Leftovers

• CS Monitor ☛ Stunning slices of life, close to home

  Over the past four decades, I’ve had the great privilege of traveling on assignment for the Monitor to seven continents, 90 countries, and 49 states...

• CS Monitor ☛ The awe of turning skyward together

  I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. The light began to fade, muted and amber. The air went cold. The buzz of the crowd seemed to wane with the sun.

• CS Monitor ☛ Capturing people as they kindly share their stories

  I am often asked by friends and acquaintances what my favorite part of my job is.

• Games

  • Hackaday ☛ Fan Made Dreamcast Port Of GTA 3 Steals The Show

    As it turns out, Sega’s long defunct Dreamcast console is still thinking. The company behind the machine cut support long ago due in part to the commercial pressures applied by Sony’s PlayStation 2 console, but that never stopped the most dedicated of Dreamcast fans from seeking out its true potential. Thanks to [Stefanos] and his team, the genre defining Grand Theft Auto III (GTA 3), can now run on Sega’s hardware. Their combined efforts have yielded a fully playable port of the PC version of the game for the Dreamcast.

  • Does Freeciv be better than Civilization?

    I think Freeciv has hex tiles earlier than Civilization. Freeciv exists even, when newest Civilization is 3. Perhaps I am not 100% correct in all sentence here, but I only wrote, what I remember about hex tiles. I start play Freeciv even Civilization does not have hex tiles.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Forgot to Send That Gift? Psychologists Have Good News For You.

    Better late than never.

  • Science Alert ☛ It Literally Takes Fire And Brimstone to Transport Gold to Earth's Surface

    But what kind of brimstone is the real MVP?

  • Science Alert ☛ Northern Lights Could Ring in New Year Following Massive Solar Eruptions

    Goodbye 2024.

• Career/Education

  • Nolan Lawson ☛ 2024 book review

    2024 was another lite reading year for me. The fact that it was an election year probably didn’t help, and one of my resolutions for 2025 is to spend a heck of a lot less time keeping up with the dreary treadmill of the 24-hour news cycle.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ John Hopkins and Stanford robots learn surgery by watching videos

    Researchers from John Hopkins University and Stanford University have revealed details of how they are training robots with videos to perform surgical tasks with the skill of human doctors, in what could be a significant step forward in medical robotics. Robotics in surgery is not new, with various use cases over a number of years.

• Hardware

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Bidding farewell to Mini-ITX and SFF, maybe

    I like small things. I like efficient things. I like small things that are efficient. Brute-forcing a solution by making it bigger, hotter, or louder is one thing, but performing the same work with less, in a smaller space? Or taking an existing system and shrinking it down? That’s impressive. The fact Clara is that much shorter than me and twice as intelligent is another example (cough).

  • Hackaday ☛ Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Copycat Keyboard

    This is Crater75, an almost completely from-scratch row-staggered wireless split board that [United_Parfait_6383] has been working on for a few months. Everything but the keycaps and switches is DIY.

  • Hackaday ☛ 38C3: Save Your Satellite With These Three Simple Tricks

    BEESAT-1 is a 1U cubesat launched in 2009 by the Technical University of Berlin. Like all good satellites, it has redundant computers onboard, so when the first one failed in 2011, it just switched over to the second. And when the backup failed in 2013, well, the satellite was “dead” — or rather sending back all zeroes. Until [PistonMiner] took a look at it, that is.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ China wants to restore the sea with high-tech marine ranches

    A short ferry ride from the port city of Yantai, on the northeast coast of China, sits Genghai No. 1, a 12,000-metric-ton ring of oil-rig-style steel platforms, advertised as a hotel and entertainment complex.

  • Hackaday ☛ Release Your Inner Ansel Adams With The Shitty Camera Challenge

    Social media microblogging has brought us many annoying things, but some of the good things that have come to us through its seductive scrolling are those ad-hoc interest based communities which congregate around a hashtag. There’s one which has entranced me over the past few years which I’d like to share with you; the Shitty Camera Challenge. The premise is simple: take photographs with a shitty camera, and share them online. The promise meanwhile is to free photography from kit acquisition, and instead celebrate the cheap, the awful, the weird, and the wonderful in persuading these photographic nonentities to deliver beautiful pictures.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Chinese GPU maker reveals new workstation GPU for the domestic market — Moore Threads MTT X300 uses the same hardware as the gaming-focused MTT S80

    The X300 is Moore Threads’ newest professional GPU, though we’ve seen the underlying hardware before.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Hackaday ☛ When The EU Speaks, Everyone Charges The Same Way

      The moment everyone has been talking about for years has finally arrived, the European Union’s mandating of USB charging on all portable electronic devices is now in force. While it does not extend beyond Europe, it means that there is a de facto abandonment of proprietary chargers in other territories too. It applies to all mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, game consoles, portable speakers, e-readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems and earbuds, and from early 2026 it will be extended to laptops.

    • Hackaday ☛ Lowering Your Noise Floor, The Easy Way

      If there’s anything more annoying to an amateur radio operator than noise, we’re not sure what it could be. We’re talking about radio frequency noise, of course, the random broadband emissions that threaten to make it almost impossible to work the bands and pick out weak signals. This man-made interference is known as “QRM” in ham parlance, and it has become almost intolerable of late, as poorly engineered switch-mode power supplies have become more common.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ 10 Tips to Help You Eat Healthier in 2025

    Throughout the past year, we reviewed seed oils, ultraprocessed foods, Bruce Springsteen’s diet and more. Here’s what we learned.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Massachusetts towns ban nicotine for a generation. Public health win or overreach?

    Who is responsible for the health of young people? Tobacco bans in Massachusetts towns have residents weighing public health concerns against individual freedoms and considering what it means to have a “nicotine-free generation.”

  • France24 ☛ Health system in northern Gaza has been 'obliterated', Red Cross says

    The health care system in northern Gaza has been “obliterated” with hospitals “completely inoperable”, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday, leaving sick and wounded civilians in “grave risk”.

  • NYPost ☛ UnitedHealth Group CEO quietly telling execs company will hit financial records: report

    Revenue at the UnitedHealth Group was more than $299 billion through September -- which is a record high and up from $277 billion last year, the Journal reported.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Insurers Continue to Rely on Doctors Whose Judgments Have Been Criticized by Courts

  • Hackaday ☛ Re-engineering Potatoes To Remove Their All-Natural Toxins

    Family Solanum (nightshade) is generally associated with toxins, and for good reasons, as most of the plants in this family are poisonous. This includes some of everyone’s favorite staple vegetables: potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant, with especially potatoes responsible for many poisonings each year. In the case of harvested potatoes, the chemical responsible (steroidal glycoalkaloids, or SGA) is produced when the potato begins to sprout. Now a team of researchers at the University of California have found a way to silence the production of the responsible protein: GAME15.

  • Science Alert ☛ A New Discovery Helps Explain How Cannabis Triggers Psychosis

    Another link emerges.

  • Science Alert ☛ Pets Taking Cocaine on The Rise According to Recent Helpline Study

    Keep out of reach of animals.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Five years on, WHO urges China to share Covid-19 origins data

    The pandemic killed millions of people, shredded economies and crippled health systems.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Cases of respiratory virus HMPV remain low in Hong Kong, epidemiologist says, amid mainland China outbreak

    A leading epidemiologist has said that levels of human metapneumovirus (HMPV) remained low in Hong Kong amid an outbreak of the respiratory virus in mainland China.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong cruise arrivals may reach pre-Covid levels in 2026, operator says

    Hong Kong’s cruise arrivals are expected to reach pre-Covid levels in 2026, the head of the city’s cruise terminal operator has said, as the government highlighted cruise tourism in a five-year sector development blueprint.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Oklahoma Senator takes aim at waste and fraud

    The first bill, the Fraudulent COVID Funds Recovery Act, would extend the statute of limitations for all pandemic-era programs for five extra years.

  • New York Times ☛ Food Tourism Is Dead. But Something More Interesting Is Emerging.

    The world’s next great cuisine isn’t hidden in some undiscovered corner of the globe. It’s in the spaces among cultures, traditions and technologies.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Turku becomes first major Finnish city to leave X | Yle News | Yle

    Instead of posting on X, formerly Twitter, the City of Turku will shift over to Bluesky.

  • Cloudbooklet ☛ Meta Plans Hey Hi (AI) Bots with Facebook (Farcebook) Profiles for User Interaction

    Meta Plans Hey Hi (AI) Bots with Facebook (Farcebook) Profiles, capable of generating content and interacting with users, raising both excitement and concerns.

  • Steve Kemp ☛ Steve Kemp: The CP/M emulator runs on Windows, maybe!

    Today I made a new release of my CP/M emulator and I think that maybe now it will run on Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Windows. Unfortunately I cannot test it!

  • Science Alert ☛ Covert Hey Hi (AI) Could Lead to a New 'Intention Economy', Experts Warn

    Your motivations are the new currency.

  • Rlang ☛ Repost: Bluesky conversation analysis with local and frontier LLMs with R/Tidyverse

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Best of 2024: What Next For The Open Container Initiative (OCI)?

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • CNX Software ☛ GGBEE RMW002 WiFi AC smart switch supports Alexa, Surveillance Giant Google Assistant, and Cozy Life app

      The GGBEE RMW002 is a mini WiFi AC smart switch designed to make your appliances smarter. It supports a voltage range of 100-240V AC and a maximum current of 16A/20A. With built-in WiFi, the switch connects to the Cozy Life app for easy remote control of your appliances. It also supports voice commands through Amazon Alexa and Surveillance Giant Google Assistant allowing for hands-free operation.

    • Defence Web ☛ Ongoing surveillance of suspected hijacked fishing vessel

      One of three European Union (EU) naval operations off Africa continues surveillance of a Chinese fishing vessel seemingly hijacked off Somalia in what is being called a robbery at sea.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New York Times ☛ A China-Taiwan War Would Start an Economic Crisis. America Isn’t Ready.

    Congress must prepare a plan now to avoid global meltdown.

  • New York Times ☛ Migrant Chinese Muslims in NYC Say They Now Fear Trump

    At a shelter in the Flushing area of New York, Hui Muslims who fled oppression in China are concerned about the president-elect’s vows to tighten asylum policy.

  • New York Times ☛ Myanmar’s War Has Made It the Global Crime Capital

    The chaotic country is now a magnet for criminal syndicates, particularly from China, destabilizing law enforcement across much of Asia.

  • China ramps up combat readiness at Scarborough Shoal

    Large-scale drills by China’s navy and air force took place as a U.S. naval ship patrolled nearby.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China offers ‘deep condolences’ over death of US ex-president Jimmy Carter

    China on Monday expressed “deep condolences” following the death of former US president Jimmy Carter, who died aged 100. Washington forged diplomatic links with the People’s Republic of China in January 1979 — midway through Carter’s term in office — breaking with the Nationalist government in Taiwan that was a staunch US ally throughout the […]

  • The Strategist ☛ Baltic subsea sabotage: China gets away with non-cooperation

    On Christmas Day, one of two cables connecting Finland’s electricity grid to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was cut.

  • The Strategist ☛ China’s big new combat aircraft: a technical assessment

    China’s aircraft industry celebrated Mao Zedong’s birthday in style, unveiling three aircraft developments that will comprise an air warfare family of systems for the 2030s and beyond.

  • RFERL ☛ Belgrade Court Sentences Father Of School Shooter To 14 Years

    A court in Belgrade has jailed the parents of a 13-year-old boy who last year shot and killed nine students and a security guard at an elementary school.

  • JURIST ☛ Sudan rejects IPC famine report backed by UN

    Sudanese government officials on Sunday rejected the latest UN-backed famine analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), according to Sudan News Agency. The Foreign Ministry of Sudan stated it “categorically rejects the IPC’s description of the situation in Sudan as a famine.”

  • Defence Web ☛ No military solution to Sudan – top UN envoy

    The Sudanese civil war, dubbed by some as “the war the world forgot”, has in its 20-month existence seen more than 12 million people driven from their homes and created a massive humanitarian disaster.

  • Defence Web ☛ Corruption, safety and security top African youth survey concerns

    According to many international organisations, Africa is in a parlous state, with the Geneva Academy reporting that Africa has the second-highest number of intra-state conflicts in the world (35) after the 45 in the Middle East.

  • Site36 ☛ Germany does not investigate deaths of its citizens despite Israel’s crimes under international law

    Several Germans were killed by Israel in Gaza. Even though these are criminal offences, the German government does not want to prosecute them. International lawyers and the Left Party group in the Bundestag are criticising this.

  • New York Times ☛ Syria’s Top Rebel Offers Hint of Timetable for Potetial Elections

    Ahmed al-Shara, who led the rebel offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad, offered little clarity on what the electoral process might look like.

  • New Yorker ☛ Syria Faces Its Past and Its Future

    Images taken just after the precipitous end of the civil war reveal a secret legacy that is just becoming visible.

  • Police called to Chinese Consulate in Manchester after graffiti protest

    Consular staff start altercation with RFA reporter who took photos of the clean-up operation in Manchester.

  • BIA Net ☛ New development in İstiklal Street bombing: Two detained

    Police has detained two people who are claimed to have smuggled bomber Ahlam al-Bashir into Turkey and brought him to Istanbul. 6 people died and 99 were injured at the bomb-attack, and the court case related to the bombing ended in April 2024.

  • Digital Music News ☛ ‘U Guessed It’ Rapper OG Maco Dead at 32 Following Self-Inflicted Gunshot

    Rapper OG Maco has passed away following a hospital stay this month after an apparent suicide attempt. OG Maco has died at age 32 after fighting for his life in the hospital following a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea's acting president calls for national harmony and unity

    South Korean Acting President Choi Sang-mok called for national harmony and unity and for trust in the government in a New Year's address on Tuesday, amid an unprecedented political crisis sparked by impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol's short-lived martial law declaration.

  • New York Times ☛ South Korea Clears Way to Detain President in Martial Law Inquiry

    The police are investigating whether President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to lead an insurrection when he declared martial law and plunged the country into crisis.

  • NYPost ☛ South Korea court issues arrest warrant for President Yoon

    A South Korean court on Tuesday approved an arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has been impeached and suspended from power over his decision to impose martial law on Dec. 3, investigating authorities said.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s court issues arrest warrant for impeached President Yoon

    Although the warrant has been issued, it is unclear if investigators and police will be able to execute it.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Jeju Air jet turns back after another landing gear issue

    The plane landed safely.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Questions over airport embankment, bird strikes as South Korea air crash probe continues [Ed: The wheels not coming down has nothing to do with birds]

    All but 5 bodies have been identified as at the morning of Dec 31.

  • New York Times ☛ South Korean Plane Crash Questions Center on Four Fateful Minutes [Ed: Faulty plane, not birds]

    The time between when the pilot reported a bird strike and when it crashed could be key to unraveling one of the world’s worst aviation disasters in years.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s investigators seek arrest warrant for Yoon over martial law

    The suspended President has failed to respond to multiple summons for questioning.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ South Korean court issues warrant to detain impeached President Yoon

    An agency said it is investigating whether his declaration of martial law amounted to rebellion.

  • JURIST ☛ South Korea authorities request arrest warrant for impeached President Yoon over martial law declaration

    South Korea’s Public Prosecutor’s Office on Monday requested an arrest warrant for impeached President Yoon Seok-Yeol over his martial law declaration earlier this month, according to local media.

  • The Straits Times ☛ What you need to know about investigations faced by South Korean President Yoon

    South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, several cabinet ministers, military commanders and police officials face indictments and criminal investigations over the president's short-lived martial law declaration on Dec. 3.

  • France24 ☛ South Korean court issues arrest warrant for impeached President Yoon

    A South Korean court has issued an arrest warrant for suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived declaration of martial law, investigators said Tuesday. Yoon, who faces potential life imprisonment or the death penalty for insurrection, remains under constitutional court review following his impeachment.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Empty desks and tears mark five colleagues killed in South Korean plane crash

    White chrysanthemums had been placed on the office desks of the victims.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea starts releasing Jeju Air crash victims to families

    Everyone aboard Jeju Air Flight 2216 was killed, save two flight attendants pulled from the wreckage.

  • France24 ☛ South Korea releases first Jeju Air plane crash victims to families

    South Korean authorities have identified 28 of the 179 victims that died in the Jeju Air crash on December 29, and have begun releasing their bodies to their families. Anger has been growing over the delays in identifying the passengers. The process was rendered particularly difficult after the wreckage caught fire.

  • New York Times ☛ For South Korean Families, a Grim Wait for Bodies After Plane Crash

    Officials said it could take up to 10 days to prepare the dead for transport, with the uncertainty adding to the shock and grief of relatives packed into an airport hall.

  • New York Times ☛ The Man Who Showed the World South Korea’s Deadly Plane Crash

    A restaurant owner described witnessing the Jeju Air plane crash and recording videos as it happened. “Every time I closed my eyes, I kept seeing afterimages of the blast.”

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea orders air safety probe after country’s worst crash kills 179

    The top priority for now is identifying the victims, supporting their families and treating the two survivors.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Final minutes of Jeju Air flight before South Korea's deadliest air disaster

    A South Korean Jeju Air passenger jet crashed on landing at Muan International Airport on Sunday, killing 179 people in the country's deadliest air disaster.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Questions arise over concrete wall near runway in South Korea crash

    The Jeju Air plane exploded into a fireball on impact with the wall.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • LRT ☛ End of shopping in Poland? Lithuanians spend less in neighbouring country

      Poland has long been a popular destination among Lithuanian shoppers. However, Lithuanian banks’ data on card payments show that in the first half of 2024, Lithuanians spent less on purchases in Poland than last year.

    • Latvia ☛ Rīga Conference 2025 dates confirmed

      The dates for this year's Rīga Conference – a regional geopolitical discussion forum – have been confirmed by the organizer, the Latvian Transatlantic Organization (LATO) in a video posted to its YouTube channel.

    • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea’s Kim vows to further solidify ties to Russia in letter to Putin

      The two countries signed a mutual defence treaty at a summit in June.

    • RFERL ☛ Putin Places Producer Of Major Beer Brands Under Temporary Management

      Russia President Vladimir Putin on December 30 signed a decree transferring shares of the foreign brewing company AB InBev Efes Russia to the temporary management of the Russia’s Vmeste group of companies.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China’s Pooh-tin vows to promote ‘world peace’ in New Year’s message to Russia’s Putin – state media

      Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping vowed to promote “world peace” in a New Year’s message to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, state media reported on Tuesday. “No matter how the international situation changes, China will remain steadfast in further comprehensively deepening reform… and promoting world peace and development,” Pooh-tin said, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

    • France24 ☛ Xi pledges 'world peace' in New Year’s message to Putin

      Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping emphasized China’s commitment to "world peace and development" in a New Year’s message to Russian President Vladimir Putin, while reaffirming the strength of their partnership, Chinese state media reported Tuesday.

• Environment

  • The Straits Times ☛ Earthquake of magnitude 5.6 strikes Philippine island of Luzon, says GFZ

    The quake was at a depth of 10 kilometres.

  • Science Alert ☛ Sport's Growing Waste Problem Might at Last Have a Recycling Solution

    The hidden cost of breaking records.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Science Alert ☛ NASA Reveals New Mars Helicopter Design, Inspired by Ingenuity's Success

      Meet the SUV-sized 'Mars Chopper'.

    • Meduza ☛ Chechen authorities say cryptocurrency miners in the region will be treated ‘as terrorists’ — Meduza

    • Barry Kauler ☛ Testing auxiliary solar panel with custom trike

      Briliant blue sky this morning, 10.15am, December 30, mid-summer here in Perth, Western Australia. As mentioned in the previous blog post, the intention when at a camp-site is to keep the trike under shade (if available), with the throw-over tent. There will be a cable to small solar panel in the sun to keep the battery topped-up. Previous post:

    • The Straits Times ☛ World’s longest expressway tunnel built in Xinjiang, China

      The use of new technologies helped reduce the construction time from 10 years to just over four years.

    • Tedium ☛ Data-Driven Deception

      A story directly exposing how automakers were selling consumer driving data that ended up in the hands of insurers made a true ripple that drivers will benefit from in the years to come.

    • New York Times ☛ After Judicial Ruling, M.T.A. Says Congestion Pricing to Begin on Sunday

      The decision in a lawsuit brought by the State of New Jersey meant that the tolling plan could go ahead as planned, New York said. A lawyer for New Jersey disagreed.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ 14 Must-Read Environmental Commentaries

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ China urges more aid for people in need as economic woes persist

    The Chinese government urged local officials to provide more financial relief or step up one-time allowances to people in need ahead of major holidays over the next month, as China's economic difficulties are set to extend into 2025.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Crystals, sandwiches and nail art: Student dorm rooms in China turn into ‘shops’ for side hustles

    Over the weekend, a queue of around 10 to 15 students waited patiently for their turn to enter the newest “shop” on campus – dormitory room 403 at Qingdao University of Science and Technology in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong.

  • France24 ☛ Italy bans self check-in for short-term holiday rentals

    Citing security fears and the 35 million people expected to visit Rome for a Catholic jubilee in 2025, the Italian government has banned short-term rentals from allowing guests to check themselves in using lock boxes. Hosts must now welcome tenants in person and register them with the local police station.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong to focus on ‘retaining’ talent after recruitment drive, labour chief says

    Hong Kong will focus on “retaining talent” after multiple admission schemes brought around 175,000 people to the city over the past two years, including two top snooker players and a former NBA star, the labour chief has said.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia Attorney-General’s office says house arrest bids must go to pardons board

    Decisions made by the king through the board may not be challenged in court for being unlawful.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China's Pooh-tin offers deep condolences over Jimmy Carter's death

    China's President Pooh-tin Jinping on Monday offered his condolences over the death of Jimmy Carter, saying the former U.S. president was the driving force behind the establishment of diplomatic ties between both countries more than 40 years ago.

  • New York Times ☛ ‘Hanging Out With Jimmy Carter,’ Biden Faces the Echoes of History

    President Biden is yet another one-term Democrat hurt by inflation and struggling to free hostages before leaving office. But Mr. Carter’s enhanced reputation offers hope that he too may be remembered more favorably.

  • Off Guardian ☛ Voluntary Democracy – Part 3

    In Part 1, I suggested a new sociopolitical model I called Voluntary Democracy. In Part 2, I expanded upon the idea, suggesting a stateless jurisdiction where people manage their own affairs but are governed by the rule of law—by justice.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Straits Times ☛ China fights rumours of panda abuse at US zoo in sign of goodwill

      Sichuan police accused two people of spreading false information that the bears were mistreated at a Washington zoo.

    • Chinese media launch campaign to foster US ‘friendship and trust’ [Ed: AstroTurfing basically]

      The state media campaign comes as China prepares for a second Trump term.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong activist arrested over 2019 protest sees social work license suspended for 5 years [Ed: "Lau Ka-tung said on Facebook (Farcebook) and Instagram" means the person reinforces the censorship]

    A social worker and activist who was jailed over an offence linked to the protests in 2019 has had his social work license suspended for five years, the longest revocation yet under new laws meant to protect national security.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Case of man accused of sedition under Hong Kong’s Article 23 security law adjourned to await landmark appeal

    A man charged under a Hong Kong security law over allegedly publishing “seditious” posts online has had his case adjourned to await the verdict of a landmark appeal at the top court. Chow Kim-ho appeared at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Monday.

  • New York Times ☛ Social Media Companies Face Global Tug-of-War Over Free Speech

    President-elect Donald J. Trump’s picks for the F.C.C. and F.T.C. have vowed to remove censorship online. That conflicts with European regulators who are pushing for stricter moderation.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • JURIST ☛ Israel warplanes kill five Palestinian journalists in front of Gaza hospital

    The Palestinian Ministry of Health stated on Thursday that Israeli warplanes bombed a van belonging to journalists who worked for the Al-Quds Al-Youm television channel in front of Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat town of the central Gaza Strip overnight, resulting in the death of five journalists.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Digital Music News ☛ Jay-Z Officially Served in Jane Doe Sexual Assault Action Following Push to Reveal Accuser’s Identity

    After unsuccessfully attempting to reveal the identity of the Jane Doe plaintiff accusing him of rape, Jay-Z has officially been served with the ugly lawsuit. More specifically, the head of security at the Roc Nation founder’s splashy Malibu mansion was served with the complaint, the affidavit of service shows.

  • New York Times ☛ The Men Who Use Instagram to Groom Child Influencers

    Photographers and other men offer to build online followings for young girls, but some are pedophiles who work with parents to sexualize them.

  • EFF ☛ Exposing Surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico Border: 2024 Year in Review in Pictures

    EFF refuses to let this blight grow without documenting it, exposing it, and finding ways to fight back alongside the communities that live in the shadow of this technological threat to human rights.  

    Here’s a galley of images representing our work and the new developments we’ve discovered in border surveillance in 2024.  

  • EFF ☛ Fighting Automated Oppression: 2024 in Review

    This year, we wrote detailed reports and comments to US and international governments explaining that ADM poses a high risk of harming human rights, especially with regard to issues of fairness and due process. Machine learning algorithms that enable ADM in complex contexts attempt to reproduce the patterns they discern in an existing dataset. If you train it on a biased dataset, such as records of whom the police have arrested or who historically gets approved for health coverage, then you are creating a technology to automate systemic, historical injustice. And because these technologies don’t (and typically can’t) explain their reasoning, challenging their outputs is very difficult.

    If you train it on a biased dataset, you are creating a technology to automate systemic, historical injustice.

    It’s important to note that decision makers tend to defer to ADMs or use them as cover to justify their own biases. And even though they are implemented to change how decisions are made by government officials, the adoption of an ADM is often considered a mere ‘procurement’ decision like buying a new printer, without the kind of public involvement that a rule change would ordinarily entail. This, of course, increases the likelihood that vulnerable members of the public will be harmed and that technologies will be adopted without meaningful vetting. While there may be positive use cases for machine learning to analyze government processes and phenomena in the world, making decisions about people is one of the worst applications of this technology, one that entrenches existing injustice and creates new, hard-to-discover errors that can ruin lives.

  • EFF ☛ State Legislatures Are The Frontline for Tech Policy: 2024 in Review

    This year, some of that work has been to defend good laws we’ve passed before. In California, EFF worked to oppose and defeat S.B. 1076, by State Senator Scott Wilk, which would have undermined the California Delete Act (S.B. 362). Enacted last year, the Delete Act provides consumers with an easy “one-click” button to ask data brokers registered in California to remove their personal information. S.B. 1076 would have opened loopholes for data brokers to duck compliance with this common-sense, consumer-friendly tool. We were glad to stop it before it got very far.

    Also in California, EFF worked with dozens of organizations led by ACLU California Action to defeat A.B. 1814, a facial recognition bill authored by Assemblymember Phil Ting. The bill would have made it easy for policy to evade accountability and we are glad to see the California legislature reject this dangerous bill. For the full rundown of our highlights and lowlights in California, you can check out our recap of this year’s session.

    EFF also supported efforts from the ACLU of Massachusetts to pass the Location Shield Act, which, as introduced, would have required companies to get consent before collecting or processing location data and largely banned the sale of location data. While the bill did not become law this year, we look forward to continuing the fight to push it across the finish line in 2025.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Three of the best: RPKI

    Securing routing by adopting RPKI is now an essential practice in the modern Internet — here are three of 2024’s top posts.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ The last post for 2024

    This year the blog turned twenty! There were 560 posts, 204,081 words, and only a singular mention of creamed corn… right there.

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Podcast Notes: Vlad Prelovac on “The Talk Show”

    Vlad Prelovac is the CEO of Kagi: a search engine you have to pay for.

    He’s on episode 416 of John Gruber’s The Talk Show to discuss why he thinks we should be paying for search.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Unified Patents ☛ Quest entity Taasera cyber security patent monopoly found invalid

    On December 23, 2024, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) entered a notice of intent to issue a reexamination certificate canceling all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,673,137, owned by Taasera Licensing LLC, an NPE and a Quest Patent Research Corporation entity.  The ‘137 patent monopoly relates to methods of computer security using program validation.

  • Unified Patents ☛ Acacia entity Atlas Global Technologies Wi-Fi patent monopoly found invalid

    On December 23, 2024, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) entered a final rejection of all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 10,153,886, owned and asserted by Atlas Global Technologies, LLC, an NPE and Acacia Research entity. The ‘886 patent monopoly is generally directed to an uplink transmission scheme for acknowledgements to reduce or eliminate redundant acknowledgements and is asserted against a Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ax.

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Federal Circuit Affirms Invalidity of Purdue’s OxyContin Patents

    The Federal Circuit recently affirmed the invalidity of several Purdue Pharma patents related to abuse-deterrent and low-impurity formulations of OxyContin. Purdue Pharma L.P. v. Accord Healthcare, Inc., No. 2023-1953 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 30, 2024).  Although non-precedential, the appeal addresses three significant legal questions in obviousness jurisprudence: (1) The consideration given to discovering the source of a previously known problem under Eibel Process Co. v. Minnesota & Ontario Paper Co.

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ Panasonic Vs Oppo: the First UPC FRAND ruling [Ed: ☞ UPC is illegal. This is corruption manifesting its own fake system of patent 'justice', serving the litigation industry without allowing a real cascade of appeals. ]

      In July 2023, the Japanese electronics company Panasonic initiated a series of patent monopoly infringement and FRAND-related proceedings against several subsidiaries of the Chinese consumer electronics maker Oppo (and in parallel against another Chinese company, i.e. Xiaomi), at the local divisions of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) in Mannheim and Munich (*).

  • Software Patents

    • Unified Patents ☛ Another Velos Media video codec patent monopoly challenged

      On December 26, 2024, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 10,257,520, owned by Velos Media, an NPE. The '520 patent monopoly is generally directed to video coding and decoding processes for employing block rotation when transform skipping is enabled.

    • Unified Patents ☛ DynaIP entity, Err Content, media casting patent monopoly challenged

      On December 23, 2024, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 10,721,542, owned and asserted by Err Content IP LLC, an NPE and entity of Pueblo Nuevo/DynaIP. The '542 patent monopoly generally relates to providing main content and extra content to a user through a reference item.

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ Precedential No. 29: USPTO Has Inherent Authority to Correct its Error by Cancelling Inadvertently Issued Registration

    The Board ironed out a wrinkle in this rather straightforward affirmance of a Section 2(e)(1) mere descriptiveness refusal of NURSECON for "Arranging and conducting special events for social entertainment purposes." The Board rejected the applicant's argument that the USPTO exceeded its authority when it cancelled the registration for this mark and restored the application to pending status. "[T]he cancellation of the registration number as inadvertently issued was an appropriate exercise of the USPTO's inherent authority to correct its errors." In re Nursecon, LLC, Serial No. 88052194 (December 26, 2024) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Mary Beth Myles).