2025-12-25

etc

• CEO killed at industrial site by worker operating forklift while talking on the phone, OSHA report shows

  New details released from an Occupational Safety and Health Administration report show the events that led up to the death of a CEO at a Georgia industrial site in March 2025. The files are from OSHA’s recently closed investigation into the death of 45-year-old Sunbok You, the CEO of Hyundai subcontractor SBY America. The company was ultimately fined just under $10,000 for his death. According to OSHA’s findings, You was on the HL-GA Battery Company construction site on March 21 speaking to some of his workers when he decided to walk across the road. He was then struck by the forklift and killed. The report said You was wearing an eye patch on his right eye as well as a black vest. However, under HL-GA Battery Company rules, he should have been wearing a high-visibility green vest.

Horseshit

• We discovered an ancient 'party boat' in the waters of Alexandria

• Handy Phone Features Can Save You Holiday Time

• The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

• Raylo capitalises as Gen Z turns to tech rentals to stay upgraded

• Inmates could escape jail on drones, warns top prison governor

• Whales, beards, mules and VIPs: the secret world of professional gambling

Epstein

• Redacted Material in Some Epstein Files Is Easily Recovered

• Officials discover a million more documents potentially related to Epstein case

celebrity gossip

• Journey keyboardist opens up about relationship with Charlie Kirk

• For maintenance: After 64 Years, Dollywood Announces Immediate Closure

  On December 20, Dollywood posted a press release to its official Instagram story, explaining that the Dollywood Express attraction had indefinitely closed due to “unscheduled” but necessary maintenance work.

Obit

• Chris Rea, rock and blues singer-songwriter, dies aged 74

• John E. Olson, Analyst Fired for Enron Skepticism, Dies at 83

• Betty Reid Soskin, oldest-ever US national park ranger, has died

Musk

• Starlink satellite fails, polluting orbit with debris and falling toward Earth

• Dutch Tesla Fleet Goes Bankrupt After Betting on Musk's Self-Driving Promises

• The EU's Fine Against X Is Not About Speech or 'Censorship'

• Safety panel says NASA should have taken Starliner incident more seriously. “This particular anomaly deserves to be right up front and center for quite some time.”

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Autonomously navigating the real world: lessons from the PG&E outage

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Coursera to acquire Udemy to create $2.5B MOOC giant

• Apple's App Course Runs $20k a Student. Is It Worth It?

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Microsoft wants to replace its C and C++ codebase, perhaps by 2030

• The launch of the PlayStation 6 and the Steam Machine could be delayed by soaring memory prices.

• Why Madonna's decades-old Ray of Light is 2025's hottest album

• AMD entered the CPU market with reverse-engineered Intel 8080 clone 50 years ago

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Only known copy of Unix v4 recovered and running

  The actual data is around 40 MB and is available for download with a README of instructions for actually running the operating system, though it's not a one-click affair. You'll need to have an initial boot environment and then compile parts of the operating system, as that was the fashion back then. Unix v4 required a then-fancy DEC PDP-11 minicomputer, which can handily be emulated using the SimH software. More casual observers can instead look at a screenshot of the operating system running under Irix.

  • Unix V4 tape recovered: First ever version of Unix written in C is running again

• When compilers surprise you

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Nvidia Debuts Nemotron 3 Family of Open Models

• Salesforce pulls back from large language models after reliability concerns

• They graduated from Stanford. Due to AI, they can't find a job

• Cryptographers Show That AI Protections Will Always Have Holes

• People Are Paying to Get Their Chatbots High on 'Drugs'

• AI-powered 'glasses' help the blind go places – safely

• John Carreyrou and other authors bring new lawsuit against major AI companies

• Nvidia buying AI chip startup Groq for about $20B

• Librarians Tired of Being Accused of Hiding Secret Books That Were Made Up by AI

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA will soon find out if the Perseverance rover can persevere on Mars

Crypto con games

• Bitcoin Miners Thrive Off a New Side Hustle: Retooling Their Data Centers for AI

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Arm stock tanks post Qualcomm's RISC-V acquisition of Ventana

• American airline hits plus-size travelers with new policy forcing them to buy two seats

• US economy unexpectedly surges 4.3% in third quarter — its strongest growth in two years

• Workers across the U.S. are set for minimum wage increases in 2026

• Investors Warn of 'Rot in Private Equity' as Funds Strike Circular Deals

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Supreme Court Rules on Guard Deployment.

• Top Heritage Foundation Officials Flee to Mike Pence’s Nonprofit Advancing American Freedom as Think Tank Fractures

  Three entire units of Heritage — the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, and the Center for Data Analysis — are departing the think tank more-or-less en masse to become part of AmericanFreedom, the policy nonprofit founded by @Mike_Pence, chaired by marctshort, and run by former Heritage chief of staff @TimChapman.

• US delays announcement of China chip tariffs until June 2027

• California to ban all plastic bags at retail stores starting in 2026

Trump

• Trump official freezes millions in SBA aid to Minnesota, slams Walz’s policies as breeding ‘endemic’ fraud.

Left Angst

• Two British anti-hate speech campaigners sanctioned by US State Department

  • US sanctions EU government officials behind the DSA

  • US bars 5 Europeans it says pressured tech firms to censor American viewpoints

  • US sanctions former EU commissioner over efforts to curb online hate speech

• Trump Admin Reinvents US Digital Services Program After Elon Musk Fired Experts

• How Washington exports its ideology via tech dominance

• US changes H-1B visa process, replaces lottery system with wage and skills

• Bari Weiss Dropping the Hammer With Big Changes After 60 Minutes Story Fiasco

  • Pulled '60 Minutes' segment on Trump immigration policy accidentally aired

• It Is Happening Here

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Crime in the U.S. fell in 2025. Will the trend continue?

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• FCC effectively prohibits import of some new foreign drones

  • U.S. FCC bans foreign-made drones from DJI, others

• US Coast Guard lacks forces to seize Venezuela-linked tanker for now

• US drops plan to deport Chinese national who exposed Xinjiang abuses

World

• UK to ban deepfake AI 'nudification' apps

• Oz: Ten mistakes marred firewall upgrade at telco, contributing to 2 deaths

• How Uganda's Digital Number Plates Became Spy Tools

• Human Capital, Not "Industrial Policy," Explains East Asian Success

• Why Palantir is becoming a risky bet for Switzerland

• National Assembly set to vote on anti-fake news bill as filibuster nears deadline - The Korea Herald

• UK police forces lobbied to use biased facial recognition technology

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Zelensky reveals full 20-point peace plan draft backed by Ukraine, US

China

• China bans sharing 'obscene' material – potentially including sexting

• China Delays Plans for Mass Production of Self-Driving Cars After Accident

• China's reverse-engineered EUV chipmaking tool hasn't produced a single chip

• Beijing is enforcing tough rules to ensure chatbots don’t misbehave

• China manga convention bars Japanese content amid political tensions

Health / Medicine

• Regular Exercise Doesn't Just Strengthen the Heart, It Reprograms Its Nerves

• With FDA approval of Wegovy pill, new era of oral GLP-1 weight loss drugs begins

• Can eating high fat cheese and cream reduce dementia risk,as new study suggests?

• Study finds any amount of regular weed use is bad for teens.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• What Researchers Are Doing to Protect Christmas Trees in a Warming World

• Britain Just Had Its Sunniest Year on Record