Tootfinder

A profile of AI hearing aid startup Fortell, which has raised $150M so far and is targeting affluent clients in NYC with a $6,800 device that uses a custom chip (Steven Levy/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/hearing-aid-startup-ai-fortell/

New Hearing Aid Company, Foretell, Brings in Steve Martin and Others as Fans
AI-powered startup Fortell has become a secret handshake for the privileged hearing-impaired crowd who swear by the product. Now, it wants to be in your ears.

IIRC, they're playing ICE ads, so good:
Spotify Sued Over 'Billions' of Fraudulent Drake Streams - Slashdot
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/11/04/0011221/spotify-sued-over-billions-of-fraudulent-drake-streams?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Five years ago, they risked their lives to support American troops in Afghanistan.
Now refugees across the United States are facing the threat of certain death thanks to ICE.
Some 100,000 Afghans resettled in America, repayment for assisting the U.S. government during a fruitless 20-year war, after Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021.
Thousands of them have since found a new home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
But in the wake of the shooting of two National Guard…

Trump Is Ready to Send Afghan Refugees to Their Death
ICE is detaining Afghan refugees in the wake of the National Guard shooting. Those in the Dallas-Fort Worth area fear for their lives, in both their new home and their old one.

Gießen leuchtet: Zehntausende protestieren friedlich gegen die AfD-Jugend – während in den Hallen „Remigration“ skandiert wird. Demokratie zeigt Stärke ohne Faust, sagt Andreas Bauer: Protest ja, Gewalt nein. Widerstandsrecht ist keine Blankovollmacht, solange Wahlen, Gerichte, Öffentlichkeit funktionieren. Ein Samstag, der Mut macht. Autor: Andreas Bauer (#hessenschau)

From Donald Trump to Benjamin Netanyahu, let 2026 be a year of reckoning (Jonathan Freedland/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/02/donald-trump-benjamin-netanyahu-2026-year-of-reckoning
http://www.memeorandum.com/260103/p28#a260103p28

«Given that the amount of money banks make from the average sale of one vial is approximately $1,200, the industry has less than zero interest in voluntarily putting a halt to their less-than-ethical practices. It’s been proven time and time again that, without anything reining them in, they will choose profit over all else.»
What happens if industries "self-regulate" 🫠
The Profit Motive Has Corrupted the Fertility Industry
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-profit-motive-has-corrupted-the-fertility-industry

Petition Böllerverbot: für ein friedliches Silvester!
https://mitmachen.duh.de/boellerfreies-silvester/
> Setz dich mit uns für ein sicheres, umweltschonendes und tierfreundliches Silvester ein. Jetzt offenen Brief unterschreiben! (DUH)

heise wünscht einen guten Rutsch und ein gesundes neues Jahr 2026!
Die Redaktionen von heise wünschen ein friedliches und schönes Jahr 2026. Auf dass Ihre Hoffnungen und Wünsche erfüllt werden. Kommen Sie jetzt gut rein!

🌾 Barley's mosaic origin traced to five wild populations and millennia of human involvement
https://phys.org/news/2025-09-barley-mosaic-wild-populations-millennia.html

Barley's mosaic origin traced to five wild populations and millennia of human involvement
Barley is one of the world's oldest cultivated plants, farmed for more than 10,000 years. Scientists have long believed it was domesticated in just one location. An international research team led by the IPK Leibniz Institute has revealed that modern barley has a "mosaic origin," meaning it stems from several wild populations across the Fertile Crescent. The paper is published in the journal Nature.

Mr. Nadella, don’t worry about the “real world impact” of what you call “AI,” i.e., LLM-driven chatbots. Already today, lazy students and fraudulent researchers “get value out of AI in the real world.”
But I get it, the big question is: how can Microsoft profit from cheating and fraud in education and research?
https://