Month: January 2026

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This site is hosted on the same server as The New Leaf Journal, and I use Cloudron to manage the server. Beginning around early spring last year, The New Leaf Journal began to crash once every few days when Cloudron health checks failed (I have not had any similar issues with this site, which is much lower traffic). I attributed the problems to bot traffic, and I think I was correct to do so. I tried many fixes, some of which worked for a time before the downtime problems returned. After having a few too many incidents in January, I bit the bullet and moved up a tier on our Hetzner VPS server (I had been on the higher resource tier prior from February 2022 through May 2023 before downgrading to a smaller VPS to save a small amount money, initially without any problems). I thought all was well until NLJ crashed again for three hours yesterday morning. I am not inclined to go up another tier, so I decided to see if I could find a more durable solution that did not involve changing how I run NLJ (I do not have time to sit down and work on that now) or spending more money (I would rather eat the occasional downtime at a point). I poked around and noticed that Cloudron has a built-in firewall separate from app-level settings (I use Jeff Starr’s 8G Firewall in the .htaccess files for both this site and NLJ for app-level protection). I figured that preventing the bots from hitting NLJ at all may reduce strain on the site, which was pushing my server’s CPU limits far more often than I would like. I found an up-to-date list of bad IPs from AbuseIPD maintained in a GitHub repository and dumped them into my Cloudron firewall (I noted that all of the recent malicious bots that had hit NLJ that day were included on the list). Did it have an effect? I present the following chart showing CPU and RAM usage for NLJ over the previous seven days.

Screenshot from Cloudron UI showing 7-day CPU and RAM usage for The New Leaf Journal from about noon on 01/23/26 through the same time on 01/30/26. There is a noticeable huge dropoff on the CPU and RAM charts beginning in the middle of 01/29/26.

What do you think? Thoughts? As an aside, I will note that Koko Analytics, the free and open source local page visit counting solution I use here and on NLJ, shows no noticeable drop in legitimate visitor traffic since I started using Cloudron’s firewall yesterday. I am crossing my fingers that keeping the Cloudron firewall up to date will resolve the NLJ issues I have been having.

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On January 30, 2026, Time Extension reported that the Sega 32X version of Virtua Racing has been decompiled. If you are reading this, there is a decent chance you may have questions such as “Sega 32what?” or “do you mean Virtual?” But for me, the headline represented a bit of nostalgia in my Miniflux feed reader. On December 6, 2024, I published an article on The New Leaf Journal titled Musing About Tesla Cybertruck at Brooklyn Bridge Park. The post was prompted by my photo of a Cybertruck parked in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and turned to a discussion on Cybertruck aesthetics. I offered my own specious take on the design of the Cybertruck, inspired by my own history with video games. I excerpt the pertinent part of my post below:

As I noted in an article about a classic Electronic Gaming Monthly April Fools joke, I owned a Sega 32X back in the mid-1990s. For those not in the know, the now-30 year old 32X was an ill-fated video game console which plugged into the far more successful Sega Genesis’ cartridge slot and protruded from the Genesis like a mushroom (despite plugging into the Genesis’ cartridge slot, it needed its own power brick without replacing the Genesis’ power brick) … I did not have a complete library of 32X games, but I distinctly remember that my first two cartridges were Virtua Racing Deluxe and and Star Wars Arcade. Both of which are very distinctly early 3D games of the 1990s – where the models are blocky and you can make out the rough edges of every polygon. At the risk of dating myself, the first thing I thought when I found myself face-to-face with the sheet metal of the Cybertruck was Virtua Racing.

Nicholas A. Ferrell

I recall being terrible at Virtua Racing, but I definitely played around with it a bit back in the day. My most important take-away from it being decompiled is that I can feel special for being one of the relatively small number of people to have had a 32X and Virtua Racing back in the 90s (fortunately, I received mine when it was in the bargain bin, after the short period when it was selling at its launch price). Between this news and Nintendo deciding to acknowledge the existence of the Virtual Boy (I should work on refurbishing my Virtual Boy…), 2026 is shaping up to be a good year for failed mid-90s novelty consoles.

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Quoted Georgia Hopes to Reverse Venezuela’s Recognition of Occupied Territories by The Jamestown FoundationThe Jamestown Foundation (The Jamestown Foundation)
There is presently a rare opportunity for Tbilisi to push for Syria and Venezuela’s formal reversals of recognition. The Kremlin’s close partners, Maduro and al-Assad, are no longer in a position to influence recognition of Georgia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Venezuela is one of just a few countries that recognizes the independence of Georgia’s two breakway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Jamestown foundation suggests that Georgia has a golden opportunity to push for Venezuela to de-recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia now that Nicolas Maduro has (been) moved to my home borough of Brooklyn. While this may be true in theory, I fear that Marco Rubio is busy enough that Venezuela’s official position on the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will not be high on his to-do list. But I suppose it would not hurt for Georgia to ask (and perhaps ease up on trying to ban the political opposiion and certain relgious groups while maintaining a very confused posture with respect to the country that is responsible for maintaining its two breakway regions).

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I subscribe to the RSS feed for Brownstoner, a real estate and news publication focusing on Brooklyn. I opened up the January 27, 2026 daily links post by Anna Bradley-Smith and was greeted by a snowman (or snowwoman?) with a very wide base (see photo). Having documented multiple snowmen on The New Leaf Journal (see 2020 (a), 2020 (b), 2021, and 2025 snowmen), I was curious whether I could document the one presented in Brownstoner. Upon examining the image caption and file name, I determined that I could not. Firstly, the image caption says the snowman is in Bed-Stuy. While I can walk to Bed-Stuy (I walked there in 2021 on the same walk I captured a Santa delivery van), I do not go there often and would not be inclined to wander around looking for a snowman in the current walking conditions. But the file name presented a more serious impediment to documenting the wide-base snowman. While the end of the file name specifies “MacDonough Street,” which would help narrow down the location of the snowman, the beginning of the file name includes 2026/01. In light of the fact that it is now 2026/27, I fear that the charming snowman in the photo is no longer with us.

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I have never been a fan of TikTok and long called for it to be banned yesterday. Despite having come close, President Trump was derermined to snag partial defeat from the jaws of victory, potentially ameliorating some, but certainly not all, of the concerns I have raised about TikTok in a deal of questionable legality under the TikTok divestment law. Even were we to sepparate the Chinese Communist Party concerns from TikTok, its rapid fire short video format combined with its promotion of pure algorithmic “consumption” is conducive to “bad content” and turning the brans of its “users” into pudding. To paraphrase James Carville: It’s the format stupid. TikTok is not always the only problem. I note this all to set up a question: Could there be anything more insufferable than the old or new TikTok? After reading an article in the Verge titled TikTokers are heading to UpScrolled following US takeover (HT GadgeteerZA), I fear the answer is yes: A TikTok consisting of people leaving TikTok to post more TikTok-style videos could be worse than TikTok.

(All jokes aside, I am willing to grant that in a structural design sense, that UpScrolled and the Fediverse answer to TikTok, Loops, eschew TikTok’s infamous algorithmic approach is an improvement, but the short video format is the problem. Consider me anti-TikTok clone for reasons largely unrelated to why I personally led the charge to ban TikTok. Something that is conducive to creating meaningful writing and anudio-visual media is preferable to alternatives or proxies that encourage more content.)

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I stumbled upon a January 15, 2011 analytically-inclined defense of Carmelo Anthony by Nate Silver (I also think the 2012-13 Knicks prove it was at least possible to construct a championship-caliber team around Mr. Anthony), written at the hight of the Anthony-to-Knicks trade rumors that would culminate with the Nuggets trading Mr. Anthony to the Knicks justover one month after Mr. Silver published his essay. While I agree with most of the points Mr. Silver raised in Mr. Anthony’s favor, his reasoning behind one point lacked context.

[F]or instance, Allen Iverson’s True Shooting Percentage was 55.9 percent – much better than the 51.2 TS% that Iverson, a notoriously inefficient shooter, posted outside of Denver over the course of his career.

Nate Silver

The Philadelphia 76ers traded Allen Iverson to the Denver Nuggets in the middle of the 2006-07 season, where he and Carmelo Anthony formed a high-scoring duo. The Nuggets would trade Mr. Iverson to the Detroit Pistons very early in the 2008-09 season. Both Messrs. Anthony and Iverson put up good individual numbers together, although their partnership resulted in two swift first round playoff exists, while the Nuggets reached the Western Conference Finals in 2008-09 with Chauncey Billups in place of Mr. Iverson. With that being said, fear Mr. Silver left out some important context in his assertion. I will focus on the 2007-08 season, which is the only complete season Messrs. Anthony and Iverson were teammates.

  • Mr. Iverson had a career-best true shooting percentage of .567 in 2007-08, which does support Mr. Silver’s position. However, it is worth noting that Mr. Anthony also had his career-best true shooting percentage in 2007-08, coming in at .568. In both cases, one reason they helped make each other more efficient was because their usage rates ticked down. Mr. Iverson used 26.7% of Denver’s possessions while he was on the floor in 2007-08, the lowest number of his career to that point. From 1998-99 through 2005-06, Mr. Iverson never had a usage rate lower than the 32.6% he posted in 1998-99. Mr. Anthony had a usage rate of 30.2% in 2007-08, down from 33.4% in 2006-07 and 32.0% in 2005-06.  It was his lowest since 29.2% in 2004-05. (It is worth noting however that Mr. Anthony almost matched his 2007-08 TS% in 2005-06, coming in at .563 at 32.0% usage).
  • Mr. Iverson’s true shooting percentages generally improved at extreme usage beginning in 2004-05, which coincidentally was the season where the NBA started cracking down on making contact with players on the perimeter. After having a then-career high TS% of .535 in his sophomore season in 1998-99 (his last season below 30% usage until 2006-07), Mr. Iverson’s best season from 1999-00 through 2003-04 was .518 in his MVP 2000-01 campaign. In 2004-05, Mr. Iverson posted .532 and followed that up with a then-career high .543 in 2005-06. His usage rates in those seasons were 35.0% and 35.8% respectively. While I do not have a formula to show you, I will note that Mr. Iverson’s true shooting percentages in 2004-05 and 2005-06 were probably more impressive than his better number in 2007-08 when we factor in his usage rate.
  • Similarly, Mr. Anthony went on to have at least one season that was clearly better than 2007-08. In 2012-13, he posted a slightly lower .561 true shooting percentage on NBA-leading 35.6% usage.

For more Carmelo Anthony-Chauncey Billups reading, see my NLJ essay Should the Pistons have drafted Carmelo?

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From Windows Vista effectively dead as Windows Server 2008 support finally ends (Usama Jawad for Neowin. January 15, 2026):

Windows Server 2008 was supported via the Premium Assurance program until January 13, 2026. Although this support program no longer exists, volume licensing enterprise customers were grandfathered into the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, which finally expired a couple of days ago for this particular SKU.

What does the end of the last official support channel for Windows Server 2008 have to do with Windows Vista? I quote again from the article:

he SKU was built on the Windows Vista/Longhorn codebase, which is why it was internally called “Windows Server Codename “Longhorn”.

While Windows Server 2008 is not Vista, it was apparently built on the Vista codebase (although Neowin notes Windows Server 2008 R2 was built on Windows 7). Thus, in a sense, I suppose this is the true, official end of Windows Vista. While I never used Windows Server 2008 (or any flavor of Windows Server for that matter), I used a Windows Vista PC as my primary computer for a couple of years in the 2009-11 area, and I believe I first stumbled upon the Insani al|together visual novel translations on my Vista computer. While I know Vista was not popular, I can report that I do not recall having any problems with it or using it much differently than I had been using XP. Note that I did have the 64-bit version of Vista.

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I mailed the 264th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal earlier today. I included 21 links from around the web (the usual). I had one saved link (see how I save links) noting the unfortunate consequences of putting a request for a Court to take one action or another in a footnote. I decided to take that as a challenge and use many footnotes in my newsletter (I wrote the footnotes in markdown by the way). While I do not think I will do the same thing in Newsletter Leaf Journal 265 next week, I must say that Buttondown’s web viewer displays footnotes in a neat way (see my newsletter and see what you think). They also came out well (more “traditionally”) in my Miniflux feed reader (our newsletter has an RSS feed by the way).

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Quoting from Brad Linder’s Mecha Comet modular Linux handheld hits Kickstarter for $189 and up on Liliputing:

The Mecha Comet is a modular handheld Linux computer featuring a modular input section below a 3.92 inch AMOLED display, allowing you to swap out a QWERTY keyboard for a gamepad, I/O board, or other modules.

I must say this Mecha Comet looks cool. While a handheld Linux computer is neat in and of itself, I love the “modular input selection” concept. I quote again from Mr. Linder’s report:

Note that these prices don’t include input modules. So you’ll have to pay an extra $25 for a keyboard extension, $20 for a gamepad extension, or $15 for an I/O breakout extension (that exposes 40 IO pins). There are also discounts for folks that buy a bundle with two or more of these extension modules.

I would enjoy being able to swap between the keyboard and gamepad extensions. In fact, let us add that to my ideal phone concept (I will even sacrifice my e-ink preference if we can get a good gaming set-up). Alas, while it looks cool, I’m not made of enough money to throw down $200+ for a low-end handheld computer with attachments. Is this were I ask someone to send me one for a “review”? I kid, but I will be watching this one closely and hoping that the “modular” thing catches on (I could see it being interesting for handheld game consoles as well as for phones and computers).

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One year to the day, I published Trump 2024 vs Bush 2004: State-by-State on The New Leaf Journal. The concept for the article was the striking similarity between the Presidential Election victories of Donald Trump in 2024 and George W. Bush in 2004 in terms of states won, notwithstanding notable differences in their winning coalitions. It was a fun survey, but apart from my research, I must say I created a nice feature image. I placed President Trump’s 2024 inaugural portrait and former President Bush’s official portrait side-by-side. They worked well side-by-side despite the fact that President Trump was obviously mimicking the expression he had in his Georgia mugshot taken several months before he regained the presidency, while President Bush had a presidential portrait in the style of every President from Nixon-Biden (including Trump 45, which I turned into “art” back in 2020). One reason they worked was because President Trump still had the American Flag in the background. In June, President Trump released his official portrait, which was just him staring seriously into the camera with a dark backdrop (the backdrop recalled pre-Kennedy portraits, last seen with Eisenhower). I am glad he did not switch before I wrote my research study. The new portrait would have clashed with President Bush’s, although it would have worked decently well for a Trump 24-Coolidge 24 comparison.

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I just finished creating and publishing a new version of The Newsletter Leaf Journal Sign-Up page on The New Leaf Journal. It had been a long time since I last changed the page. I improved the structure of the page, beginning by listing different ways people can subscribe to or otherwise follow our Saturday newsletter before explaining what people can expect to find and why I think they should consider reading. One point I highlight is that The Newsletter Leaf Journal is also the official newsletter of this humble website, so it is a great way to keep up with our new posts here as well as with my long-form New Leaf Journal articles.

Redesigning our Newsletter page had been on my to-do list for some time. Two things motivated me to complete the project. Firstly, my Winter 2026 project involves clearing things from my writing backlog. Second, I referenced adding a QR code for our Newsletter homepage in a draft article (now published), so I could not publish that draft article until I actually published the new Newsletter page.

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I learned that Ebay updated its terms of service to explicitly prohibit the use of “buy-for-me agents, LLM-driven bots, or any end-to-end flow that attempts to place orders without human review” on site (Liz Morton for Value Added Resource, January 21 2026). This sounds like a sound policy to me. Even were I to set aside my negative view of buy for me agents, I doubt that Ebay or individual sellers on Ebay (some of whom provide great and novel service) want to deal with angry customers who outsourced their brains and wallets to AI. But I would not have covered the story here but for a note in Ms. Morton’s report on the policy change:

It also comes on the heels of Amazon’s controversial Buy For Me test which uses agentic AI to display items from direct merchant websites for sale through the Amazon app, even if the brand does not sell on Amazon themselves – raising concerns about transparency, consent, and control over how product details are displayed to buyers.

Back in November, I published a short post in support of Amazon’s decision to block Perplexity AI from making purchases on behalf of Perplexity users.

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I started “playing” (more accurately, reading) a visual novel called Christmas Tina on Christmas. As I explained in an earlier post, I am working on a NLJ review of Christmas Tina. Had you asked me when I started, I would have thought that I would have published the review well before mid-January. Alas, circumstances intervened. The circumstances include, but are not limited to, having been briefly sick and subsequently left with a persistent cough, “work work,” other lengthly NLJ projects, and a secret project that I hope to reveal by the end of the month. I finally resumed Christmas Tina on January 16, 2026. Upon restoring my save, I was greeted with the following screen:

Scene for Christmas Tina. Against a black background we see the text: "About two weeks had passed. It was mid-January."

“About two weeks had passed. It was mid January.”

While a little bit more than two weeks had passed since I last “played” Christmas Tina, it is indeed mid-January. Perhaps everything is working out just like it should.

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From a January 12, 2026 Jamestown Foundation report by Vadim Shtepa:

The Karelian language has no official status in Russia because it is written in the Latin alphabet, as only those written in Cyrillic can be official languages of Russian republics.

Thus, I learned that only languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet can be granted “official status” in Russia. This reminded me of something I learned which inspired me to write Similarities between Moldovan and Romanian on The New Leaf Journal in 2023. A report about Moldova changing its official state language from Moldovan to Romanian explained that the main difference between the highly similar languages is that Moldovan uses the Cyrillic alphabet while Romanian uses the Latin alphabet.

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Replied to In The Beginning There Was Slop by Jim Nielsen (blog.jim-nielsen.com)
You don’t need AI to produce slop because slop isn’t made by AI. It’s made by humans — AI is just the popular tool of choice for making it right now.

Regular readers will now that while I think there are some potentially good use-cases for AI, I do not count so-called “content creation” among them. But does that mean that AI is the cause of blog slop? I found myself agreeing with a blog post by Jim Nielsen titled In The Beginning There Was Slop, wherein Mr. Nielsen aptly observed that “there was slop before AI came on the scene.” While AI may be behind a dramatic increase in the amont of slop, it is, as Mr. Nielsen correctly opined, “just the popular tool of choice for making it now.” “Content” created for algorithms and bots rather than human beings is inhumane whether it is created by a person or a bot. While standing athwart slop generation yelling stop will not in fact make it stop, I like to think I do my small part by making an effort to write things worth reading (your mileage may vary, of course) and encouraging my readers to build digital homes and take control of their own reading and media viewing.