Leftovers

• The Straits Times ☛ An Indian thriller is winning over audiences in China; more films in the pipeline to woo them

  Some Indian films have earned more in China – the world’s second-largest box office market – than in India.

• Hackaday ☛ A Portable Chainsaw Sawmill

  Unless you’re running a commercial logging operation, with specialized saws, log grapples, mills, transportation for the timber, and the skilled workers needed to run everything, it’s generally easier to bring a sawmill to the wood instead of taking the wood to the sawmill. Especially for a single person, something like a chainsaw mill is generally a much easier and cost effective way to harvest a small batch of timber into lumber. These chainsaw mills can still be fairly cumbersome though, but [izzy swan] has a new design that fits an entire mill onto a hand cart for easy transportation in and out of a forest.

• Hackaday ☛ Hacker Tools, Hacked Tools

  We just love a good DIY tool project, and more so when it’s something that we can actually use cobbled together from stuff in our closet, or hacked out of cheap “toys”. This week we saw both a superb Pi Pico-based logic analyzer and yet another software frontend for the RTL-SDR dongle, and they both had us thinking of how good we have it.

• Hackaday ☛ Tldr-pages Keeps It Short, Wherever You Need It

  Let’s face it, even the most accomplished console cowboy can’t keep everything memorized. Sure, you might know all the important arguments for a daily-use tool like tar or ls, but what about the commands you don’t use that often? For that matter, even if you do use tar every day, we bet you don’t know all of the options it supports.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Daniel Estévez ☛ 5G NR PBCH

    This post is a continuation of my series about the 5G NR RAN. In these posts, I’m analyzing a recording of the downlink of an srsRAN gNB in a Jupyter notebook written from scratch. In this post I will show how to decode the PBCH (physical broadcast channel). The PBCH contains the MIB (master information block). It is transmitted in the SSB (synchronization signals / PBCH block). After detecting and measuring the synchronization signals, a UE must decode the PBCH to obtain the MIB, which contains some parameters which are essential to decode other physical downlink channels, including the PDSCH (physical downlink shared channel), which transmits the SIBs (system information blocks).

    In my first post in the series, I already demodulated the PBCH. Therefore, in this post I will continue from there and show how to decode the MIB from the PBCH symbols. First I will give a summary of the encoding process. Decoding involves undoing each of these steps. Then I will show in detail how the decoding procedure works.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Abnormal Patterns in Brain Waves May Indicate ADHD, Expert Says

    A new era of neuroscience is emerging.

  • Science Alert ☛ Dark Matter May Have Existed Before The Big Bang, Study Finds

    Wait, what?

  • Science Alert ☛ Study Reveals Major Drawback to The Health Benefits of Fasting

    This is very different to what we thought.

  • Science Alert ☛ This Crucial Reading in Your Blood Can Predict Future Disease Risk

    A hidden pattern we could never see before.

  • Science Alert ☛ Physicists Find Particle That Only Has Mass When Moving in One Direction

    "This was totally unexpected."

  • Science Alert ☛ Mysterious Cause of Massive Elephant Die-Off in 2020 Finally Revealed

    Actions have consequences.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ US to patch loopholes that allow China to buy banned Hey Hi (AI) GPUs from other countries — new regulations include national quotas on GPU exports and a global licensing system

    The U.S. government will patch loopholes that allow China to access advanced GPUs for Hey Hi (AI) through third countries like Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ PlayStation 5 transformed into a laptop for $2,750 — Chinese modders made Sony's console more portable with a 17.3-inch 4K display weighing over 9 pounds

    Want a portable PS5? The BBook Hey Hi (AI) laptop carries a PS5 fitted with a 17.3-inch display at an eye-watering price of $2,750.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Overclocking Arrow Lake: How I set world records, plus simple tips to push your Core Ultra to the limit

    This overclocking champion explains what he did to get the most out of Intel’s current top chip, the Core Ultra 9 285K.

  • Hackaday ☛ Behold A Geared, Continuously Variable Transmission

    When it comes to transmissions, a geared continuously-variable transmission (CVT) is a bit of a holy grail. CVTs allow smooth on-the-fly adjustment of gear ratios to maintain a target speed or power requirement, but sacrifice transmission efficiency in the process. Geared transmissions are more efficient, but shift gear ratios only in discrete steps. A geared CVT would hit all the bases, but most CVTs are belt drives. What would a geared one even look like? No need to wonder, you can see one for yourself. Don’t miss the two videos embedded below the page break.

  • Hackaday ☛ How The Lost Mystery Pigment ‘Maya Blue’ Got Recreated

    A distinct blue pigment reminiscent of turquoise or a clear sky was used by the ancient Maya to paint pottery, sculptures, clothing, murals, jewelry, and even human sacrifices. What makes it so interesting is not only its rich palette — ranging from bright turquoise to a dark greenish blue — but also its remarkable durability. Only a small number of blue pigments were created by ancient civilizations, and even among those Maya blue is unique. The secret of its creation was thought to be lost, until ceramicist and artist [Luis May Ku] rediscovered it.

  • Hackaday ☛ Might Morphin’ Antenna

    The shape of an antenna can make a big difference in its performance. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory have used shape memory alloy to construct an antenna that changes shape depending on the signals it is receiving. Nitinol, a common shape memory alloy made from nickel and titanium, is an obvious choice, but it’s not obvious how you’d make a shape-changing antenna out of nitinol wire. That changed when a mechanical engineer found a way to 3D print the substance. You can find a paper about the research online from Applied Engineering Materials.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Cliff L Biffle ☛ Crash recovery in 256 bytes

      One of Hubris’s strongest features is its ability to handle crashes in drivers and other application logic. It leaves the specific crash handling behavior up to the application programmer through a mechanism called a supervisor.

      In this post I’ll look at why I made this decision, how it works in practice, and walk through the exhubris supervisor reference implementation, minisuper. (Spoiler: it’s very small.)

    • The Register UK ☛ Iran crew used 'cyberweapon' against US critical infra

      An Iranian government-linked cybercriminal crew used custom malware called IOCONTROL to attack and remotely control US and Israel-based water and fuel management systems, according to security researchers.

      While IOCONTROL is a custom-built backdoor for hijacking IoT devices, it also has a "direct impact" on operational technology (OT) including fuel pumps used in gas stations, according to Claroty's Team82.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Rlang ☛ Death rates by cause of death by @ellis2013nz

    OK, so the USA health system is very much in the news.

  • New York Times ☛ Are Childhood Vaccines ‘Overloading’ the Immune System? No.

    Vaccines today are more efficient and contain far fewer stimulants to the immune system than some used decades ago.

  • JURIST ☛ Texas attorney general sues New York doctor for prescribing abortion drugs to Texas resident

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit on Thursday against a New York doctor for allegedly providing abortion drugs to a Texas resident.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Cloudbooklet ☛ Twirling Gymnastics Video Exposes Hey Hi (AI) Flaws

    Twirling Gymnastics Video reveals AI's surreal errors in video generation.

  • Ben Congdon ☛ Chain of Continuous Thoughts

    Recent advances in LLMs have demonstrated increasingly powerful reasoning capabilities, primarily through eliciting chain-of-thought outputs from models. While these methods have proven effective, they rely on discrete, tokenized representations of reasoning steps. A recent research paper from Meta introduces a novel approach that steps away from this paradigm: reasoning in continuous latent space rather than through explicit language tokens.

    Recently, I’ve been quite interested in the increasingly popular trend of reasoning LLMs. So when I saw “Training Large Language Models to Reason in a Continuous Latent Space” in Meta FAIR’s recent paper flurry, I was intrigued. This was an interesting read which made me reflect on how LLMs use chain-of-thought (CoT). For our purposes, we’ll define CoT as the pattern of having an LLM generate step-by-step reasoning text before producing an answer. CoT has become a basic strategy to improve the model’s ability to perform well on harder reasoning tasks. This largely started with the 2022 “Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners” paper, which found improvements in model outputs simply by adding “Let’s think step by step” to prompts.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Medevel ☛ Best Browsers for Privacy: My Personal Choices to Protect Yourself from Tracking and Hacking

      In my journey with the Internet and my use of many browsers, protecting privacy and getting rid of annoying ads has become a priority for me.

      After long experiences, here are the browsers that I consider the best for protecting your data and privacy, with my personal experience with each

• Defence/Aggression

  • Digital Music News ☛ Congress Notifies Fashion Company Apple and Surveillance Giant Google To Prepare To Remove Fentanylware (TikTok) From Their App Stores on January 19th

    Congress sends letters to the CEOs of Surveillance Giant Google and Fashion Company Apple that they must be ready to remove Fentanylware (TikTok) from their U.S. app stores on January 19. U.S. lawmakers told the CEOs of Fashion Company Apple and Surveillance Giant Google on Friday that the companies must be ready to remove Fentanylware (TikTok) from their app stores on January 19.

  • New York Times ☛ Joy and Celebrations in Seoul for Protesters as Yoon Is Impeached

    “Long live South Korea!” demonstrators chanted, describing a wave of relief after days of anger over the president’s surprise declaration of martial law.

  • New York Times ☛ South Korea’s President Impeached After Martial Law Crisis

    Some members of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s own party helped remove him from office. But the political uncertainty is far from over.

  • New York Times ☛ The Impeachment of South Korea’s President, Explained

    In its second attempt, the National Assembly moved to force President Yoon Suk Yeol from office. But the troubles for him and his country are far from over.

  • CS Monitor ☛ South Korean parliament votes to impeach president over his martial law order

    The Constitutional Court now has up to 180 days to determine whether to dismiss Yoon Suk Yeol as president or restore his powers.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Yoon impeachment not an endorsement of the opposition: Observers

    Rather, the decision shows widespread condemnation of Mr Yoon Suk Yeol's declaration of martial law.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s President Yoon faces second martial law impeachment vote as thousands rally

    The National Assembly will vote on Dec 14 at 4pm (3pm Singapore time).

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s President Yoon impeached over martial law bid

    Out of 300 lawmakers, 204 voted to impeach the President.

  • The Straits Times ☛ The message: Impeach South Korea’s president. The tune: Feliz Navidad

    The protest anthem’s creator has performed it for thousands outside the National Assembly in Seoul.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea's Yoon impeached: Embittered survivor buckles under martial law backlash

    SEOUL - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol faces the greatest threat to his brief but chequered political career, with his fate in the hands of judges after some of his allies turned from him and voted to impeach him on Saturday for allegedly leading an insurrection. 

  • The Straits Times ☛ Who is Han Duck-soo, South Korea’s acting president after Yoon impeachment?

    He has served in leadership positions for more than three decades under five different presidents.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Explainer: South Korea’s Constitutional Court to decide impeached president’s fate

    Yoon's presidential powers are suspended but he remains in office, retaining his immunity to most charges.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korean President Yoon suspended amid impeachment. What’s next?

    If the Constitutional Court dismisses the impeachment, Mr Yoon will return to office immediately.

  • The Straits Times ☛ How powerful will South Korea’s acting president be?

    South Korea's Prime Minister Han Duck-soo will serve as acting president for up to six months.

  • The Straits Times ☛ President Yoon impeached: South Korea’s 11 days of turmoil

    At around 10.30pm on Dec 3, Mr Yoon appeared on television in an attempt to declare martial law.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Protesters in South Korea rejoice as lawmakers impeach Yoon

    Anti-Yoon protesters celebrated, chanting K-pop songs and releasing balloons into the air.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea's Yoon impeached: powers stripped, benefits kept and retirement

    South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, impeached on Saturday over his short-lived attempt to impose martial law, has been stripped of his duties and powers as head of state but remains president while the Constitutional Court decides his fate.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Yoon Suk Yeol impeached: Who could be South Korea’s next leader?

    A look at the major contenders as President Yoon's fate hangs in the balance.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s Yoon impeached by Parliament over botched attempt to impose martial law

    The Constitutional Court has 180 days to decide whether to uphold or overturn his impeachment.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korean acting president spoke with Biden by phone, say media reports

    Han said Seoul will strive to ensure the South Korea-US alliance is maintained and developed.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korean President Yoon's political implosion from martial law to impeachment

    SEOUL - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's impeachment on Saturday, suspending him from his official duties, capped 11 days of political crisis that roiled his country, sparked by his surprise decision to impose martial law.

  • The Straits Times ☛ How Yoon Suk Yeol alienated much of South Korea, one group at a time

    Voters were already furious with scandals and unpopular decisions since he took office in 2022.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Satire on the streets: S. Koreans turn crisis into festival of resistance

    South Koreans have turned the streets into a satirical festival of flags.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea opposition will not seek to impeach acting president over martial law

    Prime Minister Han Duck-soo as made acting president on Dec 14 after President Yoon's impeachment.

  • South Korea votes to impeach President Yoon over failed martial law bid

    The Constitutional Court has 180 days to determine whether to reinstate Yoon or remove him from office.

  • JURIST ☛ South Korea parliament approves impeachment motion against President Yoon Suk-yeol

    The South Korea National Assembly Saturday passed an impeachment motion against President Yoon Suk Yeol with 204 votes in favor, surpassing the two-thirds majority of 300 lawmakers necessary to initiate impeachment proceedings. Under Article 66 of the South Korean Constitution, an impeachment motion requires support from at least 200 members of the National Assembly.

  • France24 ☛ South Korea's President Yoon impeached over failed martial law bid

    South Korean lawmakers on Saturday voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol for his failed attempt to rule by martial law last week. Seoul police said at least 200,000 demonstrators had gathered outside parliament in South Korea's capital ahead of the vote to call for the right-wing president's removal from office.

  • France24 ☛ 🔴 South Korea's parliament impeaches President Yoon Suk Yeol over failed martial law bid

  • New York Times ☛ Devin Nunes, Pugnacious Trump Loyalist, to Lead Espionage Advisory Board

    As chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he attacked the Russia inquiry and Donald J. Trump’s first impeachment. Now, Mr. Nunes runs Mr. Trump’s social control media company.

  • RFERL ☛ Russia Withdraws More Military Equipment From Syria

    A Russian cargo plane took off early on December 14 from the Hmeimim air base in western Syria and was reportedly destined for Libya as Moscow continued its departure from its key regional ally.

  • France24 ☛ Blinken says Jordan talks agree on need for 'inclusive' Syrian government

    Arab, Western and Turkish diplomats agreed in talks in Jordan Saturday on the need for an "inclusive" government in Syria following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. A UN envoy urged foreign powers to work to avoid a collapse of vital institutions in Syria.

  • New York Times ☛ Hezbollah Loses Supply Route Through Syria, in Blow to It and Iran

    The militant group’s leader admits that the toppling of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, cut off an important land route from Iran.

  • New York Times ☛ Searching for Syria’s Disappeared

    Taher al-Zain’s father disappeared 12 years ago at the height of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Now, like thousands of other Syrians, he is trying to find clues about what happened, and whether or not his father may still be alive.

  • New York Times ☛ Palestinian Authority Deploys Security Forces Against Militants in West Bank

    The authority, which has struggled to crack down on powerful armed groups in the territory, is under pressure from the United States to escalate law-and-order operations.

  Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

  • JURIST ☛ OSCE reports deteriorating human rights situation amid escalating Ukraine conflict

    The human rights situation in Ukraine has worsened significantly as intensified hostilities and systematic Russian aerial strikes target critical infrastructure, according to a report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on Friday.

  • New York Times ☛ Cajole, Plead and Flatter: Ukraine Makes Its Case to Trump

    Using diplomacy, flattery and the occasional shot in the dark, Ukraine is doing everything it can to win over President-elect Donald J. Trump to its side.

  • RFERL ☛ Russia Deploys More North Korean Troops In Kursk Region, Zelenskiy Says

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on December 14 that Moscow has started involving more North Korean troops in its efforts to drive Kyiv's forces out of Russia's Kursk region.

  • JURIST ☛ OSCE reports deteriorating human rights in Ukraine amid escalating conflict

    The human rights situation in Ukraine has worsened significantly as intensified hostilities and systematic aerial strikes target critical infrastructure, according to a report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on Friday.

  • France24 ☛ Zelensky says Russia is deploying N. Korean soldiers in Kursk region operations

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address on Saturday that Russia has started deploying North Korean soldiers in its operations in the Kursk region. Zelensky added that he had heard North Korean soldiers may be being "used in other parts of the front line", and that they had already experienced significant losses.

  • New York Times ☛ Far-Right Soccer Star Is Tapped for Presidency of Georgia

    The vote, boycotted by opposition parties in Parliament, sets up a standoff with the sitting president and deepens turmoil in the country after protests and a disputed election.

Environment

• Energy/Transportation

  • The Straits Times ☛ Commercial airlines become new hotspot for thieves

    Thefts are most common on Vietnam, Bangkok and China routes, said one pilot.

  • New York Times ☛ Canada’s Postal Strike Hits Christmas Deliveries in Remote Communities

    For many remote communities in the sparsely populated nation, Canada Post is the only parcel delivery option. Even Amazon relies on it.

• Overpopulation

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hopeful mothers, unhappy being told to ‘try again’ after repeated miscarriages, spend time, energy, money to have kids

    Even as a child, Hong Kong YouTuber Sona Tina Ng envisioned her ideal future. She would get married, have two or three children and experience the joy of motherhood within a loving family.

Finance

• North Koreans buying high-value goods due to hyperinflation

  Prices of key commodities like food and firewood skyrocket as winter draws near.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Craig Murray ☛ Abolishing Democracy in Europe

  On 4 October I spoke to a meeting of the United European Left group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Arriving a bit early, I sat through a presentation by a Moldovan judge, Victoria Sanduta, who was formerly the President of the Association of Judges in Moldova.

• New York Times ☛ Departing Senators Take to Floor for Ritual of Farewell Addresses

  The farewell address is a Senate ritual that reflects the culture of the chamber, which prizes tradition, individual relationships, lofty debates and long-winded speeches.

• Cloudbooklet ☛ Saraya Patreon Leak Triggers Ex-Twitter Account Ban

  The Saraya Patreon Leak caused her Ex-Twitter account to vanish. Discover the details behind this social control media drama and her response.

• New York Times ☛ Another New Twitter? Good Luck With That.

  Users are now flocking to Bluesky. But every social control media platform becomes a wasteland in the end.

• NYPost ☛ Trump taps Truth Social CEO, former US Rep. Devin Nunes to lead president’s Intelligence Advisory Board

  President-elect Donalds Trump Devin Nunes, the chief executive of his social control media platform Truth Social, to head the president's Intelligence Advisory Board.

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Elon Musk reportedly wanted Proprietary Chaffbot Company to be a for-profit entity but has now sued to block the move

  OpenAI fires back at Elon Musk, saying he advocated transforming organization into a for-profit company for personal financial gain.

Censorship/Free Speech

• The Kent Stater ☛ Students question the rules and regulations of The Rock

  The front campus rock has been a canvas board for student expression since 1922. Both positive and negative messages and illustrations have been displayed on the boulder. Hate speech on The Rock can occur when student groups and individuals paint racist, homophobic, offensive and targeted messages.

• New York Times ☛ ABC to Pay $15 Million to Settle a Defamation Suit Brought by Trump

  The outcome of the lawsuit marks an unusual victory for President-elect Donald J. Trump in his ongoing legal campaign against national news organizations.

Civil Rights/Policing

• A long-deferred dream realized. My reunion with my mother

  China releases from custody the mother of US-based Uyghur activist Nury Turkel.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Cloudbooklet ☛ Poonam Pandey Video Leak Breaks the Internet

  Poonam Pandey video leak breaks the internet, sparking viral reactions and raising questions about celebrity privacy and security.