”.

    Detectives hope the powerful appeal will help jog memories enough for them to finally solve the cold case murder, after Ms Szabo was found in a pool of blood in the early hours of 19 February 2009.

• Environment

  • Wired ☛ Microplastics Could Be Making the Weather Worse

    While children learn in grade school that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius), that’s not always true. Without something to nucleate onto, such as dust particles, water can be supercooled to temperatures as low as –36 degrees Fahrenheit (–38 degrees Celsius) before it freezes.

    For freezing to occur at warmer temperatures, some kind of material that won’t dissolve in water needs to be present in the droplet. This particle provides a surface where the first ice crystal can form. If microplastics are present, they could cause ice crystals to form, potentially increasing rain or snowfall.

  • The Local DK ☛ Wooden bricks set to sea off Denmark to track plastic waste

    The pine wooden boards were chosen because they weigh about the same as the plastic that makes up around 70 percent of marine waste in the region, Schipperheijn explained.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Bitcoin crosses $80,000 for the first time as traders bet on Donald Trump's return as US president

      The value of Bitcoin soared to a new high as the digital currency surged past $80,000 for the first time in its history on Sunday, news agency AFP reported.

      The digital currency's value surged to $75,000 on Wednesday, breaching its previous all-time peak of $73,797.98 achieved in March 2024.

    • India Times ☛ Bitcoin reaches $80,000 for first time on optimism over Trump

      The cryptocurrency climbed as much as 4.7% to an unprecedented $80,092 on Sunday.

    • RTL ☛ Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin hits $80,000 for the first time

      Cryptocurrencies have made headlines since their creation, from their extreme volatility to the collapse of several industry giants, foremost among them the FTX exchange platform.

    • CBC ☛ How an alleged Russian plot suddenly upended Canada's air cargo rules

      Harsh new regulations for 55 countries after discovery of incendiary devices

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Science Alert ☛ These Insects Changed Their Entire Color Because of Humans

      A striking example of human-induced evolution.

• Finance

  • WhichUK ☛ New laws to make supermarket pricing clearer, thanks to Which?

    Unit pricing will be overhauled to help shoppers compare costs, following campaigning by Which?

  • The Washington Post ☛ Election betting predicted Trump. Now gamblers jump to the next race.

    Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi, said in a phone interview Wednesday that exchanges like his have “done the very thing that they have been designed to do — aggregate information in real time and clear out all the noise.”

  • India Times ☛ After cost-cutting and 15,000 layoffs, Intel reintroduces free tea and coffee to boost employees morale

    Intel announced it will reintroduce free coffee and tea for its employees after removing several workplace perks earlier this year as part of extensive cost-saving initiatives. The decision to restore the beverages comes as the company attempts to bolster employee morale following a challenging year, which included workforce reductions and benefit cutbacks.

  • The Tipping Point

    In a call that lasted just three minutes this August, executives at tech giant IBM told employees it was shutting its research and development operations in China — closing two labs and cutting more than 1,000 jobs.

  • Business Insider ☛ The full list of major US companies slashing staff this year, including Visa, Meta, and Goldman Sachs

    ...IBM announced job cuts related to AI.

  • MSN ☛ Freshworks set to layoff 13% employees despite profits: 5 skills budding techies must add to their CVs to save their jobs

    Freshworks cuts workforce despite profit: In a surprising move, California-based tech firm Freshworks has announced plans to lay off 13% of its global workforce, impacting roughly 660 employees, as part of its operational restructuring strategy. Well, this comes despite surging profit. Media reports suggest that Freshworks sees this move as essential to streamline operations and enhance efficiency amid a rapidly evolving tech landscape.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Economic woes sour prospects for China's dairy farmers

    Chronically low consumption has left the Chinese market sloshing with unwanted milk.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s Yoon struggles amid lowest approval rating

    Mr Yoon’s approval rating fell to 17 per cent, marking an all-time low since he took office in May 2022.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Tech executives that opposed Trump in 2016 are now trying to make nice

    The change in tone underscores the pragmatism many tech companies have adopted as another Trump administration nears. In recent years, many tech elites have shrugged off the idealism once central to Silicon Valley’s self-image, in favor of a more corporate and transactional approach to politics.

  • India Times ☛ Amazon mulls new multi-billion dollar investment in Anthropic: report

    Amazon has asked Anthropic, which uses Amazon's cloud services to train its AI model, to use a large number of servers powered by chips developed by the cloud computing major, the report said.

  • India Times ☛ Apple Inc sets up first subsidiary in India for R&D

    Apple established a new subsidiary in India, Apple Operations India, marking its first direct presence in the country. This subsidiary will focus on research, design, testing, and providing support to third-party manufacturers. This move signifies Apple's commitment to expanding its operational footprint in India beyond assembly and sales.

  • India Times ☛ Big tech's hotbeds of employee activism quiet after Trump's victory

    But after this week's presidential election, the largely liberal workforces of tech's biggest companies were quiet. While the definitive nature of the election most likely played a role, the change also represented an effort by executives to dampen employee activism in recent years. They put in place policies restricting dialogue, monitored internal chat channels and vowed not to weigh in on the issues that fired up activist employees.

  • New York Times ☛ She Was a Child Instagram Influencer. Her Fans Were Grown Men.

    “Jacky Dejo” was introduced to social control media by her parents as a snowboarding prodigy. Now 18, she has seen the dark side of the internet — and turned a profit from it.

  • The Cyber Show ☛ Urgent Job Vacancy: Leader of the Free World

    The successful candidate demonstrates a strong belief in freedom. Many benefits including private jet and own TV show, Application process is by democratic consensus for a limited time only.

  • New York Times ☛ Han Dongfang, Once China’s ‘Worst Nightmare,’ Refuses to Back Down

    Neither jail nor exile to Hong Kong has stopped Han Dongfang, a former Tiananmen Square protest leader, from championing workers’ rights. “If you’re born stubborn, you go everywhere stubborn.”

  • The Straits Times ☛ China, Indonesia enhance ties with key deals on lithium, green energy, tourism

    China and Indonesia also plan to collaborate more closely in the mining sector.

  • Chinese state TV drama about Xi's father fails to impress

    Social media reaction, commentators suggest young people are more excited about downloading 'Stranger Things.'

  • France24 ☛ Rise of the podcaster: Trump eschews mainstream media for Joe Rogan and the Nelk Boys

    Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump criticized news media. He also pivoted to appear on massively popular podcasts like Joe Rogan and the Nelk Boys. Democrat Kamala Harris was criticized for not pursuing a similar strategy to shore up more support. In this episode of Scoop, we look at the rise of the podcaster in US politics and speak to Reason reporter Billy Binion and the Washinton Reporter's Matthew Foldi, who jokingly refers to himself as something of a Rogan historian.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • India Times ☛ Elon Musk is positioning X behind the new Trump presidency

      Their comments show how Musk is increasingly positioning X as the platform behind the new Trump presidency. Since the election was called Wednesday, Musk has used X to talk up how bright the future will be under the president-elect.

      In addition, he has urged X's users to replace the news media and report on Trump's triumphant return to office, and has promoted the platform as a go-to destination for continuing conservative conversation.

    • Maine Morning Star ☛ How tech affected 'the information environment' of the 2024 election

      But there are real-world risks for rampant misinformation, Harper said. Federal investigative agencies have made clear that misinformation narratives that delegitimize past elections directly contribute to higher risk of political violence.

      Platforms with less-well-established trust and safety teams, such Discord and Twitch also play a role. They experienced their “first rodeo” of mass disinformation this election cycle, Harper said.

    • New York Times ☛ Saudi Arabia Hosts a Tennis Final Won by Coco Gauff

      The kingdom, which has been accused of trying to “sportswash” its human rights record, hosted the WTA Finals, part of its unstoppable advance into the world of sports.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Record ☛ Belarus arrests members of ‘neighborhood’ chat groups ahead of January election

    According to a statement from the Viasna human rights center, more than 100 Belarusian citizens have been detained across various cities in the last week — most of whom were participants in online chats created for residents in apartment buildings to communicate with each other.

    Earlier in October, the Belarusian security service (KGB) designated these so-called “neighborhood chats” as “extremist” due to their role in coordinating massive protests against the 2020 presidential election, which many Belarusians and international observers widely regarded as rigged.

  • Craig Murray ☛ Online Media Banned in Lebanon - Craig Murray

    It is illegal to report from Lebanon without prior accreditation by the Ministry of Information.

    On the day Niels and I arrived in the country, a new rule was introduced by the Ministry specifically excluding online media from accreditation, which is now limited to print newspapers and broadcast TV stations only.

    All freelance journalists and independent TV production companies are also specifically excluded.

  • VOA News ☛ Vietnam detains pro-democracy activist: state media

    Vietnamese authorities arrested a pro-democracy activist, state media said, the latest in a crackdown on political dissidents in the southeast Asian country.

    Tran Khac Duc, 29, was held on charges of "creating, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items aimed at opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam," according to the publication Safeguarding the Law.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Deseret Media ☛ With water rights in hand, Navajo still hope to restore farms on Utah's San Juan

    The settlement gives the Navajo the right to use 81,500 acre-feet of San Juan River water each year. It also includes more than $210 million in federal funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, along with $8 million for water infrastructure from the state of Utah, to help the Navajo access that water.

  • VOA News ☛ Burkina wants to reinstate death penalty: government source

    Amnesty International has reported a surge in the use of the death penalty on the African continent, saying in a statement in October that "recorded executions more than tripled and recorded death sentences increased significantly by 66%."

    On the other hand, the rights group noted that "24 countries across sub-Saharan Africa have abolished the death penalty for all crimes while two additional countries have abolished it for ordinary crimes only."

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Straits Times ☛ U Mobile responds to concerns over its winning bid for Malaysia’s second 5G network

    ST Telemedia, a Temasek arm, has agreed to reduce its stake in U Mobile from 48 to 20 per cent.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • 404 Media ☛ Nintendo Sues Streamer of Emulated, Pre-Released Games

    Nintendo is suing a man who allegedly repeatedly streamed pirated and emulated Nintendo Switch games, sometimes before they were released, and at times directed his audience to popular Switch emulators and other piracy tools, according to a new lawsuit viewed by 404 Media.