2026-01-09

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• How Did TVs Get So Cheap?

  It was somewhat more difficult than I expected to suss out how TV manufacturing has gotten more efficient over time, possibly because the industry is highly secretive. Nonetheless, I was able to piece together what some of the major drivers of TV cost reduction over the last several decades have been. In short, every major efficiency improving mechanism that I identify in my book is on display when it comes to TV manufacturing.

  Falling LCD costs have also been driven by relentless competition. A 2014 presentation from Corning states that LCD “looks like a 25 year suicide pact for display manufacturers.” Manufacturers have been required to continuously make enormous investments in larger fabs and newer technology, even as profit margins are constantly threatened (and occasionally turning negative). This seems to have partly been driven by countries considering flat panel display manufacturing a strategic priority — the Corning presentation notes that manufacturing investments have been driven by nationalism, and there were various efforts to prop up US LCD manufacturing in the 90s and 2000s for strategic reasons.

• What I Got Wrong About “Hard Work” in My 20s

  When I was younger, in my 20s, I assumed that everyone was working “hard,” meaning a solid 35 hours of work a week. Especially, say, university professors and professional engineers. I’d feel terribly guilty when I would be messing around, playing video games on a workday. Today I realize that most people become very adept at avoiding actual work. And the people you think are working really hard are often just very good at focusing on what is externally visible. They show up to the right meetings but unashamedly avoid the hard work.

Horseshit

• Early screentime linked to slower decision-making, higher anxiety in children

• Unilever's 'underarm sommeliers' sniff out most promising new products

• How Bright Headlights Escaped Regulation – and Blinded Us All

• Maine company in the spotlight after Maduro apparently wore one of their hoodies

• In Lodge Grass, Montana, a Crow community rebuilds from meth's destruction

• Dogs eavesdrop on their owners to learn new words

  • Some gifted dogs can learn new toy names by eavesdropping on owners

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Experts Warn U.S. in Early Stages of Genocide Against Trans Americans

• Free Speech Union hacked by trans activists

• The Ofcom Files, Part V: Block Harder

Musk

• Bristol MP claims Elon Musk's 'AI porn' site X is 'flagrantly illegal'

• Grok Is Generating Sexual Content More Graphic Than What's on X

• Musk’s Grok AI Generated Thousands of Undressed Images Per Hour on X - Bloomberg

• X faces global investigations for deepfake porn of women and minors

• Why Are Grok and X Still Available in App Stores?

• Grok Deepfaked Renee Nicole Good's Body into a Bikini

• Tim Davie says BBC will stay on X to try to stem 'flood' of globalmisinformation

• OpenAI Musk lawsuit over OpenAI for-profit conversion can go to trial

Electric / Self Driving cars

• The Waymo Ojai Will Soon Offer Autonomous Rides Around the U.S.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Samsung estimates nearly three-fold profit surge as memory prices skyrocket

• Meta delays international rollout of display glasses

• Smart glasses: 'I was filmed and trolled online'

• AMD Ryzen chief teases return of older Zen 3 chips to fight soaring RAM prices

  • Senior AMD executive suggests consumers buy cheap CPUs to combat memory pricing

• Ubisoft Closes Recently Unionized Developer Studio

  • Ubisoft Shuts Assassin's Creed Developer Studio Just Weeks After It Unionized

• Are violent video games like Grand Theft Auto 6 becoming too realistic?

• Japanese electronics store pleads for old PCs amid ongoing hardware shortage

• AOSP on a diet plan as Google halves Android code drops

• Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them

• Illinois health department exposed over 700k residents' personal data for years

• Lego unveils tech-filled Smart Bricks – to play experts' unease

• Single 256GB server sticks now over $5,700 in China's spot market

• "Worst in Show" Returns at CES 2026, Calling Out Gadgets That Make Things Worse

• 'Books are going to take longer to get to libraries'

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Artificial intelligence begins prescribing medications in Utah

  • AI starts autonomously writing prescription refills in Utah

• Fusion Startup Gets an AI Boost from Nvidia, Siemens

• Tailwind lays of 75% of their team due to traffic drop to docs because of LLMs

• AI misses nearly one-third of breast cancers, study finds

• The Fight over Making Data Centers Power Down to Avoid Blackouts

• Are criminals vibe coding malware? All signs point to yes

• OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Health. Should we trust it?

• 'I rarely get outside': scientists ditch fieldwork in the age of AI

• A person claiming to be a 'whistleblower' fooled the internet with AI's help

• China Is Investigating Meta's Latest A.I. Acquisition

• OpenAI putting bandaids on bandaids as prompt injection problems keep festering

• Linus T: "The AI Slop Issue Is *Not* Going to Be Solved with Documentation"

• He was called a 'terrorist sympathizer.' Now his AI company is valued at $3B

• Google Is Adding an 'AI Inbox' to Gmail That Summarizes Emails

• Google and Character.AI agree to settle lawsuits over teen suicides

  • Google and AI startup to settle lawsuits alleging chatbots led to teen suicide

• Microsoft turns Copilot chats into a checkout lane

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Medical Situation on the ISS

  • NASA considers rare early ISS crew return due to astronaut's medical issue

  A NASA spokesperson said that the "medical situation" aboard the International Space Station "involved a single crew member who is stable."

  • NASA considers evacuating ailing crew member from International Space Station

  • NASA considers whether to bring sick crew member back to Earth

  • NASA ends space mission early due to astronaut medical condition

  Nasa has said it will return a four-person crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS), cutting short their mission a month early because of a "serious medical condition" affecting one of the astronauts. The agency did not disclose the name of the crew member or the medical condition, citing health privacy, but said the person was in a stable condition. "This is not an emergency evacuation," said a Nasa official, adding: "We always err on the side of the astronaut's health."

  • ISS Crew-11 to return early due to a medical concern with astronaut

• Ex–Google CEO funds private space telescope bigger than Hubble

  • Former Google CEO plans to singlehandedly fund a Hubble telescope replacement

  • The first privately funded space-based telescope is in the works

• Rubin Observatory spots an asteroid that spins fast enough to set a record

• The first commercial space stations will start orbiting Earth in 2026

Crypto con games

• Crypto.com Integrates with Stripe to Enable Crypto Payments and Subscriptions

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Bayer's Monsanto Sues Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna over mRNA Technology

• Chase is taking over Apple's credit card

  • JPMorgan Chase Reaches Deal to Take over Apple Credit Card

• Don't be fooled – everything has changed for the global economy

• One Regulation E, Two Very Different Regimes

  The U.S. is often maligned as being customer-hostile compared to other comparable nations, particularly those in Europe. One striking counterexample is that the government, by regulation, outsources to the financial industry an effective, virtually comprehensive, and extremely costly consumer protection apparatus covering a huge swath of the economy. It does this by strictly regulating the usage of what were once called “electronic” payment methods, which you now just call “payment” methods, in Regulation E. Reg E is not uniformly loved in the financial industry. In particular, there has been a concerted effort by banks to renegotiate the terms of it with respect to Zelle in particular. This is principally because Zelle has been anomalously expensive, as Reg E embeds a strong, intentionally bank-funded anti-fraud regime, but Zelle does not monetize sufficiently to pay for it. And thus a history lesson, a primer, and an explanation of a live public policy controversy.

• Dutch Fintech Bunq Reapplies to Become a Bank in the US

• Amazon angers retailers by listing products from other sites without consent

• Warner Bros. sticks with Netflix merger, calls Paramount's $108B bid "illusory"

• Job-finding expectations hit all-time low, NY Fed survey shows

• Bail out signal activated: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says robots could be 'AI immigrants'

  "We no longer, as a population, will be able to sustain the economies that we would like to have," Huang said. "And so we need to have more, you know, if you will, AI immigrants to help us on the manufacturing floors and do the type of work that maybe we decided not to do anymore." He followed up by saying that the "robotics revolution" will drive the economy forward, and that will allow for more jobs to hire more people. "We just need the economy to do well," Huang said. "We need inflation to stay low so that, you know, more jobs will be created, living will be more affordable. All of that's going to come with AI."

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Trump Admin Resets U.S. Nutrition Policy, Puts Real Food Back at the Center

• In reversal, U.S. loosens guidance on alcohol

• A Letter Won't Always Be Postmarked the Same Day You Drop It in the Mail

• US Treasury awards ID.me $1B five-year contract

• Gov. Hochul seeks restrictions on 3D printers and ghost guns

• Toyota uses retro-style games and prizes to urge US workers to lobby politicians

Trump

• Trump withdraws US from 66 international organizations

  • U.S. withdrawing from bodies, treaties, and conventions against U.S. interests

• Marco Rubio Has Informed Congress That Trump Wants to Buy Greenland.

• Trump proposes increase in 2027 defense spending to $1.5T

• Trump orders his 'representatives' to buy $200B in mortgage bonds

Democrats

• What Separates Tim Walz From Other Democrats Is He Got Caught.

Left Angst

• Silicon Valley Plots Against Ro Khanna After His Support for a Wealth Tax

  • Tech titans divided over whether to pay billionaire tax or flee California

  • CA's controversial wealth tax proposal leaves billionaires with little way out

• Blood for Stonks

• Why Trump Is Fixated on Venezuelan Oil

• 'Stop sending butt plugs to Bahrain'

  The letter was sent by the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command fleet logistics centre in Bahrain, an island neighbouring Qatar and Saudi Arabia on the Persian Gulf. “During security screening by Bahrain Customs, pornographic materials and or devices were identified in a package addressed to you. This letter is to notify you that your parcel was returned to the sender,” the letter, with the subject line ‘Adult item Identified during X-ray Mail Screening,’ reads in part. “Please notify the sender that pornographic materials or devices are not allowed into the Kingdom of Bahrain.” The Pentagon declined to comment to CTV News Toronto’s repeated requests, saying they “don’t have anything to offer” on the topic.

• German president says US is destroying world order

• What new legal challenges mean for the future of US offshore wind

• The Looting of US Foreign Policy

• Supreme Court Increasingly Favors the Rich, Economists Say

• The Trump Administration Says It's Illegal to Record Videos of ICE

• How Hackers Are Fighting Back Against ICE

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Woman in Minnesota fatally shot by ICE agent during raid, video shows

  • explanation of the shooting of a Leftist activist by the ICE

  The video is clear that the driver was heading at and came in contact with the ICE agent. He had a right to use deadly force to defend himself. This does not matter to the left and its narrative. The left will do everything it can to keep people from looking at the actual video that shows the incident.

  • ICE Agent Shoots Woman Attempting To Run Over Officer During Minneapolis Illegal Alien Crackdown | ZeroHedge

  • Who was Renee Nicole Good, the woman killed by ICE?

  Good "weaponised her vehicle", Noem told reporters, and then tried to run over one of the officers "in an attempt to kill or cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism". The ICE agent feared for his life, Noem said, and "fired defensive shots". This story was backed up by Trump, who wrote on Truth Social that "the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting".

  • Of course "she was driving at an armed agent at the time" is relegated to the last third of thee text...

  • Minnesota officials say they can't access evidence after fatal ICE shooting

  • Trump Invoking 'Insurrection Act' Speculation Grows After ICE Shooting

• Echols County Sheriff's Office secretary arrested in misuse of data

  The investigation began on December 18, 2025, after Echols County Sheriff Randy Courson requested the GBI look into allegations that Altobello, who worked as a secretary at the sheriff’s office, accessed the department’s FLOCK license plate reader system for non-law-enforcement purposes on multiple occasions.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

• Lockheed Martin to more than triple Patriot missile production capacity

World

• Danish troops told to 'shoot first, ask questions later' if US invades Greenland

• The private education industry is coming for Switzerland's expensive schools

• Pakistan, Saudi in talks on JF-17 jets-for-loans deal, sources say

• British Palantir rival, founder touted UK tech sovereignty, sells to Accenture

• Humiliation for Starmer as Lords inflict FOUR defeats on Chagos Islands ‘surrender’ legislation and demand he reveal the REAL cost of the handover.

• John Cleese tears into BBC over Iran bias row as actor fumes he’s ‘ashamed’ of broadcaster: ‘It doesn’t want to offend Islamists!’

• Software to tackle deepfakes ahead of Scottish and Welsh elections

Venezuela

• Cloudflare pours cold water on 'BGP weirdness preceded US attack on Venezuela'

• Venezuela To Turn Over 30 Million to 50 Million Oil Barrels To America.

• Hugo Chavez gave one of the founders of Black Lives Matter a million dollars FOR STREET PROTESTS IN AMERICA

  he told me he was in the room when Hugo Chavez, before he died, gave one of the founders of Black Lives Matter millions of dollars to support the Bolivarian revolutions in U.S. streets.

Iran / Houthi

• Iran leans into anti-Western bluster as it tries to quell deadly protests

• Nationwide internet disruptions hit Iran

• Iran Goes Into IPv6 Blackout

• Internet access cut out in Iran after protests

• Internet collapses in Iran amid protests over economic crisis

• Iran Goes Dark as Government Cuts Itself Off from Internet

• Internet, phone lines cut as thousands rally in Tehran; death toll at 45

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia launches national AI taskforce with homegrown AI and drones by 2030

• Putin Casts Ukraine War as 'Sacred Mission' in Orthodox Christmas Remarks

• Russian attack hits infrastructure target in Western Lviv region

China

• China starts UHV power line: The new 700 km UHV line will transmit 8M kW

• Pay and pray: Nvidia reportedly wants money up front for Chinese H200 orders

• Inside China's Six-Decade Campaign to Dominate Rare Earths

Health / Medicine

• Alzheimer's drug developers accuse clinical trial sites of faking data

• Stopping weight loss drugs leads to rapid weight regain and health reversal

  • Less than two years after stopping obesity drugs, weight, health issues return

  • Weight regain seems to occur within 2 years of stopping obesity drugs

  • Former GLP-1 users regain lost weight after about 18 months, study says

• Exercise may relieve depression as effectively as antidepressants

• Associations between preservative food additives and type 2 diabetes

• TikTok influencers fuelling parallel market for unlicensed weight-loss drug

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Global Giants Are Investing in Clean Tech Despite Politics

• Hydrogen plays part in global warming, study says