Tootfinder

The FCC updates its site to remove the phrase "independent agency", after Brendan Carr said in a Congressional hearing it is not independent "formally speaking" (Sara Fischer/@sarafischer)
https://x.com/sarafischer/status/2001338675607769120

Sara Fischer (@sarafischer) on X
🚨🚨 This is INSANE. I took this screenshot of the @FCC website at 11:52 a.m. ET where it explicitly states the FCC is an independent agency. 25 minutes later, it has been removed following Carr's comments during this hearing! See before and after screenshots below

LG smart TV owners say a webOS update pinned Microsoft Copilot to TV home screens, with no apparent way to remove the app; LG unveiled an AI TV strategy at CES (Luke James/Tom's Hardware)
https://www.tomshardware.com/service-provi

LG TV users baffled by unremovable Microsoft Copilot installation — surprise forced update shows app pinned to the home screen
Users report Copilot appearing after a recent software update, with no option to uninstall.

next #firewalld oddity; you can't use 'firewall-cmd' when firewalld is stopped (like configuring a rootfs not yet booted), but it has got 'firewall-offline-cmd' that lets you do it - except the options are sometimes different; e.g.
firewall-cmd --zone=external --remove-service ssh --permanent
becomes
firewall-offline-cmd --zone=external --remove-service-fro…

Once again just shovelled the driveway into the driveway so the driveway snow clearing service can actually clear all of the snow from the driveway.
…we're barely halfway through January…

Wetlands efficiently remove nitrogen pollution from surface water, leading to cost savings for municipalities https://phys.org/news/2025-10-wetlands-efficiently-nitrogen-pollution-surface.html

Wetlands efficiently remove nitrogen pollution from surface water, leading to cost savings for municipalities
Wetlands are an important part of the ecological system, providing a myriad of benefits for people, wildlife, and the environment. They also serve as "nature's kidneys," filtering out pollutants from surface water. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign finds that wetlands along the Mississippi River Basin effectively clean up nitrogen runoff from agricultural fields. The researchers also show this can lead to significant savings for local drinking water treatment faciliti…

Imagine thinking now is the time to remove a protection on freedom of speech on the internet.
https://bsky.app/profile/judiciarydems.senate.gov/post/3m7sjbvhbms2z

Senate Judiciary Democrats 🇺🇸 (@judiciarydems.senate.gov)
Sen. WHITEHOUSE: We finally are moving to file a bipartisan Section 230 repeal bill. Waiting any longer serves no useful purpose.

UK House of Lords must be abolished. It's an undemocratic institution, trying to remove the right to have an unlocked computer with an OS under user control.
They're proposing that devices for use in the UK have "tamper-proof system software" that prevents "viewing of CSAM".
It's a noble goal on the surface, but it effectively outlaws devices that don't reliably spy on everything people have on screen. It outlaws open source operating systems a…

🦠 Microbes may remove more than half of groundwater methane, curbing global emissions
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-microbes-groundwater-methane-curbing-global.html

Microbes may remove more than half of groundwater methane, curbing global emissions
Groundwater commonly contains methane, but the amount of this important greenhouse gas that can escape to surface waters or the atmosphere is highly uncertain. A team from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and University of Jena has shown that microbes in groundwater significantly reduce methane emissions, as revealed in a study published in PNAS.

"Plastic pollution could linger at ocean surfaces for over a century, new research finds"
#Plastic #Plastics #Oceans

Plastic pollution could linger at ocean surfaces for over a century, new research finds
Scientists from the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at Queen Mary University of London have developed a simple model to show how buoyant plastic can settle through the water column and they predict it could take over 100 years to remove plastic waste from the ocean's surface.

US lawmakers remove provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2026 that would have ensured military members' right to repair their own equipment (Boone Ashworth/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/the-military-almost-got-…

The Military Almost Got the Right to Repair. Lawmakers Just Took It Away
The final language of the annual bill that funds the US military is in. It removes provisions that would have helped ensure service members’ ability to fix their own equipment.