Leftovers

• New York Times ☛ Donald Bitzer, Unsung Pioneer of Interactive Computing, Dies at 90

  “The level to which PLATO, its people and its history have been ignored is extraordinary given not only how seminal the innovations were and how early its online community flourished, but also how recently it all happened,” the tech entrepreneur Brian Dear wrote in “The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the Rise of Cyberculture” (2018).

  Dr. Bitzer, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois, began developing PLATO in 1960 as a tool for educators to create interactive, individualized coursework. It swiftly evolved into “a culture, both physical and online,” Mr. Dear wrote, “with its own jargon, customs and idioms.”

• Seth Godin ☛ Taxonomy as a service

  If you’ve been frustrated with a price list, a menu, a user interface or a bookshelf, it’s because someone didn’t spend the time to understand the expected taxonomy.

  When we sort our stuff, we’re telling people a story. A story about our stuff and a story about how we see the world.

• Kev Quirk ☛ The Cost of Self-Hosting

  Since playing around with Android and trying to get some self-hosted services running, I've been thinking about the costs of self-hosting. Ironically, I think the cost to my wallet is the least of them.

  I've talked about what I think the definition of self-hosting is in the past, but it's been 5 years since I wrote that post, and although my opinion hasn't really changed on the definition, the way I think about self-hosting has.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ Meta blog post

  I am not the biggest fan of meta blog posts, also called blogging about blogging. I do think they’re sometimes useful but they’re also quite uninspiring for me to read. And that’s why I try to stay away from the topic for the most part. But a bunch of people over the past few weeks have reached out via email, asking me questions about my blog, how I run it, where is hosted etc, and so I thought it was a good idea to answer a bunch of questions here all in one go.

• Science

  • New York Times ☛ Human Thought Is Far Slower Than Your Internet Connection

    Now researchers have estimated the speed of information flow in the human brain: just 10 bps. They titled their study, published this month in the journal Neuron, “The unbearable slowness of being.”

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Archaeologists Are Finding Dugout Canoes in the American Midwest as Old as the Great Pyramids of Egypt

    Thomsen’s 2021 find spurred the two women to continue their hunt—and take it public. Establishing the Wisconsin Dugout Canoe Survey Project, the pair and helpers have so far documented a full 79 dugout canoes, including two of the ten oldest dugouts found in eastern North America, ranging between 4,000 and 5,000 years old. Wisconsin’s dugout catalog sheds light on Indigenous knowledge, habits of trade and travel—and even environmental adaptation. But the project also conjures a sense of magic in the familiar: To travel thousands of years back into history, look no further than America’s urban lakes and rivers.

• Career/Education

  • Axios ☛ MAGA civil war pits Ramaswamy and Musk vs Cernovich and Loomer in immigration fight

    Vivek Ramaswamy escalated the conflict into a full-blown war Thursday morning with a post on X blaming an American culture that "venerated mediocrity over excellence" for the growth in foreign tech workers.

    "A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers," Ramaswamy wrote, calling for a 1950s-style "Sputnik moment" to prioritize "nerdiness over conformity."

  • Sean Goedecke ☛ What can strong engineers do that weak engineers can't?

    Right now people are blowing up on Twitter about whether the USA needs to import top talent from other countries, and if that means that American home-grown engineering talent is weak. Last month, people were blowing up over a study that purported to show that ~9.5% of software engineers do effectively zero work, and are effectively defrauding the company. And for the last ten years, people have been talking and writing about the fabled “10x engineer”.

    What does it really mean to be a strong software engineer?

• Hardware

  • Jeff Geerling ☛ Documenting an 1115 ft radio tower climb

    Some broadcast engineering tasks are a bit too daunting for me to consider. Climbing the massive towers that power radio and TV stations is one of them!

    Recently, local engineer Aaron Cox had the perfect set of conditions for a drone flight to capture some of that risk, as the weather and timing of an antenna inspection lined up perfectly with his schedule.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ This Army unit is the first to field new company and battalion drones

    The Skydio X10D drone is a short-range recon aircraft that can fly up to 5 kilometers and stay aloft for approximately 30 minutes, according to the release. Typically, the Skydio is deployed by infantry and scout platoons on dismounted patrols, providing soldiers with a better snapshot of their immediate area during mission planning.

  • Vermaden ☛ Perfect Desk

    Early in my computer related life – that means being 15+ years old – especially at parents house – I had a prefabricated desk with stand for monitor and for all other possible things. Printer on top. CD/DVD all over the place. Things like that.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Variety ☛ Denis Villeneuve: 'Cellphones Are Banned on My Sets. It's Forbidden.'

    Denis Villeneuve recently spoke to the Los Angeles Times and shared his discomfort over how “human beings are ruled by algorithms right now.” He explained: “We behave like AI circuits. The ways we see the world are narrow-minded binaries. We’re disconnecting from each other, and society is crumbling in some ways. It’s frightening.”

  • Science Alert ☛ Experts Reveal Why You Shouldn't Do The Same Workout Everyday

    While this might sound appealing to those of us who have trouble sticking to a routine, the truth is if we don't challenge our body enough, eventually this strategy could actually work against our aim to get in shape.

    In order to improve your fitness, you need to disrupt your body's homeostasis. This is the process by which living organisms maintain a stable internal environment despite changes in our external conditions.

  • Armin Ronacher ☛ Reflecting on Life | Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings

    Over the years, I've been asked countless times: “What advice would you give to young programmers or engineers?” For the longest time, I struggled to answer. I wasn't sure I had anything definitive or profound to offer. And truthfully, even now, I'm not convinced I have enough answers. But as I've reflected on my journey to here, I've formulated some ideas that I believe are worth sharing — if only to provide a bit of guidance to those just starting out. For better or worse, I think those things are applicable regardless of profession.

    My core belief is that fulfillment and happiness comes from deliberate commitment to meaningful work, relationships, and personal growth and purpose. I don't claim that these things can be replicated, but they worked for me and some others, so maybe they can be of use for you.

  • MWL ☛ BSDCan 2025 Chair’s Entirely Personal Comments on the Con Mask Policy

    Degreed scientists have performed large amounts of actual research. Their data shows over and over again, that masks work. Multiple sorts of studies have shown this.

    YouTube is not science. Neither is Twitter, nor Substack, Facebook, any social media, blog, or influencer web page. Fox News certainly is not.

  • [Old] Notre Dame Magazine ☛ What I’m Reading: The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt

    I recently attended a free guided meditation at the college where I used to teach. Four of us sat in a circle — the leader, two freshmen students and me. During a break we introduced ourselves. Everyone said how good it was to be offline and away from our phones for a while. Then we discussed how essential our phones had become. “I get all my news [sic] from TikTok,” one student said. “I get mine from Instagram,” the other replied. Though I’m as addicted to my smartphone as anyone else, I knew enough not to mention that I don’t tweet or snap or TikTok and still watch PBS NewsHour. And I was reminded that part of the reason I retired (during COVID) was that everything had gone online. I missed the immediacy of in-person classrooms.

  • [Old] The Conversation ☛ Have smartphones created an ‘anxious generation’? Jonathan Haidt sounds the alarm

    A decade ago, parents could not have known the threats lying within the shiny new smartphones they presented to their excited teenagers. But the evidence is mounting that the children who grew up with smartphones are struggling.

    Haidt calls the period from 2010 to 2015 the “great rewiring”. This was a period when adolescents had their neural systems primed for anxiety and depression by extensive daily smartphone use.

  • [Old] Jonathan Haidt ☛ Online Supplement for The Anxious Generation | Jonathan Haidt

    This section provides supplemental material omitted from the book for brevity. Appendix A guides readers through the significant technological and societal changes between the two phases of The Great Rewiring of Childhood (2010-2015), and the four decades before it.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Informa PLC ☛ 2024 in review: A bad year for public cloud in telecom

    The cheerleaders would have you think it is only a matter of time before the public cloud swallows telecom, along with everything else. "Hyperscaler" economics and artificial intelligence (AI) urges make it inevitable that operators will eventually move telco workloads, along with less mission-critical IT, into the giant data centers operated by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure for thousands of multinational clients. Unfortunately for the cheerleaders, it is just not happening.

    [...]

    The economic case, however, is obviously not as strong as it is when resources can be shared with numerous other companies. Spain's Telefónica, moreover, is still not fully convinced by the other benefits of the public cloud providers. Automation is currently more advanced when both the core network software and infrastructure come from Ericsson than it is when Telefónica takes the core from Nokia and the infrastructure from AWS, according to Cayetano Carbajo, the operator's director for core networks.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Microsoft Bundling Practices Focus of Federal Antitrust Probe

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Outage takes ChatGPT, Sora and OpenAI’s APIs offline for many users

    According to the outage tracking service Down Detector, the issue emerged around 1:30 p.m. ET. The Verge reported that some users who attempted to launch ChatGPT were greeted by an error message. In other cases, the chatbot loads successfully but doesn’t process prompts.

  • Peroty ☛ Bask in the glow - Offering a choice isn’t empowering when the choice isn’t understood

    If you insist on asking people, as if they can make an informed choice, then provide them context written in plain English, what Rosetta is and why you need it. And I mean very basic, easy to understand language that doesn’t rely on other technical knowledge. If you can’t, then install it.

  • Nick Heer ☛ The Generative A.I. Grouch

    The most obvious problem is that generative A.I. is not just ChatGPT or other similar chat bots; it is an entire genre of features. I wrote earlier this month about some of the features I use regularly, like Generative Remove in Adobe Lightroom Classic. As far as I know, this is no different than something like OpenAI’s Dall‍-‍E in concept: it has been trained on a large library of images to generate something new. Instead of responding to a text-based prompt, it predicts how it should replicate textures and objects in an arbitrary image. It is far from perfect, but it is dramatically better than the healing brush tool before it, and clone stamping before that.

  • MaskRay ☛ Exporting Tweets

    On https://x.com/settings/, click More -> Settings and privacy -> Download an archive of your data. Wait for a message from x.com: "@XXX your X data is ready" Download the archive.

  • Dhole Moments ☛ Roasted Christmas Spam from Muhu.ai

    The implied value proposition for this “Muhu.ai” startup is to enable clueless suits to surveil the proles working for them without needing to understand any of the domain expertise their developers have accumulated.

    That sure sounds pretty shit to toss at open source developers, doesn’t it? Using “AI” to shift even more of the power dynamic away from workers and towards company executives.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Wired ☛ You Need to Create a Secret Password With Your Family

      Add to that impersonation scams, where a criminal pretends to be someone known to their target and extracts money. There have been increasing calls for people, and particularly families, to create passphrases or passwords with each other. At the start of December, the FBI issued a recommendation that people create a “secret word or phrase with your family to verify their identity,” and British bank Starling has also published guidelines on creating safe phrases with others.

      It’s a simple, if not new, approach—one that can potentially be effective. For instance, if you receive a message or call from your “son” or “daughter,” and they’re urgently asking for money to get out of a jam, asking them to provide a pre-agreed passphrase can reveal whether it’s really them.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Scams Based on Fake Surveillance Giant Google Emails

      Scammers are hacking Surveillance Giant Google Forms to send email to victims that come from google.com.

      Brian Krebs reports on the effects.

      Boing Boing post.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ Surveillance Self-Defense: 2024 in Review

      This year, we celebrated the 15th anniversary of our Surveillance-Self Defense (SSD) guide. How’d we celebrate? We kept at it—continuing to work on, refine, and update one of the longest running security and privacy guides on the internet.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Iran votes to lift bans on WhatsApp, Google Play and other foreign-owned apps

      Iran’s government has unblocked access to the WhatsApp messenger and Google Play store after banning them two years ago, state media reported.

      The Supreme Cyberspace Council, which is tasked with safeguarding the internet for Iranian citizens, voted unanimously to lift restrictions on a number of foreign-owned applications during a meeting today, according to a report by the state news agency IRNA.

    • Ruben Schade ☛ The phsycological impact of surveillance

      SciTechDaily reported on a new study published by researches at my Sydney alma mater about the impact surveillance, or the feeling of being watched, had on their sensory perceptions: [...]

    • Techdirt ☛ Yeah, Maybe Your Air Fryer Doesn’t Need To Collect Your Gender Or Location Data

      I’ve noted for years how the U.S. is simply too corrupt to pass a modern [Internet]-era privacy law or regulate dodgy data brokers. So we are subjected to a parade of privacy and security scandals thanks to numerous industries that over-collect your data, fail to properly secure it, then sell access to any random asshole on the [Internet] with a few hundred bucks to spare. Usually without informing users.

      Countless gadgets like your smart television over-collect and monetize location and behavior data, but fail to engage in due diligence to protect it. Apparently even your air fryer is now over-collecting a whole bunch of data it doesn’t need so they can also monetize your every waking fart. According to UK consumer group Which?, most Amazon air fryers are now collecting all kinds of data they simply don’t need in order to function: [...]

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Hill ☛ Congress does not have to accept Trump's electoral votes

    The Constitution provides that an oath-breaking insurrectionist is ineligible to be president. This is the plain wording of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. “No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” This disability can be removed by a two-thirds vote in each House.

  • El País ☛ Defenders of the territory: Milpamérica, a social network for resisting the Musk algorithm

    Milpamérica.org is an autonomous network for posting stories about Mesoamerica and its diasporas. The platform was created in order to connect land defenders, climate justice warriors, communities in resistance and the diaspora and dissidents who fight for Mother Earth. The idea was not only driven by Musk’s appointment. It also stemmed from users’ rumblings about how best to exchange knowledge in the digital era, and from elders’ insistence on the fact that neither governments nor corporations will solve the climate crisis.

  • European Commission ☛ Joint Statement by the Commission and the HRVP

  • RFERL ☛ Ship Suspected Of Damaging Cables Off Finland Part Of Russia's 'Shadow Fleet,' EU Says

    "The suspected vessel is part of Russia’s shadow fleet, which threatens security and the environment, while funding Russia’s war budget. We will propose further measures, including sanctions, to target this fleet," the statement added.

    The statement added that "in response to these incidents, we are strengthening efforts to protect undersea cables, including enhanced information exchange, new detection technologies, as well as in undersea repair capabilities, and international cooperation."

  • New York Times ☛ Finland Seizes Ship After Undersea Power Cable to Estonia Is Cut

    Finland seized an oil tanker after the latest in a series of disruptions to undersea infrastructure.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Finnish coastguard boards tanker suspected of causing power and internet cable outages

    Two fibre-optic cables owned by Finnish operator Elisa linking Finland and Estonia were broken, while a third link between the two countries owned by China’s Citic was damaged, the Finnish transport and communications agency, Traficom, said.

    A fourth internet cable running between Finland and Germany and belonging to Finnish group Cinia was also believed to have been severed, the agency said.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Finnish authorities board tanker suspected of damaging undersea cables — tanker is reportedly linked to Russia’s shadow fleet

    Finland has stopped and boarded a ship suspected of causing damage to the Estlink 2 undersea power cable and three other internet lines on Christmas Day. The Cook Islands-registered oil tanker, called Eagle S, is owned by Caravella LLCFZ, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, and is apparently the only vessel that the company owns. At the time of the stop, the Financial Times said that the ship was carrying oil from Russia to Egypt and that public records placed it over the damaged cable during the time of the outage.

  • France24 ☛ Finland probes Russia-linked tanker for 'sabotage' of undersea cable

    Finnish authorities are investigating the oil tanker Eagle S, suspected of "aggravated sabotage" to the Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia damaged on Christmas Day. The tanker is thought to be part of Russia's "shadow fleet" vessels that transport embargoed Russian oil products.

  • YLE ☛ Estlink cable disruption: Finnish Border Guard escorts tanker linked to Russia's 'dark fleet'

    According to global ship tracking website MarineTraffic, the vessel in question, the Eagle S, flying the Cook Islands flag, noticeably slowed down around the time transmission was disrupted.

    Based on the tracking data, the Finnish Border Guard's patrol vessel Turva escorted the tanker to the waters off Porkkalaniemi, a peninsula on the Gulf of Finland, on Wednesday evening.

    The oil tanker was, according to MarineTraffic, on its way from St. Petersburg to Egypt.

  • The Hill ☛ Finland seizes Russia-linked ship after undersea cable cut

    Finland on Thursday seized a ship carrying oil for Russia in relation to the recent cutting of an undersea cable connecting electricity to Estonia as concern mounts over ships disrupting power and gas lines in European waters.

    Finland’s national law enforcement body, the Police of Finland, said in a statement it had seized a Cook Islands-registered ship called the Eagle S.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Finland investigates latest 'sabotage' of Baltic Sea cables

    Electricity transmission between Finland and Estonia through the Estlink 2 connection was cut at 12:26pm (1026 GMT) local time on Wednesday, according to Finnish grid operator Fingrid.

    The Eagle S crude oil tanker flying the flag of the Cook Islands was located at the site of the power cable at the time, with Finnish news agency SST reporting that this vessel is part of the sanction-busting “dark fleet” shipping Russian oil around the globe.

  • VOA News ☛ Finland detains Russia-linked vessel on suspicion it damaged undersea cable

    Finnish police and border guards boarded the vessel, the Eagle S, just past midnight Thursday and took over the command bridge, Helsinki Police Chief Jari Liukku said at a news conference. The vessel was intercepted in Finland's exclusive economic zone and taken to Finnish territorial waters, police said.

  • Axios ☛ Companies donating to Trump's inauguration include Amazon, Meta, GM

    Flashback: Several of the companies suspended political donations after Jan. 6 or released statements saying they would reconsider their approaches, WSJ reports.

    Four years later, some companies that denounced the insurrection are giving more to Trump's inauguration than they ever have for previous ceremonies.

  • The Independent UK ☛ More than 10,000 migrants died this year trying to reach Spain by sea, aid group says

    Tens of thousands of migrants left West Africa in 2024 for the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago close to the African coast that has increasingly been used as a stepping stone to continental Europe.

  • YLE ☛ Four telecommunication cables connecting Finland also out of service

    Two of the cables are marine cables operated by Elisa, running between Helsinki and Tallinn, Estonia. One also running from Helsinki to Tallinn is owned by the Chinese-owned CITIC Telecom.

    The fourth cable is Cinia's C-Lion1 submarine cable, which connects Helsinki to Germany. Finnish state-owned Cinia has pinpointed the damage to its cable southeast of Porkkala peninsula, just west of Helsinki on the Gulf of Finland.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Finland police seize ship after undersea power cable to Estonia is cut

    According to Finish and Estonian authorities, there has been no impact on the energy supply in the two countries since the cable outage.

  • Meduza ☛ Finland boards and seizes likely Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tanker suspected of damaging power and communications cables in Baltic Sea

    Reuters reported that Finnish authorities “boarded and took control of an oil tanker traveling from Russia,” believing its anchor may have damaged the power cable. Finnish officials say the tanker, registered in the Cook Islands, likely belongs to Russia’s “shadow fleet,” a group of ships used to evade sanctions on the sale of Russian oil. Officials did not find the ship’s anchor after boarding. The same vessel is suspected of damaging three communication cables, in addition to the Estlink 2, The Financial Times reported on Thursday.

  • Reuters ☛ Finland boards oil tanker suspected of causing internet, power cable outages

    The Cook Islands-registered ship, named by authorities as the Eagle S, was boarded by a Finnish coast guard crew that took command and sailed the vessel to Finnish waters, a coast guard official said at a press conference. "From our side we are investigating grave sabotage," said Robin Lardot, director of the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation. "According to our understanding, an anchor of the vessel that is under investigation has caused the damage," he added.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Number of Registered Lobbyists Jumps to a Record High in California

    There was a roughly 10% increase in the number of lobbyists who registered for the 2023-24 session compared to the previous one — for a record of 3,245 people, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

  • The Straits Times ☛ In a first, Taiwan’s Presidential Office stages war game to simulate China emergency

    Central and local government agencies as well as civil groups participated in the three-hour exercise.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China urges the Philippines to return to ‘peaceful development’

    The use of a US-built missile system in the Philippines will only fuel an arms race, Beijing warns.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Trump nominee favors ‘destroying TSMC’ fabs if China invades Taiwan — strategy designed to deprive China of key motivation to attack

    The next U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy is very likely to be Elbridge Colby, who is well known to favor the destruction of Taiwan’s chip fabs in the event of a Chinese invasion.

  • New York Times ☛ Israel Strikes Houthi Targets in Yemen, Hitting Airport and Ports

    The assault killed at least four people and injured 21 others, the state news agency in Yemen reported. The strikes came after a week of attacks by the Iran-backed militia.

  • New York Times ☛ Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians

    Surprised by Oct. 7 and fearful of another attack, Israel weakened safeguards meant to protect noncombatants, allowing officers to endanger up to 20 people in each airstrike. One of the deadliest bombardments of the 21st century followed.

  • New York Times ☛ Five Journalists Killed in Israeli Strike in Gaza, Palestinian Officials Say

    The Israeli military said it had struck a vehicle containing a “terrorist cell” in the Nuseirat area of Gaza.

  • France24 ☛ Israeli strikes kill dozens in Gaza, including hospital staff and journalists

    Israeli airstrikes in Gaza on Thursday killed at least 45 people, according to Palestinian sources, including hospital workers and five journalists. The strikes come as worsening humanitarian conditions and freezing winter temperatures claim the lives of newborns in displacement camps.

  • RFERL ☛ Israel Strikes Huthis At Yemen Airport, Prompting Iranian Condemnation

    Israel carried out large-scale air strikes on the main airport in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, on December 26 as it steps up attacks on the Iranian-backed Huthi rebels in what Tehran called a “violation” of peace and security.

  • France24 ☛ Israel strikes Yemen's Sanaa airport as Netanyahu fires warning

    Israeli air strikes hit Sanaa International Airport and other sites in Yemen on Thursday, killing three. The strikes, in response to Houthi attacks on Israel, also injured a plane's crew member, said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was at the airport. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes would continue "until the job is done".

  • Myanmar Christians, wary of airstrikes, celebrate Christmas in a cave

    More than 300 religious buildings destroyed since 2021, shadow government says

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Russian firm starts shipments of Hey Hi (AI) systems based on homegrown CPUs, but can't avoid using foreign GPUs

      Russian company Graviton launches first Hey Hi (AI) and HPC machine with homegrown CPUs that will have to be used with Nvidia's H100.

    • The Straits Times ☛ China's Pooh-tin Jinping will visit Russia in 2025, Russian ambassador says

      China's President Pooh-tin Jinping will visit Russia in 2025, Russia's state-run RIA news agency quoted Moscow's ambassador to Beijing as saying early on Friday.

    • RFERL ☛ Crew Struggled To Save Plane That Crashed In Kazakhstan

      Experts say they believe the flight crew of an Azerbaijan Airlines jet that crashed on December 25 was struggling to control the plane in its last moments. No official cause has been given yet for the crash, which claimed dozens of lives. Meanwhile, families and friends of passengers on the plane expressed fears and shared stories about loved ones hours after the disaster. Speaking to RFE/RL at Baku airport, Vugar Ismayilov said passenger Habib Ismayilov was traveling on Flight J2-8243 bound for Grozny for work and "didn't really want to go."

    • France24 ☛ Azerbaijan mourns 38 killed in plane crash as investigation gets underway

      Azerbaijan on Thursday observed a day of mourning for the victims of a plane crash in Kazakhstan that killed 38 people and injured 29 survivors as an investigation got underway. Azerbaijan Airlines initially said a flock of birds might have caused the crash before retracting that statement, while Russia sought to downplay speculation the aircraft may have accidentally been shot down.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Nato calls for full investigation of Azerbaijan Airlines crash

      The plane had been diverted from an area of Russia that Moscow has recently defended against Ukrainian drone attacks.

    • New York Times ☛ Azerbaijan Airlines Jet Crashes in Kazakhstan, Killing Dozens

      Russia’s state aviation authority said the Azerbaijan Airlines plane had been trying to make an emergency landing. The Kazakh authorities said that at least 29 people survived.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Azerbaijan Airlines flight downed by Russian air defences, four sources say

      Flight J2-8243 crashed on Dec 25 in a ball of fire near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people.

    • Meduza ☛ Putin welcomes Slovak offer to host possible peace talks on Ukraine war ‘if it reaches that stage’ — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Iranian President To Visit Moscow For Talks In January

      Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian is scheduled to travel to Russia on January 17, state-controlled media in Iran and Russia reported on December 26.

    • LRT ☛ Is Belarus appropriating Lithuanian history?

      What’s behind the fear that Belarus is allegedly trying to claim the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as solely its own? LRT sits down to speak with Rūstis Kamuntavičius, historian of Vytautas Magnus University.

    • Meduza ☛ Azerbaijani government sources say Russian missile likely downed passenger plane, media reports — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian mayor enrages town by dressing Lenin and Catherine the Great monuments in Father Frost and Snow Maiden holiday costumes — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ Plane Crash Investigators Look at Russian Antiaircraft Systems

      Also, Israel bombed an airport and ports in Yemen. Here’s the latest at the end of Thursday.

    • New York Times ☛ Azerbaijan Airlines Crash Investigators Focus on Russian Defenses as Possible Cause

      Russian aviation authorities said the Azerbaijan Airlines plane had hit a flock of birds. But some experts cast doubt on that account, pointing to footage showing apparent holes in the fuselage.

    • JURIST ☛ Russia court sentences Dutch citizen to 3 years in prison for assault

      A Russian court sentenced a Dutch citizen, Harry Johannes van Wurden, on Wednesday to three years in prison for assaulting a police officer.  The ruling was issued after van Wurden was found guilty of punching a police officer during an incident in central Moscow last October.

    • France24 ☛ What we know about the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash

      A Russian-bound Azerbaijani aircraft crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, killing 38 of the 67 onboard. Experts suggest shrapnel damage indicates a possible accidental shootdown by Russian air defence. Authorities have urged caution against speculation until the investigation concludes.

    • Meduza ☛ Russia elevates response to Kerch Strait oil spill, declaring federal-level state of emergency — Meduza

    • France24 ☛ Sergei Lavrov on Ukraine war: 'Truce is a path to nowhere'

      Russia sees no point in a weak ceasefire to freeze the war in Ukraine but Moscow wants a legally binding deal for a lasting peace that would ensure the security of both Russia and its neighbours, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on December 26.

    • Notebook found on North Korean soldier outlines tactics for countering drones

      The Ukrainian Special Forces posted a photograph of the notes on Telegram.

• Environment

  • The Hill ☛ Kathy Hochul signs law requiring polluting companies to pay for climate change damages

    Under the new state law, companies responsible for the bulk of emissions from 2000 to 2018 will be on the hook for some $3 billion a year over the next 25 years. The law is modeled after the federal Superfund law, which sticks the bill for pollution cleanup with the companies responsible for the pollution.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Powering an E-Bike From Tossed Vape Batteries

    There are probably some money-minded people who are impressed by how commoditized lithium-ion batteries have become. But this seems to me like obvious waste. For one thing, it is a bad idea to throw lithium-ion batteries in the garbage, let alone litter with them. For another, this is a terribly inefficient use of resources, and the manufacturers must be aware of that. One of them writes, in its FAQ, that its disposable vape model “is a rechargeable device containing a non-replaceable lithium-ion battery”, but because it is not refillable, it cannot be re-used. It seems impossible to me to write a sentence like that without realizing its absurdity.

  • CBC ☛ Ontario government asks Canada's highest court to hear youth-led climate case

    Ontario has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on a historic youth-led challenge of the province's climate plan, moving the case a step closer to a possible hearing before Canada's top court.

    While the court only hears a fraction of the cases it's asked to review, lawyers for Ontario say this case strikes at an unresolved issue of national concern.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ A DeSmog Guide to How the World Changed in 2024

    • Howard Oakley ☛ A brief history of Mac batteries

      As you might expect, there’s also a looser non-linear relationship between battery capacity and claimed endurance, although that has altered with the transition to low-power Apple silicon chips.

    • Axios ☛ Tech dollars flood into AI data centers in capital expenditure boom

      AI needs facilities and machines and power, and all of that has, in turn, fueled its own new spending involving real estate, building materials, semiconductors and energy.

      Energy providers have seen a huge boost in particular, because data centers require as much power as a small city.

    • RTL ☛ Motorcyclists: New regulation in France will prohibit driving in between lanes starting 2025

      This practice, also known as "inter-filing" or "lane splitting" refers to motorcyclists passing between two vehicles, typically during congested traffic. Since 2016, this maneuver has been legally permitted in 21 French departments as part of a trial. Under the rules, motorcyclists were allowed to interfile at speeds under 50 km/h and with a speed difference of no more than 30 km/h compared to other vehicles, but only on highways or major roads during traffic jams.

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ How one nonprofit is working to build support for solar — and added benefits for communities — in rural North Carolina

      “If they were willing to lease this land for the very first solar project in the area, the county needed to get something back in return,” said Mozine Lowe from her office, which overlooks the 20 megawatt solar farm now atop the old airport. “What they got was this building.”

      Of course, it’s more than a building. It’s the headquarters for the Center for Energy Education, the nonprofit Lowe has run since 2016 that works to maximize the benefits of large solar farms in rural America — one community, one school child, and one worker at a time.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Russia's finance minister reveals bitcoin is being used to conduct foreign trade

      As a result, cryptocurrencies have emerged as a viable alternative for Russian companies to conduct international trade without using the U.S. dollar or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication-based payment systems. Bitcoin is a decentralized form of electronic money that doesn’t rely on intermediaries, which makes it a useful tool for getting around sanctions.

    • Reuters ☛ Russia is using bitcoin in foreign trade, finance minister says

      Sanctions have complicated Russia's trade with its major partners such as China or Turkey, as local banks are extremely cautious with Russia-related transactions to avoid scrutiny from Western regulators. This year, Russia permitted the use of cryptocurrencies in foreign trade and has taken steps to make it legal to mine cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. Russia is one of the global leaders in bitcoin mining.

    • CBC ☛ Headlights seem a lot brighter these days — because they are

      Experts like Stern say headlight glare is a serious issue across North America as vehicles transition from warmer old-style halogen lights. Newer LED headlights create a more intense, concentrated light that's bluer and can force people to squint in discomfort.

      Canada's regulations have been adjusted — but researchers say they have not yet caught up to headlight technology common in other countries.

      So night drivers end up blinded — especially if their eyes are older — and looking for their own solutions that can only help so much.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ These stunning images trace ships' routes as they move

      Operating at 161.975 and 162.025 megahertz, AIS transmitters broadcast a ship’s identification number, name, call sign, length and beam, type, and antenna location every six minutes. Ship location, position time stamp, and direction are transmitted more frequently. The primary purpose of AIS is maritime safety—it helps prevent collisions, assists in rescues, and provides insight into the impact of ship traffic on marine life. US Coast Guard regulations say that generally, private boats under 65 feet in length are not required to use AIS, but most commercial vessels are. Unlike ADS-B in planes, AIS can be turned off only in rare circumstances.

• Finance

  • [News] Record-Breaking 1,991 CEOs Step Down in the U.S. in 2024

    According to a TechNews report, statistics from the U.S. human resources consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reveal that 2024 has been marked by widespread layoffs across various industries in the U.S., with over 600,000 employees already dismissed. The report further highlights that, alongside these layoffs, the number of CEOs resigning has reached record high, prompting many companies to appoint interim leaders as replacements.

  • New York Times ☛ California Economy Feels the Pain of Hollywood Studio Troubles

    Film production has failed to bounce back after major strikes last year, and competition from other locales has gotten stiffer.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Christmas trees make cautious comeback at shopping malls in China

    Some decorations are visible, but political pressure to avoid celebrating 'Western' festivals remains strong.

  • EFF ☛ EU Tech Regulation—Good Intentions, Unclear Consequences: 2024 in Review

    As 2024 comes to a close, important questions remain: How effectively have these laws been enforced? Have they delivered actual benefits to users?

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Elon Musk's xAI raises $6 billion to build even more powerful AI supercomputers — Nvidia, AMD contribute to funding round

    Major investors in this funding round include Nvidia, AMD, Andreessen Horowitz, Blackrock, Fidelity, Kingdom Holdings, and Sequoia Capital, among others. Only previous investors who backed Musk's earlier ventures, such as the Twitter acquisition, could participate. The minimum investment per participant was $77,593, but the identities of most investors remain undisclosed. The company plans to raise additional funds next year to sustain its growth as it seeks to challenge larger rivals in the generative AI market.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Biden signs GSA tech accountability bill into law

    The GSA Technology Accountability Act, signed by President Joe Biden on Monday, requires the agency’s administrator to deliver a yearly report to Congress that details each project funded by the Federal Citizen Services Fund and others that come via the Acquisition Services Fund.

    The FCSF funds programs that provide shared digital services across the federal government, while the ASF uses reimbursable revenue generated from seven business portfolios, one of which is Technology Transformation Services.

  • India Times ☛ Under pressure, Telegram pulls off an elusive milestone: a profit

    In the conversations, Telegram told investors that it was tackling its legal troubles head-on by policing more user-generated content. The company also said it had paid down a "meaningful amount" of its debt, according to an investor in the talks who was not authorized to discuss confidential information.

  • Axios ☛ Apple's rising stock could push market cap past $4 trillion

    Apple is closing in on a $4 trillion stock market valuation, powered by investors cheering progress in the company's long-awaited AI enhancements to rejuvenate sluggish iPhone sales.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Execs Sold $1.25B in Company Stock During 2024: Report

    That sizable Spotify stock (NYSE: SPOT) selloff total just recently emerged in a report from the Financial Times, which calculated the sum via the relevant SEC filings. Drawing from those same documents, we’ve reported on huge insider trades throughout 2024 – including many millions of dollars’ worth of SPOT sales from Daniel Ek and others during December.

    Unsurprisingly, the transactions arrived against the backdrop of continued valuation growth for Spotify stock. Though shares recently cooled from their astonishing all-time-high price of $506 apiece, they still finished at $461.64 each today, for a nearly 145% surge since the top of 2024.

  • Wired ☛ Temu’s Takeover Is Now Complete

    Temu, which is owned by PDD, one of the biggest ecommerce giants in China, is moving and pivoting at a speed that its Western counterparts can’t really grasp, says Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of the ecommerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse. “When you look at a company like Temu, it's going a thousand miles an hour,” he says. Most Popular

    Kaziukėnas believes the most important thing Temu did this year was quickly switch its focus away from shipping small packages through air cargo and start building local inventory supply chains in the US and other countries. “This year, it started with 100 percent of goods coming from China; now in the US, 50 percent of them are coming from local warehouses. For Western marketplaces, these types of changes would have taken years,” Kaziukėnas says.

  • [Old] Medium ☛ The Permacrisis explained in under 500 Words

    Those who assume the current crisis gripping the world will end and that, sooner or later, things will return to normal are like Russell’s chicken. Politicians and orthodox economists think that because the world has been through crises before but ultimately recovered equilibrium, the same must happen again. But they are failing to see the bigger picture. They don’t understand that the 20th Century ‘normal’ of consistent economic growth, rising living standards and stable liberal democracy can never reappear. There are two reasons.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • NYPost ☛ State Department’s Global Engagement Center — accused of pushing censorship to combat online ‘disinformation’ — shuts down

      Evidence showed that the GEC pressured US social control media platforms early in the pandemic to censor Americans, purportedly to counter online “disinformation” — such as theories that the virus leaked out of a lab in China.

    • VOA News ☛ Putin falsely boasts of having military alliances with 'most countries around the world'

      Moscow’s formal alliances are limited to five ex-USSR states-members of Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, that include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Beyond CSTO, Moscow is engaged in transactional military partnerships with China, Iran, India, and North Korea. By comparison, NATO has 32 members.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ US agency focused on foreign disinformation shuts down

      The GEC had an annual budget of US$61 million and a staff of around 120. Its closing leaves the State Department without a dedicated office for tracking and countering disinformation from US rivals for the first time in eight years.

      A measure to extend funding for the center was stripped out of the final version of the bipartisan federal spending bill that passed through the US Congress last week.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • VOA News ☛ VOA Russian: Kremlin targets full [Internet] control in Russia 

    The Kremlin completed preparations to isolate the Russian segment of the [Internet] from the rest of the World Wide Web, experts told VOA Russian [...]

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Rushdie’s Satanic Verses returns to Indian bookshops after 36 years

    The reappearance of The Satanic Verses in Indian bookshops has nothing to do with freedom of speech, however, but missing paperwork. The original government order banning the book’s import could not be found in India’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, leading to its overturning. Last month, Delhi’s high court ruled: “We have no other option except to presume that no such notification exists.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • VOA News ☛ Deadly attack underscores danger for journalists in Haiti

    At least two journalists — including one who worked with Voice of America — were killed and at least seven other journalists were wounded when armed men fired on reporters gathered for the reopening of Haiti’s largest public hospital in the capital, Port-au-Prince, earlier this week, according to media reports and the Haitian government.

  • NPR ☛ A gang attack on a Haitian hospital reopening kills 2 reporters and a police officer

    Two reporters were killed and several were wounded Tuesday in a gang attack in Haiti on the reopening of Port-au-Prince's biggest public hospital, the country's online media association said. A police officer was also killed in the attack.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • ACLU ☛ Who is Pete Hegseth?

    President-elect Donald Trump has nominated the Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense (DOD). If confirmed, the military veteran will lead the nation’s armed forces in what will be his first appointment to a political office.

    Hegseth was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard and he served in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. Prior to his stint as a talk show host on Fox News, he led the nonprofits Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.

    The ACLU has spent more than 100 years holding power accountable. While as a matter of policy the ACLU does not endorse or oppose nominees for cabinet-level positions, it does examine and publicize nominees’ civil liberties records. Given the power and influence defense officials have over U.S. national security policy and decision making, a president’s secretary of defense choice has serious consequences for civil liberties at home and abroad. Ahead of the January Senate confirmation hearings, we analyze Hegseth’s record on key civil liberties issues, and urge Congress to carefully consider the impact his leadership would have on our rights.

  • El País ☛ Afghanistan: The toll of Taliban laws on Afghan women’s mental health: ‘I break down at night on my prayer mat. Every day, the morality police insult me’

    The new vice rules have led to a spike in depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts. According to a U.N. report, 68% of women rate their mental health as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad,’ linking their distress to the ‘systematic’ removal of women from public life

  • VOA News ☛ US Congress fails to extend North Korean Human Rights Act

    "Kim Jong Un subjects his own people to gross human rights abuses as he grows his nuclear arsenal, and the Senate is turning a blind eye to North Korean aggression by failing to pass this bill," Kim said in an emailed statement to VOA Korean on Monday.

  • France24 ☛ 'Bring the hostages back': In Israel, protesters urge Netanyahu to strike deal

    Israeli authorities indicated progress in ongoing negotiations in Qatar. Hamas had previously said along with two other militant groups that a ceasefire agreement was "closer than ever", before changing its tune on December 25.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Is Amazon Music Plotting a 1,000-Stream Minimum for Royalties?

    As explored by DMN Pro, the seemingly minor maneuver had a decidedly significant impact; the majority of on-platform recordings ceased generating any royalties at all, to the clear-cut benefit of the major labels and their stream-heavy catalogs.

  • Techdirt ☛ Italy’s Piracy Shield Moving From Digital Farce To National Tragedy

    Walled Culture has been following the sorry saga of Italy’s automated blocking system Piracy Shield for a year now. Blocklists are drawn up by copyright companies, without any review, or the possibility of any objections, and those blocks must be enforced within 30 minutes. Needless to say, such a ham-fisted and biased approach to copyright infringement is already producing some horrendous blunders.

    For example, back in March, Walled Culture reported that one of Cloudflare’s Internet addresses had been blocked by Piracy Shield. There were over 40 million domains associated with the blocked address – which shows how this crude approach can cause significant collateral damage to millions of sites not involved in any alleged copyright infringement.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Bogus Pirate IPTV Portals Run By Law Enforcement "Entrap Hundreds" * TorrentFreak

    According to a phrase popularized by Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims should be supported by extraordinary evidence. A new piracy scare story published on Sunday takes a different approach. The extraordinary claim is that fake IPTV portals run by law enforcement are entrapping "ordinary users" to obtain evidence of their crimes. Supported by exactly zero evidence, the report claims that hundreds of [Internet] users have already been identified.

  • NPR ☛ Popeye, Tintin and more will enter the public domain in the new year

    Jan. 1 marks the dawn of a new era for Popeye and Tintin. It's the day the nonagenarian cartoon characters officially enter the U.S. public domain along with a treasure trove of other iconic works.