Leftovers

• USMC ☛ You can thank this Marine for Taco Bell — and GI distress

  Cpl. Bell seemingly learned about food efficiency while feeding hordes of hungry Marines while island hopping in the Pacific.

  Serving from 1943 until his honorable discharge in 1946, Bell took the Corps’ lessons of streamlining and logistics to fuel a burgeoning empire.

  After the war, according to The New York Times, Bell “bought a surplus Army truck and began hauling adobe bricks at 5 cents each. A miniature golf course that he leased failed to make a profit. Then, he opened a hamburger stand in a Hispanic neighborhood.”

• Science

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Brain's GPS hasn't changed in millions of years: Specialized neurons may be vital to evolutionary survival

    Ahmed's team had previously discovered a unique type of neuron in the mouse retrosplenial cortex. For this new study, Isla Brooks, a member of Ahmed's lab and the study's first author, and Ahmed created advanced AI-based tools to compare the genetic signatures of neurons from the retrosplenial cortex of mice to those from rat retrosplenial cortex. These two species are millions of years apart in the evolutionary tree. Despite this, the unique type of neuron was remarkably well preserved in rats.

    Researchers also identified another specialized type of neuron, equally ancient and essential for spatial awareness, and, again, only found in the retrosplenial cortex. This second type of unique neuron was also preserved and slightly amplified across evolution.

  • Mikael Zayenz Lagerkvist ☛ Solving the Partridge Packing Problem using MiniZinc

    The Partridge Packing Problem is a packing puzzle that was originally proposed by Robert T. Wainwright at G4G2 (the Second Gathering for Gardner conference) in 1996. In this post we will model and solve the Partridge Packing Problem using MiniZinc. The inspiration was Matt Parker’s fun video on the problem.

    Packing problems are a classic use-case for combinatorial solvers. In fact, the original paper that introduced the idea of global constraints for constraint programming, “Introducing global constraints in CHIP” by Beldiceanu and Contejean 1994 included the so-called diffn constraint for packing problems. The constraint ensures that a set of (n-dimensional) boxes are not overlapping.1

  • North Dakota Monitor ☛ Rare T. rex find in North Dakota, mammoth fossil digs ‘significant’ for research • North Dakota Monitor

    Since work at the site was about to close for the year, they couldn’t start excavating it until this year.

    They’ve since unearthed nine or 10 bones, Boyd said, including vertebrae, part of the tail, a tooth and an ankle. Boyd said to his knowledge this is the third partial T. rex skeleton found in North Dakota.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Cracked Open a Lunar Rock And Found a Huge Surprise

    The second option is even more intriguing. The leading theory for the formation of the Moon is that a newborn Earth was slammed into by a Mars-sized object named Theia in the pinball chaos of the early Solar System.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Solar winds could bring a surprise Thanksgiving-week aurora to photographers in 14 states

    Astrophotographers could be in for some surprise aurora sightings this week if conditions hold. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts solar winds could help bring a G1 solar storm to northern latitudes on November 25 and 26.

  • [Old] Pavel Panchekha ☛ The Promise of P-Graphs

    In Herbie we use e-graphs to do algebraic rewriting of mathematical expressions. For example, in the Rust standard library's acosh function, e-graphs rewrite log(sqrt(x^2 + 1))…

• Career/Education

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Notes From an Interview With Jony Ive

    Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, interviewed Jony Ive at Stripe Sessions. Below are my notes from watching the interview. I thought about packaging these up into a more coherent narrative, but I just don’t have the interest. However, I do want to keep these notes for possible reference later, so here’s my brain dump in a more raw form.

  • Sergio Visinoni ☛ It's not a principle until it costs you money

    But there’s another angle to it, which is far more interesting: what are you willing to give up for your success? Or rather, what are the things you are never going to sacrifice on the altar of so-called success?

    Are you willing to sacrifice your principles and moral values to become richer?

  • Alexandru Nedelcu ☛ How To Become a DevOps Engineer

    The TLDR: Eat your own dogfood by practicing DevOps on your own infrastructure, change mentality to one oriented towards automation, and grow your hard engineering skills, such as learning to do programming, because it’s in the job description.

• Hardware

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Here’s why the US military decided to paint its aircraft grey

    So what happened? Turns out science, art and logistics all play a role in how the U.S. military paints its aircraft for battle.

    Aircraft camouflage kicked off during World War I, when aircraft proved great tools for scouting enemy positions, which in turn led to the development of anti-aircraft guns and air-to-air combat.

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ Google challenges Nvidia

    The advancement of TPUs represents a major commercial opportunity for Google Cloud, whose growth already outpaces AWS and Azure. At the end of October, the company announced a partnership with Anthropic, allowing the OpenAI rival to use up to one million TPUs to train its models. According to The Information, Google is also in talks with Meta. The parent company of Facebook, which currently relies on its own infrastructure, is considering renting TPUs as soon as next year.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Strategist ☛ Online safety of women and girls is a test of regional leadership

    Digital safety is emerging as a new test of regional governance and security. .

  • CS Monitor ☛ Children’s cafeterias nourish a sense of community across Japan

    In addition to providing food, the sites have created opportunities for locals across the generational spectrum to interact with one another.

  • El País ☛ The five ‘ages’ of the human brain: Crucial changes occur around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83

    But this network of neural pathways that populate the brain is not static; it changes and reconfigures itself throughout life. Research published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications has delved into how these structures are organized over time and has identified five ages of the human brain — that is, five distinct periods of neural development. The authors, a group of scientists from the University of Cambridge (UK), concluded that crucial changes occur in this arrangement of neural networks around the ages of nine, 32, 66, and 83.

  • The Register UK ☛ Norway's new supercomputer to use waste heat to raise salmon

    Nvidia's Grace Hopper may not be its latest accelerators, but they have proven to be among the most energy-efficient ever made. The parts combine Nvidia's 72-core Grace CPUs with a 144 GB H100 graphics accelerator. Each of these 1,000-watt chips is capable of delivering upwards of 67 teraFLOPS of FP64 matrix math for highly precise scientific workloads, or as much as 4 petaFLOPS of sparse FP8 for machine learning tasks.

• Proprietary

  • [Repeat] APNIC ☛ A second look at geolocation and Starlink

    All of these factors were plausible, but none really seemed to match what was visible in the data. Starlink users in Yemen were just getting a disproportionately high number of the ads placed on to end systems located in Yemen.

  • Nick Heer ☛ ‘The iPad’s Software Problem Is Permanent’

    Apple’s post-iPhone platforms are only as good as Apple will allow them to be. I am not saying it needs to be possible to swap out Bluetooth drivers or monkey around with low-level code, but without more flexibility, platforms like the iPad and Vision Pro are destined to progress only at the rate Apple says is acceptable, and with the third-party apps it says are permissible. These are apparently the operating systems for the future of computers. They are not required to have similar limitations to the iPhone, but they do anyway. Those restrictions are holding back the potential of these platforms.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ iOS 26.2 to Open Up iPhone–Apple Watch Wi-Fi Sync in EU

    I think the high-level takeaway is that Apple is not removing the network syncing feature. They’re actually keeping nearly all of the functionality, removing self-preferencing, and opening it up to third parties. As Gruber says, most Apple Watch users in the EU probably won’t even notice.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Locks Down Office After Violent Threat

      "He has previously been on site at our San Francisco facilities."

    • Digital Music News ☛ Suno Doubles Down on Push to Toss Artist-Led Copyright Lawsuit

      Suno has doubled down on calls to toss most of the infringement lawsuit filed by artists including Tony Justice. The way the AI music generator sees things, partial dismissal will allow the litigants to focus on the “core question” of whether training on protected works sans permission is fair use.

    • Dyne ☛ [DNG] Artificial Idiocy attacking mirrors.

      come to the conclusion that my Devuan mirror mirrors EVERYTHING!

      So it's probing my mirror looking for things like rpms, jars, npn, cpan packages, etc, and specifically looking in directories named after other operating systems or package collections. Even stuff I have never heard of. I certainly don't mirror any of it, only Devuan.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Gulf between AI journalism hype and concerns at the coalface revealed

      But whereas proponents of the technology have repeatedly promised that it will free journalists from mundane toil, enabling them to focus on higher-value newsgathering, this research suggests the opposite is the case.

      The Reuters Institute surveyed 1,004 UK journalists between August and November 2024.

    • 404 Media ☛ 'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It’s 2022

      Slop Evader was created by artist and researcher Tega Brain, who says she was motivated by the growing dismay over the tech industry’s unrelenting, aggressive rollout of so-called “generative AI”—despite widespread criticism and the wider public’s distaste for it.

    • Paul Krugman ☛ Warning: The Fed Can’t Rescue AI

      While everything feels political now – a kind of fin de siècle chaos politics – I want to take a brief break from the political today. Instead I want to talk about asset markets and the Fed.

      We could say that the US economy in 2025 was schizoid. On the one hand Donald Trump abruptly reversed 90 years of U.S. trade policy, breaking all our international agreements, and pushed tariffs to levels not seen since the 1930s. Worse, the tariffs keep changing unpredictably. This uncertainty is clearly bad for business and is depressing the economy. On the other hand, there has simultaneously been a huge boom in AI-related investment, which is boosting the economy.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Meta’s Accounting of Its Louisiana Data Centre ‘Strains Credibility’

      The phrase “marvel of financial engineering” does not seem like a compliment. In addition to the evidence from Weil’s article, Meta is taking advantage of a tax exemption created by Louisiana’s state legislature. But, in its argument, it is merely a user of this data centre.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide

    • Ars Technica ☛ OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide

      All the logs that OpenAI referenced in its filing are sealed, making it impossible to verify the broader context the AI firm claims the logs provide. In its blog, OpenAI said it was limiting the amount of “sensitive evidence” made available to the public, due to its intention to handle mental health-related cases with “care, transparency, and respect.”

    • The Independent Variable ☛ 🤖 OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lose money, HSBC estimates

      [...] And that’s assuming they double their paying user base. [...]

    • Don Marti ☛ opting out of Black Friday

      Black Friday is simple price discrimination, but retailers are running more complex kinds the rest of the time. And the same arguments against Black Friday discounting also apply to surveillance pricing—which works like Black Friday discounting does, but in a more complicated and costly way.

      Instead of a simple rule for who gets the discount, like are you willing to fight the crowds on a particular day, modern surveillance pricing uses more complicated rules, managed by machine learning. If an ML system identifies me as a likely car owner and Costco member, who has better alternatives to the product on offer, then I’m going to get a discount code. If ML classifies me as someone with fewer options, I won’t get the code.

    • Dave DeGraw ☛ Google Search is hallucinating preview text

      The specific ways that Google is deteriorating are unpredictable and especially discouraging. First, they prioritized unrelated ad spots in our searches. Then they force-fed us their “AI Overview” at the top of the page. I myself personally use a specific “adblock.css” user agent style sheet to hide most of the slop they’ve shoved into search (see the project’s GitHub for more information). The writing has been pretty clearly on the wall for some time now.

    • Cendyne Naga ☛ A Vibe Coded SaaS Killed My Team

      I've expected either a winding down or a transition for over a year now. I've come to terms with an ending like this already.

      While my peers are bitter about having a closer end date than me, I'm not as emotionally invested into when or how it ends.

      What I didn't expect is how a vibe coded app passed as legitimate to the board of directors. We don't even have a contract with this platform yet and people are told they're being laid off.

    • BoingBoing ☛ AI teddy bear discussed sexual fetishes and knives with kids

      The alarming information comes from Trouble in Toyland 2025, a report on the hidden dangers of AI features in toys, among more well-known dangers such as toxic chemicals. To simplify sharply: they're chatbots and the chatbots are bad news.

    • PIRG ☛ Trouble in Toyland 2025: A.I. bots and toxics present hidden dangers

      We tested the toys across 4 categories:
      * Inappropriate content and sensitive topics.
      * Addictive design features that encourage extended engagement and emotional investment.
      * Privacy features.
      * Parental controls.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Welcome to the Slopverse

      But this is the wrong idea. Hallucination implies that a mistake is being made under a false belief. But an LLM doesn’t believe the “false” information it presents to be true. It doesn’t “believe” anything at all. Instead, an LLM predicts the next word in a sentence based on patterns that it has learned from consuming extremely large quantities of text. An LLM does not think, nor does it know. It interprets a new pattern based on its interpretation of a previous one. A chatbot is only ever chaining together credible guesses.

    • Lionel Dricot ☛ Don’t Do Snake Oil Writing

      In computer security, it is often said that the fact you don’t see any vulnerability in the code you write is no proof that your code is secure. It is proof that you are blind to all the mistakes you made in your shitty code.

      The less competent you are, the more confident you will be and the more vulnerable code you will write.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Grandma’s roast turkey replaced by AI chaos: holiday cooking goes slop

      This Thanksgiving, your turkey might thank you for nothing: a wave of AI‑slop recipes has swooped in, offering bogus cooking advice, bizarre measurements, and photos that may look right but taste wrong. Real food bloggers are seeing their clicks vanish while algorithms churn out disastrously unappetizing dinner ideas.

    • Fiona Fokus ☛ I don't care how well your "AI" works

      The other day I was sitting on the doorstep of a hackerspace, eating a falafel sandwich while listening to the conversation inside. The topic shifted to the use of “AI” for everyday tasks, people casually started elaborating on how they use “chat assistants” to let them write pieces of code or annoying emails. The situation is a blueprint for many conversations I had in recent months. What followed in most of them, almost like a reflex, was a self-justification of why the way they use these tools is fine, while other approaches were reckless.

      I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles.

  • Social Control Media

    • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ I tried to build a WhatsApp bot. Meta banned me before it left the drawing board ⁄ Manual do Usuário

      I was surprised by the message because:

      1. I didn’t receive any email warning about the suspension or asking me to make adjustments.

      2. I had no chance to understand why my app, in a development environment, violated any platform term.

      I filled out the appeal form, but it seems to lead nowhere. There’s no indication of any timeframe for a human or system to review my request, for example. Each day the form reopens so I can submit a new request, with the previous day’s appeal shown just below.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Scam ads on Meta in UK likely worth more than all online news advertising

      This equates to $16 billion a year in annual revenue from enabling the fraud industry and at least $790m (£600m) in the UK alone. Press Gazette has estimated that Meta made at least £6 billion in UK advertising revenue in 2024.

      Online advertising across the entire UK national and regional news industry was just under £600m in 2024 (according to Advertising Association data).

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Walrus ☛ Canada Fighting “Billions” of Attacks a Day, Cyber Agency Says

      CSE origins stretch back to 1941, when Canada created the Examination Unit (XU), the country’s first civilian bureau devoted to breaking and protecting coded communications. During the war, the XU decrypted enemy messages and forged intelligence relationships that would later anchor today’s Five Eyes alliance. The bureau’s success convinced Ottawa that understanding foreign networks was strategically indispensable, and, in 1946, the Communications Branch of the National Research Council was established—what we now know as CSE.

      In the conversation that follows, I spoke to CSE chief Caroline Xavier, by email, about that legacy and the challenges facing the agency today.

    • The Register UK ☛ Botnet takes advantage of AWS outage to smack 28 countries

      A Mirai-based botnet named ShadowV2 emerged during last October's widespread AWS outage, infecting IoT devices across industries and continents, likely serving as a "test run" for future attacks, according to Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Crisis24 shuts down emergency notification system in wake of ransomware attack

      OnSolve CodeRED, a voluntary, opt-in emergency notification system used by law enforcement agencies and municipalities across the country, has been permanently shut down in the wake of a ransomware attack.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Wired ☛ ICE Offers Up to $280 Million to Immigrant-Tracking ‘Bounty Hunter’ Firms

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expanding plans to outsource immigrant tracking to private surveillance firms, scrapping a recent $180 million pilot proposal in favor of a no-cap program with multimillion-dollar guarantees, according to new contracting records reviewed by WIRED.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Michael Tsai ☛ Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer

      The part where it submits your own posts, and the pages your post links to, to the archive seems to work well. I think this is the most important part because you can always go back and fix broken links, but you can’t go back and archive pages that weren’t archived. However, some of my posts since installing the plug-in (e.g. this one) don’t seem to have made it into the archive. This may be because the archive was down at the time of the post. Presumably, the Auto Archiver will eventually come back around and submit them again.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Papers Please ☛ CBP finalizes rule for mug shots of all foreigners entering or leaving the US

      Last month US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a final rule on Collection of Biometric Data From Aliens Upon Entry to and Departure From the United States.

      If this new rule is Constitutional and otherwise valid, which we don’t think it is, it requires all non-US citizens entering or leaving the US to submit to mug shots. These will be used for a wide range of purposes in conjunction with automated facial recognition systems. Photography and automated facial recognition of all foreigners entering and leaving the US will be expanded from airports to all land border crossings.

      This warrantless traveler surveillance and tracking program would cost more than $100 million per year, in CBP’s estimate (which explicitly puts zero value on privacy).

• Defence/Aggression

  • Techdirt ☛ Oaths Of Office, And How Everyone Not Moving To Impeach Trump Is Violating Their Own

    The oath every member of Congress has now taken, as we’ve just seen, is far from a meaningless formality; it is the key to the power granted by the Constitution to everyone elected to that august body and the commitment each must make to unlock it. A statute sets forth the specifics of what every member of Congress must promise: [...]

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Foreign agents preying on disgruntled soldiers, Army intel chief warns

    In the wake of an extended and disruptive government shutdown that multiplied concerns about paycheck and job security, the Army’s head of intelligence is issuing a stark warning to soldiers: beware flattering offers on LinkedIn.

  • Robert Reich ☛ How to Get Rid of "Citizens United"

    Corporate political spending was growing before Citizens United, but the decision opened the floodgates to the unlimited super PAC spending and undisclosed dark money we suffer from today.

    Between 2008 and 2024, reported “independent” expenditures by outside groups exploded by more than 28-fold — from $144 million to $4.21 billion. Unreported money also skyrocketed, with dark money groups spending millions influencing the 2024 election.

    Most people I talk with assume that the only way to stop corporate and dark money in American politics is either to wait for the Supreme Court to undo Citizens United (we could wait a very long time) or amend the U.S. Constitution (this is extraordinarily difficult).

    But there’s another way! I want to tell you about it because there’s a good chance it will work.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Senator Mark Kelly Is in the Wrong Job

    Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth apparently thinks that Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona is in the wrong job. Kelly was one of six Democratic legislators who released a video reminding the officers and enlisted people of the U.S. military that they are bound by their oaths to disobey illegal orders. Now Hegseth wants to recall Kelly, a decorated combat veteran and former astronaut, back to active duty in the Navy so that Kelly can be court-martialed for what Hegseth sees as riling up the troops against the commander in chief.

    Hegseth has a point: Maybe Kelly shouldn’t be in Congress. But the secretary is wrong about putting the senator back in the naval service. In a more sensible and serious world (and, yes, I know this is not the one we live in right now), Hegseth would be fired—and Kelly would take Hegseth’s job as secretary of defense.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Capitulation is not peace: Europe’s strategic failure and the coming collapse of deterrence

    The recently announced peace plan drawn up by the US and Russia speaks volumes about the level of support for Ukraine. While Europe has talked a good game when it comes to military supplies, it has not maximized these efforts. Real action is needed now in order to ensure Kyiv’s independence.

  • EE Times ☛ Europe is Breaking Up with U.S. Cloud

    Western European enterprises and governments are rapidly reshaping their technology strategies, driven not by technical necessity, but by geopolitical anxiety.

    A recent Gartner survey reveals a profound shift away from reliance on global hyperscale cloud providers—specifically those based in the United States—toward local and regional alternatives.

    This pivot is fueling a costly, long-term drive toward digital and operational sovereignty, treating cloud independence as nothing less than an insurance policy against political instability.

  • The Next Move ☛ Agony over Ukraine

    This lie is easily disproven, and has been amply disproven, but this seems not to matter. Millions of Americans take Trump’s word as gospel. And he has shaped the way much of the country thinks about Ukraine.

    Writing about disinformation, I sometimes quote Jonathan Swift: “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.”

  • Silicon Angle ☛ EU moves to ban social media for kids under 16 who don’t have parents’ consent

    The resolution was passed by a majority of Members of the European Parliament, or MEPs. It’s not legally binding, and it’s still not clear how the EU would enforce the rule. But it’s a step closer to Europe moving in the same direction as Australia, which has already banned social media for children under 16. The ban would also include artificial intelligence chatbots, a technology currently being scrutinized as a possible danger to young people’s mental health.

  • Air Force Times ☛ Norway takes home top prize in multinational best sniper competition

    A sergeant and lance corporal first class assigned to the Norwegian Army’s 1st Armored Battalion outshot 34 other teams from 21 other nations on their way to being named the winners of the command’s 2025 European Best Sniper Team Competition, according to a release.

  • Fifty escape after Friday’s mass school abduction in Nigeria

    The Christian Association of Nigeria says 50 of the 315 children kidnapped by gunmen from a Catholic school in Nigeria [...]

  • Bamako is under pressure, not under siege: the difference and why it matters

    Mali has been struggling for over a decade to defeat “jihadists” around Gao, Kidal and Ségou.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Nicki Minaj Faces Seizure of $20 Million Home to Cover Security Guard Damages Payment

    A judge is ready to force the sale of Nicki Minaj’s $20 million mansion to pay a former security guard the $500,000 judgement he is owed.

• Environment

  • Wired ☛ The Trump Administration’s Data Center Push Could Open the Door for New Forever Chemicals

    Now, it’s turning its eye to chemical regulation with a new policy that could, experts say, potentially fast-track the approval of new chemicals for use in the US—including new types of forever chemicals—with limited oversight.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Atlantic Council ☛ How geothermal could enhance US energy security—if prioritized

      As electricity prices rise, US policymakers have an opportunity to accelerate geothermal's momentum and leverage its benefits.

    • The Straits Times ☛ 20 rescued from giant Ferris wheel in Osaka after lightning strike

      The Ferris wheel is billed as the tallest Ferris wheel in the country.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Thieves are stealing keyless cars in minutes. Here's how to protect your vehicle

      In the Anaheim Hills incidents, one of the vehicles was stolen by thieves accessing the key fob signal through an antenna.

      Many newer vehicles have a remote keyless entry system where a key fob emits a signal that unlocks the car door and in some cases starts the car when it’s within a certain distance of the driver’s side.

      The downside of this feature, Sutter said, is a signal is constantly being emitted from the key fob, similar to a debit card.

    • Michaël ☛ Railways

      Estimating the disappearance of railway lines in France.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ A new 'golden age' of flying? Duffy PSA 'undermines the message'

      One thing was clear: Flying was endowed with a sense of occasion, if only for wealthy passengers and businessmen.

      “They got filet mignon. They got mashed potatoes, green beans and chocolate cake for dessert,” Bubb said. “Now we’re lucky if we get a cup of water and a stale bag of peanuts.”

      The DOT’s account, he added, leaves out the commonplace frustrations shaping the passenger experience today.

    • Molly White ☛ Digital asset treasury companies are running out of steam

      As [cryptocurrency] has become more entangled with traditional finance, the effects of a [cryptocurrency] market crash are more likely to impact the broader financial world. In December 2024, MicroStrategy joined the NASDAQ 100 [I72], and some other indexes have also begun to include various DATCOs.a As DATCO prices falter, they can tug on those indexes, and the funds that track them — some of which are widely held by investors who may not even realize they have exposure to the [cryptocurrency] world.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Listen to a Lion’s Second Type of Roar, Which Was Just Discovered by Scientists

      “If you can identify a lion by its roar, this could potentially be a tool to count the number of individuals within a landscape,” Jonathan Growcott, a study co-author and conservation technologist at the University of Exeter in England, tells Elie Dolgin at Science News.

• Finance

  • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man’s Trade War Has Canadians ‘Elbows Up’ for Homegrown Wine

    The trade war with the United States, bans on U.S. wine and liquor imports and a recent distributor strike in British Columbia have Canadians giving their homegrown wines another look.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Local DK ☛ 'No ETA, no entry': UK warns of tighter travel rules for Europeans in 2026

    The Electronic Travel Authorisation is, technically, not a visa, rather it is a visa waiver.

    However its introduction ends paperwork-free travel to the UK for people from countries where a visa is not required for a short stay - including Americans, Canadian, Australians and citizens of all EU/EEA countries.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Microsoft partners with Powertrust to develop 270MW of solar projects in Mexico, Brazil [Ed: Burning the nation; thanks, Microsoft. Mexico News Daily ☛ There's also a clear conflict of interest.]

    The partnership represents a significant investment in Mexico’s renewable energy infrastructure at a time when the country is positioning itself as a data center destination for major tech companies.

  • Vox ☛ Pope Leo’s politics on immigration and AI, explained

    So I reached out to Michael Sean Winters, a longtime columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, to discuss all things Pope Leo and to get a better sense of whether there really is tension between the freshman pontiff and the US president (and that president’s supporters), learn more about why Pope Leo seems so focused on immigration, and get a better sense of why Leo also seems deeply worried about the role AI will play in the future. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

  • Wired ☛ Jeff Bezos’ New AI Venture Quietly Acquired an Agentic Computing Startup

    Bajaj didn’t mention it at the dinner, but earlier this year he had begun working with Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos on a new AI venture called Project Prometheus. Backed by $6.2 billion in funding, including from Bezos, Project Prometheus is working on AI systems that can support the manufacturing of computers, cars, and even spacecraft, according to two people familiar with the startup who were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

  • Riccardo Mori ☛ This time it’s not fatigue, but disconnection

    I was chatting with two of my best friends last week, and among the various personal updates, we touched on this for a bit, as they, too, have been feeling a sort of tech burnout as of late. And the image I’ve used to sum up my feelings on the matter was this — I told them, It’s like I’ve been playing this game called Tech for the past 30+ years of my life and I just don’t feel engaged anymore, but not because I got bored of the game — like it happens with many regular games. It’s not boredom or fatigue. It’s more because the game has gone through a series of updates that have ultimately made it so much worse.

  • [Repeat] The Strategist ☛ US and Chinese tech research is decoupling—ASPI’s Critical Tech Tracker

    After decades of growth, US and Chinese technical research collaboration peaked in 2019, according to new research from the Critical Technology Tracker of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Despite the fall since then, the US does remain China’s largest research partner, however.

  • The Register UK ☛ HP to sack up to six thousand staff under AI adoption plan

    HP thinks it can withstand increased memory costs in the first half of its financial year, but warned margins for personal system will likely be impacted in H2.

  • Mike Brock ☛ Two Boys Who Never Grew Up - by Mike Brock

    The Boy Who Built Magic for Children—and the Boy Who Fed Them to the Machine

  • Stop Hacklore ☛ The Letter — Stop Hacklore!

    This kind of advice is well-intentioned but misleading. It consumes the limited time people have to protect themselves and diverts attention from actions that truly reduce the likelihood and impact of real compromises.

    Sound security guidance should be accurate, proportional, and actionable. With that standard in mind, we recommend replacing the above advice with clear, fact-based guidance that helps people and organizations manage real risk while enabling modern, connected use of technology.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Marisa Kabas ☛ FEMA employee terminated for signing whistleblower letter

    An employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been fired after signing an open letter warning the country about the dangers the agency posed under current leadership, The Handbasket is first to learn. In a memorandum sent on November 17th, the FEMA employee’s supervisor informed her that she had engaged in “conduct unbecoming a federal employee,” and was terminated immediately. A copy of the memo was shared with The Handbasket by someone with direct knowledge of the situation.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Mint Press News ☛ The Seven Richest Billionaires Are All Media Barons

    The world’s seven richest men now double as media barons, buying up platforms from CNN and CBS to Twitter, Facebook (Farcebook) and TikTok. Alan MacLeod charts how their ties to Convicted Felon, the Pentagon and Israel are tightening control over what we see, hear and say.

  • CPJ ☛ Nigerian authorities detain another journalist for cybercrimes over governance reports

    On September 23, police arrested Alefia, publisher of the Naija News Today site, published by Asiwaju Media Company, at his home in Ikorodu in western Lagos State, and transferred him to detention facilities in Gudu district in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

    Police also confiscated Alefia’s phone and laptop, a person with knowledge of the case told CPJ, on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals.

  • FAIR ☛ Press Remembers Oldest Survivor of Tulsa Massacre—But Not Press’s Role in Massacre

    The New York Times (11/24/25), Washington Post (12/24/25), CBS News (11/24/25), USA Today (11/24/25)—seems as though everyone had space to acknowledge the passing, at age 111, of Viola Ford Fletcher, the oldest known survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

  • FAIR ☛ NYT Mourns Lost Glamour of Jeffrey Epstein’s New York

    The late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is best known for having been accused of operating a sex-trafficking ring that supplied elite men with girls as young as 14. Epstein and his associates are believed to have abused hundreds of women and girls on Little Saint James, a private island Epstein owned from 1998 until his death in 2019. But in the New York Times’ telling, it’s not the girls on Epstein’s island but rather President Donald Trump—an Epstein associate many suspect of having participated in the alleged abuse—who is being “held captive” by a “news cycle he can’t avoid or defeat” (New York Times, 11/18/25).

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • EDRI ☛ e-Society.mk 2025: Integrity at the core of digital transformation

    Powered by EDRi member Metamorphosis, e-Society.mk brings together top experts & decision makers to discuss the future of the e-society.

  • BIA Net ☛ Dark World: Anatolian shadows and the legacy of Âşık Veysel

    Blinded by sickness as a child, later losing a newborn son to the pandemic of infant mortality that plagued Turkey’s heartlands, what the Anatolian people starved for in terms of physical substance they made up for by the richness of their cultural heritage. That was the treasure that remains of Âşık Veysel.

  • European Commission ☛ Speech by Commissioner Lahbib at the European Parliament Event on technology-facilitated gender-based violence

    A few months ago, I became a grandmother to a little girl. She cannot walk, and she cannot speak yet. But already her tiny fingers reach for my smartphone.

  • We Ain’t Buying It ☛ Economic Pressure on Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday - We Ain’t Buying It!

    We Ain’t Buying It is an economic action and solidarity campaign designed to defend democracy and reclaim community power. This Thanksgiving, choose freedom over shopping. Family over corporations.

  • Mass Blackout ☛ Mass Blackout

    This is a coordinated economic shutdown—a collective refusal to participate in a system that profits off our pain, exploits our labor, and buys our politicians.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Securing Indonesia’s Internet: ROA gains and the road to robust routing

    The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) underpins global Internet routing, but was not designed with inherent security. Its ‘trust by default’ model leaves networks vulnerable to accidental leaks and malicious route hijacks, where one network falsely claims another’s BGP prefix. To mitigate these risks, the Internet operations community has deployed Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), which relies on two complementary mechanisms: Route Origin Authorization (ROA) and Route Origin Validation (ROV).

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Can Money Talk? Latest IPR Mandamus Petitions Seek Workarounds to § 314(d) Bar

    Three coordinated petitions test new theories to overcome § 314(d) after Motorola defeat as Director Squires maintains 100% IPR denial rate.

  • Federal Circuit Affirms Win for Akamai Invalidating Streaming Patent Claims

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Tuesday issued a precedential decision affirming a district court decision that found claims of MediaPointe, Inc.’s patents for internet streaming technology either invalid as indefinite or not infringed. The decision was authored by Judge Taranto. Akamai Technologies, Inc. sued MediaPointe in 2022, seeking a declaratory judgment of non-infringement of MediaPointe’s U.S. Patent No. 8,559,426 and its child, U.S. Patent No. 9,426,195. MediaPointe counterclaimed for infringement of both patents and Akamai counterclaimed for judgment of invalidity of all claims of both patents.

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • JUVE ☛ Merz fails with PI request in first ever SPC case against Viatris

      Viatris can continue to sell its generic drug Fampridin Viatris in France for the time being. This is the result of a recent judgment by the Paris local division in PI proceedings between Merz and Viatris (case ID: UPC_CFI_697/2025). The Paris judges decided that Merz’s PI request came too late to justify an injunction.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • The Independent UK ☛ Why is Johnny Cash’s estate suing Coca-Cola?

      The lawsuit, filed in Tennessee, claims Coca-Cola sought to “enrich itself” by exploiting Cash's distinctive voice, which is considered one of the most legendary in music history.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Johnny Cash Estate Sues Coca-Cola Claiming Ad Violates ELVIS Act

      The manager of Cash’s estate, the John R. Cash Revocable Trust, cited a song in a commercial, which has been airing since August during college football games. In the lawsuit, the estate claims that the voice in the ad sounds “remarkably” like Cash’s, and that it is the voice of a performer named Shawn Barker, who is a professional Cash tribute performer.

    • Penske Media Corporation ☛ Johnny Cash Estate Files Lawsuit Against Coca-Cola Over Voice Mimic Ad

      “Stealing the voice of an artist is theft. It is theft of his integrity, identity and humanity,” wrote a lawyer for the Cash estate, Tim Warnock of Loeb & Loeb. “The trust brings this lawsuit to protect the voice of Johnny Cash — and to send a message that protects the voice of all of the artists whose music enriches our lives.”

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Greek Cybercrime Unit Shuts Down IPTV Pirates, 68 End Users Face Fines

    A targeted action by Greek authorities has shut down an IPTV reselling operation, leading to the arrest of one individual and the referral of 68 end users for prosecution. The action marks a shift in Greek law enforcement’s approach to IPTV piracy, arriving on the back of a new law that provides for thousands of euros in fines for both sellers and users.