Filing: PhonePe reports H1 FY 2026 revenue up 22% YoY to ~$427.5M, a ~$157M loss, and 657.6M users; the payments company plans to sell 50.7M shares in its IPO (Rajesh Mascarenhas/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Since September last year, Trump has announced several changes to the H1-B visa category, which allows highly skilled immigrants to live and work in the U.S. for up to six years.
From higher costs to increased scrutiny in the process,
the uncertainty has made applicants and companies wary.
FY2027 applications will close at the end of February 2026, and the lottery will run after that.
A presidential proclamation subjects new H-1B applications to a $100,000 fee,

What it takes to get an H-1B visa in Trump’s America
An immigration lawyer explains the behind-the-scenes challenges of getting the coveted U.S. visa in 2026.

:blep:

Uber plans to trial driverless taxis in London using Baidu's Apollo Go RT6 robotaxis, starting in H1 2026 with services available by the end of 2026 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-22/uber-teams-up-wit…

:dumpster_fire:

Dear folks at Frank's Red Hot™ marketing department:
#Shitpost #ShitPosting #IPutThatShitOnEverything <…

Discovery of the Day

Discovery of the Day : Angelique Arvanitaki (1901–1983), a Greek neurophysiologist born in Cairo, was a little-known pioneer in neurology.
Major Contribution:
Demonstrated ephaptic transmission, a mode of communication between neurons without synapses, still poorly understood today—and c…

Sources: ByteDance boosted its cloud offering via more sales hires and lower prices; IDC: it had 13% of China's AI cloud market in H1 2025, behind Alibaba's 23% (Eleanor Olcott/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/3732a646-da35-4437-bfde-7f9efc2725ff…

Accounts auf Mastodon welche Mitglieder von Die Linke interessieren könnten! (1/X)
Erstmal: Willkommen im Fediverse :fediverse: 👋🚩
Liste an Orgas und Leuten zum folgen:
Ich nehme gerne Empfehlungen

Die Linke

Bundesverband, Stiftung und Strömungen

• https://mastodon.social/@dielinke

Die Linke (@dielinke@mastodon.social)
1.15K Posts, 141 Following, 14.7K Followers · Kämpft für soziale Sicherheit, Frieden und Klimagerechtigkeit.

GCVE-BCP-02 Published - Version 1.3 (2025-12-09)

We’re pleased to announce the publication of GCVE-BCP-02 – Practical Guide to Vulnerability Handling and Disclosure, now available in its version 1.3.
This Best Current Practice document provides actionable guidance for organisations, researchers, and GCVE Numbering Authorities (GNAs) on managing and disclosing vulnerabilities effectively, both within the GCVE ecosystem and beyond

:dns:

Had Fun

Bought a car/micro-camper

Bought a van to do up as a micro-camper, and did a temporary rush job of that conversion myself while waiting in the list for the pro to do it.
Then the pro gave himself a health criss the week it was booked so I took apart my temp job and only got another temp kit-job in it's place.
Went out in it like four times during that and then broke my wrist and couldn't really use it or improve it.
Then had to take it apart even more to try
and figure out where the ad-blue hole was.
I will do a proper permanent job of the
floor and walls and ceiling and adjustments to the kit-job to make it the nicest it's been so far during the spring next year.
My assumption that the prior conversion
into a van and for wheelchair-access meant the microcamper conversion was half-done already turned out to be false.
If I buy a new one, it'll be one that has never been wheelchair adapted.
But it's going okay. Only scraped it once so far.
Fewer than aimed for or booked, but I broke my wrist and had to cancel the second half of the summer.
Went to a conference about money and computers and fringe decentralized social media and it wasn't as boring as you might expect and felt pretty much like a festival.
Exactly the target number! It's lovely.
Took 3 times longer than I'd hoped and
50% more money than I'd planned for really.
Still improvements to make but they will
be incremental and gradual over the coming year or two now.
It's been interest-only for 20 years so a big old lump sum payment that I never really expected to be able to make. Expected to have to sell and move at the end of the mortgage term.
But surprisingly the stocks ISA got high enough to pay it off after all, so I did that.
Cash-flow ruined by that and the bedroom but should start to feel a bit richer next year.

Yield Sec: the top 10 pirate sports streaming sites in the UK, largely funded by ads from unlicensed gambling operators, had 1.6B views in H1 2025, up 33% YoY (Olivia Solon/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…

:crt_w_test_pattern: ᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃᵃ

Viele nutzen Überschriften (H1, H2, H3) nur, damit der Text "groß" oder "fett" aussieht. Design-Entscheidung. 🎨
Für Google und Screenreader ist das aber das Inhaltsverzeichnis der Seite.
Wenn nach einer H1 direkt eine H4 kommt, ist die Struktur kaputt.
Das verwirrt Bots und Nutzer.
Mit der kostenlosen Browser-Erweiterung "HeadingsMap" sieht man sofort, ob die Struktur logisch ist.
Eine Seite sollte wie ein gutes Buch gegliedert sein. …

Sources: Meta is developing a new image and video-focused AI model codenamed Mango, expected to be released in H1 2026 along with its new LLM dubbed Avocado (Meghan Bobrowsky/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/…

Boop 🫵

📣 PhD Position in Computational & Systems Neuroscience (Marseille, France)

⏰ Deadline: January 28, 2026
We are recruiting a PhD student to work on neuromodulatory control of predictive processing in mouse vision, co-supervised by Ede Rancz (INMED) and myself.
This CENTURI project com…

Ede Rancz (@ederancz.bsky.social)
neuroscientist, free will denier

🎭🎉✨🥳
Helau, ihr Bürger, groß und klein,
heut’ schenk’ ich eurem Chef mal ein!
Im Rathaus sitzt er, hoch zu Ross,
in seinem kleinen Spesenschloss.
Ich mein' den Chef vom Ort, den Ehrenmann,
den man auch Bürgermeister nennen kann.

Made Stuff

Made 11 Wordcloud Tarot shows.

See them here
The target is like 25. So about half as many as target.
Some good, some great.
See them here
Not enough. The target is like 6.
Meh.
Target is for 2026 to be the next one anyway really.
I do have a script and all the assets needed to animate it, but I have become unhappy with the script and failed so far at rewrites.
Should get it done next year at some point I'd hope.
Overshooting the target of zero there. surprise new entry in the projects list

I scream
you scream
we all scream

:neocat_scream:⁠:neocat_scream_stare:⁠:neocat_scream_angry:⁠:neocat_scream_scared:

UK's Reach plans to close two of its three remaining printing plants to focus on digital, even as £194.1M out of its H1 2025 revenue of £256M came from print (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/reach-to-close-two-out…

Reach to close two out of three remaining printing plants
Reach has proposed to close two of its three remaining print sites across the UK - the operations in Watford and Glasgow.

KEV Assertion Format – Draft Specification (potential BCP?)

This format describes a generic KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerability) assertion format.
The goal is to express who claims exploitation, when, based on what, where it was observed, and with which level of confidence, without turning KEV into full threat intelligence. A KEV assertion is usually very binary and lacking some meta-information. The format adds some …

KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities) - Potential Format (BCP?)
KEV Assertion Format – Draft Specification (potential BCP?) This format describes a generic KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerability) assertion format. The goal is to express who claims exploitation, when, based on what, where it was observed, and with which level of confidence, without turning KEV into full threat intelligence. A KEV assertion is usually very binary and lacking some meta-information. The format adds some information which could better capture details about the exploitation. A maj…

:lolsob:

Yield Sec: the top 10 pirate sports streaming sites in the UK, largely funded by ads from unlicensed gambling operators, had 1.6B views in H1 2025, up 33% YoY (Olivia Solon/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…

:lolsob:

Media stuff

Rewatched all of Buffy

Broken wrist meant I had to sit on the sofa for a month doing nothing really. I re-watched all 200 or so episodes of Buffy for the first time this decade.
What an achievement in TV production. Amazing show.
I'll watch it again next decade maybe.
Not that I read a huge amount. Hopefully more next year.
"Outland" by Dennis E Taylor, and actually also his "Not Till We Are Lost"
"Broken Money" by Lyn Alden.
Think "Severance" was the most remarkable show I watched this year, with "Trek, Strange New Worlds" also being great again.
"Pantheon" was a pretty great cartoon, haven't seen the second season yet.

🎭️🎉✨️🥳
Helau und Alaaf, ihr lieben Leut’,
heut’ wird gelacht, nicht lang bereut!
Ich hab’ euch einen mitgebracht,
bei dem die Wahrheit Pause macht.
Wenn er berichtet – hört gut zu –
wird aus ’ner Maus ein Känguru!…

Health Stuff

Recovered somewhat from whatever that weird fit was at the end of last year.

NHS still has me on some sort of list I think, appointment might turn up next year. Last contact with them they were suggesting maybe November.
But the private treatment gave me the
MRI which
showed nothing weird and post-fit symptoms have been reducing.
Experimented with eating meat to see if that helped.
Tried eating meat for a month to see if it reduced the post-fit symptoms. Maybe it did? Tried vegetarian again and maybe it got worse?
Hard to tell with intermittent symptoms and a terrible memory.
Decided it's more likely to do good than harm (to me, entirely harm to the animals obviously), and eat meat till the end of the year.
While I'm better, I don't really feel fully recovered enough to want to change things so more meat next year I think.
One of those symptoms is that booze tolerance dropped to like zero. Very rarely had more than four pints in a day this year and very rarely more than one night a
week.
Much high number than the target there really.
Tripped over a guy-rope and fell onto the wrist.
Did two days of the festival and the drive home thinking it almost certainly wasn't broken and only confirmed it was when I got home and the hospital put it in a cast.

:paw:⁠:paw:

Chinese chipmaker GigaDevice rose 54% in its Hong Kong debut after raising ~$600M in its IPO, and reported H1 2025 profit of ~$84M, up 14% from H2 2024 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-12/gigadevice-s…

Beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk says the newsletter company plans to double the size of its ad product and operations team in H1 2026; its full staff is now ~110 people (Mark Stenberg/Adweek)
https://www.adweek.com/media/beehiiv-ad-sales-newsletter-programmatic/

Beehiiv Doubles Ad Sales Team, Scaling Newsletter Ads Business
The expansion comes as advertiser demand grows for email-native inventory and creators look for passive revenue streams

Next year 2026

So, what for next year?

• More than 12 Tarot shows,
• About six Observers shows,
• The main starship v0.4 cartoon,
• Along with the pre-release of the main starship app
• Improvements to the Exocortex app,
• An improv class/show or two (one starts Jan, show March)
• An new improv group?
• Play a couple of Loopy gigs/open-mics,
• Finish the bedroom stuff,
• Don't get sicker,
• Break zero bones,
• Fix the camper in the spring,
• About six festivals,
• Maybe a foreign holiday,
• Try and read more

:paw:⁠:paw:

Did Performance

Played two Loopy gigs

Just a tiny birthday party and in a camping field with friends.
This is probably about the target number really.
It's nice to play now and then but couldn't be monthly or anything even more frequent.
Didn't feel like either went great. Health issues affecting performance plus nerves
Just one with video of any kind.
Added a couple of great songs to the playlists, need to practise more really.
At the end of a Hoopla class and the end of
a self-organised group class.
They were good fun.
But having to book a course every eight weeks means constantly churning co-players and long gaps where I don't get around to it or it was all booked up.
Tried to get a more permanent group going...
Trying to get some sort of indie-group off
the group rather than just short runs of
classes with new people all the time.
We found a group an booked the room but didn't get most of the actual people to turn up. Need to presumably meet more people up for that sort of thing.
So there will be new improv class starting
in Jan.
A new show in March at least.

MEOW~

Digital asset treasuries, one of the hottest trends in public markets in H1 2025, saw a dramatic reversal in H2; SharpLink stock has fallen 86% from its peak (Monique Mulima/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…

Sources: Barry Diller expressed interest in buying CNN in H1 2025, before WBD said it would spin off cable networks; a WBD spokesman says CNN is not for sale (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/barry-d…

Telegram bonds worth $500M are frozen in Russia under western sanctions; filings: its H1 2025 revenue rose 65% YoY to $870M, driven by $300M from Toncoin deals (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/36a37387-cb71-4851-a56f-de2571d520d8

#ಠ_ಠ

Leaked memos: Meta delays the release of its MR glasses codenamed "Phoenix" from H2 2026 to H1 2027 to give Meta "more breathing room to get the details right" (Jyoti Mann/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-delay

Meta delays release of new mixed reality glasses code-named 'Phoenix' in order to 'get the details right'
Meta plans to release a new wearable device codenamed "Malibu 2" in 2026, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider.

:pacmanblinky:⁠:pacmanclyde:⁠:pacmaninky:⁠:pacmanpinky:⁠:pacman:

they're right behind me, aren't they?

Buyout firm Hg agrees to acquire enterprise financial software maker OneStream in an all-cash deal valued at ~$6.4B that is set to close in H1 2026 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-06/buyout-firm-hg-to…

🐈⁠💨

Xreal partners with Asus to unveil ROG Xreal R1 gaming glasses with 1080p micro-OLED displays and a 240Hz refresh rate, launching in H1 2026 (Cameron Faulkner/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/848256/asus-rog-xreal-r1-smart-glasses-specs-release…

Asus ROG’s next ally is Xreal, with 240Hz AR glasses coming in 2026
Xreal and Asus announced the ROG Xreal R1 AR glasses at CES 2026. These gamer-focused glasses support USB-C video and include a dock with HDMI and DisplayPort.

:blobcatanime:

🌈 CYBER ✨

Texas Instruments plans to buy US chip company Silicon Labs in a $7.5B deal, paying $231/share in cash, closing in H1 2027; Silicon Labs has a $4.5B market cap (Nick Turner/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…

Due to inclement weather, we will be sleeping all year

:bear:

How the US' annualized 1.6% GDP growth in H1 was heavily dependent on AI-related investments, which might have accounted for as much as 50% of the growth (Konrad Putzier/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-the-u-s-ec

Chinese autonomous trucking company DeepWay raised ~$173M ahead of its planned Hong Kong IPO, filed in November 2025; DeepWay reported ~$215M in H1 2025 revenue (Dong Cao/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20