Longtime Slashdot reader williamyf writes: The Italian company Bending Spoons seems to be on an acquisitions spree. Their recent acquisitions of AOL and Vimeo are not yet finalized, yet on Dec. 2 they announced they are buying Eventbrite, a company specializing in publicizing and organizing local events, for just half a milliard USD. Bending Spoons' portfolio also includes other companies like Evernote and WeTransfer. Further reading: Private Equity Hipsters Are Coming For Your Favorite Apps (2024)
Coworker: "Yup, looks like [process] got stuck. I'll just kill it."
Me: "Go ahead."
Coworker: "Actually, do I need HR approval for that?"
Me: "…For what?"
Coworker: "For killing a process. I don’t want to get written up for workplace violence."
Me: "Ma'am, we're closing."
Customer: "I know! I always come at this time! I know you can't tell me to leave, and you're all so eager to get me out, you give me the most attentive service!"
"You think you hate it now, but wait till you drive it." –Vacation
The station wagon lost the culture war to minivans, got buried by SUVs, and crushed by corporate tax incentives. But it's not dead, just hiding in Europe under a roof box and calling itself a "crossover." — Read the rest
The rising cost of living is squeezing Americans, with polls finding that roughly three-quarters say prices are higher than they were a year ago and that nearly half blame President Donald Trump for that spike.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed those concerns on Thursday when asked whether he thought Republicans were doing enough to address the affordability crisis in the U.S.
“Relax," Johnson told NBC News reporter Melanie Zanona. "We are exactly on the trajectory of where we've always planned to be. Steady at the wheel, everybody. It's gonna be fine. Our best days are ahead of us.”
Johnson insisted that Americans will start to receive relief from the affordability crisis next year, when the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” provisions take effect.
However, the people most impacted by rising costs are likely to be harmed by the OBBB, which makes massive cuts to Medicaid and food stamps—programs that the poorest Americans rely on.
What’s more, telling Americans—millions of whom are resorting to using “buy now, pay later” plans to afford their grocery bills—to "relax" is not a satisfactory solution to their current problems.
Indeed, Trump and his party won the 2024 election largely because they promised to tackle affordability on Day 1 of the new administration.
"Starting on Day 1, we will end inflation and make America affordable again," Trump said during a 2024 campaign rally in Montana. "This election is about saving our economy."
“Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down and we will make America affordable again. We’re going to make it affordable again," Trump said again last August, during a rally in Pennsylvania.
Yet Trump has not done that.
Instead, he implemented tariffs that are raising prices and are now starting to hammer the labor market. This year, layoff announcements have reached their highest level since 2020, according to a new report released Thursday by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
With polls showing the affordability crisis hurting his approval rating and Republicans’ chances at holding their congressional majorities next November, an angry Trump is now calling the affordability crisis a "fake narrative" and a "con job by the Democrats."
But even Republicans are aware that that message won’t be sufficient for them to hold their House majority in the 2026 midterm elections.
“The best friend the Democrats have right now is the Republicans’ messaging, because we do a terrible job of messaging,” Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee told CNN. “We got a real problem, and we better wake up.”
Suffice it to say, telling Americans to “relax” is likely not what Burchett was thinking when he said his party needs to fix their messaging on affordability.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey clapped back to President Donald Trump’s racist tirades against Somali immigrants in his city. Trump has recently taken to slandering Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Somali American immigrants in an effort to justify his authoritarian overreach.
Frey: It's obviously disturbing that the president of the United States would use terms like “garbage” to talk about an entire community that are Americans. Somali Americans are Americans. They make Minneapolis a better place. And we're proud to have these Americans in our city.
And I think the other thing that we ought to look at is the fact that if they're [the Trump administration] just indiscriminately going after people, due process is violated, habeas corpus is violated. The entire Constitution is in and of itself being thrown in a garbage. So you want to use the term 'garbage'? That's exactly what Donald Trump is doing right now to the Constitution of the United States.
The New York Times and its veteran intelligence reporter, Julian E. Barnes,filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon on Thursday, accusing the Defense Department oftrampling on reporters’ First Amendment rights through a sweeping new set of reporting restrictions.
Those rules—implemented in October—bar journalists from gathering or publishing any information that the government hasn’t explicitly cleared, including declassified documents and off-the-record conversations. It marksa stark break from decades of baseline transparency. Reporters who refused to sign were warned that their access would be suspended.
Many walked. According to the Times, six of its journalists handed in their Pentagon badges, joiningdozens from across major newsrooms who also refused to agree to the terms.
“Fixed it” by Clay Bennett
The Times’ complaint is the first major legal challenge to the policy, seeking not only to block the restrictions but to restore the press passes of reporters now covering the world’s largest military bureaucracy from the outside. In the meantime, what’s left of the on-site Pentagon press corpsis dominated by far-right outlets that had no objection to signing.
In its filing, the Times calls the Pentagon’s rules “exactly the type of speech- and press-restrictive scheme that the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit have recognized violates the First Amendment.” The lawsuit argues the policy “seeks to restrict journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done—ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories [to] the public beyond official pronouncements.”
A broad array of outlets declined to sign the agreement: The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Atlantic, CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, NPR, HuffPost, and Breaking Defense, among them. Even Fox News and Newsmax—typically friendly to Republican administrations—balked.
The Times is asking a federal judge in Washington to halt the rules. In a statement to CNN and other outlets, a spokespersonsaid the paper will “vigorously defend against the violation of these rights, just as we have long done throughout administrations opposed to scrutiny and accountability.”
The spokesperson added that “the policy is an attempt to exert control over reporting the government dislikes, in violation of a free press’s right to seek information under their First and Fifth Amendment rights protected by the Constitution.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his aidesare expected to argue that therules are needed to protect national security and prevent leaks. But the political intent is hard to miss. Hegseth’shigh-profile welcome this week for dozens of pro-Trump influencers—invited for orientation sessions and briefings at the Pentagon—helped make that clear. All signed the new restrictions and, according to his team, represent the “new Pentagon press corps,” despite having little to no background in military reporting.
Meanwhile, seasoned reporters who refused the pledge continue to cover the Pentagon from the outside. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnelldismissed their absence in October, saying those journalists “chose to self-deport” and insisting “they will not be missed.”
The Pentagon Press Association, which represents most of the reporters who pushed back, said it is “encouraged” by the Times’ lawsuit and the paper’s decision to “step up and defend press freedom.” Attorneys expect other outlets to file supporting briefs in the coming weeks.
The suit names the Defense Department, Hegseth, and Parnell as defendants. It’s also unfolding against the backdrop of another legal fight: President Donald Trump’srenewed $15 billion defamation claim against the Times, refiled after a judgetossed the original complaint for being too long.
The clampdown on press access extends beyond the rules at issue in the lawsuit. Earlier this year, the Pentagon stripped several mainstream outlets of in-house workstations. And in September, Hegseth issued a memo limiting when and how military leaders can engage with the public.
For journalists who have covered the building for years, the shift is unmistakable. And for now, the Times is leading the legal—and symbolic—push to claw back some semblance of accountability.
Whether other newsrooms will join it in court remains an open question. But the stakes are clear: the country’s most powerful institution is testing how far it can go in deciding who gets to report on it.
It's not every day that we get to read a story with so many coincidences that needed to happen to facilitate its happy ending. We're sure some invisible strings of fate were pulled by the mysterious Cat Distribution System to make it all happen. After all, that's how it works - from the shadows, from behind the scenes, making sure every coincidental situation occurs just as it should, so all cats in its care would get to their furrever homes - safe, sound, and loved.
But these two specific fluffy feline souls needed a lot of nudges in the right direction to arrive at that very happy end they're in right now. First of all, they both needed to be found individually - each by their own designated hooman. But the CDS made sure both of these people were close friends, who would communicate with each other about their rescues - the lone kitten and the sweet stray mama who lost her litter. Then, the fateful meeting between the two cats needed to happen, and… well, you already know this one has the happiest of endings.
Having one person who cares for a stray cat is one thing, but having two of them is something else. And having them take care of the two in the most optimal way together? Now, that's phenomenal. We wish the mama cat and the kitten many years of happiness together.
joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: Microsoft has silently "mitigated" a high-severity Windows LNK vulnerability exploited by multiple state-backed and cybercrime hacking groups in zero-day attacks. Tracked as CVE-2025-9491, this security flaw allows attackers to hide malicious commands within Windows LNK files, which can be used to deploy malware and gain persistence on compromised devices. However, the attacks require user interaction to succeed, as they involve tricking potential victims into opening malicious Windows Shell Link (.lnk) files. Thus some element of social engineering, and user technically naive and gullibility such as thinking Windows is secure is required. [...]
As Trend Micro threat analysts discovered in March 2025, the CVE-2025-9491 was already being widely exploited by 11 state-sponsored groups and cybercrime gangs, including Evil Corp, Bitter, APT37, APT43 (also known as Kimsuky), Mustang Panda, SideWinder, RedHotel, Konni, and others. Microsoft told BleepingComputer in March that it would "consider addressing" this zero-day flaw, even though it didn't "meet the bar for immediate servicing." ACROS Security CEO and 0patch co-founder Mitja Kolsek found, Microsoft has silently changed LNK files in the November updates in an apparent effort to mitigate the CVE-2025-9491 flaw. After installing last month's updates, users can now see all characters in the Target field when opening the Properties of LNK files, not just the first 260. As the movie the Ninth Gate stated: "silentium est aurum"
A severe spike in global DRAM prices has pushed Samsung Semiconductor to refuse a long-term RAM order from its own sibling, Samsung Electronics. The move is forcing the smartphone division into short, expensive renegotiations, which will likely mean higher costs for consumer devices. PCWorld reports: Samsung subsidiaries are, naturally, going to look to Samsung Semiconductor first when they need parts. Such was reportedly the case for Samsung Electronics, in search of memory supplies for its newest smartphones as the company ramps up production for 2026 flagship designs. But with so much RAM hardware going into new "AI" data centers -- and those companies willing to pay top dollar for their hardware -- memory manufacturers like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are prioritizing data center suppliers to maximize profits.
The end result, according to a report from SE Daily spotted by SamMobile, is that Samsung Semiconductor rejected the original order for smartphone DRAM chips from Samsung Electronics' Mobile Experience division. The smartphone manufacturing arm of the company had hoped to nail down pricing and supply for another year. But reports say that due to "chipflation," the phone-making division must renegotiate quarterly, with a long-term supply deal rejected by its corporate sibling. A short-term deal, with higher prices, was reportedly hammered out.
Federal authorities have arrested a Virginia man in connection with the placement of two pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee headquarters the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in a case that has baffled authorities for nearly five years.
The arrest marks a breakthrough in a case that has stymied investigators for nearly five years.
An FBI official says the arrest happened Thursday morning. A news conference will take place at the Justice Department on Thursday to officially announce the arrest.
Federal investigators have said an individual placed one pipe bomb near the Democratic National Committee headquarters and another near the Republican National Committee headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol.
The FBI has since repeatedly asked the public for information that could lead to an arrest, including releasing in January additional video of the suspect planting one of the bombs. The bureau has said the suspect is estimated to be about 5 feet, 7 inches tall and was wearing Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes with a gold logo.
...
Lawmakers have criticized a lack of arrest in the case.
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes told the media that after meeting Admiral Bradley and watching the video of the double tapped Venezuelan boat, the Democratic lawmaker was floored, "What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service."
Admiral Bradley and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers today to field and answer questions about the boat attack that left two survivors clinging for life, who were subsequently blown apart after a second strike took place.
HIMES: Yes, they were carrying drugs.
They were not in the position to continue their mission in any way, we don't, people will someday see this video and they will see that that video shows, if you don't have the broader context, an attack on shipwrecked sailors.
That's all.
The last thing I'm gonna say is that the admiral confirmed that there had not been a kill them all order and that there was not an order to grant no quarter.
"An attack on shipwrecked sailors," means the US murdered two alleged smugglers.
We need more information on his last remarks because it appears the military leaders are covering for Hegseth.
Susie Madrak already posted about how progressive Democrat Aftyn Behn’s double-digit overperformance in Tuesday’s special election probably frightened the s**t out of Republicans across the country. That’s not counting the fact that Behn says she plans to run again in the upcoming midterms.
Rep. Jamie Raskin brought up another way Behn’s electoral loss was probably a bigger loss for Republicans. She likely threw their big gerrymandering plot into disarray, if not stopped it altogether.
“Unless you’ve got a district that's up 15, 20, 25 points, you're not going to be interested” in gerrymandering it,” Raskin said on MS Now Tuesday night.
That’s because, as host Lawrence O’Donnell further explained, you have to take Republican voters out of a very safe Republican district and redistribute them so that they can swing another district. Those Republicans representing districts won by 18, 22 or 12 points are told, O’Donnell said, “You don't need to win by 12, you can win by eight, you can win by seven. It'll be fine. We're going to shave off 3 or 4% of your Republican vote from your district and move it over here.”
But now, with Behn having turned a 22+ district into a 9+ point one, Republicans will be a whole lot less eager to shave points off their own districts.
How delicious it would be to watch the Trump gerrymandering plan fizzle out or, better yet, totally backfire!
During the course of them working there during the ninety-day trial, the Casino switched their policy to an eighteen-month trial before getting insurance. So, they then proceeded to "find" reasons to fire all of their employees who were coming up on the ninety-day mark so that they would not be grandfathered in.
For just $599 and your dignity, Kohler's new "smart" toilet cam will lovingly photograph your excrement. Ostensibly to analyze your gut health, but, and this is a big but, share those snapshots with the cloud. Nothing says privacy like a lens staring up from your plumbing and a company pretending Transport Layer Security is "end-to-end encryption." — Read the rest
Just imagine - you're moving to a new place, all excited for all the new experiences you're going to have there, the new furniture you're going to decorate your house with, the new neighbors you're going to live right next to, the new… cat that's going to appear on your porch? Well, some new things are truly a surprise when you move to a new place.
And apparently, this is something of a regular occurrence. Sometimes, it seems the cat is sent to the meeting place prior to their soon-to-be human by the Cat Distribution System. It's as if the cats themselves know they're about to meet their forever human, but some force of nature (the CDS, truly) makes them aware the human is moving. So they simply wait for them to arrive - and adopt.
It's true that sometimes the cats simply announce their presence at your home, a kind of "I live here now" moment - like this cat who simply invited himself inside. The similar thread that runs between these CDS cases is that the cats know how to adopt themselves. The humans? They just need to accept their new fate.
And this new porch cat story? She took her time, but she was destined to be adopted by this new resident of the house. She waited patiently, and got adopted as all cats deserve. We wish her and her human many happy years of indoor living.
A man walks up with a plastic baggie.
Customer: "I’ve gotta go meet my wife in the back to talk about the dog’s food. Can you handle this? He got excited."
He points to his dog, and then hands me a warm bag of fresh dog s***.
This video of a hamster wrapped in a paper towel like a tiny burrito, just its little face poking out the top, is the brain palate cleanser you didn't know you needed.
Some hamster facts, since you're already here: They're crepuscular (most active at dawn and dusk) and navigate mainly by smell and touch because their eyesight is terrible. — Read the rest
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