Leftovers

• Nathan Upchurch ☛ What Do We Expect from Fragrance? Natural Incense in an Unnatural World

  Smoke was the first breath of early civilization, its rising plumes a synonym for human presence. This byproduct of life-sustaining flame has been constant companion to our evolution as a species, changing not only human lives, but human bodies. As the ubiquity of smoke rendered transparent to our ancestors’ noses the once harsh notes of burning plant matter, there must have been a sense of magic when our forebears happened to toss a well-resinated tree branch or a fragrant herb upon the coals. It is little wonder, then, that the word “perfume” stems from the Latin “perfumare,” translating to “through smoke.”

• James G ☛ Advent of Patterns: Timelines

  This all has me thinking about the temporal dimension of data. Digital documents are the results of changes made over time – sometimes, all changes are made in one sitting, such as may be the case for a note; in other cases, changes are made over long periods of time, such as is the case with wiki pages. Being able to scroll through the history of a document feels more intuitive than navigating to different panels to see changes.

  I am curious: in what places have you seen timeline patterns used? Where could timelines and the ability to scroll through data versions be applied?

• Career/Education

  • Terence Eden ☛ Soft Launching my Next Big Project – Stopping

    As of today, I've quit.

    I started working full time before going to university. I worked part-time during my studies. Graduated into a crappy job. Got a place on a prestigious grad scheme. Worked my way up through the public and private sector. Start-ups and Ministries of State. Constantly working.

    Not any more!

  • Seth Godin ☛ The fame/trust inversion

    Over time, we came to associate fame with trust.

    Social media presented a shortcut to some. Hack your way to fame and don’t worry about trust. Assume that people will give you the benefit of the doubt simply because they’ve heard of you.

    And now, people in many lines of work, people who were trained to know better, are finding the pull of this shortcut irresistible. It’s tempting to trade credibility for fame.

  • Rlang ☛ Nice meeting!

    The ICSDS 2024 meeting in Nice is quite impressive and not primarily because it is in Nice under a beautiful December sun. As other (numerous) IMS meetings I attended (since the initial one in Uppsala in 1990!), the program is of high quality and along topics that are currently moving fast or emerging. From the sessions I attended, e-values are strongly represented, although it remains unclear to me why they should constitute a major departure from p-values, as they stick to hypothesis testing, Type I error, power, and the whole paraphernalia of Neyman-Pearson formalism. If I manage to attend a BIRS workshop on the subject next Summer, I may manage to get a better e-derstanding!

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Indiana bakery still using Commodore 64s originally released in 1982 as cash registers — Hilligoss Bakery in Brownsburg sticks to the BASICs

    A recently posted photograph of old-school Commodore 64s, which debuted 42 years ago, in use as registers at a modern bakery has attracted a lot of attention. As further sleuthed by commenters, this bakery was identified as the Hilligoss Bakery in Brownsburg, Indiana, and the last publicly posted picture of the Commodore 64 register was in 2021. As such, we called the shop, and they verified that the registers are still in use. At the time of writing, the establishment in question has 488 Google reviews with an average 4.7-star rating and 202 Facebook reviews with an average 4.5-star rating— and, if some reviews mentioning the C64 are any indication, it even seems to be busier than usual, likely encouraged by the spreading word of this retro tech curiosity.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Dhole Moments ☛ The Better Daemons Of Our Profession

    The worst evils of social media might related to the greed of the companies that built the platforms, but the power of such platforms to poison our egos cannot be overstated. Even the Fediverse is not immune to this effect.

    Gamification and enshittification are never far apart.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Pro-Eating-Disorder Internet Is Back

    X, however, offers a totally different experience. If you search for popular tags and terms related to eating disorders, you’ll be shown accounts that have those terms in their usernames and bios. You’ll be shown relevant posts and recommendations for various groups to join under the header “Explore Communities.” The impression communicated by many of these posts, which typically include stylized photography of extremely skinny people, is that an eating disorder is an enviable lifestyle rather than a mental illness and dangerous health condition. The lifestyle is in fact made to seem even more aspirational by the way that some users talk about its growing popularity and their desire to keep “wannarexics”—wannabe anorexics—out of their community. Those who are accepted, though, are made to feel truly accepted: They’re offered advice and positive feedback from the broader group.

  • Robert Birming ☛ Feeling Inadequate

    I recently deleted my accounts on Bluesky and Mastodon. Don't worry, this isn't a post about how social media is all bad. Nor is it about some kind of personal rebirth after a digital detox.

    I just want to explain what prompted this decision.

  • Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Writing is my canary bird

    Canary bird has since become a term to signify early warning signs.

    For me and my general health and well-being, writing is my canary bird.

    When my mind gets all bogged down or I start to have issues with my well-being (becoming sick, not sleeping well, etc), I’ve noticed that my creativity and ability to write my notes, daily journals or these blog posts is among the first things to starts to fail.

  • LabX Media Group ☛ Reindeers Pave the Way for Regenerative Medicine | The Scientist Magazine®

    Although regenerating amputated limbs is still a distant dream, Li and researchers have obtained important insights about organ regeneration from studying the cellular and molecular processes behind tissue renewal and repair in deer. These insights can lay the foundation for better wound and tissue repair therapies, paving the way for advancing the field of regenerative medicine.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ On-Demand Nursing Is Dangerous for Nurses and Patients

    Big Tech and Wall Street are deploying an on-demand nursing model across America. Created to solve a nursing shortage that doesn’t exist, it creates unsafe conditions for both medical professionals and patients.

  • Wired ☛ Drug Dealers Have Moved on to Social Media

    Initial studies into drug sales on social media began to be published in 2012. Over the next decade, piecemeal studies began to reveal a notable portion of drug sales were being mediated by social platforms. In 2021, it was estimated some 20 percent of drug purchases in Ireland were being arranged through social media. In the US in 2018 and Spain in 2019, a tenth of young people who used drugs appear to have connected with dealers through the internet, with the large majority doing so through social media, according to one small study.

    Some dealers these days are even brazen enough to boost their posts and pay for sponsored advertising. “Mushrooms and marijuana used to be hard to get and now they’re being marketed to me in beautiful packaging on Instagram,” says one 34-year-old in Austin, Texas, whom WIRED spoke to. Dealers ran hundreds of paid advertisements on Meta platforms in 2024 to sell illegal opioids and what appeared to be cocaine and ecstasy pills, according to a report this year by the Tech Transparency Project, and federal prosecutors are investigating Meta over the issue.

  • Wired ☛ The Study That Called Out Black Plastic Utensils Had a Major Math Error

    Specifically, the authors estimated that if a kitchen utensil contained middling levels of a key toxic flame retardant (BDE-209), the utensil would transfer 34,700 nanograms of the contaminant a day based on regular use while cooking and serving hot food. The authors then compared that estimate to a reference level of BDE-209 considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's safe level is 7,000 ng—per kilogram of body weight—per day, and the authors used 60 kg as the adult weight (about 132 pounds) for their estimate. So, the safe EPA limit would be 7,000 multiplied by 60, yielding 420,000 ng per day. That's 12 times more than the estimated exposure of 34,700 ng per day.

    However, the authors missed a zero and reported the EPA's safe limit as 42,000 ng per day for a 60 kg adult. The error made it seem like the estimated exposure was nearly at the safe limit, even though it was actually less than a tenth of the limit.

  • Vox ☛ Novavax is as protective as other Covid vaccines, but has fewer side effects | Vox

    More than half of all people who get mRNA boosters have similar unpleasant short-term side effects to mine. But strangely, few of them seem to see Novavax as an alternative: As of August, Americans had received 650 million mRNA vaccine doses, compared with only 83,000 Novavax doses. Experts told me Novavax has suffered both from its timing and from an unearned reputation as a dark horse. “There’s this perception that this is some kind of second-line vaccine that people take if they don’t want to get the mRNA vaccines,” says Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease doctor and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, “but it should not be.”

  • CS Monitor ☛ Luigi Mangione’s killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO raised to act of terrorism

    Mr. Thompson was shot while walking to a hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare – the United States’ biggest medical insurer – was holding an investor conference.

    The killing kindled a fiery outpouring of resentment toward U.S. health insurance companies, as Americans swapped stories online and elsewhere of being denied coverage, left in limbo as doctors and insurers disagreed, and stuck with sizeable bills.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • PC World ☛ US govt. is considering a ban on Amazon's bestselling router brand

    What’s so bad about TP-Link routers? Well, they come with security flaws and have been linked to cyberattacks in the past. For example, thousands of TP-Link routers were used in a hacker attack against Microsoft’s Azure cloud service early last month. The hackers behind the attack are believed to have links to the Chinese government. If US authorities instate a ban, it could happen as early as next year.

  • Rogue Amoeba ☛ Rogue Amoeba - Under the Microscope

    Even as our products steadily grew in popularity, our relationship with Apple was almost non-existent. Plenty of individuals inside the company were fans, but we received very little attention from Apple as a corporate entity. We didn’t much mind being outsiders, but it meant that we often had zero notice of breaking changes introduced by Apple.

    During this time, Apple placed an emphasis on improving the security of MacOS, continually locking the operating system down further and further. Though their changes weren’t aimed at the legitimate audio capture we provided our users, they nonetheless made that capture increasingly difficult. We labored to keep our tools functioning with each new version of MacOS. Through it all, we lived with a constant fear that Apple would irreparably break our apps.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Nurses whose shitty boss is a shitty app

    The point of the "gig economy" is to use the "did it with an app" trick to avoid labor laws, so that bosses can shift risks onto workers, because capitalists hate capitalism. These apps were first used to immiserate taxi-drivers, and this was so successful that it spawned a whole universe of "Uber for __________" apps that took away labor rights from other kinds of workers, from dog-groomers to carpenters.

    One group of workers whose rights are being devoured by gig-work apps is nurses, which is bad news, because without nurses, I would be dead by now.

    A new report from the Roosevelt Institute goes deep on the way that nurses' lives are being destroyed by gig work apps that let bosses in America's wildly dysfunctional for-profit health care industry shift risk from bosses to the hardest-working group of health care professionals: [...]

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ No, Brian Thompson Wasn’t a “Working-Class Hero”

    Even apart from the fact that nothing but their own insatiable lust for profits made them authorize AI to overrule doctors, the level of shamelessness on display here is off the charts. No one, you see, designed this system. It just sort of happened. In reality, of course, the political power of companies like UnitedHealth Group is precisely what stops the system from being replaced with a better one like Medicare for All. Witty’s company lavishes millions on lobbying and political donations to make sure no one touches its murderous business model. And then Witty himself turns around and writes for the New York Times that, gosh, we all just found ourselves in a system like this, what can you do?

    Not to be outdone in brazenness, Bret Stephens wrote an op-ed for the New York Times calling Brian Thompson — a man under investigation for federal antitrust violations, and who was, when he was assassinated, being sued by multiple pension funds for offloading $117 million in company stock on them before the antitrust probe went public — as a “working-class hero.” He writes: [...]

  • [Repeat] Tedium ☛ So, Bluesky Has An Extortion Problem

    Turns out, it was all part of the scheme. The user had spent weeks building up accounts and buying up domains, then going after prominent blogging personalities. When the actual Parr showed up, the fake Parr started using the other sockpuppets to go after the real Parr, pushing him to buy the fake account.

    The user took advantage of a disparity in the incomplete transition between X, formerly known as Twitter, and Bluesky, where a lot of real people are, but some prominent personalities have not yet shown up. And Bluesky, being put to the test, absolutely failed.

  • The Register UK ☛ We told Post Office about system problems, says Fujitsu

    Horizon is an EPOS and back-end finance system for thousands of Post Office branches around the UK, first implemented by ICL, a UK technology company later bought by Fujitsu. From 1999 until 2015, around 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were wrongfully convicted of fraud when errors in the system were to blame. It destroyed the lives of many involved, leaving some bankrupt and others feeling suicidal, with several succeeding in ending their lives. While a number of convictions have been quashed in the courts, 60 people died before just seeing any sort of justice served. A statutory inquiry into the mass miscarriage of justice launched in 2021 is ongoing.

  • The Register UK ☛ Boffins interrogate AI model to make it reveal itself

    Machine learning model hyperparameters refer to values set prior to the training process that affect model training – the learning rate, the batch size, or the pool size. They're distinct from model parameters – such as weights – which are internal to the model and are learned during training.

    An adversary with both can mostly reproduce an AI model at far less cost than incurred during the original training process – something developers spending billions on building AI models might prefer to avoid. There are already a variety of parameter extraction techniques.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Hakai Magazine ☛ What’s Next for Deep-Sea Mining?

    In a landslide victory, Carvalho unseated Michael Lodge, an English lawyer who had served as the ISA’s secretary general since 2016. Lodge’s tenure at the international body—which is tasked with the contradictory goals of both helping deep-sea mining get off the ground and keeping it in check—was marred by allegations of bribery, corruption, and of Lodge having an undue bias toward the mining companies the ISA oversees, all of which Lodge has vehemently denied. Many environmentalists and scientists welcomed the news of Lodge’s displacement.

• Security

  • Krebs On Security ☛ How to Lose a Fortune with Just One Bad Click

    Adam Griffin is still in disbelief over how quickly he was robbed of nearly $500,000 in cryptocurrencies. A scammer called using a real Google phone number to warn his Gmail account was being hacked, sent email security alerts directly from google.com, and ultimately seized control over the account by convincing him to click “yes” to a Google prompt on his mobile device.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • PC World ☛ Meta slapped with €251 million fine for mishandling 2018 data breach

      In September 2018, it came to light that hackers had breached Facebook and gained access to data on over 50 million Facebook accounts. Around 3 million of those affected accounts were based in EU countries.

      The personal data involved in the hack included: [...]

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Sweden is a nearly cashless society. Here's how it affects people who are left out

      Part of this is due to a unique Swedish law that prioritizes "freedom of contract" above any legal requirement to accept cash. In other words, it is up to businesses—including banks—whether they take cash. Public transport, stores and services typically do not accept cash as payment, and there is no infrastructure for paying bills over the counter.

      The transition to cashlessness accelerated when a group of banks created the mobile payment app Swish in 2012. By 2017, Sweden was using less cash than other European countries. Today, more than 80% of the population has a Swish account.

    • Ed Zitron ☛ Never Forgive Them

      These people want everything from you — to control every moment you spend working with them so that you may provide them with more ways to make money, even if doing so doesn’t involve you getting anything else in return. Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and a majority of tech platforms are at war with the user, and, in the absence of any kind of consistent standards or effective regulations, the entire tech ecosystem has followed suit. A kind of Coalition of the Willing of the worst players in hyper-growth tech capitalism.

      Things are being made linearly worse in the pursuit of growth in every aspect of our digital lives, and it’s because everything must grow, at all costs, at all times, unrelentingly, even if it makes the technology we use every day consistently harmful.

    • NYOB ☛ noyb WIN: Dutch authority fines Netflix €4.75 Million

      Eight complaints, no company fully complied. In January 2019, noyb filed eight complaints against a series of streaming providers such as Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube – and of course Netflix. All of these companies failed to adequately respond to users’ access requests under Article 15 GDPR in one way or another. According to the right of access, companies are obliged to grant their users access to a copy of all raw data that it about the user, as well as additional information about the sources and recipients of the data, the purpose for which the data is processed or information about the countries in which the data is stored and how long it is stored.

    • Privacy International ☛ Privacy and autonomy: Redefining boundaries for Indigenous communities

      The concept of privacy is essential for Indigenous peoples to exercise their right to autonomy and self-determination, enabling them to better protect their cultural heritage and prevent external control, exploitation, and surveillance of their lands and identities.

    • EPIC ☛ EPIC Tells Court that Privacy Protections Don’t Violate the First Amendment – EPIC – Electronic Privacy Information Center

      In NetChoice v. Bonta,NetChoice—a tech industry lobbying group—is trying to prevent the enforcement of California’s Age Appropriate Design Code (AADC). The AADC orders certain companies to provide minors with privacy protections and to design their platforms in ways that don’t manipulate minors. NetChoice broadly argues that the entire law violates the First Amendment.

      Last year, the Northern District of California granted NetChoice’s request for an injunction in a disastrously overbroad opinion, which would have made almost any privacy law presumptively unconstitutional. While the injunction was on appeal, the Supreme Court decided Moody v. NetChoice, holding that NetChoice’s strategy of bringing facial challenges to regulation with nothing more than barebones records was unacceptable. The Court also rejected NetChoice’s overbroad legal rule: that everything platforms do to publish content is protected speech. The Court directed NetChoice to be specific on remand: to explain with specificity what the law’s provisions regulate, whether what is being regulated is expressive, and whether any unconstitutional applications of the law outweigh the constitutional ones.

    • EFF ☛ “Can the Government Read My Text Messages?”

      Whether you’re just starting to think about your privacy online, or you’re already a regular user of encrypted messaging apps, Digital Rights Bytes is here to help answer some of the common questions that may be bothering you about the devices you use. Watch the short video that explains how to keep your communications private online--and share it with family and friends who may have asked similar questions!

    • The Record ☛ Dutch regulator fines Netflix $5 million for data privacy violations

      A Dutch privacy regulator on Wednesday fined Netflix €4.75 Million ($5 million) for not telling consumers enough about how the streaming service uses their data.

      The fine stems from Netflix’s failure to give customers “sufficient” information about how it handled customer personal data from 2018 to 2020, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) said in a press release. The regulator also said the information Netflix did provide was unclear.

• Defence/Aggression

  • NL Times ☛ Dutch F-35s intercept Russian military aircraft armed with long-range cruise missiles

    Dutch fighter pilots intercepted Russian fighter jets and bombers while monitoring NATO’s northeastern airspace north of Russian coastal exclave Kaliningrad on Tuesday, the Dutch Defense Ministry confirmed on Wednesday. “Yesterday, together with Finland and Sweden, we intercepted Russian planes [armed] with supersonic missiles over the Baltic Sea,” said Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans on X.

  • ANF News ☛ Israel: Turkey supports jihadist forces that operate against Kurds in Syria

    Turkey has systematically encroached on Syrian territory, a process that began with military operations in 2016, 2018, and 2019, and continues to this day. Turkey has established proxy zones where armed groups, such as the Syrian National Army, operate under its control. Currently, approximately 15% of Syria’s territory is under the control of Turkish-backed forces. In these areas, the Turkish currency is in use, and Turkish bank branches and postal services have been operating.

    Furthermore, the Turkish military bombards infrastructure in the northeastern autonomous region of Syria using aircraft and UAVs.

    Turkey supports jihadist forces that operate against Kurds in Syria.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's Drug Use Means He Isn't Allowed to Enter Certain SpaceX Buildings

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's lawyers are advising him not to pursue higher security clearances.

    As the Wall Street Journal reports, that's because the mercurial entrepreneur could risk having to reveal his frequent contacts with foreign nationals, most notably Russian president Vladimir Putin.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's Drug Use Becoming a Problem for Government Security Clearance

    As the Wall Street Journal reports, SpaceX lawyers advised executives not to attempt to secure higher security clearances for the mercurial CEO, since that would force him to disclose information about his frequent contacts with foreign nationals, including Russian president Vladimir Putin, as well as his much-rumored drug use.

  • CNN ☛ Romania’s top court annuls presidential election result

    They also showed how Georgescu was boosted by potential interference on TikTok – the social media platform on which he largely ran his campaign – through algorithms, coordinated accounts and paid promotion, Reuters reported.

    One of the declassified documents, from the Romanian intelligence agency, detailed more than 85,000 attempted cyber-attacks on election websites and IT systems, and concluded that “the attacker has considerable resources specific to an attacking state,” Reuters reported.

  • ABC New Media AG ☛ EU Opens Formal Proceedings Against TikTok On Romanian Election Risks

    The probe will focus on TikTok's recommender systems, notably the 'risks linked to the coordinated inauthentic manipulation or automated exploitation of the service,' per the Commission. The EU will also look at TikTok's policies on political advertisements and paid-for political content.

  • Reuters ☛ EU opens investigation into TikTok over election interference

    The European Commission opened formal proceedings on Tuesday against social media firm TikTok over its suspected failure to limit election interference, notably in the Romanian presidential vote last month.

  • The Wall Street Journal ☛ EU to Investigate TikTok Over Romanian Elections - WSJ

    The European Commission opened a formal investigation into TikTok over concerns foreign actors used the video platform to interfere in Romanian presidential elections.

  • France24 ☛ EU launches probe into TikTok over Romania vote 'interference'

    The probe, under a mammoth law known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), centres on concerns the short-video app failed to "assess and mitigate systemic risks" linked to election integrity, the European Commission said.

    The DSA forces the world's largest tech firms to do more to protect European users online and clamp down on illegal content.

    Moscow is regularly accused of orchestrating disinformation campaigns in favour of candidates that could be favourable to it, in the EU and elsewhere.

  • CNN ☛ EU opens probe into TikTok over suspected Romania election interference

    The European Union’s executive arm said it will request information and look into TikTok’s policy on political advertisements and paid-for political content as well as TikTok’s systems to generate recommendations and the risks of them being manipulated.

    On December 5, the Commission ordered TikTok to freeze data linked to the Romanian election under the bloc’s sweeping Digital Services Act, which regulates how the world’s biggest social media companies operate in Europe.

  • Heise ☛ Suspicion of election manipulation: EU proceedings against Tiktok

    The EU Commission has initiated proceedings against Tiktok on the basis of the Digital Services Act (DSA) due to the events surrounding the presidential elections in Romania. It concerns alleged violations of the DSA, the Commission announced in Brussels on Tuesday. The Commission is investigating the suspicion of influence exerted by a third country.

  • The Verge ☛ Supreme Court will hear TikTok ban arguments in January

    While the outcome is far from guaranteed, SCOTUS’ decision to take up the case is a small win for TikTok, which is barreling toward expulsion from the US unless the court throws out or pauses the law, or its China-based parent company ByteDance agrees to sell it in time. The law at the center of the case, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, seeks to prohibit apps like TikTok from being owned by companies in a set list of foreign adversary countries.

  • The Hill ☛ McConnell urges Supreme Court to reject TikTok’s bid to delay ban

    In Wednesday’s filing, McConnell dismissed TikTok’s argument that the law violates the First Amendment.

    “The topsy-turvy idea that TikTok has an expressive right to facilitate the CCP censorship regime is absurd,” McConnell’s counsel, Michael A. Fragoso, wrote.

    “Would Congress have needed to allow Nikita Khrushchev to buy CBS and replace The Bing Crosby Show with Alexander Nevsky?”

    “The goal of this litigation is delay,” he added.

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok CEO Meets With Trump Amid Supreme Court Appeal of Ban

    As its U.S. fate hangs in the balance – and moments following a meeting between its CEO and President-elect Trump – TikTok is now petitioning the Supreme Court for an emergency injunction pending review.

    ByteDance-owned TikTok made the emergency injunction push official yesterday, after an appellate panel upheld the relevant law closer to December’s beginning. As most are well aware (and as we’ve covered in detail), that law will result in TikTok’s stateside shutdown on January 19th unless the platform sells or the president extends the deadline by 90 days.

  • New York Times ☛ Supreme Court to Hear TikTok’s Challenge to Law That Could Ban It

    The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to hear TikTok’s challenge to a law that could ban its U.S. operations, putting the case on an exceptionally fast track, culminating in oral arguments at a special session on Jan. 10.

    In setting aside two hours for the argument, the justices signaled that they viewed the case as presenting questions of exceptional importance. The move came only two days after TikTok and its Chinese parent company filed an emergency application. In another break with its usual practices, the court did not ask the government to respond to the application, instead treating it as a petition seeking review and granting it.

  • The Washington Post ☛ TikTok’s ban-or-sale law challenge to be heard in Supreme Court

    The justices said they would consider whether the law, passed with bipartisan support to address national security concerns, violates the First Amendment rights of millions of TikTok users and the owners of the video-sharing platform.

    In a sign of the significance of the issue, the court added a special hearing to its calendar, scheduling two hours for oral argument Jan. 10. A ruling could come any time after that.

  • Wired ☛ Intel Officials Warned Police That US Cities Aren’t Ready for Hostile Drones

    The memo states that violent extremists in the US are increasingly searching for ways to modify “off-the-shelf” drones to ferry dangerous payloads, including “explosives, conductive materials, and chemicals,” with major advancements in the area being propelled largely by rampant experimentation on foreign battlefields, including those in Ukraine.

  • NYPost ☛ Biden finally breaks silence on congressional stock trading

    President Biden has declared his support for banning sitting members of Congress from trading stock — an eleventh-hour pivot after four years of silence over the controversy.

    “Nobody in the Congress should be able to make money in the stock market while they’re in the Congress,” Biden told the “More Perfect Union” podcast.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Biden supports a ban on congressional stock trading

    President Joe Biden endorsed banning members of Congress from trading stocks, throwing his waning political capital behind long-running efforts to prevent lawmakers from profiting off of their unique access to market-moving information.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Supreme Court to hear TikTok case before ban deadline

    TikTok’s future in the U.S. has been uncertain since 2020, when then-President Trump moved to shut down the short-form video app because of national security concerns. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ TikTok’s future is in limbo as a US ban looms

    The European probe comes as TikTok faces an imminent ban in the US that could see it removed from digital app stores in the country within weeks, unless Chinese parent ByteDance sells the platform to an American company.

  • New York Times ☛ Man Who Ran Secret Police Office in New York Admits He Was Chinese Agent

    The man, Chen Jinping, was accused last year of helping to run the unauthorized Chinese police outpost and of hiding his activities from the federal government by not registering as a foreign agent. Mr. Chen was charged along with another man, Lu Jianwang, also known as Harry Lu.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ ‘A major blow to the Kremlin’: Why the killing of Russian chemical weapons chief Igor Kirillov is more than just a military setback — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ House Ethics Committee secretly voted to release Matt Gaetz ethics report, source says

    It’s a stunning turnaround for the often secretive panel of five Republicans and five Democrats. Just last month, members voted along party lines to not release the findings of their nearly four-year investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct with minors and use of illicit drugs while Gaetz was in office.

  • Futurism ☛ Dunce-Like Senator Posts Photo of "Drone" That's Actually a TIE Fighter From "Star Wars"

    As practically anybody who's ever watched a movie could tell immediately, the picture showed a replica of a TIE Fighter spacecraft from the fictional "Star Wars" universe, tied to the back of a semi-truck.

    "You can’t be that stupid," one user shot back, "or can you?"

    Others took the opportunity to indulge in humor steeped in "Star Wars" lore.

• Environment

  • The Revelator ☛ Greenwashing and Social Justice: Pro-Trophy Hunting Narratives Need Careful Examination

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Invasive ‘murder hornets’ are wiped out in the US, officials say

    The Washington and U.S. Departments of Agriculture announced the eradication Wednesday, saying there had been no detections of the northern giant hornet in Washington since 2021.

  • DeSmog ☛ New Report Shows a Surge in European SLAPP Suits as Fossil Fuel Industry Works to Obstruct Climate Action

    Developed in collaboration with the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, the report shows that SLAPPs continue to rise in Europe and identifies a total of 1,049 cases between 2010-2023. The lawsuits cover a broad range of topics, and environmental issues made up the second-most-targeted subject of all the SLAPP suits reported, behind corruption.

    The report identified SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) in 41 countries across the continent, including Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK, and Ukraine. Globally big oil, big ag, and other corporate interests have filed lawsuits against individuals and groups who advocate for environmental and climate protection and attempt to hold key players accountable.

  • VOA News ☛ Damaged Russian ships spill estimated 3,700 tons of oil in Kerch Strait, state media say

    An estimated 3,700 tons of low-grade fuel oil had spilled into the Kerch Strait after two Russian ships were seriously damaged by stormy weather, Russian state media reported Monday.

    The two ships, the Volgoneft-239 and the Volgoneft-212, were transporting roughly 9,200 tons of mazut, a heavy, low-quality oil product. Social media footage from the scene showed a black liquid rising among the waves.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Machine learning framework improves groundwater recharge estimates in Western Australia

    The study, led by Griffith's Australian Rivers Institute Ph.D. Candidate, Ikechukwu Kalu using the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite data, combined advanced random forest regression models with groundwater storage anomalies to overcome the current limitations in spatial resolution. The findings are published in the journal Water Resources Research.

    By downscaling GRACE data to a fine resolution of 0.05° (~5 km), researchers achieved reliable recharge estimates over the Gnangara system, which is a relatively small calibration site of approximately 2,200 km².

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Conversation ☛ Biological computers could use far less energy than current technology – by working more slowly

      The IBM scientist Rolf Landauer addressed the question of whether we need to spend so much energy on computing tasks in 1961. He came up with the Landauer limit, which states that a single computational task – for example setting a bit, the smallest unit of computer information, to have a value of zero or one – must expend about 10⁻²¹ joules (J) of energy.

      This is a very small amount, notwithstanding the many billions of tasks that computers perform. If we could operate computers at such levels, the amount of electricity used in computation and managing waste heat with cooling systems would be of no concern.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • El País ☛ Cats pay more attention to us than we realize: They outperform babies in word association game

      The study concludes that cats were able to form these associations more quickly than human infants. The majority of cats learned the picture-word association after just two nine-second sessions, while most 14-month-old human babies required four 15-second sessions. However, Takagi notes that this doesn’t mean human babies are slower at learning words. “Cats quickly lost interest in the stimuli, which made it seem like they were learning faster than humans, but it is not a real difference in learning speed,” she explains.

• Finance

  • Daily Mail ☛ Another CNN star flees failing network as panicked remaining staff brace for impact of looming layoffs

    Yet another senior CNN staffer is fleeing the station following dismal election ratings - this one a 17-year veteran.

    The network on Wednesday confirmed word of the 72-year-old Gloria Borger's departure - bidding goodbye to the longtime political analyst in the process.

    As of writing, there's been no word on the journalist's future plans yet, as she's already served stints at CBS News and CNBC.

  • David Rosenthal ☛ Cherry-picking

    But follow me below the fold for more detail from someone who has been long NVDA for more than three decades..

    Alas, this infographic is deeply misleading because they cherry-picked their data. Nvidia's stock price is extraordinarily volatile. The log plot of NVDA shows that on average over its history every three years it suffers a drop of between 45% and 80%. Fortunately, over the same time it has had much larger rises. Thus when discussing the return for being long NVDA for a period the start and end dates matter a lot.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • NYPost ☛ Jeff Bezos spotted having dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago

    The billionaire is just one of the tech executives hoping to get in Trump’s good graces before inauguration. Bezos had informed Trump’s team that he would donate $1 million to his inaugural fund, according to the Wall Street Journal.

  • Futurism ☛ Boston Dynamics Lays Off Human Employees, Says It's "Burning Through Cash"

    The layoffs "affect nearly every function throughout the business," a spokesperson told the newspaper.

  • Futurism ☛ Trump Disgusted by Public’s Support for CEO Killer Suspect

    It's striking that the president-elect would find it appropriate to pal around with one New York killer while disparaging another — except, of course, when you consider who died in those disparate encounters.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Qualcomm’s CTO to Retire; Deputy CTO is Promoted - Inside Towers

    Dr. James Thompson will retire as Chief Technology Officer after 33 years at Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM). The company made the announcement Thursday along with its appointment of Dr. Baaziz Achour as CTO. Achour is now Qualcomm’s Deputy Chief Technology Officer. Both changes are effective as of February 3, 2025.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Elon Musk now calls himself a ‘cultural Christian.’ What does that mean?

    As fewer Americans attend church, a space has opened between religion and spirituality. “Cultural Christian” is one of the terms people are using to define themselves in that space. And certainly, plenty of Americans decorate Christmas trees, observing a tradition rooted in Christianity, though they may not attend church.

    “I don’t think there’s a problem with a cultural understanding of Christianity,” says Katie Eichler, head pastor at St. Philip’s United Methodist Church in Houston. “But if it’s not pushing us to love our neighbors, then it’s a misunderstanding of Christianity.”

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • CBC ☛ This TikTok account pumped out fake war footage with AI — until CBC News investigated

      For months, an anonymous TikTok account hosted dozens of AI-generated videos of explosions and burning cities. The videos racked up tens of millions of views and fuelled other posts that claimed, falsely, they were real footage of the war in Ukraine.

      After CBC News contacted TikTok and the account owner for comment, it disappeared from the platform.

    • Science Alert ☛ Viral Heart Attack 'Hack' on Social Media Could Put Lives at Risk, Experts Say

      However, this technique is not intended for use outside a hospital. Yet that hasn't stopped it from being portrayed as a universal lifesaver, particularly in viral posts (over 270,000) designed for maximum shareability.

      Heart attacks and cardiac arrests are distinct medical emergencies. A heart attack occurs when blood flow to the heart is blocked due to the build-up of cholesterol and blood clots in the arteries that supply the heart muscle with the necessary oxygen and nutrients to function fully.

    • The Conversation ☛ Before buying a voice assistant for Christmas, you should worry about misinformation

      In our experiments, we also varied the accuracy of information. The inaccuracies were inconsistencies within the text, so that they could be detected without knowledge of the topic. For example, information on appendicitis first listed common symptoms and stated in the next sentence that about 80% of people do not have the typical symptoms.

      People generally judged the inaccurate information pieces as less credible than the accurate information. However, the credibility ratings for the inaccurate information were still surprisingly high. OpenAI

      More importantly, the subjects in our experiments judged the inaccurate information as significantly more credible when presented by a voice assistant versus reading it as text. Two processes play a role in this phenomenon: first, the conversational nature of the interaction gives people the feeling that they are interacting with an intelligent being.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Sean Conner ☛ I'm adjusting my tin hat to talk a bit about Google banning people

    Another day, another YouTube channel gets demonitized. While it matters to the channel owner that the channel was demonitized, for this post, it doesn't matter which channel, because it probably happens many times per month. Maybe per day, given the sheer size of YouTube these days. And in every case you do hear about, the owner is going around in circles, with different parts of Google trying to pass the support issue to another part of Google hoping the person with the support issue goes away.

  • [Old] Bryan Lunduke ☛ Shared post - The Lunduke Journal has been banned from YouTube

    In the early days, The Lunduke Journal published all shows exclusively to YouTube (yeah, I know... a mistake). And, for over a year of that time, YouTube demonetized every single video with the word "Linux" in the title.

    Seriously. They really did that.

    If a video said "Linux is nifty" it was instantly demonetized. As you can imagine, for someone who talks about Linux a great deal, this made earning a living from those videos incredibly difficult.

    Now, in 2024, YouTube has kicked things up a notch.

  • Meduza ☛ Murders, torture, imprisoned for speech, and a spike in xenophobia Human rights monitors at OVD-Info wrap up 2024 in Russian law enforcement — one of the country’s darkest years in modern history (and things are only getting worse)

    OVD-Info reports that 2,976 people face politically motivated prosecutions in Russia today, including 620 cases launched in 2024. Of this group, 1,407 people are now jailed. Among those behind bars are 1,107 defendants in “anti-war” criminal cases (including 62 journalists and bloggers). This year, prosecutors opened politically motivated cases against 212 people for felony speech offenses made in public statements, online comments, written remarks, and videos.

  • The Hindu ☛ Social media users booked for posting derogatory remarks against CM

    A senior official from the Hyderabad police confirmed that cases are being booked in various police stations across the commissionerate against users posting abusive content after taking legal opinion.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Inside Towers ☛ Phil Cook Retires After Incredible Inside Towers Tenure

    A veteran of not only the U.S. Army having served in Vietnam as a microwave officer, but of sales and marketing in the telecom publishing field, Phil Cook has been with Inside Towers almost from its inception, joining in 2014, to establish it as the market’s leading resource for reaching the digital infrastructure industry.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Trump Is Not on a "Retribution Tour;" He's on an Authoritarian Spree

    If you believe Trump is on a retribution tour, you are accepting his claim that truthful reporting of (flawed) survey results, or truthful reporting of what sources say about Trump associates’ attempts to cover up their ties to Russia, or truthful labeling of lies as lies, amount to some kind of harm.

    If you use the term “retribution” to describe Trump’s attacks on the press, you are accepting his frame that free speech that accurately describes his faults is somehow wrong, an injury to be avenged.

    Worse still, if you adopt his frame — retribution — you are normalizing the false claims of grievance that animated Trump’s entire campaign, from the kickoff in Waco to the far right rally in Madison Square Garden — a campaign of grievance explicitly defending insurrection against democracy, as Jonathan Karl laid out over a year ago.

  • The Hill ☛ NBC's Chuck Todd calls ABC, Donald Trump settlement a 'gut punch'

    “This was stunning to me and absolutely a gut punch to anybody who works for a major media company,” Todd said during a conversation with political reporter Chris Cillizza.

    “I think it does set a precedent that is going to be very difficult … to get out from under potentially,” Todd said. “I just, you know, I think the risk of losing this suit was 5 percent.”

  • Security Week ☛ Recorded Future Tagged as ‘Undesirable’ in Russia

    The Russian government has tagged U.S. threat intelligence firm Recorded Future as an undesirable organization, accusing the U.S. firm of participating in the collection and analysis of data on the actions of its military operations.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • YLE ☛ Nokia developer gets conditional jail term for pulling vital mains plugs during strike

    The employee participated in the December 2019 industrial action as a picket guard. Before the strike began, the software developer announced that he planned to power down the equipment that he managed during the strike.

    At the time, he had been a Nokia employee for 26 years.

  • ANF News ☛ Swiss Federal Assembly approves bill recognizing Yazidi genocide

    The Swiss Federal Assembly has approved, by a majority vote, a bill recognizing the genocide committed against the Yazidis. The bill also calls on the Swiss Federal Council to launch an international campaign to address the crimes committed.

  • RFA ☛ Authorities arrest influential Tibetan internet entrepreneur

    Sonam Choedrub, who goes by the online name of Aga Gelektsang, was arrested at Xining Caojiapu International Airport in early December and is being held for interrogation by the Drakar county Public Security Bureau, the two sources, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, told Radio Free Asia.

  • US News And World Report ☛ As Wars Rage Around Them, Armenian Christians in Jerusalem's Old City Feel the Walls Closing In

    One of the oldest communities in Jerusalem, the Armenians have lived in the Old City for decades without significant friction with their neighbors, centered around a convent that acts as a welfare state.

    Now, the small Christian community has begun to fracture under pressure from forces they say threaten them and the multifaith character of the Old City. From radical Jewish settlers who jeer at clergymen on the way to prayer, to a land deal threatening to turn a quarter of their land into a luxury hotel, residents and the church alike say the future of the community is in flux.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • India Times ☛ Elon Musk says Starlink inactive in India after second device seized

    Elon Musk said Starlink satellite internet is inactive in India, his first comments since authorities seized two of the company's devices in recent weeks, one in an armed conflict zone and another in a drug smuggling bust.

  • The Hill ☛ Protecting undersea cables from sabotage without triggering a storm

    The undersea cable network, the unseen backbone of global communications, carries 95 percent of international data, including financial transactions, military communications and internet connectivity. Despite its vital role, this infrastructure is both vulnerable and poorly defended, lying exposed on the ocean floor and shielded primarily by its obscurity.

    Recent incidents in the Baltic Sea and near Taiwan have underscored the risks, with evidence suggesting that powers such as Russia and China are testing the West’s resolve to protect these critical lifelines.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Verge ☛ Why Trump is an antitrust wild card for Big Tech

  For pretty much the entire 2010s, the tech industry grew and consolidated through mergers and acquisitions of startups at a breakneck pace, which is how you ended up with what some founders and venture capitalists called a “kill zone” around some companies — if a big tech company saw a startup that might compete with them, they would just buy it, and that would be that. This situation led to a lot of hearings, press releases, lawsuits, and podcast episodes — and ultimately it ended up with a Biden administration that wanted to do something to slow it down and perhaps even unwind some of it.

  Some of this enforcement has been so intense that companies have even devised creative end runs around the very appearance of acquiring another company. Look at Inflection AI: Microsoft didn’t acquire it; rather, it hired most of the company, licensed its tech, and installed the cofounder, Mustafa Suleyman, as the CEO of its new AI division. You can’t get blocked for an acquisition deal if, on paper, you haven’t acquire anything at all.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • The Hill ☛ Anti-deepfake pornography legislation included in year-end spending deal

      The TAKE IT DOWN Act would criminalize nonconsensual intimate imagery, including content generated by artificial intelligence (AI), and would require platforms to take down such material after being notified of its existence.

      The bill passed the Senate earlier this month, but had yet to be taken up by the House. Its inclusion in the year-end continuing resolution, which needs to pass by Friday to avert a government shutdown, boosts its chances.

    • Digital Music News ☛ YouTube Partners with CAA On AI Deepfake Removal Tools

      YouTube says by collaborating with CAA talent, the platform will gain insight from some of the world’s most influential figures in the public. CAA’s clients’ direct experience with digital replicas in the evolving landscape of AI will be critical in shaping a tool that responsibly empowers and protects creators and the broader YouTube community. YouTube says this is the first of its tools in a larger testing effort.

    • Variety ☛ CAA, YouTube Will Let Talent Identify, Remove AI Deepfakes

      In what’s being touted as the first partnership of its kind, CAA is collaborating with YouTube on a program promising to let actors, athletes and other talent fight back against AI-generated fakes uploaded to the video platform.

      YouTube’s message to Hollywood is that it’s trying to be a good partner to creative industries by taking “proactive steps to build responsible AI.” Under the partnership, CAA clients, “many of whom have been impacted by recent AI innovations,” will have access to YouTube’s early-stage likeness management technology, which is designed to identify and manage AI-generated content featuring faces on YouTube “at scale,” according to the companies.

    • Hollywood Reporter ☛ YouTube, CAA Partner On Celebrity Generative AI Likeness Tech

      The specifics on the new tools are a little vague for now, with the platform saying that it is “early-stage technology designed to identify and manage AI-generated content that features their likeness, including their face, on YouTube at scale.”

      In addition to surfacing content that features their likeness, celebrities will also be able to submit requests for removal via YouTube’s privacy complaint process.

    • Deadline ☛ AI Deepfakes: YouTube, CAA Tool To Help Stars Control Likenesses On Video

      It’s been over a year since SAG and the WGA ended their months-long strikes with agreements that sought to address the coming impact of artificial intelligence on film and TV production.

      But in that time, the technology has grown by leaps and bounds, with Open AI last week releasing its long-awaited Sora AI video generator which allows users to make a video from scratch using just a text prompt. Earlier today, Google launched its own video generation tool, Veo 2, which it says supports output in resolutions up to 4K. The tech giant plans to offer the video generation tool on YouTube Shorts and “other products” in 2025.

• Copyrights

  • Pivot to AI ☛ UK government wants to give AI companies free access to train on your creative works

    The UK government has introduced a proposal “ensuring AI developers have access to high-quality material to train leading AI models in the UK and support innovation across the UK AI sector.” [Consultation description; Press release]

    This will be achieved with a broad exception to copyright, allowing AI companies to train their models on your stuff unless you request an opt-out — rather than the present situation where AI companies are buying licenses to try to head off copyright suits.

    How can you check downstream copies of your work have been opted out? How do you check what someone’s used as training material? You can’t!

  • Daniel Miller ☛ This Is Every Creator's Desperate Fear

  • Thorsten Ball ☛ Surely not all code's worth it

    And if I don’t care about the quality nor the whitespace then why not let LLMs write it?

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Google expands Code Assist with support for third-party data sources

    Code Assist was formerly known as Duet AI, and was relaunched for enterprises in October. It was seen as Google’s response to the growing demand for artificial intelligence-powered coding tools such as GitHub Copilot, adding enterprise-grade security and legal indemnification features. With that update, it also received enhanced code transformation capabilities and customized code suggestions, based on customer’s private code repositories.