Leftovers

• Lee Peterson ☛ Stop using the word should

  You know what, over the last few years since I started weekly counselling I’ve really come to dislike the word ‘should’. It’s got a negative feeling and doesn’t benefit anyone.

• Smithsonian Magazine ☛ The Longest-Running Show in Broadway History Opened on This Date in 1988. Read Why Its Legacy Is So Controversial

  But the Covid-19 pandemic spelled trouble for Broadway’s Phantom. In March 2020, Phantom temporarily closed, staying shuttered for 586 days before reopening on October 22, 2021. The show’s audience never returned to its pre-pandemic attendance levels. Less than a year later, producers announced the production’s record-breaking run would end in February 2023.

  But when patrons learned that the musical was leaving Manhattan, a surge in ticket sales led to a two-month extension. By the time the show closed on April 16, 2023, Phantom had played 13,981 Broadway performances.

• Robert Birming ☛ The Power of the Toothpick

  By specializing, we can become experts in our niche, cater to specific customer needs, and stand out from the competition. It's about finding that one thing that makes us unique and valuable.

• Roy Tang ☛ Weeknotes 2025-01-19 The Years Are Short But The Days Are Long

  This past week as I was browsing through some old files to do cleanup stuff I think my brain finally caught up to the fact that we are currently in the year of our lord 2025. That means 2015 was a whole decade ago, and a whole quarter century has passed since the year 2000. The years go by so quickly, yet a lot of the days recently feel like a struggle to get through.

• Brandon ☛ Week Notes (01-26-2025) aka Lament

  Lament is deep grieving or deep mourning. There’s lots to lament at the moment. On the day we set aside to celebrate one of the greatest civil rights activists who was assassinated for his beliefs, this country inaugurated an individual who seems to be the antithesis of MLK jr’s legacy. He proceeded to issue horrendous executive order after order, stripping rights and humanity from broad swaths of people.

• Andrea Contino ☛ LACMA

  The first two floors are dedicated to the exhibition Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film. It examines the impact of digital manipulation tools from the 1980s to the present, for the first time assessing simultaneous developments and debates in the fields of photography, graphic design, and visual effects. Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition traces the emergence of distinctive digital aesthetic strategies, relationships to realism, and storytelling modes.

• Vintage Everyday ☛ The Story Behind Robert Crumb’s Cover Art for Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Album “Cheap Thrills” (1968)

  Getz added: “The next weekend Crumb came to our show at The Carousel Ballroom, sat on the floor in our backstage dressing room and observed. He really wasn’t into our music but it didn’t matter. It was maybe one or two days later Crumb called Janis to come and pick up what he’d done.”

• James G ☛ In design, craft

  Thinking back to the redesign of this website earlier this year, I was aiming to put greater emphasis on my words. I removed background imagery. I moved the navigation bar to the left side so that more words in my articles could appear above the fold. I wanted to design a place where my words were first.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Find Signs of Life Deep Inside the Earth

    Chief among the findings is that the dank cracks of the planet's crust could be home to over half of microbial cells on Earth, challenging our previous — and logical — understanding that life gets less diverse and abundant the farther it gets from the sun.

  • Noah Liebman ☛ The math checks out: a bit of theory in practice

    When we had an HVAC service person out a few months ago, he pointed out that whoever installed our system did something right: on a long run of duct with vents along the way, it should get narrower as it goes on in order to keep the pressure up.

  • Hackaday ☛ Shedding Light On Quantum Measurement With Calcite

    Have you ever struggled with the concept of quantum measurement, feeling it’s unnecessarily abstract? You’re not alone. Enter this guide by [Mithuna] from Looking Glass Universe, where she circles back on the concept of  measurement basis in quantum mechanics using a rather simple piece of calcite crystal. We wrote about similar endeavours in reflection on Shanni Prutchi’s talk at the Hackaday SuperConference in 2015. If that memory got a bit dusty in your mind, here’s a quick course to make things click again.

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Emotions change our perception of time – as demonstrated on The Traitors

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Sexism linked to social ills for men and women, finds largest cross-cultural study of its kind

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Ancient DNA study shows women at the centre of societies in iron age Britain – supporting decades of archaeology

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] How we uncovered the UK’s biggest site of dinosaur tracks in a quarry in Oxfordshire

• Career/Education

  • Johnny Decimal ☛ 22.00.0098 JDHQ is on the move

    We need our own place, in the country. Undisturbed by neighbours. Full of chickens.

    So, decision made just a week ago, we've already taken decisive action. Notice has been given. Many items have been sold or disposed. There's more to go: we don't plan on keeping much.

  • Hollywood Reporter ☛ Surviving Hollywood Industry Shifts: Insights From a TV Writer

    Yet another tell that the end is nigh is that your friends will start blaming technology. But they will blame the wrong technology. We were sure the problem in publishing was that the internet posted our valuable articles for free. The real problem was that reading is hard. But now people could watch an infinite amount of video. On their phones. Which they have to take out every few seconds to get directions, see the weather, text friends. The only time you need to take out a magazine these days is when you see a spider. TV writers believe the problem is AI. It’s not. The problem is that just as reading was once considered too taxing, now watching a video longer than 34 seconds is hard. Have you seen young people try to watch a movie? It’s like asking them to sit through Mass on the Easter Vigil.

  • Seth Godin ☛ Expertise and credentials

    In the ideal world, credentials would be awarded to all experts, and withdrawn from all charlatans.

  • Thorsten Ball ☛ Joy & Curiosity #24

    But, paradoxical as it sounds, even though it was a full year, I was still missing something and I realised that this is not what I want.

    And now, guess what, I’m going back to Sourcegraph.

• Hardware

  • SCMP ☛ China to host world’s first human-robot marathon as robotics drives national goals

    Some 12,000 humans will take part in the coming race – and running alongside them on the 21km (13-mile) route will be robots from more than 20 companies, according to the administrative body of Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, or E-Town.

  • Futurism ☛ China Is Hosting The World’s First Foot Race Between Humans and Robots

    The race will be roughly 13 miles, and robotic competitors both cannot have wheels and must stand between 1.5 and 6.5 feet tall. In a statement, E-Town added that "competing robots must have a humanoid appearance and mechanical structure capable of bipedal walking or running movements."

  • [Old] Newsweek ☛ Goodbye, Mike Mulligan

    And so, Americans triumph over adversity and embrace change. The struggling is necessary, even if all stories don't end happily. We are inspired and reminded that upheavals today, though imposing, are less daunting than in the past. Meanwhile, Mike and Mary Anne remain in Popperville. They invite anyone passing through to visit. Until then, bye, Mike.

  • [Old] Simcha Fisher ☛ In praise of Mike Mulligan

    Not to put too fine a point on it, but Mike and Mary Anne’s virtues are transformed into warmth, rather than mere industry. (They always worked better and faster when people are watching, after all.)

  • [Old] Internet Archive ☛ John Henry

    Digitized at 78 revolutions per minute. Four stylii were used to transfer this record. They are 3.5mil truncated eliptical, 2.3mil truncated conical, 2.8mil truncated conical, 3.3mil truncated conical. These were recorded flat and then also equalized with Turnover: 400.0, Rolloff: -12.0.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • [Old] Amnesty International ☛ Global: TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed risks pushing children and young people towards harmful mental health content - Amnesty International

    The two reports –Driven into the Darkness: How TikTok Encourages Self-harm and Suicidal Ideation and the I Feel Exposed: Caught in TikTok’s Surveillance Web -highlight the abuses experienced by children and young people using TikTok, and the ways in which these abuses are caused by TikTok’s recommender system and the underlying business model.

  • Johnny Decimal ☛ 22.00.0099 Goodbye, sweet ladies

    I don't need things. I don't need money above the basics for a simple life. This realisation has been profound.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Hippocratic Oath May Require Doctors to Disobey Trump

    ICE raids also threaten the very functioning of our health care systems. Undocumented workers — nurses, home health aides, janitors, food service staff — are essential coworkers in our medical institutions. Targeting them, or terrorizing their families and communities, will disrupt essential services at hospitals and clinics already stretched thin by widespread labor shortages (tied, in part, to exploitative labor practices in our capitalist health systems), particularly in underserved areas. When these workers are forced into hiding, the consequences ripple outward, destabilizing care for everyone.

• Proprietary

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] Pelosi Sells 31K Apple and 10K Nvidia Shares, Eyes New AI and Utility Firm in a Major Portfolio Reshuffle [Ed: Hallmark of corruption]

  • MacRumors ☛ 2025-01-18 [Older] Another Never-Announced Product Might Fail to Meet Its Never-Announced Ship Date

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • India Times ☛ 'AI to outsmart humans?': Scientists warn of risk as Artificial Intelligence can now clone itself

      'AI to outsmart humans?': Scientists warn of risk as Artificial Intelligence can now clone itself Scientists warn that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has crossed a critical "red line" as researchers in China revealed that two leading large language models (LLMs) can replicate themselves, raising concerns about safety and ethical boundaries. "Successful self-replication under no human assistance is the essential step for AI to outsmart (humans), and is an early signal for rogue AIs," the researchers stated in their study, published on December 9, 2024, in the preprint database arXiv.

    • Hall of Impossible Dreams ☛ PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory

      Does anybody remember PhysicsForums?

      It was never exactly the center of the Internet, but back when it was founded in 2001, the Internet didn’t really have a center the way it does today. PhysicsForums was one forum among thousands, founded by an enthusiastic teenager named Greg Bernhardt, existing in the ‘hard science’ niche alongside the likes of Bad Astronomy, mostly focused on giving hints for physics homework to struggling students without outright doing the physics homework. It had fairly steady growth until 2012, before petering out throughout the 2010s and 2020s in lieu of more centralized sites like StackExchange, and by 2025, only a small community was left. But, unlike so many other fora from back in the early days, it went from 2003 to 2025 without ever changing its URLs, erasing its old posts, or going down altogether. Thanks to this consistency, PhysicsForums remains quite valuable as a time capsule, and can give us a glimpse at how people thought and what they said two decades ago.

    • The Verge ☛ Meta Ray-Bans Live AI hands-on: a solution looking for a problem

      And herein lies the biggest recurring problem I have with AI: you have to know how to ask the right questions to get the answer you want.

  • Social Control Media

    • Luigi Mozzillo ☛ We are something else

      I don’t have a Meta account, but I do have a WhatsApp account, which is practically mandatory in Italy. It’s a cancer that will be very difficult to eradicate. I don’t use Meta accounts by choice because I don’t use social networks, and because I care about my privacy, and because I prefer this blog to be the place where all my content resides. Things already said.

    • Andrea Contino ☛ My tiny little corner

      I've reflected a lot lately on the evolution of social networks, specifically text-based ones. X, Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky...without even mentioning all that lesser-known undergrowth strictly linked to blockchain technologies. During this period of reflection, I've repeatedly complained about how my measure was full, nauseated by too much falsehood, desire for oppression, ignorance, violence of all kinds, and the negative list could go on infinitely.

      In almost all cases, my thoughts have led me to a single, certain, decisive conclusion. To free myself forever from the slavery of social networks, from the vicious circle in which one must participate to not be cut off from "real-time", trying to float to understand something of this crazy world through reading other human beings.

    • Vox ☛ Will Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok censor anti-Trump speech?

      For years, Republicans have believed that social media companies were inherently biased against conservative speech, despite evidence to the contrary. (More news influencers lean conservative, and most are male.) Now with a new Trump administration in power, it’s liberals who are expressing concern — and their fears, watchdogs say, are more reasonable than they might initially seem.

      People worried about how Silicon Valley tycoons are kowtowing to Trump need not look far for an example of what conservative control of a platform might look like. “We saw this happen with X after Musk took over. My feed was completely different, and I think that’s possible with Meta too,” says York. Twitter was famous for its searchability, its transparency (you could see exactly who follows who, who liked what, what time a tweet was posted, and what was trending), and its allowance for free speech relative to other platforms.

    • CBC ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini has postponed the TikTok ban. Was that legal? [Ed: No, SOCTUS upheld t his ban.]

    • Make Tech Easier ☛ 2025-01-22 [Older] Meta Wants to Pay You to Switch From TikTok [Ed: Hostile operations that view people as objects]

    • The Lawfare Institute ☛ 2025-01-22 [Older] Legal Nerdery on Cheeto Mussolini’s TikTok Executive Order

    • John Gruber ☛ 2025-01-22 [Older] ★ Let’s Not Mince Words Regarding Cheeto Mussolini’s Executive Order to Pause Enforcement of the TikTok Law and Provide Supposed Immunity to Companies That Are in Clear Violation of It

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Families Sue TikTok in France Over Teen Suicides They Say Are Linked to Harmful Content

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] iPhones With Tiktok Sell For Up To £20K On eBay As App Remains Absent In US App Store

    • Vox ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] It’s not conspiratorial to be worried about social media’s rightward swing

    • CBC ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] TikTok, Meta 'chaos' reminds Canadian businesses of the value of diversification

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Unfortunately, Cheeto Mussolini Played the TikTok Ban Perfectly [Ed: Breaing the law "Perfectly"?]

      Now Trump has not only managed to evade responsibility for his role in promoting the TikTok ban but has taken credit for ending it. Shortly after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order delaying the ban of TikTok by seventy-five days. The order was sandwiched between challenges to birthright citizenship, a constitutionally protected right, and deregulation of oil drilling, among other horrors. But Trump’s TikTok order was designed to overshadow a more robust extension of the sale deadline that was introduced to Congress by senators Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rep. Ro Khanna (CA-17), which would extend the deadline by 270 days.

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-25 [Older] Am I Being Censored? Some US TikTok Users Say App Feels Different After Ban Lifted

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini's Executive Order Gives TikTok a Reprieve. What Happens Next?

    • Scheerpost ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] Glenn Greenwald: TikTok “Refugees” Flee To Chinese RedNote App

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says He Is Open to Musk Buying TikTok if Tesla CEO Wants to Do So

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] TikTok restores US services as ban looms

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] From Backing a Ban to Being Hailed as a Savior: Inside Cheeto Mussolini's TikTok Shift

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] Conservative Influencers Celebrate at TikTok-Sponsored Cheeto Mussolini Inauguration Party

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-01-19 [Older] When Will TikTok Be Unbanned in the US and Could the Ban Spread to the UK? What We Know

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] Relieved US TikTok Enthusiasts Hope 'Magic' Returns as App Is Restored

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-19 [Older] TikTok restores US service after Cheeto Mussolini remarks on ban

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-19 [Older] Man Accused of Starting Fire at Congressman's Office Motivated by TikTok Ban, Police Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-19 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Security Adviser Doesn't Rule Out Continued Chinese Ownership of TikTok

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-19 [Older] How TikTok Grew From a Fun App for Teens Into a Potential National Security Threat

• Security

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] CISA Releases Six Industrial Control Systems Advisories

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] mySCADA myPRO Manager

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Hitachi Energy RTU500 Series Product

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Schneider Electric EVlink Home Smart and Schneider Charge

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Schneider Electric Easergy Studio

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Schneider Electric EcoStruxure Power Build Rapsody

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] HMS Networks Ewon Flexy 202

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-22 [Older] CISA and FBI Release Advisory on How Threat Actors Chained Vulnerabilities in Ivanti Cloud Service Applications

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] CISA Releases Three Industrial Control Systems Advisories

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) II

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] Siemens SIMATIC S7-1200 CPUs

    • CISA ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] ZF Roll Stability Support Plus (RSSPlus)

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • SCMP ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Oxfam Hong Kong data leak: charity violated data protection law

    • Digital Camera World ☛ A hobbyist photographed a stranger’s proposal on a beach. Social media helped them connect less than 24 hours later | Digital Camera World

      After asking for help identifying the couple on social media, Fitzpatrick was able to connect with the groom-to-be less than 24 hours later. Ryan Chadwick and Samantha Zambarano were excited to have the photos. Chadwick explained that he had actually hired a photographer for the proposal, though the pro ended up sick on the planned day – but he wanted to proceed with the plans anyway.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Irish Examiner ☛ Holocaust Memorial Day: 'It didn’t start with gas chambers. It started with politicians dividing the people, us vs them...’ 

    Against this background, Robert Gerwarth, Professor of Modern History at UCD, said there is an imperative to remind people about the Holocaust and the fragility of democracies.

    “The Holocaust is receding further and further into history, so, obviously its important to remember what happened and to bear in mind how quickly a society can trip into dictatorship, that are genocidal in nature,” he told the Irish Examiner.

  • New York Times ☛ At Auschwitz, a Solemn Ceremony at a Time of Rising Nationalism

    More than 50 world leaders, including King Charles III, will join a dwindling group of Nazi death camp survivors on Monday in southern Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz, where more than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Auschwitz Was Liberated 80 Years Ago. the Spotlight Is on Survivors as Their Numbers Dwindle

    At the time Allied troops were moving across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany. Soviet troops first liberated the Majdanek camp near Lublin in July 1944, and would go on to liberate Auschwitz, Stutthof and others.

    American and British forces, meanwhile, liberated camps to the west, including Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, Bergen-Belsen.

  • VOA News ☛ Islamist militants kill at least 20 Nigerian troops, security sources say

    Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighters have mainly operated in Borno, targeting security forces and civilians, in the process killing and displacing tens of thousands of people.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Islamist Militants Kill at Least 20 Nigerian Troops, Security Sources Say

    Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighters have mainly operated in Borno, targeting security forces and civilians, in the process killing and displacing tens of thousands of people.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Australia bans U16s from social media. Or does it?

    The Australian parliament has legislated what’s commonly described as as “social media ban” for people under 16. More precisely, it will require selected social media platforms to implement (unspecified) age verification technology for people wishing to create accounts. This measure was rushed through at the end of last year, at the expense of proposed legislation to limit advertising for online gambling.

  • The Local SE ☛ Sweden seizes ship in latest incident of suspected Baltic Sea sabotage

    Sweden has seized a ship suspected of damaging fiber-optic cable linking the country to Latvia, in the latest incidents of suspected Baltic Sea sabotage.

  • RFI ☛ Sweden seizes ship suspected of Baltic Sea cable 'sabotage'

    Sweden on Sunday said it had seized a ship suspected of having damaged a fibre-optic cable under the Baltic Sea linking the country to Latvia, which sent a warship to investigate the latest apparent act of sabotage.

  • Reuters ☛ Sweden opens sabotage probe into Baltic undersea cable damage

    An undersea fibre optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged on Sunday, likely as a result of external influence, Latvia said, prompting NATO to deploy patrol ships to the area and triggering a sabotage investigation by Swedish authorities. Sweden's Security Service has seized control of a vessel as part of the probe, the country's prosecution authority said.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Latvia: Undersea cable likely damaged by external influence

    An undersea fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden belonging to Latvia State Radio and Television Center (LVRTC) was damaged in the Baltic Sea on Sunday. The cable linked the Latvian town of Ventspils with Sweden's Gotland island.

  • International Business Times ☛ 1 in 12 Londoners Are Illegal Immigrants, Study Estimates Up to 585,533 in the Capital

    It may seem odd for a water company to be interest in illegal immigration, but the firm said it had a 'regulatory obligation to undertake a "water balance", which includes understanding how much water our customers use on a per-person basis, and how it is distributed across our supply area.'

    In order to find out how many un-recorded people it might need to provide water for, Thames Water hired Edge Analytics, a group of demography and data experts at Leeds University, to provide it with an idea of how much water they need to provide.

  • The Verge ☛ Oracle and Microsoft are reportedly in talks to take over TikTok

    Oracle and a group of investors that includes Microsoft are in talks to take over TikTok’s global operations, reports NPR. The deal, which the White House is reportedly negotiating, would see ByteDance keeping a minority stake in TikTok while “the app’s algorithm, data collection and software updates will be overseen by Oracle.”

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-01-22 [Older] Who Is El Pinky: YouTuber Found Bound, Tortured, And Executed By Mexican Cartel

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-01-25 [Older] US Coast Guard Chief Found Out She Was Fired While In Line To Take A Photo With Cheeto Mussolini

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • 2025-01-25 [Older] Slovak PM accuses Ukraine — without any evidence — of involvement in alleged “massive cyberattack”

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-25 [Older] Ukrainian Winemaker and US Veterans Team up to Show the Best of Ukraine, a Glass at a Time

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-25 [Older] US Has Not Stopped Military Aid to Ukraine, Zelenskyy Says

    • Spiegel ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Ukraine Is Running Out of People - A Demographic Catastrophe

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] US updates: Cheeto Mussolini calls on Putin to end war in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Ukrainian Drones Attack City Near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant, Officials Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Moscow Mayor Says Air Defences Repel Ukrainian Drone Attacks Aimed at Capital

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] NATO Chief Rutte Reaffirms Need to Step up Support for Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Ukraine Seeks Recovery Investment in Davos as Cheeto Mussolini Urges Peace

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-22 [Older] How art from Ukraine's Odesa was rescued and sent to Berlin

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] Financially Desperate Colombians 'Recruited' to Fight For Ukraine To Pay Off Debts

    • New Yorker ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] What Cheeto Mussolini 2.0 Means for Ukraine and the World

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Hungary's Orban threatens to block EU sanctions on Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Russia's Putin trying to 'manipulate' Cheeto Mussolini, says Ukraine

    • The Local DK ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Denmark places navy vessel close to Russian ship in Kattegat sea

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] India Says Sanctioned Russian Oil Tankers Can Discharge Before Feb 27

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Russia Says It Sees No Signs That Ukraine and the West Are Ready for Peace Talks Despite All Statements

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Slovak Protests Build in Rebuke of PM Fico's Russian Tilt

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Syria Cancels Port Management Contract With Russian Firm, Sources Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Tens of Thousands Protest in Slovakia Over Pro-Russia Policies of Populist Leader Fico

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Ukrainian Drones Hit Big Russian Oil Refinery at Ryazan, Sources Say

    • The Age AU ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Thanasi Kokkinakis was warned against playing in Russia. He went anyway

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Exclusive-Putin Growing Concerned by Russia's Economy, as Cheeto Mussolini Mulls More Sanctions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] One Dead, 25 Injured in Russian Strike on Zaporizhzhia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] Russia-Linked AI Websites Aim to Dupe German Voters, Study Finds

    • HRW ☛ 2025-01-22 [Older] Prison Terms for Navalny’s Russian Defense Lawyers

    • Scheerpost ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] On the Eve of Cheeto Mussolini, Iran and Russia Launch Historical Deal

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] EU looks to head off gas squeeze amid Russian LNG ban talk

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-21 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says He Would Sanction Russia if Putin Does Not Negotiate on Ukraine

    • Defence Web ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] Russia delivers military hardware to Mali

    • Spiegel ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] Katya, Ira and Zhenya Take on Putin: The Difficulties of Protesting the War in Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] Analysis-Cheeto Mussolini's Return Adds New Twist to Western Firms' Russia Exit Dilemma

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] Russian Disinformation Targets German Election Campaign, Says Think-Tank

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] Russia Opens Investigation After Video of Military Police Beating Soldiers Is Released Online

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] US Agrees to New Russian Ambassador to Washington, Russian Senator Says

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-01-19 [Older] Russia Offers Central African Republic Security Guarantee and Broader Economic Partnership

    • CBC ☛ 2025-01-19 [Older] As Cheeto Mussolini takes office, Ukrainians are skeptical he can quickly end the war. Some wish he would

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-18 [Older] Ukraine says at least 3 killed in Russian strike on Kyiv

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • VOA News ☛ Nigerian journalist misleads on Trump’s ability to travel internationally

    In a video posted on her TikTok account, Lawrence claimed: “President Trump is a convicted felon and he cannot enter UAE, UK, Canada, South Africa, Donald Trump cannot enter like 42 countries.”

    The claim is misleading.

    Canada is among dozens of countries to refuse entry to convicted felons. But experts say the Canadian laws can still grant a felon entry.

  • New York Times ☛ How the New York Times Website Got Its URL

    Then an editor for the Science section and a personal computers columnist, Mr. Lewis recalled predicting that by the millennium, Times articles would be read on personal computer screens, in cyberspace.

    “I recall Artie dismissing me with a wave,” Mr. Lewis wrote of Mr. Gelb.

  • New York Times ☛ Elon Musk, Video Game King? Well, Maybe Not.

    Internet sleuths made YouTube videos and took to Reddit threads to dissect his gameplay, exposing mistakes a novice would make. Other gamers pointed out that Mr. Musk's Path of Exile account has been active at times he couldn’t have been playing himself, like on Monday morning, while he was at Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Mr. Musk’s account status indicated that he was logged into the game and inside of a “map,” which meant it was possible — though not certain — that someone on the account was playing the game while Mr. Musk was sitting behind Mr. Trump.

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ How we treat catchment water to make it safe to drink

    There is no "new" water on Earth. The water we drink can be up to 4.5 billion years old and is continuously recycled through the hydrological cycle. This transfers water from the ground to the atmosphere through evaporation and back again (for example, through rain).

    Humans interfere with this natural cycle by trapping and redirecting water from various sources to use. A lot happens before it reaches your home.

    The quality of the water when you turn on the tap depends on a range of factors, including the local geology, what kind of activities happen in catchment areas, and the different treatments used to process it.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Has ash from the L.A. area fires ruined the soil and garden veggies?

    “Ash from a chaparral [vegetation] fire is clean; it contains nutrients like phosphorous and potassium that can be beneficial,” said Garn Wallace, a biochemist and soil scientist whose business, Wallace Laboratories in El Segundo, has been testing California soils since 1990. “But ash from a home that burned risks having heavy metals that came from the construction materials or were used in the paint or furniture. And ash from that house could be toxic.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Age AU ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] $Cheeto Mussolini meme coin gives new meaning to ‘creating money out of thin air’

    • Futurism ☛ We Aren't Being Told the Real Extent of AI Datacenter Emissions

      The already formidable environmental toll of generative AI is even worse than it seems because businesses aren't being transparent about the emissions given off by their enormous new AI datacenters.

      Take Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon and one of the largest cloud computing platforms in the world, which doesn't provide location-based or data center-specific statistics in its emissions reports. That means it's impossible to tell how much greenhouse gases the massive facilities — and specifically, ones that host or train AI models — are producing, right at the most important moment for the public and policymakers to be grappling with that information.

      "The environmental impact of AWS is not broken out specifically, and you can only find the emissions of Amazon overall," Benn Caddy at the IT analysis firm Canalys, told the Register. "In fairness, Google and Microsoft similarly publish annual sustainability reports for their wider respective companies, reflecting emissions beyond their cloud businesses."

    • VOA News ☛ Big Tech wants data centers plugged into power plants; utilities balk

      Looking for a quick fix for their fast-growing electricity diets, tech giants are increasingly looking to strike deals with power plant owners to plug in directly, avoiding a potentially longer and more expensive process of hooking into a fraying electric grid that serves everyone else.

      It's raising questions over whether diverting power to higher-paying customers will leave enough for others and whether it's fair to excuse big power users from paying for the grid. Federal regulators are trying to figure out what to do about it, and quickly.

    • [Old] W Evan Sheehan ☛ Mobility

      This is also why I am passionate about urbanism. Our car-centric cities and towns rob people of their independence. People who would otherwise be perfectly capable of going out on their own to meet friends, or grocery shop, or go to the library are prevented from doing so because they can’t drive. Maybe they’re too young to drive, as I was at 14; or maybe they’ve gotten old enough that it’s no longer safe for them to drive; or perhaps they have a disability that prevents them from driving. Sometimes people can’t drive simply because they can’t afford a car, because these things are really expensive.

  • Overpopulation

    • New York Times ☛ China’s Tibet Dam Project Has Its Neighbors Worried

      But this project has raised concerns among environmentalists and China’s neighbors — in part, because Beijing has said so little about it.

      The area where the dam is being built is prone to earthquakes. The Tibetan river being dammed, the Yarlung Tsangpo, flows into neighboring India as the Brahmaputra and into Bangladesh as the Jamuna, raising concerns in those countries about water security.

    • TruthOut ☛ Nearly 30 Million People in the US Face Limited Water Supplies, Study Finds

      The US Geological Survey (USGS), which is part of the Department of the Interior, issued what it said was a first-of-its-kind report last week, with USGS Director David Applegate warning of “increasing challenges to this vital resource.” The Jan. 16 report, based on data from 2010 to 2020, examines not only water supplies but also demand patterns and water quality. The report showed that most of the country had supplies that exceeded demand during the period examined, but worrisome trends were noted.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Washington Post ☛ How Mark Zuckerberg is rebranding Meta for Trump’s second term

    Mark Zuckerberg is working to get into Donald Trump’s good graces. But 10 years ago, the Meta CEO wanted to punish him.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • VOA News ☛ Facebook scammers use fake VOA article to push Russian cryptocurrency scheme

      At the center of the cryptocurrency scam impersonating VOA is an intriguing promise and a trail of stolen accounts spanning the globe.

      The fake story claims that Durov told Carlson about his latest creation: ProTON-Invest, an open program that will allow even the least financially literate person to earn large sums of money with minimal effort.

    • New York Times ☛ Financial Advice on Social Media Is Growing. And Risky.

      Everyday investors are turning to financial influencers, or ‘fin-fluencers,’ to learn how to manage their finances, but experts say rooting out misinformation is challenging.

    • Maine Morning Star ☛ In times of crisis, states have few tools to fight misinformation

      From artificial intelligence-generated images of the famous Hollywood sign surrounded by fire to baseless rumors that firefighters were using women’s handbags full of water to douse the flames, misinformation has been rampant. While officials in Southern California fought fire and falsehoods, Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — announced it would eliminate its fact-checking program in the name of free expression.

      That has some wondering what, if anything, state governments can do to stop the spread of harmful lies and rumors that proliferate on social media. Emergency first responders are now experiencing what election officials have had to contend with in recent years, as falsehoods about election fraud — stemming from President Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his 2020 loss — have proliferated.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Dan Sinker ☛ Hidden Writings

    Information wants to get out, even in places like Germany in the 30s, where the government brutally cracked down on it. Books were burnt. People were killed. Others fled. That didn't stop information from getting out. It took massive risk, it took huge effort, but the word was spread. °°°

    This week, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Apple's Tim Cook, Google's Sundar Pichai, and TikTok's Shou Chew all attended Donald Trump's second inauguration. They donated millions to the inaugural committee. Before that, Musk spent upwards of a quarter billion dollars on the election, Zuckerberg announced a slew of awful changes to Meta's properties including kicking the door wide open to hate speech and misinformation, Bezos spiked the endorsement of Kamala Harris at the Washington Post, and TikTok went offline only to return with a fawning message of thanks to Trump.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Trump talks 'free speech' while moving to muzzle those he disagrees with

    “Let’s not be naive,” said Hadar Harris, the Washington managing director of PEN America, which has advocated for free speech in the U.S. for more than a century. “While some of President Trump’s flurry of executive orders pay lip service to free speech, in reality they frame a frontal assault against it, dictating the terms of allowable expression and identities, demanding political loyalty from civil servants, and threatening retaliation against dissent in ways that could cast a broad chill on free expression well beyond the halls of government.”

  • American Library Association ☛ New ALA Initiative Asks Advocates to “Show Up for Our Libraries”

    ALA kicked off the campaign with a proactive call for library advocates to get their elected leaders on the record about how they plan to protect the freedom to read and how they will support federal funding for libraries. An email from ALA’s Public Policy and Advocacy Office urged advocates to personalize their communications with legislators, noting “Research shows that individualized messages are five times more likely than commonly used templates to influence a legislator’s decision.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ Police In Switzerland Ban Then Detain Palestinian American Journalist

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Recruits will learn about Tuskegee Airmen, Air Force insists

    The Air Force clarified on Sunday that new recruits will learn about the Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Air Force Service Pilots during their basic training, after a course that included videos on the two World War II-era groups was briefly removed for revisions.

  • International Business Times ☛ US Drug Lord Arrested In UK After Wife's IG Posts Reveal His Location To Her 21K Followers And DEA Agents

    Detectives in the UK tracked down and arrested a notorious drug cartel ringleader after piecing together his location from his wife's extravagant vacation photos shared online.

    Luis Manuel Picado Grijalbo, a Costa Rican drug lord, was apprehended by UK authorities near London Bridge on 29th December. His arrest followed an international warrant issued by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), accusing him of exporting cocaine from Costa Rica.

  • CBC ☛ Why a unionized warehouse in Quebec posed a threat to Amazon

    Decision to close Quebec facilities could lead to legal challenges under province's labour laws

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• CBC ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Threats to boycott Amazon are gaining momentum online. But could it actually happen?

• El País ☛ Cecilia Rikap, researcher: ‘Microsoft and Google are like salt: they’re on every plate’

  That move had consequences. Rikap promoted a letter signed by some 50 economists, including Thomas Piketty, Yanis Varoufakis and the new awardee of the Nobel Prize [sic] in Economics Daron Acemoglu, in which they denounced the pressure tech companies have placed on the Brazilian government to prevent it from implementing its digital sovereignty project. More recently, Rikap and other colleagues have compiled a document with guidelines on pursuing digital sovereignty. “The key is for the new digital ecosystem to be led by the public sector,” says the Argentine researcher via video call from London.

• Patents

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-01-23 [Older] GuestPost: A referral broadened? To have one’s cake, to eat it...or not yet to get it (G 1/24) [Ed: Kangaroo Courts at the EPO have no independence and they no longer even pretend to have any]

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] Epitope claims stand firm: Board of Appeal upholds functional antibody patent despite insufficiency attack (T 0326/22)

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-01-22 [Older] Plausibility as a moving target: Phase III clinical trial results sink second medical use patent (T 0816/22)

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-01-25 [Older] GuestPost:Holistic Approaches in Patent Obviousness: US and EU Perspectives [Ed: Mentions the "Pharmaceuticals v. Teva and the UPC decision", but the UPC is illegal and unconstitutional, so this is basically perpetuating corruption and injustice at the very centre of the EU]

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] Sweet success for Thatchers in Court of Appeal decision on Aldi's lookalike lemon cider

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-01-20 [Older] [Guest post] Turin Court of Appeal upholds protection of Juventus FC’s unregistered colour combination trade mark for ‘Be the stripes’ jersey

• Copyrights

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-24 [Older] Exclusive-OpenAI Faces New Copyright Case, From Global Publishers in India

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Appeals Court Affirms U.S. Navy Should Pay $154k in Piracy Damages, not $155m

    old ships navy pirateNearly a decade ago, the US Navy was sued for mass copyright infringement and accused of causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

    The lawsuit was filed by the German company Bitmanagement. It’s not a typical piracy case in the sense that software was downloaded from shady sources. Instead, it deals with unauthorized installations.