Tootfinder

At the National Institutes of Health, big changes to its communications operations were already underway before Trump’s return to the White House.
But the new administration scrapped those carefully laid plans in favor of haphazard downsizing.
In January, more than 600 people worked in communications offices spread across the NIH.
Today, there are fewer than 100.
Officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., justified the deep cuts as…

On IoT Communications Backhaul (2015) - How small Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices should talk to one another. #IoT #comms - https://www.

spent quality snow-eve time with @…'s brilliant & inspiring "other networks," an asynchronous history of non-internet communications. like many readers, i imagine, it made me think of others that might belong & my contribution is... jukeboxes!

"Scientists Create Durable Biodegradable Bamboo Plastic That’s Stronger Than Petroleum-Based Materials"
#Bamboo #Plastic #Plastics

There were many other great talks at the #OpenSSL conference, I encourage you to check them out at https://www.youtube.com/@OpenSSLConference. Some of my highlights in 🧵.

Now that #BlueBird 6 is up (https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251222922862/en/AST-SpaceMobile-Announces-Successful-Orbital-Launch-of-BlueBird-6-the-Largest-Commercial-Communications-Array-Ever-Deployed-in-Low-Earth-Orbit) the question is - after deploying the huge antenna: https://x.com/guo_lin99725/status/2003717302190243904 - how bright it will be in the sky: the earlier BlueBirds were obscenely bright as the paper https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/544/1/L15/8251664 has shown.

OpenAI's chief communications officer Hannah Wong will leave in January; Wong joined in 2021 and led PR during Sam Altman's brief ouster and return in 2023 (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-chief-communications-officer-hannah-…

Even if you're gearing up for a monster winter storm, take the time to check out today's Metacurity for the most crucial cybersecurity developments you should know, including
--Acting CISA head got grilled on mass firings at the agency,
--EU's CIRCL launches GCVE system,
--DeFi project EVM was exploited for $6m,
--Attackers exploit patch bypass for FortiGate flaw,
--Cisco fixes Unified Communications and Webex Calling RCE flaw,
--Mass spam wave …

Effects of eye closure on the spiking activity of human lateral geniculate neurons #LGN

On a atteint 10% des 100k signature pour que nos politiques bougent de X, continuons de signer : https://petitions.assemblee-nationale.fr/initiatives/2610

Sanctions AGAINST chaos: why Russian communications are BREAKING DOWN #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/22/sanctions-against-chaos-why-russian.html

Here you go again....
Malaysia may implement age verification..
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/24/malaysia-may-ban-users-under-16-from-social-media-starting-next-year

The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 along party lines on Thursday
to scrap rules that required U.S. phone and internet giants to meet certain minimum cybersecurity requirements.
The FCC’s two Trump-appointed commissioners, chairman Brendan Carr and his Republican colleague Olivia Trusty,
voted to withdraw the rules that require telecommunications carriers to “secure their networks from unlawful access or interception of communications.”
The Biden administ…

Cable company Altice changes its name to Optimum Communications and will change its NYSE ticker symbol to OPTU on November 19 (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/altic…

Series A, Episode 06 - Seek-Locate-Destroy
AVON: As soon as I get this linked into our communications set-up, we should be able to read every message that the Federation puts out.
JENNA: Any sign of the interceptors?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/106/131 B7B4

On IoT Communications Backhaul (2015) - How small Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices should talk to one another. #IoT #comms - https://

Falls jemand an der #ENABLE!-Werkstatt "Erwerben um zu Öffnen" – die P2O-Plattform als Pledging Hub" jetzt teilnehmen will: der Zoom-Link hat sich geändert!
» https://uni-due.zoom-…

AI Is Decoding Whales’ Communications. Could That Be a Turning Point in the Push for Their Rights? https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29102025/ai-sperm-whale-communications-legal-rights/
I love this idea that understanding the communication…

Commanders owners anticipate possible stadium name discussion Sunday with President Trump https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6789811/2025/11/08/commanders-trump-stadium-name-communications/

Thinking about all the citizen data that our government is shipping offshore to AU & elsewhere... there're apparently indications that Russian vessels have been hovering around undersea data cables in the north Atlantic... some suspect they've installed charges on all cables supplying data to Europe. In a future conflict, they could use these to continually disrupt European communications & intelligence. Who's to say that the US/China/others? haven't done the same to …

Blue Origin unveils TeraWave, a satellite communications network for enterprise, data center, and government customers, and plans to begin deployment in Q4 2027 (Annie Palmer/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/21/bezos-blue-origin-satellite-internet-sp…

On IoT Communications Backhaul (2015) - How small Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices should talk to one another. #IoT #comms - https://www.

> The upshot is that, whereas it used to take upwards of 12 minutes to join Matrix HQ […] now down to about 30 seconds
In #matrix , room joins occur after you start to enjoy the loading spinner.
https://

Italian communications executive reveals he was targeted with Paragon spyware https://therecord.media/italy-comms-exec-spyware

CatSalad Executive Order #133767
All fedi users shall be required to return to our roots and only use Comic Sans font from now on! Bring back graphic design to our communications shitposts.

That moment when Mallory O'Brien realizes Deputy White House Communications Director, Sam Seaborn, is a champion for national education... & as a public school teacher, her hero. 😁
#thewestwing #education

A London PR firm rewrites Wikipedia articles for governments and billionaires
Portland Communications helps rich clients
‘protect their reputation’
– with a shady, off-the-books editing service
The clients who benefitted from this “wikilaundering” are some of the world’s richest and most powerful people.
The firm's founder,
Tim Allan, is now the director of communications for Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
And it has been busted once already for th…

A look at the entry-level hiring squeeze in marketing, communications, and customer service as executives increasingly argue AI can absorb much of the workload (Anjli Raval/Financial Times)

Ein klimaneutraler Pfad könnte den #Fossilenergiebedarf in der EU bis 2050 um 90 Prozent senken.
Laut einer neuen Studie des #PIK ist dieser Rückgang durch den raschen Ausbau erneuerbarer #Energien

If you haven’t yet heard Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan explain why X dot come should not be held responsible for its paid feature of generating child sex abuse material, you might want to sit down before pressing play.

Is any comrades able to give me an invite code to #RiseUp mail?
@…
@……

Universities selling their address space are probably oblivious to where it is going, but they should care. One day people are going to realize a lot of these high rep addresses are getting transferred to very different resource stewards.
re: https://social.bgp.tools/@transfers/st

Don’t let anyone tell you rubio has any substance under his attempts at style.
To say he is an empty suit would be an insult to suits.
“U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a ‘wasteful’ diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters.”

Scientists call for 'systems reset' to redefine sustainable development #environment

The latest on the Western Front. Oh, sorry, the Western font. These conflicts run through everything. And yes, fonts matter.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rubio-font-times-new-roman-calibri_n_6938c4e6e4b0fc6751e2aa6c

«U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his …

"Wertheimer argues that the famous Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act--which protects companies from liability for content posted by users to their websites--needs to be reinterpreted to exclude “platforms that actively promote content using reinforcement learning-based recommendation algorithms.”"
(Original title: Platform Temperance)

ich bin der agent boss
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/how-to-be-an-agent-boss

The Greenland sea cables are probably being closely monitored, but redundancy seems minimal likely limited to OneWeb satellite connectivity and some VSAT links.
Looking at the routing side, AS8818 announces just two /19s and one /22 (and two /32s in IPv6) with a single upstream provider, Level 3 Inc. This suggests that Layer 3 redundancy is even more constrained.
I would have expected at least one EU-based provider as an additional upstream...
🔗

What do people think about the "dark forest theory of the internet" ? https://www.ystrickler.com/dftrevisited/

🏎️ Giving waste plastics a second life as high-performance carbon nanomaterials
#plastics

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is shutting down, but wants to sell you a subscription to read the story.
https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2026/01/07/pittsburgh-post-gazette-final-edition/stories/202601070073

The Trump administration announced on Monday that
all foreign-made drones and their components
posed “unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States”
and would be put on a federal blacklist of equipment makers prohibited from selling their goods freely in the country.
A fact sheet released by the Federal Communications Commission left some room for exceptions.
The Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security can clear a drone or component fo…

Impact of a transient neonatal visual deprivation on the development of the ventral occipito-temporal cortex in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65468-7 "while EVC is permanently affected by early deprivation, categorical coding in VOTC shows resilience"; <…

Celebration de 75 annos con interlingua.
Jovedi le 15 de januario 2026, 19:00-20:20 UTC, 20:00-21:20 CET.
https://umu.zoom.us/j/63633002721?pwd=onf9kafi5UQN0ZXsiDwWmMiuwKce68.1
Zoom ID: 636 3300 2721
Contrasigno: 757575
Tres presentatione…

Deadline Extended - AI and the Study of the Ancient Near East
https://ift.tt/4ARCbFi
CFP: [FRISTVERLÄNGERUNG] Variations 28/2021: Gender through technology (25.09.2021) Call…
via Input 4 RELCFP

RE: https://mastodon.social/@joeycastillo/115679311941728952
"The burden of communication is on the speaker/writer" is something that I absorbed from a friend and have taught for years. I have felt the asymmetry in communications with LLMs as an inter…

Jetzt dreht die Darth #Trump Administration völlilg durch: #Rubio verbietet die Nutzung des Fonts #Calibri
"No more Calibri in official State Department communications!"
Als ob die US sonst keine Probl…

Series C, Episode 04 - Dawn of the Gods
ZEN: All energy banks recharged.
ORAC: Excellent. Excellent. There is now little point in further communications between us by audio channels. In future we will communicate by direct sensory link.
ZEN: Confirmed.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/304/283<…

ibm selling off 9.0.0.0/8 ? i would have thought they’d want to keep it for their cloud service
https://social.bgp.tools/@transfers/statuses/01KDY17AENBWPQXEG3RSW7396R

Don't get whipsawed by the overwhelming amount of cybersecurity news. Check out today's Metacurity for a concise rundown of the critical infosec developments you should know, including
--Former defense firm GM pleads guilty to selling cyber exploits to Russia,
--Nation-state hackers breached key US telecom services firm Ribbon Communications for nearly a year,
--US government agencies back bid to ban TP-Link routers,
--Hacktivists breached Canadian critical inf…

Über die Gründung von Broadcom und deren Mitgründer Henry Samueli: #techhistory

Sources: Bay Area radio station KCBS-AM, which faced MAGA backlash over ICE coverage, scaled back political reporting after Brendan Carr's threats of a probe (Byron Tau/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/trump-media-fcc-kcbs-5dbed5c466771d53e2c7…

"Up to 4,700 metric tons of litter flows down the Rhine each year"
#Rhine #Pollution #Litter

Public sector organisations *shouldn't* standardise on Calibri, actually.
While assessments might focus on readability, selecting it binds organisations to the Microsoft ecosystem for the lifetime of the documents, since licensing is only covered for Windows / Office users.
https://w…

#idw #Hitzewellen in Nord- und Mitteleuropa extremer und chaotischer
Hitzewellen in Europa werden nicht nur häufiger und heißer, sondern auch unberechenbarer. Eine Studie (erschienen in Nature Communications) des Klimaforschers Goratz Beobide-Arsuaga vom Earth and Society Research Hub (ESRAH) der Univer…

Leona Health, maker of an AI-copilot that integrates with doctors' WhatsApp accounts in LATAM to manage patient communications, raised a $14M seed led by a16z (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/16/uber

I was hired by the Brand, Design and Communications Agency Whistlejacket to produce illustrations for the WRAP "nudging strategy for reducing consumption of single-use disposable cups" in collab with the Swedish EPA.
#illustration #design #sustainability #coffee

Up to 4,700 metric tons of litter flows down the Rhine each year #Europe

On IoT Communications Backhaul (2015) - How small Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices should talk to one another. #IoT #comms - https://www.

One year after the return of Trumpism to the White House
— and with it a surge in supremacist ideology
— signals and references to fascism, Nazism, and white supremacy are present in numerous communications from the administration.
Trade union leaders were one of the latest to sound the alarm over the government’s supremacist rhetoric.
The trigger came last weekend from the Department of Labor,
when it shared on its social media an animation featuring a statue o…

Dulin, S., Mitoulis, SA., Bredikhin, A. et al. 3 November 2025
"Rethinking infrastructure design from component failure to systemic resilience."
Nature Communications 16, 9681 (2025).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-64683-6
pdf:

This is the big fear, right?
Google was accused in a lawsuit of using its Gemini AI assistant to unlawfully track the private communications of users of its Gmail, instant messaging and videoconference programs.
https://www.blo…

MeshCore is opensource
The foundation of MeshCore is developed primarily by a single developer who is incredibly hardworking, dedicated and idealistic about keeping everything he does fully open. The firmware and protocol specification are completely open, allowing anyone to create a client app or perform security audits on the device firmware implementation. Just hop over to the meshcore-dev github repo and have a look. There are also open source command line, python and javascript cl…

Resource 1 for how to talk about current political events more effectively:
These cheat sheets on messaging and framing from Aso Communications are fantastic. Right now I highly recommend the one called “Here to Stay: How to Talk About MAGA’s Authoritarian Agenda on Immigration”.
#USpol #politics #communications #change #socialJustice #USA

We might think of the 1963 March on Washington when we talk about organizing and civic change
-- but smaller networks are equally important.
Find many small groups of people you trust,
as small as 2-5 other people.
Use encrypted communications,
like Signal.
Meet in person and break bread,
if you can, building trust slowly.
Be a bridge-builder between trusted colleagues, where appropriate.
Appreciate the beauty of all that can be achie…

Au Danemark, la poste ne livre plus le courrier
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2026/01/05/au-danemark-la-poste-ne-livre-plus-le-courrier_6660642_3234.html

Series B, Episode 02 - Shadow
BLAKE: There's no reason why they should.
[Space City. Chairman is seen on communications screen]
ENFORCER: They'll be making planetfall anytime now.
CHAIRMAN: Excellent. Are all Largo's addicts so available?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/202/444

Block Communications announces that The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will cease publication May 3; the closure will not affect its sister newspaper, The Toledo Blade (Mark Walker/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/business/media/pittsburgh-po…

Was looking at the Chaos Communications Congress agenda & this session caught my eye:
A cool civilian terrestrial backup for GPS Satellite that is interference resistant.
✅ Who cares about the Baltic Jammer?
https://

Next Woman Up: Jennifer Rojas, VP of Marketing Communications

Deadline Extended - AI and the Study of the Ancient Near East
https://ift.tt/tOrfZdI
CFP: [FRISTVERLÄNGERUNG] Variations 28/2021: Gender through technology (25.09.2021) Call…
via Input 4 RELCFP

How Does Increasing CO2 Concentration Affect the Ionospheric Sporadic-E Formation? #GlobalWarming worsens, so may space communications: https://www.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/researches/view/358 - higher CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere increase the strength of sporadic-E and lower the altitude at which it occurs.

Check out my latest CSO piece, which provides the key takeaways from the 2026 NDAA compromise bill released earlier this week, chief among which are provisions that protect the mobile communications of top brass and requirements to safeguard AI systems from digital threats.
https://www.

Role of thalamus in human conscious perception revealed by low-intensity focused ultrasound neuromodulation https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-66832-3 these findings "underscore the modulatory potential of thalamocortical networks in shaping visual experience";

Armenia probes alleged sale of 8 million government records on hacker forum https://therecord.media/armenia-probes-alleged-sale-government-records

🌞 Sunlight, water and air power a cleaner method for making hydrogen peroxide
#chemistry

Was looking at the Chaos Communications Congress agenda & this session caught my eye:
A cool civilian terrestrial backup for GPS Satellite that is interference resistant.
✅ Who cares about the Baltic Jammer?
https://

Internal documents and insider communications obtained by CDG News reveal that 700Credit, one of the auto industry's largest credit reporting and identity verification providers, experienced a data breach on or around October 25, 2025
https://news.dealersh…

Deadline Extended - AI and the Study of the Ancient Near East https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20138002/deadline-extended-ai-and-study-ancient-near-east

Described by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) as “a highly survivable command, control and communications center,” the Los Angeles Times noted that the Thursday landing by the aircraft—a militarized version of the Boeing 747—may have been its first-ever landing at LAX.
The aircraft was carrying Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to Southern California as part of a nationwide “Arsenal of Freedom” tour,
which the administration has described as a
“call to action to revitalize America…

Chinese automotive chipmaker Black Sesame says its Huashan A2000 chip passed the US Commerce and Defense Departments' "relevant reviews" for global sales (Coco Feng/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3338742/<…

The US Supreme Court hears arguments in a copyright case between ISP Cox Communications and record labels; labels say Cox should be liable for user infringement (Blake Brittain/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/u

Brain-aligning of semantic vectors improves neural decoding of visual stimuli #BCI

Was looking at the Chaos Communications Congress agenda & this session caught my eye:
A cool civilian terrestrial backup for GPS Satellite that is interference resistant.
✅ Who cares about the Baltic Jammer?
https://

Deadline Extended - AI and the Study of the Ancient Near East https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20138002/deadline-extended-ai-and-study-ancient-near-east

Eyewitnesses say Iranian government forces have begun opening fire,
apparently with automatic weapons and at times seemingly indiscriminately,
on unarmed protesters.
Hospital workers say protesters had been coming in with pellet injuries but now arrive with gunshot wounds and skull fractures.
One doctor called it a “mass-casualty situation.”
Despite the communications blockade, a recurring image has made its way out of Iran:
rows and rows of body bags.

…

Greece says a radio failure that grounded flights is unlikely to be a cyberattack
https://www.wral.com/news/ap/f2ebc-greece-says-a-radio-failure-that-grounded-flights-is-unlikely-to-be-a-cyberattack/

An NC Republican Party spokesman appeared to threaten ProPublica, citing party ties to Trump's administration, and tried to coerce the outlet to kill a story (Brianna Tucker/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/31…

The Trump administration is arguing that requiring real-time American Sign Language interpretation of events like White House press briefings
“would severely intrude on the President’s prerogative to control the image he presents to the public,”
part of a lawsuit seeking to require the White House to provide the services.
Department of Justice attorneys haven’t elaborated on how doing so might hamper the portrayal Trump seeks to present to the public.
But overturning p…

Deadline Extended - AI and the Study of the Ancient Near East https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20138002/deadline-extended-ai-and-study-ancient-near-east

Hey Fedi, as a marketer I want to say: ALL OF YOU HAVE THE POWER TO INFLUENCE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
We can shape social movements and public opinion with the things we say. Communication CAN change minds and make improvements that feel “impossible” real and tangible. That’s how the right got as far as it did, with strong and consistent messaging.
Now, let’s be practical. HOW we talk about the events that happen matters as much as WHAT we talk about.
If we want to make a difference and mobilize people towards progressive stances while our democracy and freedom are under attack - we need to use effective language and messaging.
Don’t give airtime to conservative values and MAGA lies. Instead, appeal to the values we believe in and help shape the conversation in ways that benefit people like us who want a better future.
I’ll share some resources in the thread with actionable advice.
#USpol #politics #communications #change #socialJustice #USA

Series C, Episode 11 - Moloch
POOLA: Chesil... I think I've got something. [Chesil moves to look at Poola's screen.]
CHESIL: Aren't you going to report it?
POOLA: No. Wait! [They watch as a spacecraft-shaped dot crosses the screen.]
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/311/50…

Iran’s internet shutdown,
now in place for 36 hours
as the authorities seek to quell escalating anti-government protests,
represents a “new high-water mark” in terms of its sophistication and severity, say experts
– and could last a long time.
As the blackout kicked in, 90% of internet traffic to Iran evaporated.
International calls to the country appeared blocked and domestic mobile phones had no service,
said Amir Rashidi, an Iranian digital right…

Based on another report I just read from Iran's PressTV (state-sponsored service with an expired encryption cert today), this sounds like a giant DDoS attack.
Iran says repelled ‘one of world’s most complex’ cyberattacks on national infrastructure
https://

Russia limits WhatsApp use, claiming it enables terrorism, crime, espionage https://therecord.media/russia-whatsapp-restrictions

West Coast Health Alliance,
WA Dept of Health,
and Leading National Medical Organizations
Continue to Recommend Hepatitis B Vaccination for Newborns
WCHA disagrees with CDC’s Advisory Committee’s change to decades-long vaccine recommendation
that has reduced pediatric hepatitis B infections by 99 percent

Resource 2 for how to talk about current political events more effectively:
This book from George Lakoff called “Don’t Think of an Elephant” is short, to the point, and very practical.
First edition came out in 2004, I recommend the second one from 2014. It’s surprisingly on point to everything that’s happened in the country since.
It will give you both a theoretical framework to understand framing / messaging specific advice on key issues.
#USpol #politics #communications #change #socialJustice #USA

The White House said Friday that reporters could no longer access an area in the West Wing known as “Upper Press” that houses the offices of key communications staff members,
triggering pushback from White House correspondents, who said the move would hurt the press’s ability to cover the president.
https…

Around 56 million years ago,
Earth suddenly got much hotter.
Over about 5,000 years, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere drastically increased and global temperatures shot up by some 6°C.
As we show in new research published in Nature Communications,
one consequence was that many of the world’s plants could no longer thrive.
As a result, they soaked up less carbon from the atmosphere,
which may have contributed to another interesting thing about this pre…