Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ Goodbye to the Hexham Oak and Hungry Jacks

  I’m learning of this very late, but it still hits close to home. The Oak Milk Bar and Hungry Jacks in Hexham is no more. Gutted! I kid, but no, this is a bit sad. Our experience of this place likely mirrors those of thousands of other families from who’d drop in on their way to somewhere else.

  Our story began when we first moved interstate in Australia, then later overseas. We’d come back to New South Wales to visit relatives and close family friends each year, either during the school holidays or a long weekend. Many of them lived in Sydney, though we had a part of the extended family that lived further north near Nabiac and Forster. This involved taking a road trip due north from Sydney, over the F3/M1 motorway to Newcastle, then along the coast. The wide open spaces on this route felt like another world, especially coming from Singapore where you could circumnavigate the country before lunch.

• James G ☛ The indie web in 2030

  To enable this, the indie web must be open both technically and have a culture that supports discussion, exploration, and discourse, where we – everyone – looks at the web we have now and asks what we like, what we don’t like, and what we want, and move in the directions that let us build better futures.

• Science

  • Alisa Sireneva ☛ Faster practical modular inversion

    That’s a big shame, because the extended Euclidean algorithm can be optimized in a very similar manner, and the underlying ideas were described in a 2020 paper. It’s probably not well-known because the paper focuses on constant-time evaluation and long arithmetic, so people might have assumed it’s irrelevant.

    I’m hoping to bring justice to the extended Stein’s algorithm with this post. I’ll cover how the algorithm works, its limitations, some optimizations compared to Pornin’s paper, and potential further improvements.

  • Science Alert ☛ This Week in Science: 3I/ATLAS Passes Earth, a Runaway Black Hole, And More!

    Our weekly science news roundup.

  • Science Alert ☛ Earth's Seasons Are Strangely Out of Sync, Scientists Discover From Space

    These mismatches have surprising consequences.

  • Science Alert ☛ The First-Ever Map of The Boundary of The Sun Has Just Been Revealed

    Like a solar porcupine.

  • Science Alert ☛ Earth's Atmosphere Is Leaking to The Moon, And Here's Why

    Sharing is caring.

  • Science Alert ☛ First Contact With an Alien Civilization Could Be 'Loud'. Here's Why.

    Shouting across the void.

• Career/Education

  • Futurism ☛ Actual Human Interaction Flourishes After High School Bans Phones

    New York state banned smartphones in schools this September, and teachers are weeping tears of joy.

    As New York Magazine reports, while the bell-to-bell ban was intended to foster a distraction-free learning environment, it’s also allowing old-fashioned human socializing to flourish — buoyant findings as similar bans sweep the United States and elsewhere across the globe.

  • Fatih Arslan ☛ My two-part desk setup

    After a recent trip to Hamburg, visiting various museums and exhibitions, something struck me. I hadn’t seen a single desk that was facing the wall. Almost every single desk was in the middle of the room, and facing the room itself.

    Once I was back from my trip, I rotated the whole setup for my desk, and flipped it. Now my desk is facing the room. My back is against the wall, I can see the door, and I have the rest of the room in my field of view. It is a small change, but the space feels very different. I should have done this earlier.

  • Colin Devroe ☛ My 2026 goal is to be bored more often

    What do you do with your time? I think the modern world has afforded us all more time than we know what to do with and we’re squandering it. I know this isn’t true for everyone, and certainly not true of people everywhere, but many of us live in a time of abundance and we’re not spending enough time being bored.

  • Max Leibman ☛ Typing is my business.

    A couple of retail jobs in my teen years polished my 10-key skills, and then in my early 20s, typing became my business. I got a job at a brokerage scanning paperwork and then doing data entry to annotate and route the images. Later, I got a job supervising a team doing the same, and then another after that, before talking my way into a project management role. In all, typing was my career for over twelve years.

    I imagine data entry jobs like the ones I had barely exist anymore, between advances in computer vision (call it “AI” or not) and the ability to send the images overseas via the internet to be processed by less expensive human labor. Certainly, things were trending towards optical character recognition and automation when I left the field behind; the teams I oversaw were being asked to take on ever more challenging “value-added” work, requiring more close reading, classification, and analysis. But the bulk of the work was, basically, typing. Often mindless enough that I could maintain good speed and accuracy for hours while listening to podcasts or audiobooks.

  • Pete Brown ☛ Typing is great!

    To this day, I think one of the most important classes I ever took was “Freshman Workshop” my first year of high school. In a room at the end of the hallway on the third floor, twenty of us at a time sat a fleet of Olympia typewriters and learned to touch-type. It was tedious and grueling work, but by the end of it, I could type relatively accurately and quickly.

  • Shriram Krishnamurthi ☛ Pedagogy Recommendations

    People often ask me for recommendations on pedagogy. To avoid repeating myself, I’m going to make some suggestions here, and update this document over time.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Hardware Store Marauder’s Map Is Clarkian Magic

    The “Marauder’s Map” is a magical artifact from the Harry Potter franchise. That sort of magic isn’t real, but as Arthur C. Clarke famously pointed out, it doesn’t need to be — we have technology, and we can make our own magic now. Or, rather, [Dave] on the YouTube Channel Dave’s Armoury can make it.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AMD publishes first Zen 6 document detailing ground-up redesign on 2nm process node — brand-new 8-wide CPU core with strong vector capabilities

    AMD's Zen 6-based CPUs may be number crunching monsters, given their core design that is partially revealed in a performance counters document.

  • Hackaday ☛ Testing 8 Solder Flux Pastes After Flux Killed A GeForce2 GTS

    Flux is one of those things that you cannot really use too much of during soldering, as it is essential for cleaning the surface and keeping oxygen out, but as [Bits und Bolts] recently found, not all flux is made the same. After ordering the same fake Amtech flux from the same AliExpress store, he found that the latest batch didn’t work quite the same, resulting in a Geforce 2 GTS chip getting cooked while trying to reball the chip with uncooperative flux.

  • Louie Mantia ☛ Jungle Green

    I love the NES, Game Boy, Super Nintendo, Genesis, and the original PlayStation, but I have an unwavering fondness for Nintendo 64.

    While some kids had the original black N64 model with a gray controller, I apparently had to have one of the Funtastic translucent models. They were not easy to come by, but my mom was determined. When I was visiting home in 2013, she recounted the situation. Luckily, I recorded it.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ Toys Can Turn Dangerous in Seconds: How to Stay Safe This Christmas

    A little extra caution goes a long, long way.

  • Techdirt ☛ California Brings Former CDC Staff On To Do The Work RFK Jr. Refuses To Do Nationally

    Monarez is the former CDC director who was summarily fired by RFK Jr., reportedly for refusing to rubber stamp the anti-vaxxer nonsense that everyone knew would come out of Kennedy’s handpicked immunization panel at CDC. Kennedy disputes that as the reason for the firing, but his claims are as dubious as those he has about vaccines generally. Houry, meanwhile, was one of the senior CDC professionals that resigned in the wake of Monarez’s firing.

    On the one hand, it’s an embarrassment of riches for California, to suddenly have leadership for public health in the state of the caliber of former high-ranking CDC professionals. The downside is that they’re now confined to 1 of 50 states instead of all of them. States like California shouldn’t have to do this sort of thing. And states should also not be in the position of jockeying to gobble up this talent before other states get there first simply because RFK Jr. is completely out to lunch.

  • Wired ☛ Trump’s Agriculture Bailout Is Alienating His MAHA Base

    But there’s a catch: only major commodity farming operations—such as those that grow corn, cotton, peanuts, rice, wheat, and soybeans—will be eligible for more than 92 percent of the money, which is scheduled to begin flowing in February. Just $1 billion of the bailout has been set aside for farmers who produce other crops; when those payments will be made available has not yet been announced.

  • Futurism ☛ Doctors Catch Cancer-Diagnosing Hey Hi (AI) Extracting Patients’ Race Data and Being Racist With It

    "Reading demographics from a pathology slide is thought of as a 'mission impossible' for a human pathologist, so the bias in pathology Hey Hi (AI) was a surprise to us."

• Proprietary

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Registry hack enables new performance-boosting native NVMe support on backdoored Windows 11 — backdoored Windows Server 2025 feature can be unlocked for consumer PCs, but at your own risk [Ed: Linux does not have such issues]

    The backdoored Windows Server 2025 registry tweak that activates native NVMe support can also be activated in backdoored Windows 11, but at your own risk.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Cisco VPNs, Email Services Hit in Separate Threat Campaigns

    On Wednesday, Cisco revealed that a newly identified China-linked advanced persistent threat (APT), "UAT-9686," had been exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Cisco email security appliances that run on its AsyncOS software. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-20393, has since been assigned a "critical" 10 out of 10 severity rating in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), and it has not yet been patched.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ CL0P Ransomware Group Targets Gladinet CentreStack In New Campaign

    Cyble said in a note to clients today that CL0P appears to be readying its dark web data leak site (DLS) for a new wave of victims following its exploitation of Oracle E-Business Suite vulnerabilities that netted more than 100 victims.

  • Steam Sale: 50 great roguelikes and roguelites on PC (Linux/SteamOS, Mac, and Windows)

    Finally, if you want to read about the games in this list, nearly all of them feature in my article on the best roguelikes and roguelites, so hit that link for more on them. Otherwise, stay with me for tons of discounted games, as they’re priced in the Steam Winter Sale 2025 (which runs until January 5th, 2026, 10 am PST).

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • BoingBoing ☛ Survey finds "very negative" attitude toward generative AI in games

      If you've noticed sentiment turning sharply against generative AI—images, chatbots, and the like—you wouldn't be alone. A survey of gamers conducted from October to December puts it in stark numbers: 85% reported a negative view of its use in games, with 62% holding a "very negative" view and only 7.6% approving of it.

    • Intuition Labs ☛ RAM Shortage 2025: How AI Demand is Raising DRAM Prices

      Executive Summary: In late 2025 the global memory industry is grappling with an unprecedented RAM (DRAM) shortage. Exponentially rising demand – especially for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and next-generation server memory – is colliding with manufacturing constraints, leading to record-high prices and supply rationing. Major industry players like Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron have shifted investment and production capacity toward AI-oriented memory (HBM, advanced LPDDR), deliberately holding back commodity DRAM expansions ([1]) ([2]). AI data centers (from giants like Nvidia, Google, and Microsoft) are voraciously consuming HBM and LPDDR, effectively outbidding consumer PC, gaming, and smartphone markets for available DRAM. ([3]) ([4]). The result is that even traditional memory segments face shortages: contract DRAM prices are surging (e.g. 16Gb DDR5 chip prices rose from ~$6.84 to ~$27.20 in Q4 2025 ([4])), and bargain DDR4 is scarce as production lines convert to DDR5. Leading analysts now warn that high memory prices and tight supply could persist into 2027–2028 when new fabrication plants come online ([2]) ([5]). This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the December 2025 RAM shortage: its technical and economic causes, industry responses, effects on various sectors, and foreseeable future developments, drawing on extensive data and expert commentary.

    • Futurism ☛ Google's AI Summaries Are Destroying the Lives of Recipe Developers

      Even setting aside the question of whether the resulting recipes actually produce tasty food, the bots are biting the hand that feeds by destroying the business model behind the content they’re stealing: clicks that would be going to their food blogs are being diverted to the chatbots instead, depriving the actual recipe creators of eyeballs — and ad revenue — that historically kept them afloat.

    • Max Leibman ☛ Let the machine do the dishes.

      Regardless of the type of model, it’s also a type of AI application I am comfortable with. I wasn’t in a position to pick up my phone when I was up to my elbows in dirty pans and dishwater; I couldn’t read a message or look at a photo, so Siri did it for me.

      Linguist, professor, and AI skeptic Emily Bender often says that she won’t read “synthetic text.” I don’t take that strong of a stance, but I think it has an admirable, bracing clarity. And I do understand where she is coming from. I don’t want to read a novel written by AI. Or a news article. Or a social media post.

    • NL Times ☛ Netherlands moves to criminalize glorifying terrorism

      Distributing materials that glorify terrorist violence, such as videos of attacks accompanied by approving comments, would carry a prison term of up to two years or a fine.

      Publicly expressing support for banned terrorist organizations, including through flags, clothing with symbols or logos, or statements on social media, would also be punishable by up to three years in prison or a fine.

    .

  • Social Control Media

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ TikTok: Six key things to know

      TikTok boasts over a billion users worldwide, including more than 170 million in the United States, it says — nearly half the country’s population.

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ Social media herd mentality, Tulum edition: Our CEO's perspective

      I think it makes a fascinating case study to observe and learn from on so many levels. In many ways, Tulum provides us insights into the perils and pitfalls of herd mentality and group thinking that is so prevalent on social media today. Allow me to explain.

    • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Challenging fate with goodwill (and a holiday sale)

      When I post on social media, regret isn’t that unusual an emotion. Most of the time it’s momentary and near-immediate. I regret my poor impulse control. Or, I worry about a silly statement getting reposted into a strange audience that might take it too seriously. Sometimes my anger gets the better of me.

      Sometimes I’m not angry enough in the post, and people foolishly mistake patience for approval.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Denmark Cyberattack Fuels Tensions With Russia

      Denmark cyberattack allegations have escalated into a diplomatic confrontation with Russia, after Danish authorities accused Moscow of orchestrating two cyber incidents targeting critical infrastructure and democratic processes. On Thursday, Denmark announced it would summon the Russian ambassador following findings by the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) linking Russia to a destructive cyberattack on a Danish water utility in 2024 and a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Danish websites ahead of elections last month.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Straits Times ☛ 31 Malaysians rescued from Myanmar job scam syndicates safely repatriated

      The operation is part of the ministry’s ongoing efforts to safeguard the welfare of Malaysians abroad.

    • Jake Saunders ☛ I got hacked, my server started mining Monero this morning.

      819% CPU usage. On a process called javae running from /tmp/.XIN-unix/. And multiple xmrig processes - that’s literally cryptocurrency mining software (Monero, specifically).

      Looks like I’d been mining cryptocurrency for someone since December 7th. For ten days. Brilliant.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Futurism ☛ Officials Deploying Hey Hi (AI) Surveillance Devices in School Bathrooms

      "It's very peculiar to make the claim that this will keep your kids safe."

    • Cyble Inc ☛ University Of Sydney Cyberattack Exposes Student Data

      University officials said the suspicious activity was identified last week during monitoring of the platform, which is primarily used for software development and code storage. While the system was never intended to house personal records, investigators found that historical data files had been stored within the library, largely for testing purposes. These files were accessed and downloaded by an unauthorized party before the university intervened.

    • [Old] Saket Narayan ☛ Reinventing the dial-up modem

      The plan was similar for Simple, but there was one problem with this approach: talking to the server required an internet connection. We wanted to keep Simple offline-first. While it’s nice to have a data connection, it was important for the app’s functionality to not degrade when a connection is unavailable, especially in remote villages.

      We needed a way to send data to our server without an internet connection. A team member came up with this fantastic idea of using DTMF tones!

    • Bill and Keonne ☛ Behind Every Line of Code, There's a Family

      Supporting Bill and Keonne, the Samourai Wallet developers and their loved ones

• Defence/Aggression

  • JURIST ☛ UN briefing warns recovery remains fragile in Syria amid considerable progress

    The UN’s top political affairs official and the deputy emergency relief coordinator briefed ambassadors in the Security Council on Thursday, saying that Syrians have made tangible progress over the past year but warning that the country’s recovery remains fragile and uneven since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024.

  • France24 ☛ Bondi Beach shooting: Jewish community "completely unbreakable", PM says

    Australian surf lifesavers lined Bondi Beach to observe three minutes of silence in memory of the 15 people who lost their lives. Volunteers across the country joined them in a show of solidarity with the Jewish community. Senior researcher and adjunct professor at Sciences Po (CERI), in Paris, David Camroux, shares his insights on the Bondi beach attack.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan President vows full inquiry into deadly subway attack

    Officials called it a “deliberate act” but said the motive was not immediately clear.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Trump Tips the Scales in Honduras

    Donald Trump’s meddling in Honduras’s national election aims to return the disgraced party of the narcotrafficking ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández to power.

  • Jan Wildeboer ☛ OCT – My Framework for Digital Sovereignty, Part 1

    Over the past few months, I thought a lot about #DigitalSovereignty. I talked to experts, from analysts over legal experts to people running companies and public authorities. I tried to distill what is really at the core of the principle.

    And I think I have found a way to frame the whole topic. Using three layers that are interdependent. So in many ways they behave as axis in a 3 dimensional space. It helps (at least me) to think about digital sovereignty on a higher level, to not get lost in technical details but to keep a clear view on The Bigger Picture.

    Today I want to share this model, which is far from complete and finished, to open up a discussion. It’s pragmatic, rough, unpolished and not too deep on theory and scientific knowledge. My critics will point that out in ways that I could never come up with and that is EXACTLY what I hope will happen. So that we can discuss and refine the concept. Or learn that my approach is a total failure. I am open to all of that. As long as you stay constructive. So. Let’s get started.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Four Ways to Fight Fascism: Checking In

    Throughout this year, I have argued there are four ways to fight fascism — and doing so through the guise of the Democratic Party (especially DC Democrats) is not yet the best way to do so.

    I argued these were the four ways to peacefully fight Donald Trump’s authoritarianism: [...]

  • New York Times ☛ TikTok Signs Agreements With Investors in Step Toward Avoiding a U.S. Ban

    TikTok’s chief executive told employees on Thursday that the company had signed agreements with three major new investors to help form an American version of TikTok, bringing it one step closer to completing a deal to keep the app operating in the United States, according to an internal memo reviewed by The New York Times.

    The agreements do not mean that a deal for an American version of TikTok is done, as these investors would form only 45 percent of the new ownership. It’s not clear where the rest of the deal stands.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ TikTok just signed the deal to hand US operations to Oracle-led investor group

    In a memo, Shou Zi Chew said that parent company ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok have signed binding agreements. Oracle Inc., private equity firm Silver Lake Partners LP, and Emirati-backed investment firm MGX will together own 50% of the U.S. business. Close to 30% of the joint venture will be held by “affiliates of certain existing investors in ByteDance,” and ByteDance will retain 19.9%.

  • BoingBoing ☛ New York's school phone ban accidentally created a teen social revival

    The most striking transformation belongs to a seventh-grader named Tokyo Levy. His mother, an art teacher, watched him go from a phone-clutching Minecraft devotee to a chess club member to a soccer league participant. His latest request to his parents isn't for a new game or upgraded device. He wants a bicycle so he can hang out with the new friends he made at school.

  • NYMag ☛ How New York’s Phone Ban Saved High School

    What stuff are they doing? At many schools, teachers have made cards, board games, and sports equipment available during free time, and the kids have deigned to use them. Kevin Casado, a coach and teacher at Math, Engineering, and Science Academy Charter High School in Bushwick, hands out volleyballs every lunch period. He says a lot more kids are playing this year than were last year. “It’s no net, open space, forming their own circles of ten or 12 kids, hitting it up to each other, an equal number of girls and boys,” he adds. Aidan Amin, a ninth-grader at Hunter College High School, is in a friend group that congregates in the school foyer to stack OK Play tiles and compete at Sorry! and other tabletop games during lunch. “I’d say it’s made us closer. Honestly, half the people I’m playing board games with I didn’t know at all before this,” Aidan says.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Enhancing land military mobility in Europe: Advocating a pragmatic approach

    That task force’s collective efforts resulted in the 2020 report, Moving Out: A Comprehensive Assessment of European Military Mobility. The report generated important politico-military discussions on the issue across the capitals of Europe, helping to shape a broader debate over the need for Alliance improvements not only in capability and capacity, but also in logistics and sustainment, especially for northern and central Europe. The report also successfully encouraged the European Union (EU) to provide critical financial resources for mobility in its 2021–2027 multiannual financial framework. However, written as it was some five years ago, it came two years before Russia’s full-scale military aggression against Ukraine in February 2022. Consequently, a new study on the subject is timely and beneficial.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Japan’s nuclear ambitions must be stopped ‘at any cost’, says North Korea

    The statement did not address Pyongyang’s own nuclear programme.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China's rare earths El Dorado gives strategic edge

    The hills of Jiangxi province are home to most of China’s rare earth mines.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Pakistan court hands Imran Khan, wife 17-year jail terms in another graft case

    The graft case involves purchase of underpriced state gifts given by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China envoy visits Cambodia seeking to de-escalate fighting with Thailand

    China’s special envoy for Asian affairs visited Phnom Penh this week to push for Cambodia and Thailand to de-escalate their fierce border fighting, Cambodia’s foreign ministry said on Saturday.

  • JURIST ☛ US imposes sanctions on two ICC judges after rejecting Israeli challenge in war crimes case

    The US government on Friday announced sanctions on two judges from the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court, Gocha Lordkipanidze of Georgia and Erdenebalsuren Damdin of Mongolia, due to their “illegitimate targeting of Israel.”

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Coast Guard Boards Tanker Carrying Venezuelan Oil

    Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said a vessel had been “apprehended.” It was the second action this month against a tanker carrying Venezuelan oil.

  • France24 ☛ US forces intercept second merchant vessel off Venezuela amid blockade of sanctioned vessels

    US forces on Saturday stopped an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela for the second time in less than two weeks, following President The Insurrectionist’s announcement of a blockade on sanctioned vessels. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the operation, carried out with the Defense Department, targeted a tanker last docked in Venezuela, as Washington ramps up the pressure on Caracas.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Bangladesh tightens security after youth leader’s killing as media attacks stoke unrest fears

    Amnesty International urged prompt investigations into Mr Hadi’s killing and the subsequent violence.

  • France24 ☛ Gaza famine over but situation 'remains critical', UN says

    Improved aid access means there is no longer famine in Gaza, but the war-ravaged territory still faces emergency conditions, a UN-backed global hunger monitor said on Friday. Israel denied that there is a food shortage in Gaza, where around 1.6 million people are expected to face "crisis" levels of food insecurity in the coming months.

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Strikes on Syria Underscore Scale of Challenge for Its President

    The Syrian government did not comment directly on the extensive U.S. strikes targeting the Islamic State on Friday but said it was intensifying its own efforts to fight the group.

  • France24 ☛ At least five killed in US retaliatory strikes on Islamic State group targets in Syria

    The US military has carried out a wave of air strikes against dozens of Islamic State group targets across central Syria, US officials said, in retaliation for a deadly attack on American personnel. The strikes, which killed at least five, were carried out with Jordan’s participation and followed President The Insurrectionist’s pledge to respond after two US soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in an assault last weekend near Palmyra.

  • France24 ☛ US pounds targets across Syria: five ISIS members killed

    The US military launched large-scale strikes against dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria on Friday in retaliation for an attack on American personnel, US officials said.

    A US-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes and ground operations in Syria targeting Islamic State suspects in recent months, often with the involvement of Syria's security forces. Simon Mortiz has more.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • New York Times ☛ With Attacks on Oil Tankers, Ukraine Takes Aim at Russia’s War Financing

      Strikes on four vessels signal that Kyiv is willing to expand the maritime theater of the conflict in an effort to crimp Moscow’s military funding.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Russia strikes Ukrainian port as peace negotiations continue in US

      The airstrikes on port infrastructure in Odesa come as the Kremlin sends an envoy to Florida to discuss the Convicted Felon administration's proposed peace plan. Meanwhile, European Union leaders agreed to provide $106 billion to support Ukraine's military and economic needs over the next two years.

    • RFERL ☛ Zelenskyy Says US Has Proposed Direct Talks With Russia, Ukraine, As Diplomacy Accelerates

      The Kremlin’s senior negotiator in talks on ending the war in Ukraine, Kirill Dmitriev, said he was on his way to Florida for fresh meetings with US counterparts on December 20 – hours after a Russian strike on Ukraine’s Odesa region killed eight people and injured 27.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Says Florida Talks 'Constructive,' Will Continue -- But Both Sides Tight-Lipped

      Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s senior negotiator, declared that Russia and the United States are speaking “constructively” in Florida and said peace negotiations would continue on December 21, although no details were immediately provided.

    • LRT ☛ Russia built a school-to-trenches conveyor belt. Is the West ready? – opinion

      Western policymakers often treat “soft” humanitarian concerns—such as returning Ukrainian children from Russia—as separate from “hard” security issues like future defense guarantees for Ukraine. In reality, these cannot be disentangled.

    • France24 ☛ Only US can persuade Russia to end Ukraine war, Zelensky says

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Saturday said that only the US can persuade Russia to end the war in Ukraine. The comments come as Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev arrived in Miami for talks with US counterparts Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Earlier, Russian missile strikes hit port infrastructure in Odesa, killing eight and wounding 27, Ukraine’s Emergency Service said. Read our blog to see how the day's events unfolded.

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine strikes Russian shadow fleet tanker in Mediterranean sea

      Ukraine on Friday said its drones had hit a vessel from Russia's shadow fleet – the first such strike in the neutral waters of the Mediterranean sea. Russia's shadow fleet transports sanctioned Russia oil by frequently changing flags and concealing ownership.

    • France24 ☛ US, Russian officials to meet in Florida for latest round of Ukraine talks

      Russian officials arrived in Florida on Saturday to meet with US negotiators for the latest round of talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. The meeting comes as talks between US, Ukrainian and European negotiators on Friday ended with all sides saying progress had been made on agreeing security guarantees for Kyiv.

    • France24 ☛ Eight killed in Russian strike on Odessa

      Russian missile strikes on port infrastructure in Odesa, southern Ukraine, killed eight people and left 27 wounded, Ukraine’s Emergency Service said Saturday morning. The strikes came as Russian envoys are set to travel to Miami to hold talks with US negotiators aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Eliza Herbert and Léo Paichard tell us more.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • New York Times ☛ Epstein Files Photos Disappear From Government Website, Including One of Trump

    A total of 16 photos were taken down at some point on Saturday from the website that the department created to house files — among them, one of the few that contained Mr. Trump’s image. It was a photo of a credenza in Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan home, with an open drawer containing other photos, including at least one of Mr. Trump.

  • New York Times ☛ Bill Clinton Photos in Epstein Files Show He Can’t Escape Scandal

    The Republican-led Justice Department’s release of photos of the former president with Jeffrey Epstein will introduce yet another generation to his flaws and controversies.

  • New York Times ☛ Epstein and Maxwell Grand Jury Records Are Released

    The transcripts and photos were part of Department of Justice files arising from investigations into the disgraced financier and his former girlfriend.

  • Vox ☛ Epstein files release does nothing to clear up scandal’s biggest question

    The Trump administration was legally required to release all documents related to federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein by Friday, with only limited grounds for withholding documents and full explanations required for any redactions.

    It did not do this. Or anything close to it.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Epstein Files Are Too Redacted to Satisfy Anyone

    It is difficult to know if the information in this phase of the files is simply the first in a series that will implicate people across the political spectrum or if this was the tranche that was easiest for DOJ lawyers to redact and clear for release. What is clear is that the administration, which dragged its feet releasing the files—Bondi first indicated that the files were “on her desk” in February, nearly a year ago—has lost the benefit of the doubt. As my colleague Sarah Fitzpatrick reports, in the lead-up to the release of the files, Bondi and the Justice Department kept Epstein’s victims in the dark about the release and, today, scratched a call that had been floated between Bondi and victims. (The victims were told that Bondi had a medical appointment.)

  • The Atlantic ☛ Epstein’s Victims Are Furious

    The Trump administration’s release of the long-awaited Epstein files didn’t provide what survivors were looking for.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Trump administration is breaking Epstein law it just signed

    Instead, Blanche says DOJ will stretch the release over "several weeks," starting with "several hundred thousand" documents Friday and more batches to follow. The files include over 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence in FBI custody related to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Lawmakers posture as if they'll do something as the Trump Administration keeps delaying the Epstein files release

    Threats of prosecution loom as Democratic lawmakers rattle sabers and the Trump DOJ ignores the deadline set by Congress to release the Epstein files. With images of Trump condoms now released as part of the photo dump, Trump's well-understood close friendship with Epstein and the qualifications they sought in "employees" so similar as to have resulted in Epstein "stealing" Trump's girls, it is unclear what further proof folks expect the files to reveal, but here we are.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Epstein files release: First Trump reference in heavily redacted photo; ‘a $22,500 novelty check’ | Hindustan Times

    While it is unclear when and where the photo was taken, the check appears to match one previously seen in images of a birthday book Ghislaine Maxwell compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday. That same page featured a note from a Mar-a-Lago member making a joke about selling a ‘fully depreciated’ woman to Trump for $22,500.

  • Futurism ☛ The Epstein Files Release Is a Disaster

    Enter “Trump,” for example, and there will be “no results found.” Search “Epstein,” and still nada. The issue was flagged by Ben Collins of The Onion notoriety, and other users took notice.

    In all, it’s not a good look for the Trump administration, which has — surprise — underdelivered on the president’s promise to expose Epstein’s dealings. A first batch of Epstein files released shortly after he took office offered little that the public didn’t already know. It ignited an uproar in July, when the DoJ said it wouldn’t release anymore files to the public, before backtracking in the face of overwhelmingly negative public reception.

• Environment

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Starlink satellite anomaly creates debris in rare orbital mishap

    It was working with the US Space Force and Nasa to monitor the debris pieces, the number of which SpaceX did not reveal in its statement.

    Space-tracking company LeoLabs said it detected “tens” of what were likely pieces of debris from the mishap and that additional fragments could be detected as it continues to analyse the event. LeoLabs added the swift drop in altitude likely showed the mishap was caused by an internal problem rather than a collision with another object in space.

  • Kentucky Lantern ☛ Sure, debate what to do about climate change. But Trump's war on science can't end well.

    As Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, wrote on Linked In, NCAR is “quite literally (atmospheric scientists’) global mothership.”

    Nearly everyone, she wrote, “who conducts research in climate, atmospheric science, and weather — not only in the U.S. but around the world — has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Turning plastic waste into valuable chemicals with single-atom catalysts

    The rapid accumulation of plastic waste is currently posing significant risks for both human health and the environment on Earth. A possible solution to this problem would be to recycle plastic waste, breaking it into smaller molecules that can be used to produce valuable chemicals.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Futurism ☛ Germany Building Clever System to Heat 40,000 Homes Using Device Powered by River Water

      This is genius.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ I took my kids to Lapland on the Santa Claus Express – but would the big man deliver?

      Along with my husband and two young daughters, I was here to take the Santa Claus Express to the northern city of Rovaniemi, the heart of Finnish Lapland – and the “official” home of Father Christmas. A regular commuter train for the rest of the year, come late November the Santa Claus Express is Finnish Railways’ flagship service, offering the ultimate sleeper-train adventure. As I checked my watch and announced it was finally time to make our way to Helsinki central station, the girls were pink in the cheeks, eyes sparkling from all the surrounding golden lights.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-12-10 [Older] Mosquitoes: The most dangerous animals in the world?

• Finance

  • The OpenBSD Foundation ☛ The OpenBSD Foundation 2025 Fundraising Campaign

    Reaching this goal will ensure the continued health of the projects we support, will enable us to help them do more, and will avoid the distraction of financial emergencies that could spell the end of the projects. Our goal for 2025 is to increase the amount of support we offer for development, without compromising our regular support for the projects. We would like to: [...]

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Thousands protest in Budapest over child abuse case

    Thousands marched through Budapest on Saturday in protest over alleged abuse at a juvenile correction facility, after security footage surfaced showing the violent mistreatment of minors in state care. The protest was organised by the opposition Tisza party after videos emerged about an institution, showing its former acting director brutally assaulting children, including slamming one boy’s head against a table and repeatedly beating and kicking another while restraining him on the ground. The footage caused immediate public outrage over  Hungary’s child protection system.

    The man seen in the footage resigned a day before the videos were released and was arrested shortly afterwards. Police raided the facility, while the minister heading the prime minister’s office, Gergely Gulyás, announced that all five of Hungary’s juvenile detention centres would be placed under police supervision and that an investigation had been launched. As the inquiry expanded, four additional employees were arrested on suspicion of abuse, with one accused of aiding and abetting. The case has further unsettled the government because it echoes the most damaging scandal of Fidesz’s 15 years in power: earlier this year, president Katalin Novák and former justice minister Judit Varga resigned after it emerged that Novák had pardoned the former deputy director of a children’s home who had coerced victims into withdrawing testimony against a paedophile director, with Varga having countersigned the decision.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Airbus to migrate critical apps to a sovereign Euro cloud

    That creates a really interesting opportunity: Airbus is doubtless not the only large European company with similar needs. There’s a proposal to bankroll the creation of this kind of infrastructure in the EU, with an estimated price of €300 billion. It probably won’t be ready in time for Airbus, but they’ve at least proven that the need is real rather than ideological. Who’s going to pick up the baton?

  • John Nunley ☛ Rust's Block Pattern

    I don’t know if there’s an actual name for this idiom; I’m calling it the “block pattern” for lack of a better word. I find myself reaching for it frequently in code, and I think other Rust code could become cleaner if it followed this pattern. If there’s an existing name for this, please let me know!

    The pattern comes from blocks in Rust being valid expressions. For example, this code: [...]

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • [Repeat] The Mysterious Forces Steering Views on Hacker News

      I began writing this post after noticing unusual behavior when another one of my articles was shared on Hacker News. It triggered an immediate spike in traffic, which then dropped off abruptly for no apparent reason. While the post in question appeared to resonate with many readers, it rapidly fell from the top ranks of the Hacker News front page to the second, then third, and within minutes to the fourth page.

      The decline was so sudden that even the very people whose product my post was criticizing, and who understandably weren’t pleased with it, stepped in to dispute any claims of censorship. Nevertheless, the data from my analytics clearly shows a traffic chart in a shape that couldn’t be further from being organic, leading to the assumption that the post was demoted from the front page both sharply and deliberately.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • New York Times ☛ How China Tried to Dismantle a Major Underground Church

    Videos and photographs show how the Chinese authorities have tried to dismantle Zion Church, a Christian network with branches across the country.

  • BIA Net ☛ Turkey bans HBO Max series about sex worker

    In an earlier statement issued during the review process, RTÜK said the series contained elements that “clearly contradict national and moral values, exploit women, and violate public morality.” The council added that “broadcasting activities must not harm the moral and cultural structure of society,” stressing that content on digital platforms accessible to children and young people is of “great concern” to the authority.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Digital authoritarianism grows as African states normalise [Internet] blackouts

    Between 2016 and 2024, there were 193 [Internet] shutdowns imposed in 41 African countries. This form of social control is a growing trend in the continent, according to a new open-access source book. It has provided the first-ever comparative analysis of how and why African states use blackouts – written by African researchers.

    The book, co-edited by digital rights activist and [Internet] shutdown specialist Felicia Anthonio and digital researcher Tony Roberts, offers 11 in-depth case studies of state-sponsored shutdowns. We asked five questions about it.

  • RFERL ☛ Taliban Demolish Famous Kabul Cinema

    A number of Afghan cultural figures and filmmakers consider the destruction of the historic Ariana Cinema by the Taliban government to be an erasure of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. A shopping mall will reportedly replace it. Built in the 1960s, the Kabul cinema attracted film fans for decades.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media ‘troublemaker’ in Beijing’s crosshairs

    A rags-to-riches tycoon, Hong Kong media boss Jimmy Lai is a self-styled “troublemaker” who has long been a thorn in Beijing’s side with his caustic tabloids and unapologetic support for democracy.

  • NYPost ☛ CNN staffers are reportedly loathing a potential takeover— but don’t expect the Ellisons to kill the news agency

    The word inside CNN is that staffers are thrilled that their parent, Warner Bros. Discovery, agreed to merge with DRM spreader Netflix instead of Paramount Skydance. They fear the latter’s Convicted Felon-friendly owners, Larry and David Ellison, would kill the network once they get their grubby hands on “The Most Trusted Name In News.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Utah News Dispatch ☛ Mike Lee backs off change that advocates called a ‘green light’ to sell national parks

    Lee, A Republican, had proposed removing part of a spending bill requiring that national park lands be maintained as federal lands. The Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks shot back, saying the move could “green-light the selling off, transferring and giving away of national parks.”

    Over the summer, Lee attempted to add a mandate for the sale of some public lands, excluding national parks and national monuments, to Republicans’ megabill. He backed down after outcry from hunting and recreation advocates.

  • EFF ☛ Speaking Freely: Sami Ben Gharbia

    Sami Ben Gharbia is a Tunisian human rights campaigner, blogger, writer and freedom of expression advocate. He founded Global Voices Advocacy, and is the co-founder and current publisher of the collective media organization Nawaat, which won the EFF Award in 2011.

  • Futurism ☛ Bernie Sanders Calls for Halt on Construction of New Data Centers

    “Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up nights worrying about what AI and robotics will do for the working families of our country, and the world?” Sanders continues. “I don’t think so. I think that these very, very, rich men want even more wealth, and even more power. “

    “Question: if AI and robotics eliminate millions of jobs and create massive unemployment, how will people survive if they have no income?” the Vermont Senator challenges. “Very few members of Congress are seriously thinking about this.”

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ China's new nation-spanning network eclipses 100 Gbps transferring 72 terabytes across 1,000km — experimental research network designed to connect thousands of virtualized networks across the country

    China has brought online a national experimental research network designed to support experimentation on future network designs and to improve data transmission quality.

  • Luke Plant ☛ Help my website is too small

    Apparently, if your HTML is less than 7k, that obviously can’t be a real website, let alone something as ridiculously small as 3k. Even with compression turned up all the way, it’s clearly impossible to return more than an error message with less than at least 4k, right?

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ A DMCA "Bot War": Google Search Processed 5 Billion Takedown Requests in 2025

    While little is known about how Google processes these requests, it’s safe to say that these takedowns are not all reviewed manually. Instead, they are likely processed by an algorithm that greenlights URL removals unless there are clear signs that something is wrong.