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From Matty Merritt at Morning Brew:

Gambling on commercial flights has been illegal in the US since 1962, but there have been attempts to change the law over the last few decades. In 1991, US-registered cruise ships secured gambling rights, and a few smaller airlines such as Northwest Airlines and TWA attempted unsuccessfully to use the momentum to bring betting aboard their flights.

Mr. Meritt noted one unusccessful implementation of on-flight gambling:

Singapore Airlines attempted to put physical slot machines on a flight in 1981. It was popular, but the machines kept breaking.

[Source: Matty Merritt at Morning Brew (archived)]

I cannot think of anything commercial airliners need more than on-flight gambling. It should go well with on-flight booze to make flying a more pleasant experience for everyone. This news ties in nicely to my list of things I learned in 2024, in which I discussed learning about Washington D.C.’s official sports gambling partnership with FanDuel. Speaking of sports gambling, that was the subject of my 01-02-25 Thing I Learned.

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On December 23, 2024, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) made an exciting announcement:

The Coast Guard has officially welcomed its first polar icebreaker in more than 25 years – the recently acquired Aiviq, a commercial vessel that will be renamed CGC Storis.

I extend a hardy welcome to Storis. The USCG press release included some good facts about the newest member of its fleet:

  • Storis is named aftrer “the original CGS Storis, a legendary light icebreaker and medium endurance cutter commissioned in 1942 that patrolled for submarines and ran convoys during World War II and led the first American transit of the Northwest Passage.” (Also see: Dedicated USCG article on the CGS Storis)
  • The new CGC Storis has undergone limited changes since its acquisition last month. These included painting the hull red and labeling the ship as WAGB-21. (Note: “Last month” would be November 2024.)
  • The vessel will be permanently homeported in Juneau, Alaska once the shoreside infrastructure is ready. The design and construction work for the homeporting project will take several years
  • As of December 23, 2024, the USCG “only has two operational icebreakers.” One of those two icebreakers, the CGC Healy, “was temporarily sidelines after experiencing an electrical fire in July.” The other icebreaker, CGS Polar Star, “is nearly 50 years old.”
  • The USCG purchased M/V Aiviq from Offshore Surface Vessels LLC for $125 million.
  • The new CGC Storis, formerly the M/V Aviq, was built in 2012. It is 360-feet long and a class 3-equivalent icebreaker.
  • Before it becaome a USCG vessel, the M/V Aviq “supported oil exploration in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska in the Arctic Ocean, and has deployed twice to the Antarctic.”
  • The new CGS Storis will help bridge a gap while the USCG works on acquiring new Polar Security Cutters.
  • “The initial commissioning crew of the future CGC Storis will consist of approximately 60 officers and enlisted personnel. They will be assigned in the summer of 2025.”

[Source: Kathy Murray for My CG]

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Golf gets a new look with high-tech indoor league by Cassandra Cassidy (Morning Brew)
TGL has star power in Woods, but the sports world is waiting to see if young fans take to the new age game, or if it flounders like SlamBall.

Cassandra Cassidy concluded a report in Morning Brew about the TGL, a new indoor golf league headlined by Tiger Woods and Rory McIllroy, by asking an open-ended question: “[T]he sports world is waiting to see if young fans take to the new age game, or if it flounders like SlamBall.” [Cassandra Cassidy at Morning Brew (01/07/25)] I submit for the record that when I started reading the article (I had not previously read about TGL), my first thought was SlamBall. Seldom have I ever felt so on the same weve-length as a reporter. All jokes aside, SlamBall, which is roughly basketball-plus-trampolines (I found it vaguely reminiscent of the NBA Street video games), is neat for the first five-to-ten minutes. I remember when ESPN tried to make it a thing in the early 2000s and I watched a couple of games, but its moment came and went quickly. The TGL is similarly (if not more) gimmicky, but it has the advantage of having the biggest name in golf (still Tiger Woods) whereas SlamBall did not feature any broadly recognizable practitioners. You may be wondering how this is a things I learned post. Learning that TGL exists is not very exciting and I noted that I remember watching SlamBall in the early 2000s. While looking for a good SlamBall link, I learned that ESPN apparently planned to air SlamBall in 2023 and 2024. [Katie Hughes Martin for ESPN Press Room (June 21, 2023)] That was the plan at least, but it does not look like SlamBall 2024 happened. [Wikipedia; January 11, 2025 capture of blank 2024 schedule on SlamBall website] In any event, it was (or is) a solid come-back, I assumed that SlamBall had gone the way of the dodo after the first ESPN rodeo in 2002.

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Gloria Murli of Rikers Island Cat Rescue estimates that there are 300-350 feral cats living on Rikers Island. According to The City, there were “:around 1,000” cats in the early 2000s. The New York Times reported on September 1, 2002, that there were then “[u]p to 18 cat colonies” and that the cat population “hit an estimated 250 to 400.” (I am not sure where The City got the 1,000 number.) The cat population was brought under control by a trap-neuter program in the early 2000s. [Sources: Haidee Chu for The City; Tara Bahrampour for The New York Times (2002)]

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Cars are going high-tech at the risk of software woes by Cassandra Cassidy (Morning Brew)
Automakers have yet to figure out how to balance shiny futuristic dashboards with seamless software updates. Software fixes accounted for 15% of US recalls last year, an increase from 6% in 2019, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Cars used to be analogue back in my day. Now, according to Cassandra Cassidy of Morning Brew, 15% of U.S. car recalls in 2024 were due to software issues. [Cassandra Cassidy at Morning Brew] While I am not a proponent of excessive regulation, perhaps some of the time and energy used to push electric cars should be devoted to ensuring that people still have access to normal cars that do not require constant software updates. Of course, I get motion-sick (a point I referenced in a photo post about a car), so I prefer walking, which does not require any software.

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Haleluya Hadero of the Associated Press begins her report [Haleluya Hadero for The Associated Press]:

Hearing a lot about Lemon8 lately? You’re not the only one.

I have not heard of Lemon8. Is this going to be another Temu situation?

Ms. Hadero continued:

Amid a looming U.S. ban on TikTok, content creators have been pushing the platform’s sister app. Lemon8 resembles an amalgamation of the types of short-form videos found on TikTok and the picture-perfect aesthetic of Instagram and Pinterest.

Sister? TikTok has siblings other than the for-Chinese version of TikTok (since China does not allow TikTok)?

Like its popular relation, Lemon8 is owned by China-based ByteDance, whose collection of internationally available apps also includes the video editing app CapCut and the photo and art editing app Hypic. In addition, the company operates Douyin, the Chinese sibling of TikTok that follows Beijing’s strict censorship rules.

TikTok should be banned (you were right the first time Mr. President-elect). When it tries to give you a lemon, you should also ban the lemon. When it tries to give you eight lemons, you should ban all eight lemons.

 

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Meta's fact-checking exit prompts urgent IFCN meeting by Pranav Dixit (Business Insider)
According to a 2023 report published by the IFCN, income from Meta's Third-Party Fact-Checking Program and grants remain fact-checkers' predominant revenue streams.

Business Insider referenced a 2023 report from the International Fact-Checking Network (shudders) about how the fact-checking complex is funded. [Business Insider] I followed a link to the report (credit to Business Insider for including it) and found the relevant passage:

Income from Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program and grants remain fact-checkers’ predominant revenue streams. Notably, grants now support approximately 87% of survey respondents, overtaking Meta’s 3PFC as the most common funding source. Other significant sources include training activities (55%) and memberships or user donations (50%).

[2023 State of Fact-Checkers Report by IFCN]

Meta was the second-biggest funder of the fact-checking complex after unpsecified grants. Page 14 of the report noted that 63.5% of members of the IFCN participated in Facebook’s third party fact-checking (3PFC) program in 2023, which was actually down from 66.7% in 2022, 66.3% in 2021, and 79.2% in 2020. Page 15 of the report noted that only 14.6% participated in TikTok’s (which should be banned) fact-checking program (the report noted that every participant in TikTok’s program also participated in Facebook’s program).

That the fact-checking complex was receiving significant funding from Facebook was hardly a secret, but the particulars are interesting now that Facebook is ending its fact-checking program. Regardless of how this changes Facebook, it will likely have a material effect on the revenue of some of the fact-checking entitities which participated in Facebook’s program. For whatever it is worth, I consider this news a positive development for reasons I discussed back in 2020 in my little-read Proposals for Fact-Checking Reform essay (which came at the height of the fact-checking industrial complex’s power). For a more incisive take, I largely agree with John Sexton’s post yesterday in HotAir, which was what initially led me to the Business Insider and IFCN reports. [John Sexton]

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TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus features a glare-free NXTPAPER 4.0 display by Brad Linder (liliputing.com)

The TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus is a tablet with an 11.5 inch display featuring a 120 Hz refresh rate and up to 550 nits brightness. It’s also the first tablet to feature TCL’s NXTPAPER 4.0 display technology, which the company says offers a more paper-like viewing experience than ever thanks to hardware and software improvements. NXTPAPER […]

The screen on the TCL NXTPAPER tablets is intriguing to me. [See Liliputing report] Intriguing enough for me to spend $200 on an Android tablet by a Chinese TV manufacturer that “is also baking … AI features into the tablet”? No. I do not even let my 2019 TCL TV talk to the internet, much less a tablet which would depend on updates. (This more or less also summarizes my thoughts on the BOOX line of e-ink devices.) But it would be neat to have this sort of screen on a Linux-friendly device (or even LineageOS-friendly if the project ever adds some of the NXTPAPER tablets to its list of supported devices). I suppose I would consider a cheap one if I could get some of the Google/AI cruft off the homescreen and use it as an e-reader without turning on wi-fi. For now, I will stick with my Pocketbooks for my e-reader needs (my Kindle Paperwhite does make a few rare appearances.)

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On December 18, 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that “U.S. authorities are investigating whether a Chinese company whose popular home-internet routers have been linked to cyberattacks poses a national-security risk and are considering banning the devices.” I learned a few interesting facts beyond the top-line story:

  • “The router-manufacturer TP-Link, established in China, has roughly 65% of the U.S. market for routers for homes and small businesses.” TP-Link’s home and small business marketshare for routers was only 20% in 2019. The Wall Street Journal attributes the jump to an increase in working from home beginning in 2020 and TP-Link’s low prices.
  • “The Justice Department is investigating whether the price discrepancies violate a federal law that prohibits attempts at monopolies by selling products for less than they cost to make…” (Note: For whatever it is worth, I do not think TP-Link is strikingly cheap compared to other “popular” consumer routers and access points, but I could be off.)
  • TP-Link devices are used by the Department of Defense, Drug Enforcement Agency, NASA, and other agencies.
  • “An analysis from Microsoft published in October found that a Chinese hacking entity maintains a large network of compromised network devices mostly comprising thousands of TP-Link routers.”
  • According to the Journal, people familiar with the TP-Link investigation have stated that the company does not engage with security researches complainted about security flaws in TP-Link products.
  • “TP-Link routers don’t appear to be related to China’s alleged breaches of at least eight U.S. telecom firms by a group dubbed Salt Typhoon…” Chinese hackers instead targeted out-of-date routers built by Cisco and Netgear.
  • Taiwan has banned government and educational facilities from using TP-Link routers. India issued a warning in 2024 that TP-Link routers present a security risk.

[Source: U.S. Weighs Ban on Chinese-Made Router in Millions of American Homes (Wall Street Journal). Original Link. Archived Link.]

I used a TP-Link router for several years before upgrading to a MikroTik hAP ac3 router. As of the writing of the instant post, I still use a TP-Link wireless access point (it is a pure AP, no router capabilities), but I am in the process of swapping it out for a Netgear router with OpenWrt, which I will use as an Access Point instead of a router.

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I noticed when reviewing my server logs that the comments feeds for individual posts were receiving hits. This is undesirable since the only “comments” we have are pingbacks and webmentions. I wanted to remove the comments feeds from the head. I found a solution in a 2018 Stack Overflow post combined with an addendum from another user. I added the following code to the child theme functions.php both here and on The New Leaf Journal:

add_filter('feed_links_show_comments_feed', function() {
return false;
});

[Solution Source: Users leoauri and Ivan Shatsky on Stack Overflow]

(PS: I am not a WordPress developer. Please do your own research and double check your work before messing with your functions.php, but it seems to be working here. If someone has a better solution, do tell.)

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Back in November 2023, I wrote a joke article about having the good foresight to review the first season of The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten, which had aired in the winter 2023 season, before a second season was announced that fall. While my actual review of the show did surge in views with the announcement, it was eventually overtaken by the joke article (that was not by design) so much so that by the end of 2024, the joke article was my 3rd most-visited article of the year while my serious review was 16th. The joke article just completed its best-ever week in terms of page views (albeit not good enough to overcome my review of Kaori After Story for the number-one spot this past week), and it is showing no signs of slowing down. I wondered what gives. Perhaps it was the release of a teaser image pertaining for the upcoming second season (note: no release date yet).

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According to Roger Sherman, under college football rules, “[i]t’s legal to change a player’s uniform number mid-season—all that matters is the roster submitted to the officials on gameday.” This ensures that the opposing team has the opportunity to review the changes. If the change was not noted before the game, “it would have had to be reported to the official and announced” when the player in question takes the field. There are additional rules, such as those governing changing a player’s number to the number of a player at a different position. Conversely, the NFL avoids any issues by prohibiting in-season number changes. [Source: Roger Sherman (12/30/24)] In an earlier article, Mr. Sherman explained that a college football player change jersey numbers in the middle of a game in order to be eligible to catch a forward pass (players must be wearing a number outside of the 50-79 range to be eligible to catch passes). Here, the NFL has a more sensible approach, allowing the Coach to declare an otherwise ineligible receiver eligible before a play. [Source: Roger Sherman (9/27/24), text fragment link]

Things I learned aside, I highly recommend reading the first source article. Mr. Sherman tells a very fun story about selling a fake punt with subterfuge in an otherwise sleepy bowl game between Bowling Green and Arkansas.

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I came across Gautam krishna R’s blog-post-workflow repository on GitHub last night (being January 2, 2025). In short, it is a GitHub workflow for fetching RSS feeds and adding them to a GitHub profile README.md file. I created a profile repository (I had been meaning to for a while) and added three feeds: My ATOM feeds for this site and The New Leaf Journal and my Buttondown newsletter feed. Everything worked, but symbols in headlines for this feed and New Leaf Journal were being rendered oddly. I tried switching both WordPress feeds from ATOM to RSS. Now everything works perfectly. It is possible that I could have fixed the formatting using the available configuration options, but for this purpose (for mosy purposes, really), there is no difference between the WordPress RSS and ATOM feeds. You can see my GitHub profile with the feeds here.

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Project Owlnet is in the business of banding saw-whet owls to learn more about them. Kayla Randall of Smithsonian Magazine explained how they accomplish this:

The group uses an audio lure to entice the birds, capturing them in mist nets to bring back to the banding station. Once there, they place aluminum bands on the birds—’friendship bracelets for science,’ as they’re called within the project. Project participants also measure the owls’ bills, wings and tails.

While I did not know how one would catch and band a saw-whet owl despite having written All About the Saw-whet Owl back in 2021, that passage is not the thing I learned of the day. What caught my attention was how the researchers estimate how old individual Saw-whet owls are:

They use a blacklight to look at the underside of the owls’ wings and see their molt pattern, which helps determine their ages, a difficult task. Old feathers don’t glow as brightly under the light because the pigment has faded, while new feathers have a brighter glow, Boyle Acuti says.

I would not have guessed that they use blacklights to estimate the age of Saw-whet owls. [Source: Kaya Randall for Smithsonian Magazine]

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I present the following quote from Josh Blackman on taking podcasts out of context:

And this is yet another reason why I severely dislike podcasts. This was a 90 minute long discussion where Vance hit on lots of points. If you pluck out a few words here and there, and ignore the broader context, a lot will be missed. I transcribe podcasts, for good reason.

Josh Blackman

I am not a podcast-person, but I agree with the broad point in Mr. Blackman’s opinion. It is easier to take one line or another from a long podcast out of context than it is in a written piece. Transcribing podcasts sounds like a good approach. [Link: Josh Blackman]