They call it "the business-impersonator scam". And it's fooled 396,227 Americans in just the first nine months of 2025 — 18% more than the 335,785 in the same nine months of 2024. That's according to a Bloomberg reporter (who also fell for it in late November), citing the official statistics from America's Federal Trade Commission:
Some pose as airline staff on social media and respond to consumer complaints. Others use texts or e-mails claiming to be an airline reporting a delayed or cancelled flight to phish for travellers' data. But the objective is always the same: to hit a stressed out, overwhelmed traveller at their most vulnerable.
In my case, the scammer exploited weaknesses in Google's automated ad-screening system, so that fraudulent sponsored results rose to the top [They'd typed "United airlines agent on demand" into Google, and the top search result on their phone said United.com, had a 1-888 number next to it and said it had had 1M+ visits in past month. "It looked legit. I tapped the number..." ]
After I reported the fake "United Airlines" ad to Google, via an online form for consumers, it was taken down. But a few days later, I entered the same search terms and the identical ad featuring the same 1-888 number was back at the top of my results. I reported it again, and it was quickly removed again... A [Google] spokesperson there said the company is constantly evolving its tactics "to stay ahead of bad actors." Of the 5.1 billion ads blocked by the company last year, she said, 415 million were taken down for "scam-related violations." Google updated its ads misrepresentation policy in 2024 to include "impersonating or falsely implying affiliation with a public figure, brand or organization to entice users to provide money or information." Still, many impostor ads slip through the cracks.
"Reported losses from business-impostor scams in the United States rose 30 per cent, to US$835 million, in the first three quarters of 2025," the article points out (citing more figures from the America's Federal Trade Commision). An updated version of the article also includes a response from United Airlines. "We encourage customers to only use customer-service contact information that is listed on our website and app."
And what happened to the scammed reporter? "I called American Express and contested the charge before cancelling my credit card. I then contacted Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, to put a fraud alert on my file. Next, I filed a complaint with the FTC and reported the fake ad to Google.
"American Express wound up resolving the dispute in my favour, but the memories of this chaotic Thanksgiving will stay with us forever. "
Tuesday the White House faces a deadline to decide "whether Chinese drone maker DJI Technologies poses a national security threat," reports Bloomberg. But their article notes it's "a decision with the potential to ground thousands of machines deployed by police and fire departments across the US."
One person making the case against the drones is Mike Nathe, a North Dakota Republican state representative described by the Post as "at the forefront of a nationwide campaign sounding alarms about the Made-in-China aircraft." Nathe tells them that "People do not realize the security issue with these drones, the amount of information that's being funneled back to China on a daily basis."
The president already signed anexecutive orderin June targeting "foreign control or exploitation" of America's drone supply chain. That came after Congress mandated a review to determine whether DJI deserves inclusion in a federal register of companies believed to endanger national security. If DJI doesn't get a clean bill of health for Christmas, it could join Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp.on that Federal Communications Commission list. The designation would give the Trump administration authority to prevent new domestic sales or even impose a flight ban, affecting public agencies from New York to North Dakota to Nevada...
The fleet used by public safety agencies nationwide exceeds about 25,000 aircraft, said Chris Fink, founder of Unmanned Vehicle Technologies LLC, a Fayetteville, Arkansas-based firm that advises law-enforcement clients. The overwhelming majority of those drones — called uncrewed aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in industry parlance — comes from China, said Jon Beal, president of theLaw Enforcement Drone Association, a training and advocacy group that counts DJI and some US competitors as corporate sponsors...
Currently, at least half a dozen states havetargeted DJIand other Chinese-manufactured drones, including restrictions in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. A Nevada law prohibiting public agencies from using Chinese drones took effect in January... Legislators also took up the cause in Connecticut, which passed a law this year preventing public offices from using Chinese drones. Supporters said they're worried about these eyes in the skies being used for spying. "We're kind of sitting ducks," said Bob Duff, the Democratic majority leader in the state senate who promoted the legislation. "They are designed to infiltrate systems even when the users don't think that they will."
One North Dakota sheriff's department complains U.S.-made drones are "at least double and triple the price out of the gate," according to the article, which adds that public safety officials "say it's difficult to find domestic alternatives that match DJI in price and performance."
And DJI "wants an extension on the security review," according to the article, "saying Tuesday is too soon to make a conclusion."
"In the lead up to its Switch 2 console release, Nintendo updated its user agreement," writes the Free Software Foundation, warning that Nintendo now claims "broad authority to make consoles owned by its customers permanently unusable."
"Under Nintendo's most aggressive digital restrictions management (DRM) update to date, game console owners are now required to give Nintendo the unilateral right to revoke access to games, security updates, and the Internet, at its sole discretion."
The new agreement states: "You acknowledge that if you fail to comply with [Nintendo's restrictions], Nintendo may render the Nintendo Account Services and/or the applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part...."
There are probably other reasons that Nintendo has and will justify bricking game consoles, but here are some that we have seen reported:
— "Tampering" with hardware or software in pretty much any way;
— Attempting to play a back-up game;
— Playing a "used" game; or
— Use of a third-party game or accessory...
Nintendo's promise to block a user from using their game console isn't just an empty threat: it has already been wielded against many users. For example, within a month of the Switch 2's release, one user unknowingly purchased an open-box return that had been bricked, and despite functional hardware, it was unusable for many games. In another case, a user installing updates for game cartridges purchased via a digital marketplace had their console disabled. Though it's unclear exactly why they were banned, it's possible that the cartridge's previous owner made a copy and an online DRM check determined that the current and previous owner's use were both "fraudulent." The user only had their console released through appealing to Nintendo directly and providing evidence of their purchase, a laborious process.
Nintendo's new console banning spree is just one instance of the threat that nonfree software and DRM pose to users. DRM is but one injustice posed by nonfree software, and the target of the FSF's Defective by Design campaign. Like with all software, users ought to be able to freely copy, study, and modify the programs running on their devices. Proprietary software developers actively oppose and antagonize their users. In the case of Nintendo, this means punishing legitimate users and burdening them with proving that their use is "acceptable." Console users shouldn't have to tread so carefully with a console that they own, and should they misstep, beg Nintendo to allow them to use their consoles again.
A supermassive black hole which is 10 million times bigger than the mass of the sun has been captured by the aforementioned telescope.
Gizmodo reports that it's leaving a trail of gas that spawning new stars.
Astronomers have long theorized about runaway black holes, but none have been observed until now.
The black hole is one of the fastest-moving objects observed in the cosmos, traveling at a speed of 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second). At that speed, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes, according to NASA.
In July Google promised to scale the CO2 batteries of "Energy Dome" as a long-duration energy storage solution. Now IEEE Spectrum visits its first plant in Sardinia, where 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide power a turbine generating 20 MW over 10 hours — storing "large amounts of excess renewable energy until it's needed..."
"Google likes the concept so much that it plans to rapidly deploy the facilities in all of its key data-center locations in Europe, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region."
Developed by the Milan-based company Energy Dome, the bubble and its surrounding machinery demonstrate a first-of-its-kind "CO2 Battery," as the company calls it... And in 2026, replicas of this plant will start popping up across the globe. We mean that literally. It takes just half a day to inflate the bubble. The rest of the facility takes less than two years to build and can be done just about anywhere there's 5 hectares of flat land.
The first to build one outside of Sardinia will be one of India's largest power companies, NTPC Limited. The company expects to complete its CO2 Battery sometime in 2026 at the Kudgi power plant in Karnataka, in India. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, the public utility Alliant Energy received the all clear from authorities to begin construction of one in 2026 to supply power to 18,000 homes... The idea is to provide electricity-guzzling data centers with round-the-clock clean energy, even when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. The partnership with Energy Dome, announced in July, marked Google's first investment in long-duration energy storage...
CO2 Batteries check a lot of boxes that other approaches don't. They don't need special topography like pumped-hydro reservoirs do. They don't need critical minerals like electrochemical and other batteries do. They use components for which supply chains already exist. Their expected lifetime stretches nearly three times as long as lithium-ion batteries. And adding size and storage capacity to them significantly decreases cost per kilowatt-hour. Energy Dome expects its LDES solution to be 30 percent cheaper than lithium-ion.
China has taken note. China Huadian Corp. and Dongfang Electric Corp. are reportedly building a CO2-based energy-storage facility in the Xinjiang region of northwest China.
Google's senior lead for energy storage says they like how Energy Dome's solution can work in any region. "They can really plug and play this."
And they expect Google to help the technology "reach a massive commercial stage."
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wants us to believe they're all about protecting victims' right after his DOJ disappeared files that included Trump, yet published a victim of Jeffery Epstein's name.
This is not true. I have confirmation from a Jane Doe Epstein survivor that her name was not redacted in publicly released files.
Here's Blanche's pathetic spin on this Sunday's Meet the Press when asked about the partial release of the files.
WELKER: The Epstein Files Transparency Act called for all files with limited exceptions to be released within 30 days. On Friday, the Justice Department released just a fraction of the overall Epstein files. Why didn't the Justice Department meet that Friday deadline?
The grifting machine known as Turning Point USA is holding a big old fascist festival this weekend in Arizona. The event is the first since Charlie Kirk was unalived earlier this year. The main event, besides wringing every dime out of the attendees, was to enthrone the professional widow and Tammy Faye lookalike, Erica Kirk, as the Queen of the Grift.
But you do have to give the people credit for one thing - they sure do understand their cultish - and rather ghoulish - followers:
As she [Brandy Zadrozny] was speaking with host Chris Jansing, she strolled in front of a canopy that had “Prove me wrong” printed on it — an exact replica of the one from the murder scene.
"Hello from Turning Point USA in Phoenix, Arizona,” she began. “ We have had quite a time, it's been a pretty spicy conference to be honest. You can see here people are sort of winding their way back into the conference.”
“But there are three main things that are happening here,” she reported. “The first thing that's happening is grief. And you can see from behind me, this is a re-creation of the tent where Charlie Kirk lost his life at Utah University in September, and people are taking selfies with it. You can see all around people are saying, like ‘For Charlie,’ they're wearing replicas of the shirt that Charlie Kirk was wearing when he was killed. So there's that moment.”
Can we call this Charlie Kirk Derangement Syndrome, because these people are just plain sick?
Annie Karni, with a quick and decent summation of Elise Stefanik's meteoric rise and just as sudden fall after her stunning announcement that she was leaving politics when her term ends, and abandoning her quixotic New York Gubernatorial run.
To detractors, Ms. Stefanik’s shoddy treatment by the president amounted to karmic comeuppance for a Republican lawmaker who came to Congress as a Harvard-educated moderate but tacked unapologetically to the MAGA right when it suited her political purposes. They said she personified the opportunistic shape-shifting that gripped her party.
“My greatest disappointment is Elise Stefanik, who should know better,” Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, said in an interview last year, describing her as a one-time friend. “She went off the deep end.”
Her tumble from grace crystallized the limits of MAGA loyalty and the risks of building a political identity around Mr. Trump, who can turbocharge or torpedo a career — sometimes both. Once one of the president’s most stalwart defenders, Ms. Stefanik, who referred to herself as “ultra MAGA” and styled herself after Mr. Trump, ultimately found herself undermined by him and politically adrift.
Nowhere was that undermining more evident than when Trump invited the New York mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, to the White House.
During the fascist festival hosted by Turning Point USA in Arizona this weekend, there's been a lot of sniping going on. Benjamin Shapiro went after a slew of people. Steven The Blob Bannon went after Shapiro. None of the children were behaving.
All of this infighting has gotten conservative reporter Brian Glenn all upset, gosh darn it all!
Conservative journalist Brian Glenn erupted Friday over the ongoing MAGA civil war that was on full display Thursday during a Turning Point USA event in Arizona, warning that the escalating intraparty fights may hurt Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.
“When it comes down to it, is your life better right now than it was a year ago?” Glenn said, speaking on right-wing news network Real America’s Voice.
“Do you think it's gonna be better off two years from now than it was when [Trump] took office? Those are the things I wish we'd talk about! All this other bull----, I'm sorry, I'm just over it! If I seem a little angry, I apologize, I'm just over it!”
It appears that in all of his faux outrage, Glenn forgot about his girlfriend's - er, fiancée's - own history of tantrums and picking fights to the point of quitting Congress. I guess that not all disarray is created equal or something like that.
Residents of Lexington, Nebraska, are feeling devastated this Christmas. The town’s biggest employer revealed it will shut down early next year, triggering fear and economic uncertainty across the community. Via WTF Detective:
MS NOW reported Friday from Lexington — the county seat of Dawson County, Nebraska, a place Trump carried easily with more than 74 percent of the vote last year. Tyson, the meatpacking giant that employs about 3,200 workers in the town, will leave all of them without jobs when the facility closes on Jan. 20.
“Have you ever been in a place where you can just feel the pain and the anxiety? That’s what it feels like being here in Lexington, Nebraska,” MS NOW reporter Rosa Flores said. “… People have described to me what’s happening here by using the words ‘catastrophe,’ ‘crisis,’ the feeling of being ‘collateral damage,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘anxiety,’ ‘agony.’”
“There’s another business here to my left, down the street. That woman says that people have gone into her store sobbing,” Flores said. “Her sales immediately dropped 10 to 20 percent right after the announcement.”
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Tyson decided to close the Lexington facility as cattle supplies are expected to fall to a 75-year low in 2025. Limited cattle availability drives up production costs for beef products like hamburgers and steaks, while prolonged drought has shrunk grazing land and reduced herd sizes for ranchers.
In case you missed it, the trailer for Melania Trump’s new self-titled documentary dropped Wednesday—and it looks as uninteresting as you might have imagined.
The one-minute glimpse of “Melania” portrays the first lady as a strutting fashionista, complete with dramatic scene cuts and music that aspire to make the Amazon MGM Studios-produced documentary a blockbuster-style flick.
But the only real scoop gleaned from the teaser is that Melania is still mostly removed from her husband’s affairs.
“Did you watch it?” Donald Trump can be heard asking from the other end of a phone line.
“I did not, yeah” she replied. “I will see it on the news.”
Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics or culture.
With the winter holidays approaching—and with this marking the last formal edition ofSurvey Says for the year—it’s a natural moment to take stock. New polling offers a revealing snapshot of how Americans are closing out 2025 and what kind of mood they’re carrying into 2026.
The toplines are not encouraging.
A new survey fromYouGov asked Americans to assess this past year both personally and nationally, and what emerges is a country that feels worn down, uneasy, and distinctly unconfident about what comes next.
Let’s start with the personal assessments. Just 9% of Americans said 2025 was “great” for them, and 29% called it “good.” The largest share—37%—landed in the middle, describing the year as being only “OK.” But the distribution’s darker edge was hard to ignore: 15% said the year was “bad,” and another 10% called it “terrible.”
In other words, roughly 1 in 4 Americans said their experience of 2025 was actively negative.
If Americans’ personal experience of the year is lukewarm at best, they’re even more downbeat about the country’s performance in 2025. Only 24% rated the year as “good” or “great” for the United States. Another 24% called it just “OK.” But nearly half—48%—said the year was “bad” or “terrible” for the country as a whole.
That dissatisfaction shows up clearly when Americans were asked to rate how things are going nationally on a 1-to-10 scale. Forty-seven percent placed their answer between one and four. But just 30% gave the year an seven or higher.
Other polling points in the same direction. The latest Economist/YouGov survey found that 56% of Americans said the country was “off on the wrong track,” compared with just 35% who said it was headed in the right direction.
“It’s not surprising that, overall, the results indicate the level of ambivalence and negativity that they do,” Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, told Daily Kos. “The country has been in deep, polarized political and social conflict, and that usually doesn’t feel like a good thing to most people.”
Reeher cautioned against reading these kinds of questions too literally, though. Assessments of “how the year was” often act as proxies for a tangle of other forces: personal psychology, financial stress, perceptions of national decline, and what social scientists call expressive bias.
“There’s so much noise in these kinds of questions,” he said. “Respondents are often signaling something else that they want others to know about them,” adding that, in this case, that could be views about the president himself or about politics more generally.
“It’s simply impossible to unwind all these threads,” Reeher said.
President Donald Trump, shown on Dec. 17.
Still, the broader gloom didn’t materialize out of thin air. Polling throughout the second half of 2025 has shownrising economic anxiety—particularlyaround the holidays—alongsidesagging approval ratings for President Donald Trump. Those pressures appear to be shaping how people look back on the year, even if they don’t fully explain it.
At the same time, Reeher is quick to note that pessimism about the future long predates Trump.
“The polarization we are experiencing is not new or a product of Trump, and neither is the pessimism about the future,” he said. “That’s been a growing feature since the mid-2000s, with some temporary exceptions.”
Even so, the political undercurrent in the YouGov data is unmistakable. Forty-three percent of Americans describe 2025 as “one of the worst” years in American history. Some of that is almost certainly recency bias, or overemphasizing the effects of recent events. But the willingness to apply such language to the year is striking.
Notably, YouGov didn’t ask respondents whythey felt this way. But the answers to questions about New Year’s resolutions offer some clues. The most common goals were modest and familiar: exercising more (25%), being happy (23%), eating healthier (22%), and saving money (21%).
More forward-looking ambitions were far less common. Just 9% said they planned to pursue a career goal in 2026, and only 12% hoped to pay down debt. Even saving money—named by 21% of Americans—comes across less as optimism than as self-protection, a reflection of how many households are still feeling financially boxed in.
Looking ahead provides little reassurance about the country’s trajectory.
While 48% of Americans believed 2026 would be good or great for them personally, only 31% said it would be great for the country. Worse, 27% predicted it would be one of the worst years in American history.
Those are dramatic numbers, but they likely reflect generalized pessimism rather than a literal comparison to historical calamities. The question asked about “one of the best years,” not whether the country would improve. Still, the pattern is clear: Far more Americans expect trouble for the country than for themselves.
It’s a familiar dynamic in polling. People often believe they’ll manage personally—even as they conclude that the broader system is failing.
So how seriously should we take these responses? Reeher urged some caution in reading too much into polls like YouGov’s.
“Those who are saying the past year has been great are probably trying to signal that they support the president,” he said. “Those who are saying that the past year has been one of the worst are probably trying to tell the surveyor that they really, really don’t like the president. The people more in the political middle are probably reacting to all the conflict and political chaos, and are either ambivalent or negative.”
That doesn’t make the data meaningless. But it does limit how much can be drawn from it.
At best, polls like this offer a reading of national mood—an emotional barometer rather than a precise diagnosis. Anyone trying to extract more than that does so at their own peril, politically or otherwise.
Any updates?
Daily Kos has reported extensively on the cracks forming in Trump’s coalition—first amongLatinos, thenyoung voters. Now, new data from NBC News Decision Desk and SurveyMonkey confirms the trend. The largest declines in strong support since April are among Republicans overall, particularly those who identify with Trump’s MAGA movement. MAGA Republicans continue to widely approve of Trump, with 70% saying they strongly approve of him, but that represents an 8-percentage-point drop from earlier this year. Meanwhile, fewer Republicans report being part of the MAGA movement compared with earlier in 2025, highlightingearly signs of fraying in Trump’s base.
Americansremain deeply ambivalent about the rapid spread of artificial intelligence, even as they’re increasingly using it on the job. Gallup reports that the share of U.S. employees using AI at least a few times a year increased from 40% to 45% between the second and third quarters of 2025. Frequent use also increased from 19% to 23%. So, while Americans may not love AI, more of them are learning to live with it.
Vibe check
It’s easy enough to freeze up over holiday gifts, especially with people you don’t see often. Wanting to give something that signals your thought and care doesn’t always come with the clarity about what that something should be.
New polling fromthe Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research offers some reassurance. Nearly 9 in 10 say it’s acceptable to give cash (88%) or gift cards (87%). Even regifting or giving secondhand items—long treated as a social faux pas—now clears the bar for a solid majority: 64% say it’s fine.
Age, unsurprisingly, shapes those views. Adults ages 18 to 45 are significantly more open to secondhand gifts than those 45 and older (73% vs. 58%), reflectingthe growing normalization of thrift and resale culture. The flip side is that enthusiasm for cash and gift cards declines with age, suggesting older Americans still place more weight on presentation—or at least pretense.
The poll looks beyond presents as well, examining how people are spending the holidays. Nearly half of adults (44%) plan to be in bed before midnight on New Year’s Eve—an understated way to close out a year many seem ready to move on from.
Still, signs of seasonal enthusiasm remain. About a third of Americans say they’ve worn or plan to wear a holiday sweater or accessories this month. And 30% are getting into the spirit by buying gifts for their pets—present company included. This year, we got our shelter pooch a DNA test, and I’m really excited to learn more about him.
As for Christmas Day itself, traditions vary. Nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they’ll watch sports, while 5% plan to head to a movie theater.
Please sound off in the comments and tell us how you’re spending the holidays. Are you keeping things low-key? Sticking to old traditions? Spoiling your pets? However you’re marking the season, we want to hear it—and happy holidays!
I work in an academic library. I am overhearing my manager's side of the conversation with one of our regular patrons.
Manager: "Yes, that is correct, we've rescinded your right to eat food in the library."
Larry showed up carrying all the signs of a hard life. No collar, no chip, underweight, and clearly used to being on his own. He was wary at first, more comfortable outside than anywhere else, but there was a sense that he wanted stability even if he didn't quite trust it yet.
Over the past few months, that trust has grown steadily. What began as brief check-ins slowly turned into a routine, then into a garage setup with food, a bed, and a safe place to rest. Eventually, Larry made the leap to becoming a full house cat, with occasional outdoor time on his own terms. Each transition happened gradually, guided by patience and consistency. Living alongside other cats has come with some growing pains, especially around mealtimes, but there are more playful moments now and fewer signs of stress.
As Larry settles in, his personality has become impossible to miss. His large paws, striking features, and confident presence fill the space he's in. Watching him relax into comfort feels like witnessing a quiet victory. After a long stretch of surviving, Larry finally has a place to belong.
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland wonders if "gifts for geeks" is the next big consumer demographic:
For this year's holiday celebrations, Hallmark made a special Christmas tree ornament, a tiny monitor displaying screens from the classic video game "Oregon Trail." ("Recall the fun of leading a team of oxen and a wagon loaded with provisions from Missouri to the West....") Top sites and major brands are now targeting the "tech" demographic — including programmers, sysadmins and even vintage game enthusiasts — and when Hallmark and Amazon are chasing the same customers as GitHub and Copilot, you know there's been a strange yet meaningful shift in the culture...
While AI was conquering the world, GitHub published its "Ultimate gift guide for the developer in your life" just as soon as doors opened on Black Friday. So if you're wondering, "Should I push to production on New Year's Eve?" GitHub recommends their new "GitHub Copilot Amazeball," which it describes as "GitHub's magical collectible ready to weigh in on your toughest calls !" Copilot isn't involved — questions are randomly matched to the answers printed on the side of a triangle-shaped die floating in water. "[Y]ou'll get answers straight from the repo of destiny with a simple shake," GitHub promises — just like the Magic 8 Ball of yore. "Get your hands on this must-have collectible and enjoy the cosmic guidance — no real context switching required!"
And GitHub's "Gift Guide for Developers" also suggests GitHub-branded ugly holiday socks and keyboard keycaps with GitHub's mascots.
But GitHub isn't the only major tech site with a shopping page targeting the geek demographic. Firefox is selling merchandise with its new mascot. Even the Free Software Foundation has its own shop, with Emacs T-shirts, GNU beanies and a stuffed baby gnu ("One of our most sought-after items ... "). Plus an FSF-branded antisurveillance webcam guard.
Maybe Dr. Seuss can write a new book: "How the Geeks Stole Christmas." Because this newfound interest in the geek demographic seems to have spread to the largest sites of all. Google searches on "Gifts for Programmers" now point to a special page on Amazon with suggestions like Linux crossword puzzles. But what coder could resist a book called " Cooking for Programmers? "Each recipe is written as source code in a different programming language," explains the book's description... The book is filled with colorful recipes — thanks to syntax highlighting, which turns the letters red, blue and green. There are also real cooking instructions, but presented as an array of strings, with both ingredients and instructions ultimately logged as messages to the console...
Some programmers might prefer their shirts from FreeWear.org, which donates part of the proceeds from every sale to its corresponding FOSS project or organization. (There are T-shirts for Linux, Gnome and the C programming language — and even one making a joke about how hard it is to exit Vim.)
But maybe it all proves that there's something for everybody. That's the real heartwarming message behind these extra-geeky Christmas gifts — that in the end, tech is, after all, still a community, with its own hallowed traditions and shared celebrations.
It's just that instead of singing Christmas carols, we make jokes about Vim.
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