Leftovers

• James G ☛ Grateful for the indie web

  I am grateful for so many people making cool things and sharing them on their websites. I have been inspired countless times by blog posts and websites this year. Blog posts have made me excited, curious, interested in new things, inspired to go deeper on things I’m interested in, and so much more.

• James G ☛ Coffee shop

  If I were to open a shop, I think it would be a coffee shop.

• Dan Q ☛ Actually, Yes! (that IS what my birth certificate says)

  Y’see, I was born in Scotland, and Scottish law – in contrast to the law of England & Wales4 – permits a change of name to recorded retroactively for folks whose births (or adoptions) were registered there.

  And so, after considering it for a few months, I filled out an application form, wrote an explanatory letter to help the recipient understand that yes, I’d already changed my name but was just looking for modify a piece of documentation, and within a few weeks I was holding an updated birth certificate. It was pretty easy.

• Daniël de Kok ☛ Thread Networks

  So what does this mean to you as an end-user? First of all, thread uses wireless radios and to make things more difficult, it uses the 2.4GHz band. Yeah, the same band as 2.4GHz WiFi, Zigbee, and Bluetooth. And the same band that USB 3 likes to cause interference in. So this means that in order to have a well-functioning Thread network, you need some planning. First of all, you should pick a channel that does not interfere with WiFi. WiFi also uses channels, but they are numbered differently. Someone made these very handy graph (source): [...]

• Cynthia Dunlop ☛ The Impact of Technical Blogging

  We interviewed a dozen(ish) expert tech bloggers over the past year to share perspectives and tips beyond Writing for Developers. The idea: ask everyone the same set of questions and hopefully see an interesting range of responses emerge. They did.

  You can read all the interviews here. We’ll continue the interview series (and maybe publish some book spinoff posts too) in 2026. But first, we want to pause and compare how the first cohort of interviewees responded to specific questions.

  Here’s how everyone answered the question “What has been the most surprising impact of blogging?”

• Vidit Bhargava ☛ Why every "iPhone killer" will fail

  So if there's no general purpose computer, that's meant for everyone (or Joe Six Pack in General Magic terminology). What does the future of computing look like? The future of computing adds on to what the iPhone is successful at, by addressing its deficiencies and frustrations. It's a lot of small things that add onto the iPhone, rather than one giant replacement.

  For the sake of making sense, I'll elaborate a bit more, but this is meant to be a very quick rant.

• Ness Labs ☛ 2025 Year in Review: Presence versus Performance

  So much happened, but here’s a quick bullet-point overview before I dive in: [...]

• Remkus de Vries ☛ We All Lose With Ad Hominem Arguments

  What does become a problem is when the argument stops being about the idea and starts being about the person who shared it.

  We’ve all watched a discussion shift from, “I disagree because…” to something that quietly, or not so quietly, edges into, “Well, you would say that,” or, “Clearly you don’t understand…”. That’s the moment the conversation stops being productive.

  That’s the moment the work ends.

• Science

  • Vox ☛ Trump’s attack on a key climate research center, briefly explained

    Why target NCAR now? Hurting NCAR also hurts the state of Colorado, and Donald Trump is currently angry at Colorado Gov. Jared Polis for refusing to go along with his pretend pardon of 2020 election conspiracy theorist Tina Peters (presidents can only pardon federal offenses, and Peters was convicted on state charges).

  • Vox ☛ Why shutting down the National Center for Atmospheric Research would be one of the most consequential science cuts in US history

    NCAR, founded in 1960 and administered by the National Science Foundation, provides state-of-the-art data and technology resources for 129 North American university partners. Partners rely on NCAR supercomputers, heavily instrumented aircraft and Earth-systems modeling. NCAR developed the Dropsonde, the equipment that hurricane hunter aircraft use to measure temperature, pressure, and humidity of tropical storms. The center does real-time operational forecasting for the military, for example, at the anti-ballistic missile systems site at Fort Greely, Alaska, and has done the computer modeling that has helped improve forecasting of wildfire behavior.

    NCAR is “is quite literally our global mothership,” said climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe in a post on X. “Nearly everyone who researches climate and weather — not only in the US, but around the world — has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources.”

  • Science Alert ☛ Time Moves Faster on Mars, And Scientists Finally Know by How Much

    Research conducted by two physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US reveals that clocks on Mars tick 477-millionths of a second (or 477 microseconds) faster per day, on average, compared to Earth clocks.

    Though small, that difference could be critical in situations where time on Earth, the Moon, and Mars needs to be coordinated with split-second precision.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ 'This year nearly broke me as a scientist': US researchers reflect on how 2025's science cuts have changed their lives

    And over the course of the following months, billions of dollars of grants supporting research projects across disciplines, institutions and states were terminated. These include funding already spent on in-progress studies that have been forced to end before completion. Federal agencies, including NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Agency for International Development have been downsized or dismantled altogether.

  • Mike Doornbos ☛ Sorting Algorithms Visualized on the Commodore 64

    One of the best ways to understand how sorting algorithms work is to watch them run. Modern computers are too fast—everything happens in a blink. But on an 8-bit machine running BASIC? You can watch every comparison, every swap, every decision the algorithm makes.

    We’ll implement three classic sorting algorithms on the Commodore 64, visualizing each as an animated bar chart using PETSCII characters.

• Career/Education

  • David Bushell ☛ I Survived 2025

    I have survived another year of self-employment! Business has changed over that time. Gone are the days I can freely share a neat case study online. Clients demand confidentiality. I front-end develop and I refuse to prompt and everything else is a secret!

  • American Library Association ☛ ALA welcomes pathbreaking study on the state of the nation’s library facilities

    The GAO report provides the first comprehensive national data in decades about the state of the nation’s library facilities. Nationwide, there are more than 17,000 public library locations, totaling more than 200 million square feet of buildings, which Americans visit more than 800 million times each year.

    “Every community deserves a great public library,” said ALA President Sam Helmick. “Unfortunately, in many parts of America today, the local public library building falls short of what the community needs.”

    Key findings in the report include: [...]

  • The Register UK ☛ England to keep pen and paper exams, says watchdog Ofqual

    The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) is consulting on plans that will require exam boards to stick to paper-based exams for the 13 most taken GCSEs as well as A-level mathematics for the foreseeable future.

• Hardware

  • Reuters ☛ Exclusive: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

    EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold War. They use beams of extreme ultraviolet light to etch circuits thousands of times thinner than a human hair onto silicon wafers, currently a capability monopolized by the West. The smaller the circuits, the more powerful the chips. China's machine is operational and successfully generating extreme ultraviolet light, but has not yet produced working chips, the people said.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ China may have reverse engineered EUV lithography tool in covert lab, report claims — employees given fake IDs to avoid secret project being detected, prototypes expected in 2028

    The tool was reportedly developed by reverse engineering existing scanners from ASML and is said to be on-track to make prototype chips in 2028. If the information is correct, then Chinese scientists have made numerous breakthroughs across multiple disciplines in just a few years instead of decades, a scenario that appears extremely unlikely. Further analysis of the report indicates that China's laboratory is far from completing the tool, meaning that the country is years away from making chips using EUV lithography.

  • Security Week ☛ UEFI Vulnerability in Major Motherboards Enables Early-Boot Attacks

    According to an advisory published on Wednesday by Carnegie Mellon University’s CERT/CC, an attacker can exploit the vulnerability to access data in memory or influence the initial state of the system.

    The security hole could allow an attacker to obtain sensitive data and conduct pre-boot code injection.

    While the issue may sound critical as it undermines the integrity of the boot process and allows attacks to be conducted prior to the operating system’s defenses being loaded, exploitation requires physical access to the targeted device.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Ava ☛ disability and retirement

    The past few months, I have thought a lot about aging, retirement and disability a lot. I’m often surrounded by people who take their health for granted, and where degenerative effects on the body are something they leave to their future selves to deal with, being almost in denial that it will happen. There is missing awareness (or willingness to see) that you could end up disabled almost instantly, but definitely will not feel like you do now at the expected retirement age either way. Which doesn’t mean it has to suck or is full of suffering necessarily, but: [...]

  • Utah News Dispatch ☛ First-ever wreath laying ceremony at Utah Agent Orange Memorial

    Even though the memorial has not yet been completed, the Utah Agent Orange Veterans Foundation (UAOVF) scheduled a wreath laying ceremony to honor victims of Agent Orange and other toxic chemicals.

    Those victims number in the hundreds of thousands and include Vietnam veterans, Gulf War veterans, and post-9/11 veterans. Service members from all three groups were exposed to extremely hazardous chemicals.

• Proprietary

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Oops, I made a benchmark

    This benchmark is pretty simple, you give it an audio or video file and it transcribes the file using Apple's on-device language model over and over and over again. I maxed everything out by giving it a Cozy Zone podcast episode to transcribe 20 times in a row. After each run, it logs how many words per minute it transcribed in that specific run, and begins again.

  • The Register UK ☛ NATO's battle for cloud sovereignty: Speed is existential

    NATO is in an existential race to develop sovereign cloud-based technologies to underpin its mission, the alliance's Assistant Secretary General for Cyber and Digital Transformation told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) last week.

  • The Register UK ☛ Crypto crooks co-opt stolen AWS creds to mine coins

    The illicit cryptocurrency-mining campaign abuses compromised valid AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) credentials with "admin-like privileges" - it doesn't exploit a vulnerability - and then uses this access to deploy a SBRMiner-MULTI on ECS and EC2, Amazon security engineer Kyle Koeller said in a blog this week.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Cisco CVE-2025-20393 Cyberattack On Secure Email Appliances

    The vulnerability, detailed in Cisco Advisory ID cisco-sa-sma-attack-N9bf4, impacts appliances when the Spam Quarantine feature is enabled and exposed to the internet—a configuration not enabled by default according to Cisco deployment guides. Both physical and virtual instances of the affected appliances are vulnerable.

  • Mike Rockwell ☛ Locked Out of Apple Account Due to Gift Card

    Seeing something like this just reaffirms that I’ve been heading in the right direction by moving what I can to self hosting and reducing my reliance on Apple and other major tech companies. The risks are just too darn high and the lack of transparency and recourse doesn’t help the situation.

  • Doc Searls ☛ Re Collections

    What does the Internet Make of Us? is a piece I wrote in Medium that has had 2,500 views so far. But Google doesn’t find it. Not with the query Doc Searls “What does the Internet make of us?”

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • David Revoy ☛ When Your Avian Intelligence Agrees a Little Too Much - David Revoy

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Wall Street Is Starting to Short AI

      Wall Street traders have sharply increased how much they’re spending on credit default swaps tied to artificial intelligence. That means more and more investors are managing their risk by putting their money on the AI market’s eventual crash.

    • Anil Madhavapeddy ☛ Dear ACM, you're doing AI wrong but you can still get it right

      There's outrage in the computer science community over a new feature rolled out by the ACM Digital Library that generates often inaccurate AI summaries. To make things worse, this is hidden behind a 'premier' paywall, so authors without access (for example, having graduated from University) can't even see what is being said.

  • Social Control Media

    • Press Gazette ☛ Facebook tests charging to post more than two links per month

      However Techcrunch reported news publishers are not currently included in the experiment.

      This means publishers will not be restricted on the number of links they post themselves, but they may see a traffic impact if other users are unable to share their content.

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Dating in the Age of the Algorithm

      Who controls love: Men, women, or capital? At first, the question sounds absurd. Love in the modern era is supposed to be the most personal of experiences, untouched by politics or economics. Yet in the age of dating apps, it has become one of the central battlegrounds of contemporary life.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Coldplay kiss cam woman explains how public shaming feels

      The video’s virality was helped by the news media, the algorithms behind social media and the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Whoopi Goldberg and the Philly Phanatic. People made money off kiss-cam-themed merch. Cabot said she was doxxed, inundated by hate-filled phone calls and emails and called out by strangers on the street. She got 50 or 60 death threats.

      Her kids accidentally overheard one of the phone calls when Cabot played it on speakerphone for her mom.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ HR boss breaks silence on Coldplay kiss-cam scandal

      The former HR manager has hired Dini von Mueffling, a communications consultant who previously represented Monica Lewinsky and Virginia Giuffre, to raise awareness about the harms of pile-ons by [Internet] mobs.

    • Alex Chan ☛ Hard problems in social media archiving

      In this post, I’ll explain what I see as the key issues facing institutional social media archiving: what can be saved, what resists preservation, and how context is so hard to keep.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Register UK ☛ NHS tech supplier probes cyberattack on internal systems

      DXS International, which provides tools to NHS trusts to tackle appointment referral errors and prescriptions, disclosed the "security incident" to the London Stock Exchange on Thursday morning.

    • Wired ☛ Microsoft Will Finally Kill an Encryption Cipher That Enabled a Decade of Windows Hacks

      Microsoft is killing off an obsolete and vulnerable encryption cipher that Windows has supported by default for 26 years. This follows more than a decade of devastating hacks that exploited it and recent blistering criticism from a prominent US senator.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Security

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Nick Heer ☛ MSC Cruises Bans Smart Glasses in Public Areas to Curb Covert Recording

        MSC Cruises is prohibiting “devices capable of covertly or discreetly recording or transmitting data” which, as written, is pretty vague without the subsequent “(e.g. smart glasses)”. Any wireless device is arguably “discreetly … transmitting data” all the time. I appreciate the idea. However, I fear this is the kind of rule that will be remembered as a relic of a transitional period, rather than an honest commitment to guest privacy.

      • NYOB ☛ Austrian Supreme Court: Meta must give users full access to their data

        Austrian Supreme Court (OGH): Meta must provide full access to all personal data of user within 14 days, including the sources, recipients and purposes for which each information was used. All of Meta's claims of trade secrets or other limitations were rejected, leading to unprecedented access to the inner workings of Meta. Meta was also illegally collecting data from third party apps and websites and may only provide personalised advertisement if a user provided “specific, informed, unambiguous and freely given” consent. Meta must also ensure that data revealing sensitive information (such as political views, sexual orientation, or health) is not processed together with other data unless a valid legal basis according to Article 9(2) GDPR applies. Meta may not avoid the application of Article 9 GDPR by arguing that it does not intentionally collect such data or that it cannot technically distinguish or segregate it. The case, brought by Max Schrems in 2014, originally lasted 11 years and hit the Austrian Supreme Court three times and the CJEU two times. Mr Schrems was awarded €500 in damages.

      • Nick Heer ☛ Instagram and Facebook Users in Europe to Get Option of Sharing Less Data

        Meta might be trying to save face, but a year ago, it was so distraught as to file a legal complaint to retain its “pay or consent” model.

    • Confidentiality

      • Tor ☛ Code audit for the Tor Project completed by 7aSecurity | The Tor Project

        For the past three years, the Tor Project has been working to improve the tools, resources, and protocols used to monitor the health of the Tor network. This work aims to strengthen the Tor network's resilience and resist relay attacks.

        As part of this effort, in October 2025, 7aSecurity conducted a code audit of those tools.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Reuters ☛ China's ByteDance signs deal to form joint venture to operate TikTok US app

      Despite the divestiture requirements, Chew added that TikTok global's U.S. entities "will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing."

    • Robert Reich ☛ The real threat in Trump’s madness

      Either Section 4 of the 25th Amendment must be invoked — because he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” — or he must be impeached and convicted under Section 4 of Article II of the Constitution for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

    • International Business Times ☛ ByteDance Signs TikTok US Deal As Forced Sale Fears Peak — Creators Face Upheaval

      According to the note, the American entity will be overseen by a fresh, seven-person board of directors, the majority of whom will be from the United States. Furthermore, the operation will be bound by conditions designed to 'protect Americans' data and US national security.'

    • CNBC ☛ TikTok signs agreement to create new U.S. joint venture, memo says

      The entity is named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, according to a memo sent by Chew and obtained by CNBC. As part of the joint venture, Chew said the company has signed agreements with the three managing investors: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. He said that the deal's "closing date" is Jan. 22.

    • The Verge ☛ The TikTok US sale is finally happening

      The letter notes that the new joint venture will oversee its own algorithm, “retraining the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data to ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” as well as content moderation, data security, and deployment of the US version of the app and platform.

    • Hollywood Reporter ☛ TikTok Sale Is Done, Oracle and Silver Lake Among Buyers

      Chew confirmed that the deal has officially been signed Thursday, laying out some terms of the deal, including “retraining the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data to ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” Oracle overseeing data protection, and specifying that “ultimate decision-making authority for reviewing and approving all content moderation and related policies within the United States.”

    • The Guardian UK ☛ TikTok signs Trump-backed deal to sell US entity to American investors

      White House officials have said Oracle, which was co-founded by Donald Trump’s supporter Larry Ellison, will license a copy of TikTok’s recommendation algorithm as part of the deal, in a partnership that will expand on Oracle’s existing management of TikTok’s trove of data collected about its US users.

      Ellison’s role in the new ownership of the most popular social media platform in the US has raised concerns about the decreasing share of media firms not under the control of pro-Trump billionaires, with Ellison’s son David now driving wholesale changes at CBS, Elon Musk in control of X, formerly known as Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg overseeing both Instagram and Facebook, and Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post.

    • NDTV ☛ TikTok Signs Deal To Sell US Unit To American Investor-Led Venture

      The company told employees on Thursday that ByteDance and TikTok signed binding agreements with three managing investors: Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, to form a new TikTok US joint venture named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.

    • France24 ☛ TikTok signs joint venture deal to end US ban threat over ownership

      Meanwhile "TikTok Global's US entities will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing," he wrote.

      Whether this unit would still be owned by ByteDance was not made clear in the memo.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ TikTok Signs Deal To Sell US Unit To American Investors, Including Oracle, Silver Lake

      The U.S. venture will have a new, seven-member majority-American board of directors, the memo said. It will also be subject to terms that “protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.” U.S. user data will be stored locally in a system run by Oracle.

    • US News And World Report ☛ TikTok Signs Deal to Sell US Unit to American Investor-Led Venture

      The deal, set to close on January 22, would end years of efforts to force ByteDance to divest its U.S. business over national security concerns.

      Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will collectively own 45% of the new entity, according to the memo, which confirms what Reuters and other outlets reported in September.

      The U.S. joint venture will be 50% held by a consortium ​of new investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX with 15% each; 30.1% held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance, the memo said.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ TikTok signs agreement for new joint venture keeping it online in the U.S.

      Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX will collectively own about 50% of the new entity, with ByteDance retaining roughly 20%, addressing national security concerns about Chinese control of user data.

    • Variety ☛ TikTok U.S. Sale Set to Close in January With Oracle, Silver Lake

      ByteDance and TikTok have signed “binding agreements” with three managing investors: Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s state-owned investment firm MGX, to form a new TikTok U.S. joint venture named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, according to a memo to TikTok staff by CEO Shou Zi Chew reviewed by Variety. The agreement forming the TikTok U.S. joint venture is set to close Jan. 22, 2026.

    • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Officially Signs Deals with Oracle, Silver Lake, & MGX

      The deal is expected to close on January 22, according to an internal memo seen by the Associated Press. CEO Shou Zi Chew has confirmed to employees that ByteDance and TikTok have signed the binding agreements with the investor consortium. Half of this new joint venture will be owned by those investors, who each hold a 15% share. 19.9% of the new app will be held by ByteDance itself, while another 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Muslim gangs [sic] ‘take control’ of drug-ridden prison

      “A recurring theme is the perception of widespread violence, including bullying by both prisoners and staff, as well as unchecked gang control, particularly by religious gangs [sic], which many prisoners report feeling powerless and unsafe against,” they said.

    • [Old] Kent UK ☛ 'Failing' HMP Swaleside 'understaffed' and 'unsafe' says new prison report

      It said: "Several prisoners alleged they had been assaulted by staff and Muslim respondents, and those who identified as being from a racial minority, reported more negatively than their counterparts in relation to bullying or victimisation by staff."

      Mr Taylor said: "These failings were perhaps most clearly seen in the prison’s approach to rehabilitation.

    • New Eastern Europe ☛ Krupp fuels far-right narratives in Germany

      In the north-eastern German city of Greifswald, the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg’s minimal acknowledgment of its patron’s crimes against humanity, committed during the Second World War, indirectly feeds into the political climate that facilitates the meteoric rise of the far-right AfD party. This calculated institutional forgetfulness nurtures extremist revisionism, highlighting the crucial intersection of memory politics and momentous political shifts in contemporary Germany.

    • New Statesman ☛ Bondi beach shows IS is taking advantage of a new kind of terrorist

      On 18 December, IS for the first time commented on the attack, in one of its dense weekly editorials in Arabic. It obliquely took credit for inspiring the assault, hailing Naveed and Sajid Akram as “heroes” and “lions” – but came short of claiming any operational links with the father and son. A decade ago, IS would have been far more likely to stamp its mark more explicitly on an attack as soon as possible links emerged. In this shift, there may be signs of a tactical move which reflects an evolving landscape of threats for governments around the world.

    • US Navy Times ☛ Navy launches suicide drone from ship at sea for first time

      A Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System drone, known as a LUCAS drone, was launched from the flight deck of the USS Santa Barbara, an Independence-class littoral combat ship currently operating in the Arabian Gulf.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Vox ☛ Epstein files deadline: What to know

      Friday is the deadline for the Justice Department to disclose materials from its two investigations into deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein after Congress passed a bill last month requiring it to do so within 30 days. There are still questions about what materials could be withheld or redacted, but it’s extremely likely we’ll see something.

    • Wired ☛ Terrifying New Photos Emerge From the Jeffrey Epstein Estate

      The release did not include information about where or when the photos were taken. However, several of the photos appear to have been taken at “The Edge ‘Billionaires’ Dinner’ 2011,” at which several other tech moguls and wealthy individuals were photographed. (The web page featuring the photos includes a quote from a 2000 WIRED story in which the long-standing dinner series was briefly mentioned.) An email address listed on The Edge’s website did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

    • The Independent UK ☛ What to know about Epstein files release as the deadline approaches

      By Friday, December 19, the department must release all unclassified documents, investigation material and internal communications from probes into Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. That includes flight logs and references to named individuals, including potentially government officials.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ New Epstein estate images released ahead of deadline

      The 68 images published by Democrat lawmakers from the US House Oversight Committee are taken from a cache of around 95,000 images which Congress acquired from Epstein's estate, and which have been steadily drip-fed into the public domain in recent weeks, including last week.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Epstein files: New photos reveal woman with Lolita quotes scrawled on body

      The photograph was reportedly taken at the Microsoft founder’s Seattle office in 2014, almost 10 years after Epstein was arrested for soliciting a child for prostitution.

  • Environment

    • Vox ☛ It’s official: Earth will blow through the 1.5°C global warming limit

      Climate scientists have been warning for years that we’ve already backed ourselves into a corner where even the most optimistic forecasts of humanity’s efforts to address climate change will breach this threshold. Now this year, even some of the loudest voices calling for global action to curb emissions have begun to drop the pretense.

    • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Continued coal use serves out-of-state interests, not Nebraskans

      Yes, energy demands are increasing. Yes, we must keep rates low. But at what cost? Until twice, three times, four times as many people perish from sulfur dioxide emissions? Until Nebraska lies at the top for the worst asthma rates in the country due to the plant’s pollution?

      Until I can’t go back to my hometown because it silenced the community’s voice and showed me there’s no place for someone like me — someone fighting for my future, hoping those making decisions about it will listen.

    • Michigan News ☛ Bills would target water use, utility costs tied to Michigan data center boom

      Senate Bills 761, 762 and 763 each propose amending existing state statutes.

      SB 761 bans those withdrawing more than an average of 2 million gallons of water a day for consumptive use ― water that evaporates or does not return to the water system ― from obtaining a permit in the state.

      Meanwhile, SB 762 requires the Michigan Public Service Commission to publish annual reports regarding the total energy spending and water usage of data centers, and SB 763 prohibits passing infrastructure improvement costs on to residential ratepayers.

    • Energy/Transportation

      • Semafor Inc ☛ Oracle stock falls over US data center funding troubles

        The Financial Times reported that Oracle’s primary backer for its largest data center projects won’t finance a $10 billion, 1-gigawatt facility in Michigan over concerns about the software giant’s rising debt and AI spending. Cloud-computing firms including Oracle, Microsoft, and Meta have amassed a combined $500 billion in obligations toward data center leases, Bloomberg reported.

      • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ You Can Now See 2,000-Year-Old Thermal Baths and Military Barracks Without Ever Leaving Rome's New Subway Stations

        The stations’ opening was delayed for years, partly because their construction revealed remnants of Rome’s past that had to be carefully excavated by archaeologists. The driverless C Line now connects Rome’s eastern suburbs to the city center; if all goes according to plan, it will eventually extend to St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.

      • Silicon Angle ☛ University of Michigan develops AI training ground

        Allen, alongside three University of Michigan students — Ciara Cade (right), Calvin Kraus (center) and Sydney Allen (second from right) — spoke with Savannah Peterson (left) for the “Google Cloud: Passport to Containers” interview series, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the University of Michigan’s approach to AI, where Google Cloud fits in, and the future of the Gen Z workforce. (* Disclosure below.)

      • El País ☛ The journal ‘Science’ criticizes Trump’s anti-renewable energy policy: ‘The US is failing to benefit from its own innovations’

        The prestigious publication added a forceful editorial that constitutes a full-fledged condemnation of the anti-renewable energy and pro-fossil fuel policies implemented by Donald Trump. Beyond the environmental and health problems this policy causes, the magazine emphasizes the economic paradox it represents for U.S. interests, as the U.S. is “failing to benefit from its own innovations.” That’s because a significant portion of the technologies that have driven this growth in renewables worldwide were developed in the United States, notes the editorial. But it is China that perfected and now manufactures them, reaping the profits. This country, Science notes, supplies 80% of the world’s solar cells, 70% of its wind turbines, and 70% of its lithium batteries.

  • Finance

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: A perfect distillation of the social uselessness of finance

      It's a long and fascinating piece and it's certainly left me wanting to read both books, but that's not what convinced me to do one more newsletter before going on break – rather, it was a brief passage in the essay's preamble, a passage that perfectly captures the total social uselessness of the finance sector as a whole.

    • Sumana Harihareswara ☛ Python Software Foundation, National Science Foundation, And Integrity

      I know, from personal experience, that it takes a significant amount of effort to research, write, revise, and submit a decently plausible funding proposal to the US government's National Science Foundation. A successful NSF proposal is as tightly structured as a sonnet, even beyond the explicit requirements given in the solicitation; every diagram or chart, every paragraph, every sentence of those 20-30 pages has to hit a particular mark. I had written or co-written several grant proposals -- including multiple successful ones that garnered hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding -- before the first time I worked on an NSF proposal. The NSF process is a different beast.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Federal News Network ☛ IRS moves 1,000 IT employees out of its tech shop, with few signs of what work they’ll do next

      Impacted employees told Federal News Network they’re not sure what kind of work they’ll be doing as part of this reassignment. Federal News Network spoke to four IRS employees. The IRS and the Treasury Department did not respond to requests for comment.

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Ford to convert KY battery plant for energy storage business, reportedly laying off 1,500 workers

      Ford Motor Co. will lay off about 1,500 workers in Kentucky as it converts a ballyhooed plant in Hardin County from making batteries for electric vehicles to making batteries for a new energy storage business.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Honda to temporarily shut down factories in China and Japan because of chip shortage — disruption caused by fallout from on-going conflict within Nexperia

      While Nexperia does not produce cutting-edge semiconductors like TSMC and Samsung, it’s still one of the largest legacy chip manufacturers in the world. Although these may be cheap parts, they’re still essential components found in every vehicle where they’re used in major systems like power steering and automatic windows. The trouble began in mid-October when the Dutch government seized it from Wingtech, its Chinese owner, following concerns of illegal technology transfers from the Netherlands unit to its China-based parent company.

    • W Evan Sheehan ☛ A Useless Profession

      I came across this book review via Cory Doctorow’s blog. It’s a review of, I think, two different books relating to finance. I find I am not that interested in reading either of these books, but the first six or so paragraphs of the review have a pretty cogent explanation of why finance is utterly useless: finance is just gambling. Very little of what happens in the finance sector has to do with getting money from the people who have it but aren’t using it, to the people who can use it but don’t have it. Mostly it’s about betting on whether the value of an asset will go up or down. If you’re right, you get money; if you’re wrong, you lose money. Nothing of value is done.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ [Cryptocurrency]'s Trump-era boom faces a 2026 reality check

      Aiming to get that position enshrined in law, [cryptocurrency] companies and executives donated more than US$245-million in the 2024 election cycle to promote pro-[cryptocurrency] candidates including Trump, according to Federal Election Commission data.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ The workplaces scrubbing Christmas from existence

      Part of the problem is HR overreach. Britain now employs more than 500,000 people in HR roles – a staggering 83 per cent increase since 2011, according to the British Labour Force survey.

      To put this in perspective, HR workers now outnumber NHS doctors three to one. Second worldwide only to the Dutch, the UK is now an HR superpower.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

      • YLE ☛ Finland to tighten rules for foreign students

        The reality is quite different, as Finland grapples with an unemployment crisis that is especially difficult for foreign nationals. The misinformation spread by the agents, therefore, has serious consequences, with many of the students who move to Finland with dreams of a better life finding themselves in abject poverty, relying on handouts to survive.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • CPJ ☛ CPJ: Trump’s BBC lawsuit is yet another attack on US media freedom 

      “The president’s lawsuits against the BBC and other news outlets undercut the First Amendment values he claims to uphold and creates an environment where journalists and newsrooms are forced to self-censor in order to ward off potentially costly legal retribution,” said CPJ’s U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “It is disgraceful that a sitting U.S. president would spend a portion of his tenure suing media companies. This sends a chilling message to journalists and creates a framework in which world leaders, as well as local officials in the U.S., could feel empowered to emulate this behavior.”

    • Project Censored ☛ Trump’s War on Epistemic Institutions

      Contemporary liberal democracies such as the United States depend on more than free elections and stable, functioning economies. They also rely on what are sometimes called epistemic institutions, organizations such as universities, news outlets, scientific associations, and government research agencies whose main purpose is to discover truth and make reliable knowledge public.

      Over the years, such institutions—and the people who run them—have clashed with politicians and corporate leaders when those elites attempt to suppress inconvenient truths. On occasion, epistemic institutions have been hampered by internal organizational struggles or their own conflicts of interest. Yet, until very recently, overt political tampering with the operation of universities, independent research agencies, scientific organizations, and the like in this country has been the exception rather than the rule. After all, effective government policy, the fair adjudication of legal disputes, protection of public health, and even the day-to-day operations of businesses of various kinds are all predicated on institutions such as these functioning with a substantial degree of autonomy from partisan political interference and on the fact that they can be counted on to produce consistently trustworthy information and sound scientific insights.

      Unfortunately, since Donald Trump returned to office in January, his administration has worked systematically to destroy or disable the epistemic institutions upon which we all rely to understand our society, the natural world, and the problems facing us as a nation.

    • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Baku Film Festival removes film over ‘immoral depiction’ of 12th century poet

      The filmmakers have said the film is ‘a modern tale built in the spirit of feminism’, the pro-government media outlet Kinobiz noted.

      After the film was removed from the festival, Gara made a statement, saying it had been disqualified from the Baku festival’s programme because the Film Commission of the Culture Ministry refused to issue a screening license, arguing the film does not conform to moral values.

    • BoingBoing ☛ FBI ordered to list "Antifa-related" Americans

      The legal problems are significant. Former FBI Director Chris Wray and the Congressional Research Service have both explained that Antifa is not a group or organization but a decentralized movement. The administration has no statutory authority to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations — Trump's executive order cites none.

  • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • CPJ ☛ 127 African women journalists write to jailed Burundian Sandra Muhoza as she returns to court

      Muhoza is expected in court on December 19, a family member familiar with her case told CPJ, on condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns.

    • CPJ ☛ Joint letter in support of Burundian journalist Sandra Muhoza [PDF]

      We want to reassure you that journalists across Africa and around the world are following your case closely. Many are committed to advocating for your freedom, and we will continue to raise our voices in demanding your immediate and unconditional release. We hope this knowledge brings you some encouragement and strength during this dark and difficult time. We remain confident that good news will soon arrive, and that you will be reunited with your family and allowed to resume your work as a journalist.

    • TruthOut ☛ Billionaires Are Encroaching on the Free Press. Let’s Act to Defend It in 2026.

      Moving into the new year, in this period of resolution-making and intention-setting, it’s worth it for each of us to deeply consider our relationship to media. How is it shaping what we think, feel, and do, for better, or worse, or different? How is it driving us toward action, or toward complacency? What media-related choices can we make, as autonomous, living beings capable of choices, to confront fascism and grow the society we want and need?

      In 2026, let’s take back the media — and our minds and spirits — from the billionaires.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Vox ☛ How much would it cost to end extreme poverty? New study says $318 billion

      We tell ourselves that global poverty is just too big, too distant, and too intractable an issue for us to solve. If the world could afford to solve it, or something like hunger, then surely somebody else would have done it already.

      But, it turns out, that’s simply not true. According to a new report by a group of anti-poverty researchers that uses AI tools to achieve unusually granular data of the picture on the ground, the price tag for completely ending extreme poverty would be just $318 billion per year. Using targeted direct cash transfers, it would cost around 0.3 percent of global GDP to ensure that virtually everyone has enough to pay for the absolute basics — the food, shelter, and medicine they need to survive each day.

    • Wired ☛ ICE Seeks Cyber Upgrade to Better Surveil and Investigate Its Employees

      The agency plans to renew a sweeping cybersecurity contract that includes expanded employee monitoring as the government escalates leak investigations and casts internal dissent as a threat.

  • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

    • Matt Birchler ☛ Streaming music is the lie we tell each other

      Spoilers for an upcoming Cozy Zone episode, but I've come to the conclusion that streaming music platforms are a shared lie we all agree to that suggests we're paying for music when we're actually may as well be pirating it, we just pay $10 a month to keep the cops away.

    • Digital Music News ☛ YouTube's the Problem, Not Billboard — And Everybody Agrees

      That logic goes something like this: more dedicated, paying fans – and their purchases – are far more valuable to the music industry and its artists, songwriters, publishers, and labels than freebie ad-supported ones. And the charts should reflect that.

      The rest is just making up the numbers to fit. Paid stuff feeds the music industry, and accordingly, it weighs more heavily in the rankings. It’s logical enough.

      Just one problem: in that framework, YouTube will never be a heavy chart influencer compared to other streaming platforms and formats. The harsh reality is that YouTube Music, once a promising paid platform, never materialized as a serious competitor to Apple Music or Spotify – and with the music subscription market now maturing, it’s unlikely to catch up.

  Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Tweaks to IPTV Piracy Law That "Bans VPNs" Won't Change Its Intent or Scope

      Early December, Denmark's Ministry of Culture submitted a bill that aims to combat viewing of pirated content on illegal IPTV platforms. Public debate was more concerned with proposed restrictions on VPNs, with some concluding that the government wants a "total ban". In a statement this week, Denmark's Minister of Culture said VPNs will not be banned, and to avoid doubt, references to VPNs will be removed. Whether that will change anything seems extremely unlikely.