Leftovers

• Annie Mueller ☛ Practice by doing - annie's blog

  It’s so much easier to practice publishing now.

• Dhole Moments ☛ Ideas and Execution

  Point being: If I’m not playing their game, I also don’t need to play by their rules. So here are a few free ideas that anyone can pick up and run with if they want.

• Nathan Upchurch ☛ Washing Frankincense

  Plant resins come with varying amounts of water-soluble gum content. Beyond the temperature-reducing aspect innate to resins in combustible incense, these gums can further affect how much of a given resin you can include in a build. As anyone who has burned resins on charcoal can attest, with resins high in gum content, the burning gum can introduce off-notes. Gums also serve as binders in incense sticks; while a little is helpful for producing a performant dough that extrudes well and a more rigid, break-resistant incense stick, too much can prevent combustible incense from remaining lit.

  Naturally, I’ve been curious for some time as to how dissolving and discarding resin gums might impact the performance of a resin in combustible incense. Given all of the considerations I mentioned earlier, using resin in combustible incense is trickier than you might at first imagine, yet incense artisans like Yi-Xin manage to produce very clean sticks using resins with a high gum content. Could dissolving the gum be the answer? When a fellow member of an incense chat group mentioned this type of processing, she unknowingly gave me the final push I needed to give it a go.

• Games

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Introducing o(m)g:image

    Without question, we seem to have accepted (and stretch ourselves to support) this idea that every web page in the entire world should should be annotated with an image that encapsulates its contents into a single, visual expression.

    This game is meant to illustrate the absurdity of this notion in both principle and real-world execution.

• Science

  • Deseret Media ☛ Webb telescope confirms the universe is expanding at an unexpected rate

    "Yes, it appears there is something missing in our understanding of the universe," added Riess, a 2011 Nobel laureate in physics for the co-discovery of the universe's accelerating expansion. "Our understanding of the universe contains a lot of ignorance about two elements — dark matter and dark energy — and these make up 96% of the universe, so this is no small matter."

    "The Webb results can be interpreted to suggest there may be a need to revise our model of the universe, although it is very difficult to pinpoint what this is at the moment," said Siyang Li, a Johns Hopkins doctoral student in astronomy and astrophysics and a study co-author.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Time-symmetry concept boosts accuracy of radar and LiDAR systems

    In the study published in the journal Nature Communications, the team of researchers from Spain, China, and Canada presents a time-symmetry concept called parity-time (PT) symmetry, which is applied to frequency-swept systems. Their proposal makes it possible to reduce the linewidth of the generated waves by up to 14 times, thus obtaining more stable and precise signals than those obtained with conventional systems.

  • Science Alert ☛ Some Life-Forms Hit Pause For Centuries. We Finally Know The Benefit.

    What can plants or animals do when faced with harsh conditions? Two options for survival seem most obvious: move elsewhere or adapt to their environment.

    Some organisms have a third option. They can escape not through space but through time, by entering a dormant state until conditions improve.

    As it turns out, dormancy may not only benefit the species who use it. In new research, we found that a propensity for dormancy may affect the balance of competition between species, and make it possible for more species to survive together when environments change.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Ethics In Scholarly Publishing Is More Than Following Guidelines

    On November 19, 2024, I joined a panel at the Council of Science Editors’ (CSE) 2024 Fall Virtual Symposium to discuss ‘Are Ethics Geographically Equitable? Maintaining the Sanctity of the Published Scholarly Record’. While preparing for the session, I started thinking about a few issues around ethics, which are captured in this article.

  • Chris ☛ The Sample Size Curve

    I’m writing an article on correlations (much more interesting than I had thought!) One of the things I have learned is that the coefficient of determination captures the idea of effect size in a way that is particularly intuitive to estimate because it is additive. This makes it a useful tool to estimate the sample size needed for an experiment.

• Career/Education

  • Tim Kellogg ☛ How Can I Be An AI Engineer?

    An AI engineer is a specialized software engineer that integrates GenAI models into applications. It can involve training or fine-tuning LLMs, but it often does not. It can involve working on low-level harnesses, like llama.cpp or vLLM, but it often does not.

    More often AI engineering involves building UIs, APIs, and data pipelines. It can look wildly different from job to job. The common thread is that you send prompts to an LLM or image model, e.g. via OpenAI’s API, and use the result in an application somehow.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ Talking Myself off the Ledge

    I wrote an angry email that I didn't send. As the hours pass, I am less and less upset, but I am still bothered. I know I am not responsible for this person's lack of social skills. I don't question my ability to do something as simple as issue a workstation to a new employee. I don't know what it will take for me to feel whole after this. I plan to talk to my boss tomorrow to ask him to have a word with this lady's boss. I fear that my boss, who is very much a "don't make waves" type, will opt for ignoring it, and I don't know how to handle that. I'm not working these days for the dough as much as I am to have something to get me out of the house and keep me busy. If it starts feeling like a net negative, I can just head right back into retirement.

• Hardware

  • Ben Tsai ☛ Analog

    For cyber Monday, I splurged and purchased Ugmonk’s daily and weekly system. I also threw in an hourglass. You can see that so far the system is not keeping me productive. I am busy documenting my usage of it instead.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • El País ☛ ‘Instagram therapy’ offers self-diagnoses, vocabulary and justifications, but it does not solve anything

    From ‘red flags’ and ‘love bombing,’ to being ‘dissociated’ and having ‘anxious attachment,’ Gen Zs are turning to Instagram and TikTok to identify disorders and patterns of behavior. But rather than solving their problems, this trend only excuses destructive habits

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Predicting the present

    So I told her, "Look, you can basically ignore everything they tell you during those lockdown drills, because they almost certainly have nothing to do with your future. But if a friend ever says to you, 'Hey, wanna see my dad's gun?' I want you to turn around and leave and get in touch with me right away, that instant."

    Guns turn the murderous impulse – which, let's be honest, we've all felt at some time or another – into a murderous act. Same goes for suicide, which explains the high levels of non-accidental self-shootings in the USA: when you've got a gun, the distance between suicidal ideation and your death is the ten feet from the sofa to the gun in the closet.

  • Nikita Lapkov ☛ 2024 Reflection

    In the end, I fully tested two ideas and confirmed that neither of them will result in a working business. I even presented one of these ideas on RustLab this year. However, this all came at a cost of me needing to take a sick leave for a month for medical reasons, indirectly caused by essentially working two jobs at the same time. All of my bravado that I will be fine and that I just need a few more months for the startup to fly got the best of me. I’m now convinced of two things: you need to dedicate 100% of your working time to the startup and you need to have a lot of non-working time (e.g. rest, hobbies) for this to be sustainable. I’m no longer a 19-year old that is able to drink rocket fuel, power through a 48-hour hackathon and then go to school fresh next day. I need to respect my body and its needs.

  • Axios ☛ Luigi Mangione, UnitedHealthcare killing suspect, arraigned on gun charges

    Driving the news: Mangione was identified at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Monday. He had fake IDs, a firearm and a device to muffle gunshots at the time of his arrest, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at the press briefing.

  • The Register UK ☛ Police arrest suspect in murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO

    Technically speaking, following his detention, Mangione has been arraigned on weapons-related charges in Pennsylvania, and has not been formally accused of slaying Thompson.

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ FFRF deplores anti-science Weldon nomination for CDC head — Freedom From Religion Foundation

    Of grave concern is Weldon’s stint as president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, a trade group representing Christian cost-sharing ministries offered as an alternative to regular health insurance that have no legal obligation to pay medical claims. FFRF has played a key role on a congressional bill, the Health Share Transparency Act, which has been introduced by Rep. Jared Huffman to rein in these ministries.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Nobel Prize Winners Urge Senators to Reject RFK Jr. for HHS Secretary

    Kennedy has threatened to fire large swatches of the federal government’s health care and scientific workforce, accusing them of waging a “war on public health.”

    The letter notes Kennedy’s “lack of credentials or relevant experience in medicine, science, public health or administration,” as well as how he “has been an opponent of many health-protecting and live-saving vaccines, such as those that prevent measles and polio.”

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ New California law would require warning labels on social media

    Hinks, whose 16-year-old daughter died by suicide in August, joined California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) in announcing proposed legislation that would require social media companies to warn California users their platforms could pose risks to the mental health and well-being of young people.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Air Force to brief Congress on pilot test of beards in uniform

    “The certification of this base as an imminent danger area, the use of chemical agents in its vicinity, and the fact that the effectiveness of the M-50 gas mask is compromised by facial hair, demonstrates that adherence to grooming standards furthers the Air Force’s compelling interest in safety,” the opinion states. “Requiring [the airman] to remain within grooming standards, is the least restrictive means of furthering the Air Force’s interest.”

  • El País ☛ UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder sparks consumer outrage over health insurance abuses

    The words engraved on the shell casings of the bullets that ended Brian Thompson’s life conveyed a message of anger at unfair practices that are common in the sector and have long been denounced by regulators and legislators

  • International Business Times ☛ Trauma Dumping On TikTok: Examples, Reasons And Effects Of A Growing Trend

    Trauma dumping has emerged as a trend on social media platforms, particularly TikTok. This phenomenon involves individuals sharing their personal traumas and emotional struggles in a public, unfiltered manner. Experts caution that this trend might be causing more harm than good.

  • Robert Birming ☛ The Tyranny of Thoughts

    "What could you do less of?"

    That blogging prompt came my way. A question that's easy to answer in my case:

    To stop thinking so much about things that don't really matter.

  • The Conversation ☛ People who are good at reading have different brains

    I analysed open-source data from more than 1,000 participants to discover that readers of varying abilities had distinct traits in brain anatomy.

    The structure of two regions in the left hemisphere, which are crucial for language, were different in people who were good at reading.

  • Air Force Times ☛ Air Force would study allowing beards under proposed defense bill

    As part of the beard study, the compromise NDAA would require the Air Force to tell the House and Senate armed services committees whether beards would work with military equipment such as gas masks, which need an airtight seal against the wearer’s face to be effective.

  • Senators: Please grill RFK Jr.’s health nominees with these suggested questions

    President-Elect Donald Trump has rounded out the list of his nominees for health positions in his administration, and I have…questions. Initially, he had nominated antivax activist and all-around conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whom given his having bent the knee to Donald Trump before the election in return for the promise of a high-ranking health position in Trump’s administration, I had previously characterized as an “extinction-level threat” to federal health and biomedical science programs, to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), a truly awful and alarming pick, a veritable catastrophe for public health and medical research. Likely on the advice of RFK Jr, Trump soon followed up by nominating “America’s Quack” Dr. Mehmet Oz to be Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a “blast from the past” antivaxxer (and former Florida Representative) Dr. Dave Weldon to be Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as a veritable rogues’ caller of quacks and grifters, including Dr. Jay “the pandemic will be over in six months” Bhattacharya to be NIH Director. The only somewhat tolerable nominee was Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for Surgeon-General, given that she is definitely not antivaccine (although she did eventually swear fealty to the “anti-mandate” crowd.) She is, however, a Fox News pundit and does sell a self-concocted and self-branded line of vitamin supplements, because of course she does. She also was one of the directors of a chain of urgent care centers that settled a lawsuit alleging fraud by the Department of Justice for fraudulently obtaining government reimbursements for COVID tests from February 2020 to April 2022 by submitting false claims to a COVID program for uninsured patients regardless of whether their patients had health insurance or not.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Survey: UK financial services add more AI, mostly machine learning

    In conclusion, we expect widespread deployment of black box ML systems that implement a ghastly degree of social bias, and legal excuses written with ChatGPT when you ask them to explain a decision.

  • Connor Tumbleson ☛ Goodbye cPanel

    As I planned roughly 14 months ago I finally terminated my cPanel license and said goodbye to some software I started using more than a decade ago. This journey took far longer than I expected, but it was worth the effort.

  • John Gruber ☛ Daring Fireball: Don’t Throw the Baby Out With the Generative AI Bullshit Bathwater

    Lopatto’s piece is excellent, particularly the way she shows her own work. And the entire premise of her piece is that people are, in fact, embarrassing themselves (in Pierce’s case, spectacularly) and inadvertently spreading misinformation by blindly trusting the answers they’re getting from generative AI models. But I think it’s wrong to argue flatly against the use of generative AI for research, as she does right in her headline. I’ve been late to using generative AI as anything other than a toy curiosity, but in recent months I’ve started using it for work-related research. And now that I’ve started, I’m using it more and more. My basic rule of thumb is that if I’m looking for an article or web page, I use web search (Kagi); if I’m looking for an answer to a question, though, I use ChatGPT (4o). I direct (and trust) ChatGPT as I would a college intern working as a research assistant. I expect accuracy, but assume that I need to double-check everything.

  • International Business Times ☛ AI Has Silently Taken Over LinkedIn: Think That Viral Post Is Real? Think Again

    AI-generated writing has quietly become pervasive online, including on platforms like LinkedIn. Recent data reveals that over half of long-form English posts on LinkedIn are likely crafted by AI, blurring the line between human and machine-created content.

    This shift mirrors broader trends, where some publications have been reshaped into AI content mills after acquisitions, while other platforms show more subtle signs of automation's influence. LinkedIn , with its polished posts and professional tone, exemplifies AI's silent takeover—leaving users wondering if that viral post is truly authentic.

  • New York Times ☛ Ukraine Weighs Telegram Security Risks Amid War With Russia

    But what has been a salvation has increasingly turned into a major source of concern. In recent months, Ukrainian officials have become more alarmed by the country’s dependence on Telegram, as worries that the app was used as a vector of disinformation and a spying tool for Russia have mushroomed.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Sora Is the Most Hyped Bot Since ChatGPT

    But job displacement and disinformation may not be the most immediate or significant consequences of the Third Day of OpenAI. Both were happening without Sora, even if the program accelerates each problem: Production studios were already experimenting with enterprise AI products to generate videos, such as a recent Coca-Cola holiday commercial. And cheap, lower-tech methods of creating and disseminating false information have been extremely successful on their own.

  • The Register UK ☛ Salt Typhoon recorded 'very senior' US officials' calls

    Neuberger, America's deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, spoke at the Manama Dialogue regional security conference over the weekend. During the Bahrain event, she told reporters that the Salt Typhoon campaign was a "focused" operation targeting high-level people in politics for espionage purposes.

  • The Register UK ☛ AI-powered Reddit search now available to select users

    However, in Reddit's case, the AI-powered results won't cull data from around the [Internet]; instead, it will rely on posts and comments from the site to provide answers. Just like the ChatGPT does.

    Only a few users have been invited to the Answers beta, with Reddit promising an invitation to this vulture that has yet to materialize. If you're lucky enough to have access, you'll find the feature at reddit.com/answers, or on the Reddit homepage along with buttons for Home, Popular posts, Explore, and the like.

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ The Power Mac 4400 — 512 Pixels

    In November 1996, Apple released the Power Macintosh 4400 with a starting price of $1,725. Also sold as the Power Macintosh 7220, it’d be easy to write this machine off as just another grain of sand on the beige beach that was Apple’s product line in the 1990s. I mean, just look at this thing, pictured here with an Apple-branded CRT: [...]

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Impersonators are claiming Apple laptops in before real owners can pick them up

      Markowitz said he filed a police report but hasn’t heard back. He also said Apple told him someone used his QR code to pick up his laptop.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Off Guardian ☛ You’d Better Watch Out: The Surveillance State Is Making a List, and You’re On It

      “He sees you when you’re sleeping He knows when you’re awake He knows when you’ve been bad or good So be good for goodness’ sake!”

    • Papers Please ☛ Public/private partnerships for financial surveillance

      [Email from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the US Department of the Treasury to some of its banking industry partners forwarding list prepared by Mitsubishi United Financial Group (MUFG) of vendors at DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia) airports, train stations, and bus stops, to target reporting of purchases at these locations as “suspicious” .]

      The House Committee on the Judiciary and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have released a ground-breaking report on their investigation of what they describe — accurately, we think — as “the coordination between Big Banks and Big Government” in financial surveillance.

      The Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee’s latest report on financial surveillance as well as their earlier interim report on the same issue are part of their broader inquiry into the investigative tactics used in the aftermath of the storming of the US Capitol  on January 6, 2021.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ HK mulls in-car cams, GPS, dashcams, digital payments for all taxis

      According to a document submitted on Monday, the proposal for in-car CCTV would ease the handling of disputes between drivers and passengers. Outward facing dashcams and GPS would also be required under the proposal with authorities aimming for all taxis to complete the set-up within 2026.

      The plan would also require taxis to provide at least two forms of electronic payment – including Quick Response (QR) code payments and non-QR code payments – as authorities called the use of such technology “the general trend.” All cabs are expected to provide such payment options by the end of 2025.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Gov't dep't contravened data privacy laws, privacy watchdog finds

      Hong Kong’s privacy watchdog has found that the city’s Electrical and Mechanical Services Department contravened data privacy laws over a data leak involving 17,000 people this May.

      Privacy Commissioner Ada Chung said at a Monday press conference that the department has been served an enforcement notice requiring it to take corrective measures and submit a report to the watchdog.

    • The Scotsman ☛ AI, facial recognition and digital evidence sharing: Why police must embrace new tech

      With previous funding levels for public services like the police gone for good, officers must turn to technology to help them cope with increasing demands on their time

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft rolls out Recall for Intel, AMD-based Copilot+ PCs

      The update arrived with build 26120.2510 of Windows 11 and means more Insiders – not just those with Arm-compatible Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs – will be able to join in the Recall fun, although Microsoft cautioned that users should take care to ensure the latest drivers are installed before checking out the preview code.

    • Privacy International ☛ PI's briefing on travellers' surveillance | Privacy International

      In this new briefing, we identify the most significant concerns on the UN Countering Terrorist Travel Programme (CTTP), and put forward a range of recommendations to mitigate some of the human rights risks associated with the surveillance of travellers. [...]

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Apple May Introduce Macs with Cellular Connectivity

      According to a report by Bloomberg, the in-house modem could debut next year and will replace the components from long-term partner Qualcomm. A modem is a critical component of a mobile phone, which lets the device connect to cell towers to make calls and also link up with the [Internet].

    • The Register UK ☛ Palantir and Anduril form partnership, as Sauron funded

      "Exabytes of defense data, indispensable for AI training and inferencing, are currently evaporating. What should be America's ultimate asymmetric advantage over our adversaries is instead our biggest lost opportunity," the partners state in their announcement.

      The other issue is the lack of a secure enterprise pipeline that would allow use of that data to create AIs.

      The combined entities plan to combine some of their products to address the issues.

    • The Verge ☛ Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman on what the industry is getting wrong about AGI

      Then, earlier this year, Inflection cut a deal with Microsoft to license its core technology in a weird and kind of controversial not-quite-acquisition situation, one that sent Mustafa, his cofounder, and a majority of their employees into Microsoft.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Strategist ☛ The fall of the House of Assad

    The October 7, 2023, attack that Hamas carried out against Israeli civilian communities bordering Gaza triggered earthquakes across the Middle East. Israel’s ruthless offensive to destroy Hamas in Gaza, and in Lebanon against Hezbollah, practically obliterated Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’, while the United States and Britain pummelled the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen in response to Houthi attacks on international shipping.

    Syria’s civil war began in 2011 when the Assad regime crushed peaceful Arab Spring protests. But the fighting largely subsided after 2015, when Russia’s intervention, together with assistance from Iran and Hezbollah, turned the war in Assad’s favour. Today, with Iran’s proxies destroyed and Russia’s war-fighting capabilities drained by its Ukraine quagmire, the rebels saw their chance.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Alarming amount of Texas Instrument chips found in Russian-based weapons in Ukraine — Russian military using third parties to purchase U.S-made chips

    Russia's military is reportedly using third parties to purchase U.S.-based electronic products from Texas Instruments Inc., and some of these intermediaries are even comprised of companies that are under U.S. sanctions. These chips are purportedly used to assist in the production of "...drones, glide bombs, precision communication systems and the Iskander missiles that Moscow uses to hammer Ukraine’s cities."

  • Michigan Advance ☛ U of M regent says home was vandalized in an antisemitic attack using 'Klan-like tactics' • Michigan Advance

    But it was the upside down triangle beside the words that particularly disturbed Acker as the symbol has become synonymous with attacks by Hamas as a symbol to mark Israeli targets and has been used internationally in crimes against Jewish officials like himself.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ U-M regent’s home vandalized, 'Free Palestine' spray-painted on wife's car

    “That upside-down triangle is what Hamas uses to identify legitimate military targets that are Israeli,” Acker told Bridge Monday afternoon. “And so I take that as a direct and personal threat on my life.”

  • The Hill ☛ Michigan condemns antisemitic vandalism at regent's home

    The individuals vandalized the car with what Acker told the outlet were “messages about Palestine with a Hamas upside triangle.”

  • Michigan News ☛ University of Michigan regent’s home vandalized with mason jars, pro-Palestine slogan - mlive.com

    The home of a Jewish member of the University of Michigan Board of Regents was attacked Sunday night, including spray-painted pro-Palestinian messages on his family car.

  • CNN ☛ University of Michigan regent’s home vandalized in antisemitic attack

    “As a public official, you expect a certain level of criticism – even protests – but this is not protest, this is terrorism,” Acker said, adding the incident took place while his daughters were asleep upstairs.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ TikTok makes a last stand as it asks for emergency pause on US ban

    Last Friday, the company lost an appeal to save its existence in the U.S. when it argued in an appeals court that the ban signed into legislation earlier in 2024 is unconstitutional given the “staggering” impact it would have on the 170 million users in the U.S. and what that means for free [sic] speech. For years now, American officials have argued that the app poses a national security risk, something TikTok and its parent company ByteDance Ltd. have denied.

  • The Verge ☛ Donald Trump talks about the TikTok ban

    President-elect Donald Trump gave a murky answer when NBC’s Kristen Welker asked whether he would protect TikTok from its impending ban during a Meet the Press interview on Sunday. He didn’t say he would save the app from its ban but did seem to imply that ByteDance should sell it.

  • India Times ☛ TikTok hires ex-Trump administration lawyer ahead of Supreme Court appeal

    TikTok and ByteDance have hired former US Solicitor General Noel Francisco to challenge a US law potentially banning the platform. Francisco, who previously defended Trump's travel ban, will argue before the Supreme Court. The law mandates TikTok's divestiture by January 19, 2025, citing national security risks.

  • US News And World Report ☛ TikTok Hires Ex-Trump Administration Lawyer Ahead of Supreme Court Appeal

    TikTok and its Chinese owner ByteDance have turned to a veteran U.S. Supreme Court lawyer as they prepare to ask the justices to block a law that could ban the popular short video platform in the United States.

  • Futurism ☛ FBI Baffled by Mysterious "Car-Sized Drones" Circling Over New Jersey

    Residents of several New Jersey counties have been witnessing giant drones flying over their homes at night since at least November 18 — and nobody seems to know where they're coming from or who they might belong to.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Khamenei Loses Everything

    The biggest loser in all of this—after Assad, his family, his cronies, and possibly his Alawite sect—is Iran. Decades of patient work assembling proxy movements throughout the Middle East, specifically but not exclusively focused on Israel, have collapsed. Hamas was never a cat’s paw of Tehran, but it received weapons and training from Iran, and coordinated with Hezbollah, a far more formidable force, and one much more tightly aligned with, if not always entirely controlled by, Iran. Hezbollah had helped turn the tide of battle that had flowed against the Assad regime from 2012 onwards. It kept a force of 5,000 to 10,000 men in Syria at the height of its commitment, but they were not alone. Iran organized and trained thousands more in dozens of militias, including a Syrian Hezbollah, and various Shiite groups from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. All of them are now on the run.

  • The Verge ☛ TikTok tried to save itself with the First Amendment — and failed

    A law that could ban TikTok in the US doesn’t violate the Constitution, a panel of judges unanimously — and forcefully — ruled on Friday. The decision suggests TikTok, which has evaded attempts at a ban or sale for over four years, really could be forced out of the US, unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells it off by January 19th. TikTok has indicated it will take its fight to the Supreme Court, and President-elect Donald Trump has previously promised to save the app, though he’s been fuzzy on how. But as the deadline approaches, it faces an uphill legal battle.

  • The Washington Post ☛ TikTok asks court to pause law that could shut down app in U.S. next month

    ByteDance officials have said selling off the U.S. app would be extraordinarily challenging for several reasons, including its reliance on a global software infrastructure and user base, as well as China’s long-standing pledge to block the sale of the app’s signature video-recommendation algorithm.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ TikTok asks court to bar potential ban until Supreme Court review

    If the law is not overturned, both TikTok and its parent ByteDance, which is also a plaintiff in the case, have claimed that the popular app will shut down by Jan. 19, 2025. TikTok has more than 170 million American users who would be affected, the companies have said.

    In their legal filing on Monday, attorneys for the two companies wrote that even if a shutdown lasted one month, it would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its daily users in the U.S.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Dutch F-35s Intercepted Three Russian Aircraft Over the Baltic Sea

    "This is why our people are there: to protect our collective airspace against Russian threats," Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans said on Monday. "As was once again evident on Friday, Russian forces are active in all sorts of ways near NATO airspace."

  • New York Times ☛ Elon Musk and the Tech Billionaires Steering Trump’s Transition Team

    The involvement of wealthy investors has made this presidential transition one of the most potentially conflict-ridden in modern history.

  • CBC ☛ How the FBI linked a Pakistani student in Ontario to an alleged plot to kill Jews in New York

    Nearly a year before a Pakistani man hit the road in the Toronto area — allegedly headed to New York to kill "as many Jewish people as possible" in an ISIS-inspired mass shooting — his Facebook profile caught the eye of an FBI informant.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ US Prosecutors Unable To Persuade Judge That Accused CIA Leaker Must Stay In Jail

  • Rlang ☛ Analyzing Driver License Suspensions with R

    In 2020, I joined a group of attorneys at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland who were looking into the topic of debt-related driver’s license suspensions.

    Their interest in license suspension stemmed from the fact that debt-related suspensions can trap drivers with limited resources in a vicious cycle: fines and fees for seemingly minor traffic infringements can easily spiral into thousands of dollars of debt. Drivers, being unable to repay these debts, then are unable to drive. Making it even more difficult for them to to earn the money needed to pay down the debt.

    But, what do you think is the leading cause of driver’s license suspensions?

    I bet you answered something like dangerous driving, speeding, drunk driving, or something similar. For the State of Ohio, you’d be wrong. Most suspensions in Ohio are due to the driver not being able to pay a fine or fee. Debt. It can have absolutely nothing to do with dangerous driving!

  • The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland ☛ Road to Nowhere: Debt-Related Driver's License Suspensions in Ohio [PDF]

    Over 1 million Ohioans had a suspended driver’s license each year from 2016 to 2020.2 While some suspensions result from dangerous driving, other suspensions occur because a person cannot pay a debt to the State or to another driver. This report focuses on the types of suspensions related to unpaid debt, collectively referred to as “debt-related suspensions” or “DRS.” It is estimated that at least 11 million people nationwide have their licenses suspended for debt – specifically for owing unpaid fines and fees.3

    Debt-related suspensions trap drivers with limited resources in a vicious cycle. Fines and fees related to seemingly minor traffic stops can easily spiral into thousands of dollars owed to the State. Drivers unable to pay these debts cannot get their licenses back, which for most Ohioans means they cannot drive to work to earn the money needed to pay down the debt, without risking even more driving restrictions, fines, fees, or even jail.4 Many drivers have multiple suspensions on their license at the same time, compounding the problem. Drivers in this situation face the difficult choice between losing their employment or risking more penalties, or even incarceration, by driving with a suspended license.

• Environment

  • The Strategist ☛ Catastrophic sea level rise possible within our lifetime? Yes, here’s how

    ‘Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea level rise is possible within our lifetime,’ according to a joint emergency statement released by more than 300 scientists at the inaugural Australian Antarctic Research Conference in Hobart last month.

    ‘The East Antarctic ice sheet alone,’ the scientists stated, ‘holds enough water to raise global sea levels by approximately 50 metres.’

  • EcoWatch ☛ 40% of Earth’s Land Is Now Drylands, Excluding Antarctica, Research Finds

    Forty percent of all the lands on Earth, excluding Antarctica, are now made up of drylands, reported The Guardian.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Winds catapult SoCal fire warning: 'Particularly Dangerous Situation'

    National Weather Service meteorologist Robbie Munroe said Particularly Dangerous Situation red flag warnings should, on average, occur only once every three to five years. But it has now happened twice in the same fire season, just as it did in 2020 — once in October and another time in December.

  • Science Alert ☛ This Microbe Eats Radiation For Breakfast. Now We Know Its Secret.

    Not all superheroes wear capes. Capable of handling extreme cold, acid, and dehydration, the microbe Deinococcus radiodurans handles doses of radiation that would kill a human tens of thousands of times over, earning it the nickname 'Conan the Bacterium' after the valiant pulp fantasy character.

    The secret to micro-Conan's strength lies in an assortment of highly potent antioxidants that mop up the mess of oxygen radicals before they can damage proteins critical to the cell's repair process.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • European Commission ☛ State aid

      The European Commission has approved a €2.6 billion Estonian scheme to support renewable offshore wind energy to foster the transition towards a net-zero economy. The scheme was approved under the State aid Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework (‘TCTF') adopted by the Commission on 9 March 2023 and amended on 20 November 2023 and on 2 May 2024.

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ In Michigan and Wisconsin, cities are finding rooftops alone may not achieve solar energy goals 

      “Folks want to see solar panels on parking lots and buildings, but there’s no way as a city we can accomplish our net-zero buildings just putting solar panels on a roof,” said Justin Gish, Kalamazoo’s sustainability planner. “Working with the utility seemed to make the most sense.”

      Initially there was skepticism, Gish said — “environmentalists tend to not trust utilities and large corporate entities” — but the math just didn’t work out for going it alone with rooftop solar.

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Florida has installed the second most solar power capacity in the country in 2024

      Nearly 30,000 Floridians have installed solar power this year, bringing the number of installations to over 253,000 according to a new report.

      The state as a whole has installed 3.1 gigawatts (GW) of solar-generation capacity through the first three quarters of this year, nearly matching the state’s record-setting amount of 3.2 GW installed last year. That’s the second most in the nation, ranking behind only Texas.

    • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Opinion: Want Stronger Public Transport And Better Communities? Get Youth Hooked on Transit

      Public transport has long been seen as a cornerstone of future-ready urban development. But its potential to alleviate financial burdens on families, foster community, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions remains untapped in many places.

    • The Nation ☛ This Solar Panel Kills Fascists

      The law has four main features. First, it seeks to bring New York into compliance with the state’s legal requirement to achieve 70 percent renewable energy by 2030 and 100 percent by 2040. The mechanism for doing so is to mandate that the New York Power Authority (NYPA), the largest state public power authority in the country, fill the gap in renewable energy creation left by private-sector developers. Second, the law will lower energy bills for New York’s neediest, by providing credits to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. Third, it seeks to create 25,000 green union jobs, providing $25 million a year to help fossil-fuel workers transition to clean energy, and building pathways for marginalized communities to enter this sector, with funding allocated for job training, childcare, and transportation costs. And finally, it requires that NYPA close 11 highly polluting small natural-gas power plants, known as “peaker plants,” located in predominantly Black and brown communities in New York City and Long Island, by 2030, provided that the plants’ output can be replaced with renewable energy.

    • University of Michigan ☛ University to begin installing solar power sites on campus

      New solar installations distributed across the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn campuses will have a total capacity of 25 megawatts of renewable electricity after a three-year installation process is complete.

    • Science News ☛ Generative AI is an energy hog. Is the tech worth the environmental cost?

      Processing and answering prompts eats up electricity, as does the supporting infrastructure like fans and air conditioning that cool the whirring servers. In addition to big utility bills, the result is a lot of climate-warming carbon emissions. Electricity generation and server cooling also suck up tons of water, which is used in fossil fuel and nuclear energy production, and for evaporative or liquid heat dissipation systems.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ On the Horizon: Nature’s Top Emerging Threats and Opportunities

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Dogs use two-word button combos to communicate, study shows

      A new study from UC San Diego's Comparative Cognition Lab shows that dogs trained to use soundboards to "talk" are capable of making two-word button combinations that go beyond random behavior or simple imitation of their owners. Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the study analyzed data from 152 dogs over 21 months, capturing more than 260,000 button presses—195,000 of which were made by the dogs themselves.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ Google CEO Says Easy AI Gains Are Over

    He was a little mealy-mouthed when it came to directly addressing the technical side of the issue, but was unequivocal that the effortless newbie gains that AI development initially enjoyed are over.

    "I think the progress is going to get harder," Pichai said at the Dealbook summit. "When I look at '25, the low-hanging fruit is gone. The hill is steeper."

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Rupert Murdoch cannot hand control of his media empire to one son

    Murdoch, 93, had sought to change the terms of his irrevocable family trust to ensure his older son, Lachlan, would have sole control over his media companies News Corp. and Fox Corp. News Corp. owns influential publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Investor’s Business Daily and Dow Jones. Fox Corp. is the parent company of Fox News and the Fox broadcast network.

  • International Business Times ☛ Airbus to Cut Nearly 500 UK Jobs Amid Falling Profits and Global Restructuring

    Airbus, the European aerospace giant, has announced plans to cut 477 jobs in the UK as part of a global restructuring effort following a 22% drop in profits. The job reductions are part of a broader plan to reduce over 2,000 positions worldwide, with the company citing increased costs and supply chain bottlenecks as significant challenges.

  • The Verge ☛ Microsoft’s AI boss and Sam Altman disagree on what it takes to get to AGI

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Meduza ☛ Behold ‘Putin’s liberation’ Russia doesn’t let independent journalists report from occupied Ukraine, but the Kremlin’s own state media publish photos revealing the invasion’s devastation

    Russia doesn’t let independent journalists report from occupied Ukraine, but the Kremlin’s own state media publish photos revealing the invasion’s devastation

  • The Record ☛ Russia disrupts [Internet] access in multiple regions to test ‘sovereign internet’

    Residents of several Russian regions experienced [Internet] disruptions over the weekend as local authorities attempted to disconnect them from the global network and test the country’s so-called “sovereign internet” infrastructure.

    According to a report by the U.S. nonprofit Institute for the Study of War (ISW), these trials mostly affected Russian regions populated by ethnic minorities, including Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia.

  • Tedium ☛ Do General Audiences Exist? Do G-Rated Films Even Make Sense Anymore?

    In the fall of 1968, the film industry changed forever. The studios, with the help of a hard-nosed Washington insider, figured out how to expand the parameters of film and avoid government censorship in one fell swoop. Jack Valenti, in one of the first moves he made as head of the Motion Picture Association of America, instituted an industry-wide ratings system, which replaced a self-censorship regime called the Hays Code. Ultimately, Valenti’s scheme fostered a stronger film industry. Much has been written about these ratings, but one particular rating has surprisingly faded into the ether: The safe-for-everyone G rating. As Sherwood noted this past week, there have been essentially no G-rated movies in recent years. (I spotted just one new G-rated theatrical release that made money at the box office in 2024, an IMAX documentary on the Blue Angels flight crew.) I would use a stronger profanity here usually, but I must ask, what the heck happened? Today’s Tedium ponders why the “G” no longer lives up to its name. — Ernie @ Tedium

  • The Independent UK ☛ Federal employees scrub social media accounts of any negative posts about Trump as they scramble to save jobs

    Some federal employees are removing posts from X and Facebook, with one official who testified in Trump’s first impeachment inquiry considering filing retirement papers as others are taking steps to move to possibly safer agencies.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Federal employees scramble to insulate themselves from Trump’s purge

    As President-elect Donald Trump’s transition teams move into federal agencies, thousands of civil servants — and some of the Biden appointees they work for — are scrambling to insulate themselves from the new administration’s promised purge.

    Federal employees are scrubbing their Facebook and X accounts for any negative posts about Trump. Some, including at least one prominent official who testified in Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, are weighing putting in retirement papers, while others maneuver to transfer to seemingly safer agencies. D.C. recruiting firms are seeing booming business from those looking for private-sector work.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Egypt jails journalist Sayed Saber after recent social control media posts

    Saber’s arrest is believed to be linked to recent social control media posts criticizing military rule in Egypt. He is an established Egyptian journalist and writer with contributions to various media outlets and several published books. Known for his sharp critiques of the current political regime in Egypt, Saber often uses a sarcastic tone to deliver his commentary.

  • CPJ ☛ Environmental journalist Chhoeung Chheng shot and killed in Cambodia

    “The wanton killing of journalist Chhoeung Chheng shows the grave danger environmental reporters face in Cambodia,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Until Cambodian authorities start protecting journalists who report on environmental issues, predators of the press will continue these types of assaults.”

  • VOA News ☛ After Assad’s fall, cautious optimism for jailed journalist Austin Tice in Syria

    In remarks at the White House on Sunday afternoon, President Joe Biden said, “We remain committed to returning him [Tice] to his family.”

    “We believe he is alive. We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet,” Biden later added.

  • VOA News ☛ US making 'intensive efforts' to find journalist Austin Tice in Syria

    In the aftermath of the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria, U.S. officials say they continue to work to locate American journalist Austin Tice, who has been detained in the country for more than 12 years.

  • USMC ☛ US believes Marine vet is alive after disappearing in Syria in 2012

    President Joe Biden said Sunday that the U.S. government believes missing American journalist and Marine Corps veteran Austin Tice, who disappeared 12 years ago near the Syrian capital, is alive and that Washington is committed to bringing him home after Bashar Assad’s ouster from power in Damascus.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Wired UK to go quarterly and bring global newsrooms into a single team

    In a letter sent with copies of the January and February issue of the Condé Nast-owned magazine, the UK edition of the title also told readers that it had “gone global” and would be “uniting our global newsroom into a single, powerful team”.

    The changes will go into effect beginning with the next issue of Wired UK. Subscriptions are to be extended “to ensure that you still receive the number of issues you were expecting in your current subscription period”, the magazine said.

  • 404 Media ☛ 404 Media Objects to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's Subpoena to Access Our Reporting

    404 Media's reporting on an internal Google privacy violation database has been subpoenaed by the State of Texas. We are fighting it.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Walrus ☛ In Afghanistan, Women Haven’t Given Up

    Saee knew protesting might get her arrested or killed. The previous September, the Taliban had banned unauthorized protests, and its members had regularly attacked activists and journalists on the scene, detaining some, ­usually ­arbitrarily. That didn’t stop women from marching in the streets, chanting slogans like “Naan, kar, azadi”—bread, work, freedom—after the Taliban retook Kabul on August 15, 2021, amid the frenzied withdrawal of US troops. The ­demonstrations, which often made international headlines, continued sporadically over the following months in response to the Taliban’s ongoing brutality. Afghan ­Witness, an investigative project from the UK-based Centre for Information Resilience, has documented at least 170 street protests between August 2021 and June 2024. Many of the demonstrations have been organized locally by women’s rights groups and are typically coordinated via WhatsApp.

  • The Scotsman ☛ How women in politics are being harassed with a sinister tactic akin to stalking

    A fellow (female) candidate pointed out, quite conversationally, that she had never known a woman display their address, never known a man not to do so.

  • Wired ☛ Taking on the Tyranny of the Tech Bros

    In 2025, the march toward a future dictated by algorithmic lords will falter. Coalitions between feminist movements and labor activism will increase public scrutiny of tech culture. These efforts will start to crack the Bro Code. Bro Code bosses talk a big game about its socially revolutionary impact, but participants in my research felt thwarted when trying to use their technical skills to serve others. For instance, Lynn reported that the eye-tracking device she developed to help people with disabilities was repurposed for marketing analysis; Shauna’s lab mates nicknamed her “accessibility bitch” when she worked on projects to help those disenfranchised in computing.

  • Axios ☛ Wounded Knee bill blocked amid one tribe's recognition fight

    Between the lines: The Lumbee, which claims 50,000 members, has significant political influence in the swing state of North Carolina, and both Vice President Harris and President-elect Trump endorsed its push for federal recognition.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Strategist ☛ Cloud and 5G convergence is a national security imperative

    The expanded reliance on cloud infrastructure and 5G networks creates a significantly larger attack surface for cyber adversaries. These technologies are integral to energy, transport and communications services. A successful cyberattack could have devastating consequences, compromising national security, economic stability and public safety.

    The complex and interconnected nature of cloud and 5G ecosystems, which involve multiple vendors and international supply chains, makes them vulnerable to exploitation. Weaknesses in these systems could be abused to disrupt services or access sensitive data.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump 2.0 To Slather Elon Musk’s Starlink With Billions In Taxpayer Subsidies It Doesn’t Deserve

    Ideally, you’d want a lot of this $42.5 billion in state funding going to open access fiber networks: which help drive not only affordable, high capacity fiber into a region, but help cultivate competition by letting numerous ISPs compete in layers (I wrote a Techdirt/Copia report on this very subject). From there, you probably want to fund fixed wireless and 5G connections. Then fill in the rest with Starlink.

    That’s the sensible way to shore up U.S. broadband.

    But Republicans really don’t like that a lot of this money is going to popular community broadband options they traditionally despise because they disrupt AT&T and Comcast’s comfy telecom monopoly. Stuff like municipal fiber builds, cooperatives, or city-owned utilities, which increasingly provide better, faster, cheaper broadband access than telecom monopolies or Starlink could ever manage.

    So Republicans will be taking every opportunity to redirect these funds away from community broadband and toward whoever does the best job kissing Trump ass. That’s going to be AT&T, Comcast, Charter, Verizon… and Elon Musk. States like Maine and New Mexico have already gotten an early start in redirecting money to Elon Musk’s Starlink and declaring the rural broadband problem solved.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • PC World ☛ Microsoft now allowing Windows 11 on older, incompatible PCs

    Not even a week ago, Microsoft doubled down on its policy that requires PCs to have TPM 2.0-compatible hardware in order to install Windows 11. But now, in an unexpected and puzzling move, the company is issuing instructions for installing Windows 11 on incompatible PCs.

  • Kevin Boone ☛ Kevin Boone: They don’t make them like that any more: Sony PRS-500 e-reader

    The PRS-500 wasn’t Sony’s first e-reader, although it was the first to have any kind of commercial success. Sony so crippled its forerunner, the Librie, with DRM and copy protection that it was almost unusable. To be fair, the early Kindles had the same problem; but Amazon got away with it, while Sony didn’t, because they had such a huge catalog of books. Kindle owners didn’t have to seek out and install books from other sources.

    While Sony did have an on-line store-front, it offered far fewer titles than Amazon’s. Restricting the Librie to Sony’s limited catalog was not a winning strategy.

    The PRS-500, however, moderated Sony’s DRM policy; a good thing, because Sony’s store-front did not even extend beyond the USA for the first year after it released the PRS-500. Owners could install DRM-free books in several different formats, including RTF and plain text. This made the whole of the Gutenberg collection available, as well as content scraped from websites and converted. It continues to amuse me to see Kindle owners paying hard coin for public-domain books by Dickens and Austen, when they could just get them from Gutenberg.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Register UK ☛ China hits Nvidia with antitrust probe amid US tech dispute

  China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) announced an investigation into the GPU giant on Monday, citing alleged breaches of anti-monopoly regulations.

  The focus of the investigation is not clear. According to Beijing approved newspaper China Daily, references were made to the company's $7 billion acquisition of datacenter networking specialist Mellanox.

• India Times ☛ China opens investigation into Nvidia over potential antitrust violations

  The inquiry, a rare move by Beijing, comes a week after the Biden administration expanded curbs on the sale of advanced U.S. technology to China. In the days since, the Chinese government announced that it would ban the export of several rare minerals to the United States and imposed sanctions on more than a dozen U.S. defense firms and defense industry executives.

• New York Times ☛ Nvidia Faces Antitrust Investigation in China

  China’s State Administration for Market Regulation said on Monday that it was investigating Nvidia for violating commitments made during its acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, a company that makes computer networking equipment. The Chinese regulator approved Nvidia’s acquisition of the company in 2020 with conditions to prevent anti-competitive practices and ensure supplies to China.

• Inside Towers ☛ Bill to Cut Red Tape and Expand Rural Broadband Passes U.S. Senate - Inside Towers

  Specifically, the measure would create an exemption from certain SEC public registration and reporting requirements for rural telecommunications companies. “This will save these small companies from costly and burdensome requirements that were never intended for them,” according to Baldwin and Ernest.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Bogus Complaint Disables Itch.io, Google Ignored Same Sender For Years

    Indie videgame portal Itch.io is effectively offine today after a brand protection company reported the platform for "fraud/phishing" for what was a problem easily solved using a DMCA notice. According to Google's transparency databases, the same company has repeatedly attempted to use the DMCA to solve alleged trademark infringement but had its complaints rejected.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Cloudflare Blocks Pirate Site URLs "For Legal Reasons"

    The company’s approach to copyright complaints differs based on the role it plays. If Cloudflare merely passes traffic along (for a website using their CDN), they forward DMCA takedown notices to the actual hosting provider, which is often hidden from public view.

    When Cloudflare actually hosts reported content, it will remove or disable access to it, following the procedures set forth in the DMCA, 17 U.S.C. § 512(g).

  • Digital Music News ☛ Ed Sheeran Beats 'Thinking Out Loud' Lawsuit Appeal Request

    The presiding judge chalked up the SAS dismissal to the allegedly unprotectable nature of the chord progressions in question. Besides affirming the unprotectable determination, the appeals court concurred with prior findings that the plaintiff could only allege infringement (and introduce related evidence) with regard to components of the “Let’s Get It On” sheet music submitted to the Copyright Office. Among other things, that narrowed the case’s scope to exclude the recording’s bass line, which doesn’t appear in the Copyright Office submission.