2026-01-24

etc

• US states declare emergencies as historic winter storm threatens snow, ice and brutal cold temperatures

  • The next 10-days of winter will be the worst in 40-years across the United States

  You should be prepared for extended power outages with subzero temperatures outdoors. Think about where you can go, what you can do, and who needs even more help to survive this week ahead. This is not hype or a joke.

  • Trump Administration Taps Data Centers for Backup Power Ahead of Snowstorm

  • More than half of the U.S. braces for hazardous ice, heavy snow and brutal cold

• North America divided into regions of 1M people

Horseshit

• Hotels Are Getting Rid of Proper Bathroom Doors and Guests Are Revolting

• Bay Area software rep. lost $176K after accepting remote job she thought with FB

• The threat eating away at museum treasures

• There Are No Lessons to Be Learned Here

  • Few things in the real world are as "just so" as the stories tell us

• Penis size may matter more to men than women

• Parents might age faster or slower based on how many kids they have

• Alex Honnold's made-for-Netflix free solo of Taipei 101 draws awe – and unease

  The Free Solo star will attempt to climb the 1,667ft skyscraper without ropes in a live Netflix broadcast, drawing awe, ethical concern and global attention

  • The new Alex Honnold climb

celebrity gossip

• Colorado Authorities Confirm Suicide by Hunter S. Thompson

Obit

• David Webb, gifted investor and thorn in the side of Hong Kong's financial establishment – obituary

• Barbara G Walker, Guru to the Kniterati, Is Dead at 95

• Louis E. Brus, Nobel Laureate Who Illuminated the Nanoworld, Dies at 82

• John Brodie, ex-49ers quarterback, dead at 90

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• TikTok closes deal with White House to split US app from global business

  • TikTok deal finalized to stop US ban: Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX to hold 15% each

  • Who Just Bought TikTok

  • What does a new US TikTok deal mean for users?

• Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power

• Howard Lutnick heckled at Davos dinner as Christine Lagarde walks out

• An entrepreneur's 13 hours in Davos jail: 'The food was phenomenal'

  • 'I'm stupid': SF tech founder jailed in Davos for bomb-lookalike device

Musk

• Tesla launches robotaxi rides in Austin with no human safety driver

  • Tesla didn't remove Robotaxi safety monitor – just moved them to a trailing car

  • Teslas claims of unsupervised Austin robotaxi challenged

• Tesla cuts standard Autopilot, paywalls safety feature behind FSD subscription

  • Tesla Removes Autosteer from All Model 3 and Model Y Trims

  • Tesla discontinues Autopilot to boost adoption of its Full Self-Driving software

  • Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

• Elon Musk Is Diving Back into U.S. Politics

• Tesla fined for repeatedly failing to help UK police over driving offences

• SpaceX's Starlink dodged 300k satellite collisions in 2025

  • Having no satellites at all, SnafuHall dodged an infinite number of collisions last year!

• SpaceX lines up Wall Street banks as Musk eyes blockbuster IPO

Electric / Self Driving cars

• GM announces end of Chevy Bolt (for the second time)

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Hyundai Motor's Korean union warns of humanoid robot plan, sees threat to jobs

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Gender ideology has been a disaster for working-class women

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Over 1k Arizona teachers resigning plays a part in shortage

  Horne said the situation has reached a crisis point, calling salary the number-one issue driving teachers out of the classroom. “We absolutely have to increase the salary of the teachers,” he said, adding that a lack of administrative support on student discipline is “the number two reason” educators are leaving.

• Scientists used the same data, but their politics predicted the results

• Ed tech is profitable. It is also mostly useless

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Google must face consumer antitrust lawsuit over search dominance,US judge rules

• Google is ending full-web search for niche search engines

• Microsoft investigating outage affecting Microsoft 365

• Intel puts consumer chip production on back burner

• Ancient telnet bug happily hands out root to attackers • The Register

  The bug, which had gone unnoticed for nearly 11 years, was disclosed on January 20 and is tracked as CVE-2026-24061 (9.8). It was introduced in a May 2015 update, and if you're one of the few to still be running telnetd, patch up, because attacks are already underway. "If the client supply [sic] a carefully crafted USER environment value being the string '-f root', and passes the telnet(1) -a or --login parameter to send this USER environment to the server, the client will be automatically logged in as root bypassing normal authentication processes."

• Devs begin to assess options for MySQL's future beyond Oracle

• Microsoft gave FBI set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Notes on the Intel 8086 processor's arithmetic-logic unit

  In this post, I discuss the circuitry that controls the ALU, generating the appropriate control signals for a particular operation. The process is more complicated than you might expect. First, a machine code instruction results in the execution of multiple microcode instructions. Using the ALU is a two-step process: one microcode instruction (micro-instruction) configures the ALU for the desired operation, while a second micro-instruction gets the results from the ALU. Moreover, based on both the microcode micro-instruction and the machine code instruction, the control circuitry sends control signals to the ALU, reconfiguring it for the desired operation. Thus, this circuitry provides the "glue" between the micro-instructions and the ALU.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI Boosts Research Careers but Flattens Scientific Discovery

• People who use chatbots for news consider them unbiased and “good enough,” new study finds | Nieman Journalism Lab

• AI-exposed jobs deteriorated before ChatGPT

• Financing the AI boom: from cash flows to debt

• eBay bans illicit automated shopping amid rapid rise of AI agents

• CEOs Say AI Is Making Work More Efficient. Employees Tell a Different Story

• Autodesk burns the village to feed AI and the Cloud – cuts 7% of workforce

• Op-ed: They're Coming for Our Data Centers

• AI bot swarms threaten to undermine democracy

• YouTubers will be able to make Shorts with their own AI likenesses

• Yann LeCun's new venture is a contrarian bet against large language models

• Job Applicants Sue to Open 'Black Box' of A.I. Hiring Decisions

• Microsoft chief Satya Nadella warns AI boom could falter without wider adoption

• Claude Code is everywhere at Microsoft

• BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: 'What Happens to Everyone Else If AI Fuels Inequality?

• Google won't stop replacing our news headlines with terrible AI

• South Korea launches landmark laws to regulate AI, startups warn of burdens

  • Korea Issues Strict New AI Rules, Outpacing the West

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Sonic Booms and Seismic Waves Can Reveal Where Space Junk Crash-Lands

• 2 asteroids the size of 22 penguins to pass Earth this weekend - NASA

  Both asteroids 2023 AT and 2023 AE1 are as much as 22 meters wide, meaning 22 emperor penguins. They won't hit us though – penguins are more likely to.

  • De-orbited penguins rarely survive re-entry intact

Crypto con games

• Former FTX crypto executive Caroline Ellison released from federal custody

Economicon / Business / Finance

• E-scooter sharing company Bird has raised $20M

• Amazon Gears Up to Ax Thousands More Corporate Employees

  • Amazon planning job cuts next week after axing 14,000 due to AI: report

• Software sell-off sparked by AI sets stage for potential big year of M&A

• Justice Department Opens Criminal Probe into Deel/Rippling Spy Allegations

• Intel Shares Fall on Swing to Loss

• Can Old Lime Bikes and Hard Disks Counter China's Rare-Earth Chokehold?

• Judge rejects DoorDash, Uber bid to block New York City tipping laws

• Betting on Prediction Markets Is Their Job. They Make Millions

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Supreme Court appears to carve out a murky exception for the Federal Reserve

  The Supreme Court for the past year has repeatedly allowed President Donald Trump to fire heads of independent agencies, but it appears to be drawing a line with the Federal Reserve. The court has signaled for months that it sees the Fed in a different light. It has said that the president can fire directors of other agencies for any reason, but can remove Fed governors only “for cause,” which is often interpreted to mean neglect of duty or malfeasance.

• House Vote Keeps Federal "Kill Switch" Vehicle Mandate

  A Republican attempt to cut off federal funding tied to vehicle “kill switch” enforcement failed in the House this week, leaving intact a law directing the Department of Transportation to develop mandatory impaired-driving prevention systems in new vehicles. The proposal, led by Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, sought to bar the government from spending money to advance or enforce the measure, formally known as Section 24220 of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

  • Massie is a treasure; allowed as a token "principled person" i think.

• California becomes first state to join WHO disease network

Trump

• How Much Did Jack Smith Pay to ‘Confidential Human Sources’?

• Trump sues JPMorgan for $5B over account closure after Capitol riot

• Trump calls for $1.5T military budget in 2027, up from $901B in 2026

Democrats

• Klobuchar files campaign paperwork for Minnesota governor.

Left Angst

• Trump threatens pollsters after New York Times survey shows sagging disapproval

• Doomsday-Prepping for Trump's Third Term

• Section 230 Didn't Fail Rand Paul. He Just Doesn't Like the Remedy That Worked

• Most countries on Trump's 'Board of Peace' banned from immigrant visas

• Workplace rights agency scraps anti-harassment guidance

  critics argue that all workers will now be more vulnerable to harassment without the EEOC guidance. Kalpana Kotagal, the lone Democrat on the commission, likened it to “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.” She voted against getting rid of it. The agency updated its guidance on workplace harassment in April 2024 under President Joe Biden for the first time in 25 years following a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that gay, lesbian and transgender people are protected from employment discrimination. Lucas voted against the guidance at that time, citing her opposition to language warning employers against deliberately misgendering transgender employees or refusing them access to bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity. A few dozen protesters clustered outside the EEOC building on Thursday morning before the meeting, holding signs demanding “hands off the EEOC” and waving flags bearing the blue-and-yellow equality logo for LGBTQ+ rights group Human Rights Campaign. "The fact that they’re taking this majorly in-depth guidance that is so worker-centered and they’re just chucking it all is such a slap in the face,” said Kate Miceli, a protester who previously worked at the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor.

  • Unpicked from the language of faith, this appear to mean that the Feds will no longer be backing a Trans Right to Rape in the workplace.

• One year of Kash Patel running the FBI

• Liberals have to reckon with the limits of protests

• The Trump Administration Admits More Ways DOGE Accessed Sensitive Personal Data

• White House defends sharing AI image showing arrested woman crying

  • White House Posts Altered Photo Showing Arrested Minnesota Protester Crying

  • White House shares altered image showing arrest of civil rights attorney in MN

  • Minnesota activist releases arrest video after manipulated White House version

• Arizona AG Kris Mayes wildly suggests residents can shoot masked ICE agents under state's self-defense laws

• Is liberal democracy in terminal decline?

• Hang on, there's a Trump Phone Ultra coming too?

• Misinformation Studies Meets the Raw Milk Renaissance

  On the question of the impact of misinformation, the report is appropriately cautious: It notes that there is strong evidence that exposure to misinformation about science produces misbeliefs. People who encounter it may come to hold false beliefs about vaccines, climate, or reproductive health.

  One of the report’s most important sections—frequently underemphasized in the solutions conversation—is the discussion of community-based organizations (CBOs). The committee repeatedly returns to CBOs, including local businesses, faith groups, and media, as “particularly well positioned” to identify information needs in their communities and fill local science information voids. It urges funders and professional societies to invest in these actors and even suggests building an independent consortium to curate and periodically review high-quality science information, with equity and access as central design goals.

• Operation Fakeout: Leftist Hotlines Send Protesters to Biker Bars

  Leftists started publishing phone numbers people could call and report 'ICE activity'. When activity was reported, a whole bunch of protestors would descend and harass the ICE officers. 'Blue Lives Matter' decided to use those hotlines against them and reported ICE activity at some interesting places ... biker bars. They claimed ICE officers were inside drinking beer.

• DHS keeps trying and failing to unmask anonymous ICE critics online

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• United States Completes WHO Withdrawal

  • U.S. Formally Withdraws from World Health Organization

  • US officially exits World Health Organization

• Trump's Golden Dome Is No Silver Bullet

• Does SR-72 Hypersonic Dark Star Have Technical Challenges?

• Crackdown on Shadow Fleet Escalates with Seizure of Ship Carrying Russian Oil

World

• Heathrow's new scanners end dreaded rummage for liquids and laptops

• Campaigner launches £1.5bn legal action in UK against Apple over wallet’s ‘hidden fees’ | Apple | The Guardian

• Social media firms come to ban 'kicking and screaming'- Australia eSafety boss

• Finland sets tougher guidelines: No social media or smartphones for under-13s

• UK Home Secretary's Admission About the Emerging AI Surveillance State

• Doubting U.S. resolve, Europe looks to bolster its own nuclear arsenal

• Heathrow scraps 100ml liquid container limit

• Brussels pushes for stronger cybersecurity oversight of high-risk technology

• Silver Museum Emptied in Overnight Heist

• UK government targets VPNs in online safety consultation as Lords vote for ban

Greenland

• Beware Denmark's Quiet Power

China

• Chinese AI is a risk for Europe. So is shunning it

• Chinese AI models are popular. But can they make money?

• China tests hypergravity centrifuge that compresses time and space

• China's unemployed young adults who are pretending to have jobs

Health / Medicine

• Can the prescription drug leucovorin treat autism? History says, probably not

• Methamphetamine deaths have risen across every US region

• Why Fentanyl Deaths Are Falling

• ProPublica Publishes Unreleased Data on Origins of Generic Prescription Drugs

• DNA found in ancient Colombian skeleton may hold answers to origin of syphilis

  • DNA shows syphilis was rooted in the Americas, before Columbus

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Nipah virus outbreak: 100 people quarantined in West Bengal

• Anti-vax sentiment pushes Moderna away from new late-stage infectious diseases

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• America's next big critical minerals source could be coal mine pollution

• Feral cats and foxes have driven many Australian mammals to extinction

• Strategic sex: Alaska’s beluga whales swap mates for long-term survival.

• Amsterdam forbids Ads for Meat and Fossil Fuel based products

• Illegal waste tips operating in England – including 11 'super sites'

• Whales may divide resources to co-exist under pressures from climate change

• Hiker mired in quicksand in Utah's Arches National Park is rescued unharmed