Leftovers

• LRT ☛ Cello that survived the Holocaust

  In the letter, Hermann also asked that someone look for his cello and protect it from the Nazis. The composer’s last wish was heeded: a swineherd broke into Hermann’s house, took the cello and hid it.

• Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Favourites of January 2025

  One more miserable month to go. Hopefully March will bring end to all the mire and misery which was noticeably more bad than previous years—both when it came to the weather and the world news… But hey, today was a rare beautiful albeit cold day! January signified the end of the holiday festivities (thank God) and the start of a new project at another client (goodbye Go, hello again old acquaintance Java, not yet sure whether we should become friends). I’m pretty positive about the effects on my mood for both changes. For the idiot Hacker News people out there reading this: that had nothing to do with the language, and everything with the people involved—as always.

• Tim Bornholdt ☛ Blog question challenge

  I’m drawn to blogging because it makes me happy on several levels. I love sharing what I’ve learned. I love entertaining people and spreading joy. I love having a collection of the topics I was interested in at various points in my life. I love being able to practice honing my writing skills. And I love having a place on the [Internet] that is completely my own.

• Keenan ☛ I've missed Sam for a long time (or: Pick Your Battles)

  It's 2024 now. It's been nearly three years since Sam died. I think about him often. About the relationship we had. About the person I looked up to for so much of my life. The person I didn't even know at the end.

• SuperDavey ☛ More Blogging due to cost

  I’m currently spending around $1-$2 per post just because I am only posting once or twice per week. It is difficult to justify that cost to myself, but I do like owning a domain and a blog.

• Barry Hess ☛ b2evolution

  I was digging through some old posts this past week, though, and came to a realization. I ran into some links of this sort of format: http://bjhess.com/b2blog/index.php. That doesn’t seem like WordPress! So I did some clicking around archive.org and found an actually-working archive of my blog from back then. Turns out that indeed in the mid-2000s I was using the b2evolution CMS to drive my blog. I probably had it installed on DreamHost.

• France24 ☛ Ex-Charlie Hebdo artist 'Luz' wins comic book of the year at France's Angoulême festival

  "Deux Filles Nues" (Two Naked Girls), a graphic novel about a Nazi-looted painting won Best Comic Book at France’s Angoulême Festival on Saturday. Its author, "Luz", is a former cartoonist at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, who escaped the deadly 2015 Islamist attack on its Paris offices because he arrived late that day.

• Seth Godin ☛ To be in charge

  My bank uses a lot of security theatre in the way they engage with people online. Needless hoops, or obvious holes in their systems. Again, my guess is that someone is probably in charge here, but they’re not acting as if they are.

• Idiomdrottning ☛ Enh, I tried…

  When I first started doing GTD, one thing I tried to get good at right away was noping out. The whole “I’ve really wanted to do this for a long time but now that I see everything I want to do, this one thing doesn’t seem worth it comparatively or I don’t even know how to begin doing it, so let’s just not”.

• Science

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Piecing together the puzzle of the world's earliest datable rune stone

    Thus, the discovery of several sandstone fragments inscribed with runes at the grave field of Svingerud, Norway, is exciting, as they shed light on early use of runic writing on stone and feature multiple intriguing sequences of runes alongside other puzzling markings. The archaeological contexts of the finds provide excellent opportunities for dating the rune stone by radiocarbon dates.

  • Wired ☛ The Federal Funding Freeze Will Cause Lasting Damage to Medical Research

    Clinical trials may have to be scrapped, research applications will be pushed back, and unpaid researchers will quickly leave the sector—even if the Trump administration’s funding pause is only temporary.

  • Noë Flatreaud ☛ 2^136279841 is prime !

    The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered the largest known prime number, 2^136279841 — 1, having 41,024,320 decimal digits. Luke Durant, from San Jose, California, found the prime on October 12th.

  • Rlang ☛ Levene Test in R for Homogeneity of Variances | Step by Step Guide

    When working with statistical data, ensuring that certain assumptions are met is critical to the validity of your results. One such assumption is the homogeneity of variance, which refers to the idea that the variability within groups should be consistent across all groups being compared. But how do you test this assumption effectively?

    Levene’s Test in R is a robust statistical test and is a go-to solution for researchers and data analysts who want to easily verify this assumption. This article’ll explore the what, why, and how of using the Levene Test in R, including step-by-step instructions and practical examples.

• Career/Education

  • Lou Plummer ☛ What Books Had the Greatest Influence on You?

    I think you can figure out a lot about a person if you know what books have had the most impact on them. At one point or another, each of these books was my current favorite. They all had a lasting impact on me. I'd love to see your list. It doesn't have to be 15 books and you don't need to be impressive (although if you really loved War and Peace, by all means list it). If you make a list, let me know and I will add a link to it.

• Hardware

  • Vintage Everyday ☛ Sending Electronic Mail (Email) From a Pay Phone in the 1980s

  • Hackaday ☛ Tiny RC Four-Wheeler Gets Chassis Upgrade For More Traction

    [Azpaca] purchased a fun little toy car from Tamiya, only… there was a problem. The little off-roader wasn’t up to scratch—despite its four-wheel-drive, it couldn’t get over rough ground to save its life. Thus, it was time to 3D-print a better chassis that could actually get through it!

  • Hackaday ☛ Using Microwave Heating To Locally Anneal CNT-Coated FDM Prints

    Layer adhesion is one of the weak points with FDM 3D printing, with annealing often recommended as a post-processing step. An interestingly creative method for this was published in Science Advances back in 2017, featuring the work of researchers at Texas A&M University and citing previous work by other teams. In the paper by [Charles B. Sweeney] et al, they describe how they coated PLA filament with carbon nanotubes (CNTs), resulting in this CNT being distributed primarily between the individual layers of polymer.

  • Hackaday ☛ Inside A Vintage Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator

    Crystal oscillators are incredibly useful components, but they come with one little snag: their oscillation is temperature-dependent. For many applications the relatively small deviation is not a problem, but especially for precision instruments this is a deal breaker. Enter the oven controlled crystal oscillator, or OCXO. These do basically what it says on the tin, but what’s inside them? [Kerry Wong] took apart a vintage Toyocom TCO-627VC 10 MHz OCXO, revealing a lot more complexity than one might assume.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ Mother Says Her Son Died After UnitedHealth Jacked the Price of His Inhaler From $66 to $539

    During the autumn prior to his death, the lawsuit explains, Optum changed its policies for the upcoming year and stopped carrying Advair Diskus or one of its generic alternatives, instead covering two newer and more expensive options. In doing so, the PBM was able to make more money.

    "This practice of requiring patients to change their medications so that the PBM can collect kickbacks from the drug manufacturer is called 'non-medical switching,'" the suit expounds, "because the choice of medication is dictated by the PBM’s financial interests, not the best medical interests of patients."

• Proprietary

  • Express ☛ Microsoft's latest Windows 11 upgrade is breaking PCs and users are furious

    Microsoft has just pushed out a new update for Windows 11 users, and it appears to be causing a fair amount of havoc once installed. The latest release, called KB5050009, has given many PC owners a serious headache as it appears to break Bluetooth connectivity. That's left Windows 11 fans unable to listen to music or watch videos via their favourite Bluetooth headphones.

  • The Register UK ☛ Medical monitoring machines spotted stealing patient data

    The Contec CMS8000, also sold as the Epsimed MN-120, contains a trio of vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-12248, CVSS 9.3; CVE-2025-0626, CVSS 7.5; and CVE-2025-0683, CVSS 5.9) that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) last week warned could allow an attacker to remotely execute code, crash the device and, most alarmingly, exfiltrate information about patients.

    "Once the patient monitor is connected to the [Internet], it begins gathering patient data, including personally identifiable information and protected health information, and exfiltrating the data outside of the health care delivery environment," the FDA said of the hardcoded hole.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Silicon Angle ☛ The EU is now enforcing the AI Act, banning high-risk AI systems

      The first compliance deadline for the AI Act came into force Sunday, giving regulators the power to erase entire products if they decide it’s necessary to do so. Moreover, the EU is warning AI makers that if they decide to try to break its rules, they’ll potentially be hit with a fine of up to €35 million (around $36 million), or 7% of their global revenue – whichever is more.

      Lawmakers in the European Parliament approved the AI Act in March last year after years of wrangling over the fine points. The Act went into force on Aug. 1, but it’s only now that regulators have the power to clamp down on those that don’t comply.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ Can we please stop calling AI-generated images “photographs?”

      The word "photograph" mashes the two Greek words for light and writing together, an origin that both poetically and literally means writing with light. The Cambridge dictionary gives the word the meaning “a picture produced using a camera” while Merriam-Webster gives the somewhat longer definition of “the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface (such as film or an optical sensor).”

      Dictionary nerding aside, generative artificial intelligence carries a heap of risk for misuse when not properly labeled. Many of the risks associated with AI, including fake news, can be negated at least in part by properly labeling it as what it really is: a computer-generated image.

    • New York Times ☛ Why Is This C.E.O. Bragging About Replacing Humans With A.I.?

      According to Klarna, the company has saved the equivalent of $10 million annually using A.I. for its marketing needs, partly by reducing its reliance on human artists to generate images for advertising. The company said that using A.I. tools had cut back on the time that its in-house lawyers spend generating standard contracts — to about 10 minutes from an hour — and that its communications staff uses the technology to classify press coverage as positive or negative. Klarna has said that the company’s chatbot does the work of 700 customer service agents and that the bot resolves cases an average of nine minutes faster than humans (under two minutes versus 11).

    • Futurism ☛ Police Use of Facial Recognition Backfires Spectacularly When It Renders Them Unable to Convict Alleged Murderer

      The issue comes from the chain of logic that led police to identify Tolbert. Rather than building a case on gunpowder residue, DNA matching, eyewitness accounts, or cell tower pings, police essentially used Clearview to match CCTV footage of the murder to CCTV footage of a random man they thought matched the suspect's description.

      A judge has since suppressed the AI evidence and all evidence predicated on the faulty warrant, though county prosecutors are appealing the ruling.

  • Social Control Media

    • John Gruber ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] ★ My Spitball Theory on TikTok’s Current Semi-Reprieve in the U.S.

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] World’s Most Popular TikTok Personality Khaby Lame Joins UNICEF as Goodwill Ambassador

    • The Guardian UK ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] How to Write (and Read) Headlines in the Cheeto Mussolini 2.0 Era, Microsoft-TikTok Edition

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] US-Born Girl Shot Dead by Father in Pakistan Over TikTok Videos, Say Police

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-28 [Older] South Sudan Lifts Suspension of Facebook and TikTok

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-26 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini's Q&A on Air Force One Goes From the Plane's Color Scheme to the Fate of TikTok and Canada

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Parker Ortolani ☛ Where are the Bluesky Clients?

      Let’s be clear, Bluesky has handily defeated Mastodon to be the main alternative to the big microblogging networks. It may be smaller than Threads or X, but it’s still far larger than the platform named after the long extinct prehistoric creature. Mastodon currently has around 9 million users, while Bluesky has just broken 30 million. Recall that Mastodon has been around for almost a decade, while Bluesky really only launched about two years ago. ActivityPub, the framework that underlies Mastodon, does in fact seem to have a future. Sites and news platforms are starting to federate and Threads’ limited federation bodes well for at least some kind of interoperability. But Mastodon hasn’t taken off the way that Bluesky has.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Digital Camera World ☛ In this new world of AI, photography will live and die by how transparent we photographers choose to be about the images we create

      The old adage "the camera never lies" was dispelled even in the film days, with various photography hoaxes including the Cottingley Fairies and the surgeon’s photo of the Loch Ness Monster. The digital revolution and the advent of the best photo editing software perpetuated the fact that photographs can be easily faked or disingenuous.

      But as we witness the rise and rise of artificial intelligence, photography’s only hope of remaining relevant is reminding society that AI-generated imagery is not photography. Photography is the process of gathering light and exposing a light-sensitive surface. Until AI robots start carrying around cameras, it is impossible for AI to create a real photograph.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Russia VPN Crackdown Revelation - VPN Sites Hide Their IP Addresses

      Illegal VPN services are unsurprisingly illegal to sell. Under more recent amendments, it’s also illegal to promote or encourage illegal VPN use, or provide tutorials or similar assistance to others. These are crimes punishable under law but at least for now, Russian authorities seem more likely to block offending websites, to prevent Russians from viewing illegal information.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Scoop News Group ☛ USAID website goes dark, staff emails deactivated amid DOGE takeover, source says

    The website went dark after staffers associated with the Elon Musk-led Department [sic] of Government Efficiency gained access to the domain and then blocked USAID employees, a person familiar with the matter told FedScoop. The source said around 2,000 email accounts associated with USAID workers have since been deactivated.

    USAID did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

    The news follows a massive and sudden pause on American international aid that’s shaken global development groups charged with disbursing critical and life-saving resources.

  • Yahoo News ☛ We’re watching Trump’s 7th bankruptcy unfold

    As a businessman, Donald Trump ran 6 businesses that declared bankruptcy because they couldn’t pay their bills. As the president running for a second term, Trump is repeating some of the mistakes he made as a businessman and risking the downfall of yet another venture: his own political operation.

  • Reuters ☛ Exclusive: Musk aides lock workers out of OPM computer systems

    Musk, the billionaire Tesla (TSLA.O) , opens new tab CEO and X owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency known as the Office of Personnel Management. The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department's data systems. The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.

  • [Old] BBC ☛ The Bitcoin bros who want to crowdfund a new country

    Imagine if you could choose your citizenship the same way you choose your gym membership. That’s a vision of the not-too-distant future put forward by Balaji Srinivasan. Balaji – who, like Madonna, is mostly just known by his first name – is a rockstar in the world of crypto. A serial tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist who believes that pretty much everything governments currently do, tech can do better.

    I watched Balaji outline his idea last autumn, at a vast conference hall on the outskirts of Amsterdam. “We start new companies like Google; we start new communities like Facebook; we start new currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum; can we start new countries?” he asked, as he ambled on stage, dressed in a slightly baggy grey suit and loose tie. He looked less like a rockstar, more like a middle manager in a corporate accounts department. But don’t be fooled. Balaji is a former partner at the giant Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He has backers with deep pockets.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Elon Musk dropped nearly $300M supporting Donald Trump in 2024

    The staggering figure was revealed after Musk submitted new filings to the Federal Election Commission covering the last five weeks of 2024. Prior filings reported in December had Musk’s total at more than $250 million.

  • [Old] Wired ☛ A Mysterious School for the Network State Crowd Is Now in Session

    The Network School is one of the most ambitious projects yet for people interested in creating what Srinivasan calls a “decentralized country.” The goal is for people dissatisfied with their own society to band together and create a movement spawning “parallel” societies, special economic zones that have alternative education systems, media institutions, and currency—as well as wealth-friendly tax laws. A crucial step is having physical territory, and the Network School clears that bar. On Sunday, Srinivasan said he is working to “build out the real estate” with the goal of “scaling the school.”

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-01 [Older] Exclusive-U.S. Wants Ukraine to Hold Elections Following a Ceasefire, Says Cheeto Mussolini Envoy

    • CPJ ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] 3 journalists fear accreditation limbo after detention by Ukrainian military

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] Ukraine Summons Slovak Envoy to Reject Accusations of Meddling

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] Ukraine war: Australian thought to dead now said to be alive

    • HRW ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] Pause in US Funding Puts Ukraine Programs at Risk

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-01-28 [Older] Leading MEP warns of “catastrophe” if Ukraine’s sovereignty is “compromised”

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-28 [Older] Top Ukrainian Defence Official Sacked Amid Infighting Over Procurement

    • Meduza ☛ Meduza's statement on the advertising campaign and the Ukrainian community's reaction — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ See the aftermath of Russia’s deadly missile strike on Ukraine’s Poltava — Meduza

• Environment

  • YLE ☛ FMI: Finland warmed by 1.4C in first quarter of century

    Earlier in the month, the FMI said that Finland's climate has been warming faster than the global average, up by 3.4 degrees since the pre-industrial era.

  • The Register UK ☛ Humans brought the heat. Earth decides we die

    Among those extreme weather events to which Mann referred are those aforementioned lethal heatwaves, which are steadily increasing in number, severity, and duration, and which are clearly coupled to climate change as detailed by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), among many others.

  • 404 Media ☛ Who Made this Radioactive Saharan Dust Cloud?

    In a twist, the spectre of those Saharan nukes literally visited itself upon Europe in March 2022, when a desert storm blew dust clouds from the Algerian test site across the continent. The event raised concerns that radioactive particles from the four atmospheric detonations, which were performed over Reggane in 1960 and 1961, may have contaminated those nations, potentially posing a public health threat.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ South African electricity prices have doubled since [COVID]

      It’s something of a relief that the Eskom electricity price increases approved by energy regulator Nersa are not as high as initially feared. However, the increase of 12.74% from 1 April 2025 (followed by 5.36% in 2026 and 6.19% in 2027) comes on the back of grossly inflated electricity hikes over the past 15 years, which has made the price of electricity out of touch with the economic realities of South Africans.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • EcoWatch ☛ India’s Tiger Population Doubled in 12 Years Thanks to Conservation Efforts

      India is now home to approximately 75 percent of the world’s tiger population, according to estimates from the National Tiger Conservation Authority, as The Associated Press reported.

  • Overpopulation

    • teleSUR ☛ Severe Food and Water Shortages Threaten Displaced People in Eastern Congo

      According to the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Congo, basic services in Goma, a city crucial to more than 6 million displaced people, have largely collapsed due to the ongoing conflict.

• Finance

  • Axios ☛ Elon Musk and DOGE take on the penny

    "Few things symbolize our national dysfunction more than the inability to stop minting this worthless currency," wrote Caity Weaver in a 7,500-word jeremiad for the NYT Magazine last September.

    By the numbers: The 240 billion pennies lying around the U.S. collectively weigh about 600,000 tons — the weight of three Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.

    The overwhelming majority of them made their way after being minted to some retailer, where they were given out in change. After that, they just stopped being used, because almost no one actually spends pennies.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Elon Musk and his cost-cutting team gain access to sensitive US Treasury database

    DOGE is not an official government department, but rather a special team within the Trump administration. It was put together by Musk under Trump’s authority, and its mission is to fan out across federal agencies in order to seek ways to cut government spending, reduce the size of its workforce, and increase efficiency. Most of the people working for the DOGE team were personally recruited by Musk.

    The Treasury payment system is one of the most sensitive U.S. government databases, controlling the flow of more than $6 trillion of government money each year. Millions of Americans are dependent on the system for their social security payments, medicare benefits, federal salaries and other payments.

  • International Business Times ☛ Microsoft's Termination Letter For Underperforming Employees: Guise For Corporate Cost-Cutting?

    Microsoft has faced a wave of backlash after a leaked termination letter revealed the company's new practice of swiftly cutting ties with staff deemed 'underperforming', even withholding healthcare benefits and, in several reported cases, refusing severance pay.

    The letter, which has circulated widely on social media, has sparked debate over whether the technology giant is simply exercising its right to manage its workforce or engaging in insensitive cost-cutting measures at the expense of employee welfare.

  • Bert Hubert ☛ Communications without Musk and Trump: Cloud Kootwijk

    But it is an INTOLERABLE thought that our government, police, defense, hospitals, and healthcare will soon be completely unable to communicate with each other without American approval! Or without them reading our (tax) files and messages, for that matter.

    Unfortunately, the transition to these American services is already far advanced. There’s no stopping it. For more than 20 years, we’ve been buying nothing else; our own industry has withered. We regret that the local baker, butcher, and poulterer have disappeared from the shopping street. But we never bought anything from them anymore, so it’s our own fault.

    In a similar way, our own abilities to manage email, communication, and file processing have been seriously weakened.

  • Futurism ☛ Sam Bankman-Fried’s Mommy and Daddy Have a New Plan: Suck Up to Trump Until He Pardons Her Beautiful Boy

    All the same, taking these sorts of meetings falls in line with Bankman and Fried's staunch support for their con-spawn, who they've long insisted is innocent despite being sued themselves over his misdeeds. With Trump's flurry of early pardons including Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht, it makes perfect sense that the Bankman-Frieds are trying to appeal to the president's newfound interest in all things digital.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ There is an exit

    Last week, I finished reading an advance copy of Cory Doctorow’s Picks and Shovels. No spoilers about plot specifics, but the novel has a lot to say about two things. First, how Silicon Valley used to be a place where exit was possible and a good thing. If you didn’t like your boss, you went out and found somewhere else, or founded a company yourself. California didn’t recognize no-compete agreements, and the foundation myth of Silicon Valley is the Traitorous Eight. Eight engineers found William Shockley, a hateful unpredictable jerk and a pioneer of “racial realism,” such a horrible person to work for that they all left to do their own thing, founding an engineering culture and start-ups that begat start-ups that begat start-ups.

    The second theme of Cory’s novel is how easy it is to get trapped nonetheless. There is a cult-like aspect to many organizations, a quasi religious fervor. Once you get pulled in, you reconstruct your whole identity around a particular set of values. You may start in a place where it seems that there’s a strong alignment between the organizational culture and what you yourself aspire to. You may discover that you are wrong, or the place may change. The wrong people end up taking over, or becoming influential. You find yourself in workplace conversations that leave you feeling weird and disturbed. But you aren’t sure what to do. Leaving would involve giving up on the values that you thought you shared, giving up, in a sense on your fundamental understanding of who you are.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • John J Hoare ☛ What a Mistake-a to Make-a

    So here is my suggestion. Any content which is more than a year old should have a high threshold of proof when it comes to its removal by a moderation team. And anything more than five years old should have an absurdly high threshold of proof. Because it’s clearly far more unlikely for such old material to be against the guidelines, and not been picked up and removed earlier. Not impossible, of course – simply more unlikely.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Semafor Inc ☛ CBS staffers dread Trump settlement

    The reports that Paramount executives are even weighing a settlement has highlighted a deepening divide between CBS News staff and its parent company. Network staff Semafor spoke with last week are almost universally against settling the lawsuit, particularly if the settlement comes with a mandated apology.

  • New York Times ☛ Paramount in Settlement Talks With Trump Over ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit

    A settlement would be an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Quartz’s A.I. Slop

    The downfall of Quartz is really something to behold. It was launched in 2012 as a digital-only offshoot of the Atlantic specifically intended for business and economic news. It compared itself to esteemed publications like the Economist and Financial Times, and had a clever-for-early-2010s URL.1 It had an iPad-first layout. Six years later, it and “its own bot studio” were sold to Uzabase for a decent sum. But the good times did not last, and Quartz was eventually sold to G/O Media.

  • CS Monitor ☛ As LA fires raged, Monitor reporters became part of the story

    As news journalists, we follow a general convention of keeping our presence out of the stories we cover, focusing on those affected by a news event or important issue. We write in a tone and with a style that mostly removes our emotions and opinions from a story.

    But this week, the humanity behind our headlines includes Monitor journalists who live in Greater Los Angeles. They are not just covering this historic conflagration; they are living it.

  • John Gruber ☛ Daring Fireball: As if Anyone Needed Further Proof, Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Los Angeles Times Is Now a Propaganda Rag (and They’re Bad at HTML)

    My original intention for this post ended above. I wanted to quote the TNR editors note that explained the situation, quote Reinhart’s intended headline and closing paragraph, and contrast those with the benign gibberish headline and closing that the LA Times actually published. Done. But I’ve got more. Turns out, the LA Times itself effectively published proof of its “editing” that completely perverted Reinhart’s intended thrust.

  • New Republic ☛ The RFK Jr. Op-Ed the Los Angeles Times Didn’t Want You to Read

    Eric Reinhart submitted a column critical of RFK Jr. to the troubled newspaper. What they printed under his byline bore little resemblance to what he submitted.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFERL ☛ A Woman Is Killed Every Two Days In Iran As 'Femicide' Spreads, RFE/RL Investigation Shows

    According to an analysis by RFE/RL’s Radio Farda, at least 133 women and girls were killed in the last year for “honor” or other reasons by their husbands, fathers, and brothers – meaning that every two days one female becomes a victim of “femicide” in the country.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • RTL ☛ Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration: Jimmy Carter wins posthumous Grammy for best audiobook

    On "Last Sundays in Plains: A Centennial Celebration," Carter -- who died at the age of 100 on December 29 -- speaks about love, kindness, forgiveness and the afterlife at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown Plains.

Monopolies/Monopsonies