Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ Ending 2025 with thoughts and a wordle cloud

  I used to do a wordle cloud every year, until the original site went down and an online game pilfered the name. Which is a shame, because it’s such a cool concept!

  Here’s one for 2025, fed on 592 post titles from the year. Thanks to the Free Word Cloud Generator for making this so easy ^^/.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ This Stunning 'Blue Marble' Fruit Isn't Actually Blue – It's a Wild Optical Illusion

    Nature has clever ways to trick your eyes.

  • Science Alert ☛ What Is Biophobia? Your Guide to The Hidden Experience of Millions

    And what you can do to help.

• Career/Education

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Chinese homeschooled students embrace freer youth in cutthroat market

    By Mary Yang Fourteen-year-old Estella spends her weekdays studying Spanish, rock climbing or learning acupuncture in her living room as part of her homeschooling since she left China’s gruelling public school system.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Why Can’t I 3D Print With Rubber?

    A friend of mine and I both have a similar project in mind, the manufacture of custom footwear with our hackerspace’s shiny new multi-material 3D printer. It seems like a match made in heaven, a machine that can seamlessly integrate components made with widely differing materials into a complex three-dimensional structure. As is so often the case though, there are limits to what can be done with the tool in hand, and here I’ve met one of them.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Seniors with disabilities not asking for help, Michigan survey finds

    Many seniors with disabilities don't see themselves as disabled and therefore don't access the care to which they're entitled.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China says to impose extra 55% tariffs on some beef imports

    The extra tariffs apply for three years – until Dec 31, 2028.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Michigan caregivers have a new one-stop, online resource to find help

    Caring for others doesn’t leave a lot of time to spend hours online, searching for help. A new website connects them, with a quick survey, to the state’s network of providers.

  • Futurism ☛ Doctors Find Evidence Microplastics Are Clogging Arteries, Leading to Heart Attacks and Strokes

    Curiously, male lab mice experienced dramatic plaque buildup compared to females.

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Graft Human Ear Onto Foot

    These surgeons stepped up.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Explainer: How deadly Tai Po fire brings to light bid-rigging epidemic in Hong Kong renovation industry

    More than a year before a massive fire tore through Wang Fuk Court, an eight-block housing estate in Tai Po, residents started seeing red flags about the renovation project. They shared tender documents and conviction records on Facebook (Farcebook) groups, pointing to what they believed was a complex web of corruption and greed.

  • Hackaday ☛ Measuring Caffeine Content At Home

    By far, the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world is caffeine. It’s farmed around the world in virtually every place that it has cropped up, most commonly on coffee plants, tea plants, and cocoa plants. But is also found in other less common plants like the yaupon holly in the southeastern United States and yerba maté holly in South America. For how common it is and how long humans have been consuming it, it’s always been a bit difficult to quantify exactly how much is in any given beverage, but [Johnowhitaker] has a solution to that.

  • New York Times ☛ Tatiana Schlossberg Submitted a Heartbreaking Essay to The New Yorker on Her Cancer Diagnosis, Fully Formed

    When Tatiana Schlossberg submitted an essay to The New Yorker, it had not been assigned or even expected. It was accepted immediately and barely edited.

  • Futurism ☛ Man in Intensive Care Unit After Slamming Liquid Nitrogen Cocktail That Ruptured His Stomach

    And you thought your hangover was bad.

• Proprietary

  • Lennart Poettering: Mastodon Stories for systemd v259

    On Dec 17 we released systemd v259 into the wild.

    In the weeks leading up to that release (and since then) I have posted a series of serieses of posts to Mastodon about key new features in this release, under the #systemd259 hash tag.

• Security

  • Security Week ☛ European Space Agency Confirms Breach After Hacker Offers to Sell Data

    The European Space Agency is conducting an investigation and says external science servers have been compromised.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • FSF / Software Freedom

      • FSF ☛ A message from FSF president Ian Kelling

        As 2025, the FSF's fortieth anniversary year, draws to a close, Ian Kelling, president of the Free Software Foundation, offers his reflections on why you should become an FSF associate member.

      • Apoorv Kothari ☛ On privacy and control

        The problem is that the word "privacy" is dialuted and mean different things to different people. Instead of "privacy" we really should be talking about "control". Framed in this context, we can more concretely talk about why it's important to protect your digital identity.

        For me privacy is not the primary driver, because like you mentioned, it doesn't make sense for the common folk and doesn't actually fall into people's threat model (journalists on the other hand should care). I am personally motivated by the notion of "control". Can someone else meditate how I experience the world and what information I consume? Whether that is censoring, influencing how much time I have to spend watching ads or which ads I am allowed to watch. Can they influence how I vote? Watch the talk In Defense of Privacy for a more on this.

        Many of the convenient tools we use today (email, messaging, social media, password manager) are essential for daily life but they also yield control over to organizations (Google, Facebook, Amazon) that don't necessarily have our best interest in mind [1][2].

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan’s president vows to defend sovereignty after China drills

    This comes after China declared it had successfully completed military drills around Taiwan.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Inside China’s six-decade campaign to dominate rare earths

    China has used rare earths as a chokehold on global supply chains and a powerful tool in trade wars.

  • JURIST ☛ Turkey detains 357 ISIS suspects in nationwide police raids

    Turkish police detained 357 people on Tuesday in large-scale, coordinated operations targeting the Islamic State group, according to the country’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya. Authorities carried out raids across 21 provinces following a deadly clash between police and ISIS militants in Yalova, a small northwestern city, amid heightened security ahead of New Year’s celebrations.

  • NYPost ☛ US forces obliterate five alleged drug boats, killing 8 ‘narco-terrorists’ in separate strikes

    The latest strike was the 35th known boat attack since the Convicted Felon administration launched Operation Southern Spear in September.

  • France24 ☛ US military says three killed in strikes on alleged drug boats

    The US military said on Wednesday that it had carried out strikes on three alleged drug-smuggling boats in international waters, killing three people. The latest operation is part of a wider campaign that has drawn criticism from legal experts and rights groups.

  • France24 ☛ What we know about the Saudi-led air strikes on ships in Yemen

    Open-source imagery and data confirm that the vessels targeted by the Saudi-led coalition air strike on Mukalla, Yemen, on December 30, originated from the United Arab Emirates. The ships were carrying Emirati military vehicles used by a separatist group.

  • RFERL ☛ Iran Protests Intensify Amid Rial Free Fall, Mounting Regional Tensions

    Iranians took to the streets for a fourth day to voice their anger over the state of the reeling economy, with the currency in a free fall and the threat of a new round of military strikes hanging over the country.

  • France24 ☛ Protests spread across Iran, as the country faces unrest over economic struggles

    Iranian students staged street protests in Tehran on Tuesday, a day after the capital's shopkeepers demonstrated against economic hardship and won a message of understanding from the president. Story by Emily Boyle.

  • RFERL ☛ Iran In 'New Phase Of Turmoil' As Protests Spread Beyond Capital

    Iran's leadership is facing mounting pressure from abroad and emerging dissent from within as street protests over its reeling economy and the threat of a new round of military strikes hang over the country.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China says live-fire drills around Taiwan ‘completed successfully’

    Beijing said it appreciated Russia, Pakistan and Venezuela expressing their support for China.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania updates security strategy, highlighting ‘existential’ threat from Russia

      Lithuania is updating its national security strategy, warning that the country faces an existential threat and that Russia could be capable of waging war against NATO by the end of the decade.

    • JURIST ☛ Germany to drop Russian oligarch investigation following €10M settlement

      The Munich II Public Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday dropped a money laundering and sanction breach investigation into the Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, after agreeing upon a €10 million settlement.

    • France24 ☛ Finland seizes ship sailing from Russia after suspected undersea cable sabotage

      Finnish authorities seized a vessel on Wednesday, suspected of sabotaging an undersea telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Finland seizes ship sailing from Russia after suspected cable sabotage in Baltic Sea

      Finnish police on Wednesday seized a ship sailing from Russia on suspicion of sabotaging an undersea telecoms cable running from Helsinki to Estonia across the Gulf of Finland, an area hit by a string of similar incidents in recent years.

    • RFERL ☛ Vessel Held In Finland After Suspected Baltic Cable Sabotage

      Finnish authorities seized a cargo vessel in the Baltic Sea that is suspected of damaging underwater cables in Estonian waters in a possible sabotage incident, police in Helsinki told reporters.

    • New York Times ☛ Sabotage Suspected in Cutting of Undersea Cable, Finnish Police Say

      The authorities seized the Fitburg, a cargo ship that was en route from Russia to Israel when it sliced the cable in the Gulf of Finland.

    • New York Times ☛ Oil Tanker Fleeing the Coast Guard Now Listed in Russian Ship Database

      The listing could make it more challenging for U.S. forces to board the ship, which an arm of the Kremlin’s maritime authority says is now flying the Russian flag.

    • New York Times ☛ How Thousands of Secret Russian Documents Were Exposed

      Russian journalists learned that a government office inadvertently made thousands of sensitive complaints viewable online, including accounts of abuse and coercion in the military.

    • NYPost ☛ Iran launches satellites on Russian rockets as Moscow-Tehran ties deepen

      Tehran and Moscow showcase cooperation 'despite all sanctions and threats' while tensions rise with Convicted Felon.

    • New York Times ☛ In Ukraine, an Arsenal of Killer Hey Hi (AI) Drones Is Being Born in War Against Russia

      As the war grinds on, sophisticated Russian defenses have pushed Ukraine to develop a frightening new weapon: semiautonomous killing machines.

    • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea’s Kim hails troops fighting in ‘alien land’: State media

      North Korea has sent thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Hits Ukraine's Energy Infrastructure As Winter Cold Sets In

      Russian forces continued to attack Ukrainian energy and civilian facilities as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced new meetings with Kyiv's European allies later this week to discuss the latest developments in the process aimed at ending the war.

    • RFERL ☛ Zelenskyy Prepares for Next Round Of Talks As Ukraine Strikes Back At Russian Oil Assets

      President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told his country that a peace deal is "90 percent" complete, but he warned that the remaining 10 percent will be difficult and will decide "the fate of peace, Ukraine, and Europe."

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine: War medics confront their trauma in mountain retreat

      Deep in the Carpathian mountains in west Ukraine, a government programme offers Ukrainian military medics a ten-day respite from the war while helping them confront their traumas.

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Drones dive into aviation’s deepest mystery as MH370 hunt restarts

      Nearly 12 years after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished with 239 people on board, the search for answers to one of aviation’s most haunting riddles resumed Tuesday in the remote southern Indian Ocean.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Science Alert ☛ Flat-Headed Wild Cat, Not Seen in 30 Years, Caught on Camera in Thailand

      It was presumed extinct in the region.

    • Science Alert ☛ Prehistoric Sea Monster Didn't Stick to The Oceans, Suggests Fossil Study

      As if dinosaurs didn't have enough to worry about.

    • Science Alert ☛ Promising New Drug Reverses Mental Decline in Mice With Advanced Alzheimer's

      Not just slowing it down.

    • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Found a 'Yellow Brick Road' at The Bottom of The Ocean

      Where does it lead?

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ How Japanese scallops became a pawn in diplomatic tensions with China

    For Beijing, scallops have served as a diplomatic pressure point.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ China warns the Netherlands to ‘immediately correct its mistakes’ over Nexperia saga that has disrupted auto production — chip shipments remain suspended, auto industry suffering from undersupply

    Beijing says that the Netherlands is not taking steps to resolve the Nexperia issue, thus extending the chip shortage affecting automotive makers across the globe.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Straits Times ☛ Bangladesh mourns ex-PM Khaleda Zia with state funeral

    The first woman to serve as prime minister in the South Asian nation died on Dec 30 aged 80.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China will push more proactive macro policies in 2026, Pooh-tin says

    China’s economy is expected to meet its “around 5 per cent” growth target for 2025.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Has China gone soft on drugs? Law on keeping drug use records confidential divides netizens

    Some believe that this will protect the rich and powerful.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • The Straits Times ☛ Workers in South Korea may soon be able to ignore late-night work messages

    A new proposal will seek to shield workers from unnecessary work instructions outside office hours.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Warner Bros. Board Expected to Vote Against Paramount Offer—Will ‘Stay the Course’ with Netflix’s $80B Buyout

    The Warner Bros. Discovery board is expected to reject the amended takeover offer from Paramount Skydance. The offer came after Warner Bros. Discovery had already struck an agreement to merge with DRM spreader Netflix in a deal worth $80 billion+. Paramount Skydance isn’t giving up on the takeover offer, making a tender offer to WBD shareholders.

Monopolies/Monopsonies