Crooked Bough News Round-up

+ A British redcoat’s lost memoir resurfaces—Shadrack Byfield lost his left arm in the War of 1812; his life sheds ...

+ Scientists sequence a woolly rhino genome from a 14,400-year-old wolf’s stomach—Fortunately for paleogeneticists, wolf puppies don't chew their food t...

+ EPA makes it harder for states, tribes to block pipelines—A new rule aims to speed up and streamline the permitting process. [Ca...

+ EPA moves to stop considering economic benefits of cleaner air—New language criticizes “uncertainties” in longstanding EPA practice. ...

+ Switching water sources improved hygiene of Pompeii’s public baths—Scientists analyzed carbonate deposits from baths, aqueduct to learn m...

+ NASA launches new mission to get the most out of the James Webb Space Telescope—"It was not recognized how serious a problem that is until... about 20...

+ That time Will Smith helped discover new species of anaconda—Footage of the 2024 discovery appears in NatGeo's new documentary seri...

+ The oceans just keep getting hotter—For the eighth year in a row, the world’s oceans absorbed a record-bre...

+ These 60,000-year-old poison arrows are oldest yet found—Hunter-gatherers probably derived the poison from the milky bulb extra...

+ NASA orders “controlled medical evacuation” from the International Space Station—"The crew is highly trained, and they came to the aid of their colleag...

+ These dogs eavesdrop on their owners to learn new words—“Under the right conditions, some dogs present behaviors strikingly si...

+ Trump withdraws US from world’s most important climate treaty—US also pulling out of pacts promoting development, democracy, and hum...

+ NASA considers evacuating ailing crew member from International Space Station—"The matter involved a single crew member who is stable," NASA said in...

+ Japanese nuclear plant operator fabricated seismic risk data—Company staff were very selective about how they modeled earthquake da...

+ New battery idea gets lots of power out of unusual sulfur chemistry—Rather than being used as a storage material, the sulfur gives up elec...

+ We have a fossil closer to our split with Neanderthals and Denisovans—A recent study suggests that North Africa may be a key place to look. ...

+ Here are the launches and landings we’re most excited about in 2026—A lot could happen in space this year, but let's get real about what a...

+ Appeals court agrees that Congress blocked cuts to research costs—The Trump admin can't arbitrarily set university reimbursements to a l...

+ Ørsted seeks injunction against US government over project freeze—Trump administration had suspended Danish group’s work on major wind f...

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As of 1/15/26 1:17pm. Last new 1/14/26 6:46pm.

+ Wikipedia signs AI training deals with Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon—Wikimedia Enterprise signs Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mi...

+ Wikipedia will share content with AI firms in new licensing deals—Wikimedia Enterprise signs Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Perplexity, and Mi...

+ A single click mounted a covert, multistage attack against Copilot—Exploit exfiltrating data from chat histories worked even after users ...

+ Bandcamp bans purely AI-generated music from its platform—Indie music store says it wants fans to have confidence music was larg...

+ The RAM shortage’s silver lining: Less talk about “AI PCs”—“General interest in AI PCs has been wavering for a while..." [Categor...

+ Never-before-seen Linux malware is “far more advanced than typical”—VoidLink includes an unusually broad and advanced array of capabilitie...

+ Hegseth wants to integrate Musk’s Grok AI into military networks this month—US defense secretary announces plans for integration despite recent co...

+ Microsoft vows to cover full power costs for energy-hungry AI data centers—Company responds to community concerns over electricity bills and wate...

+ Google removes some AI health summaries after investigation finds “dangerous” flaws—AI Overviews provided false liver test information experts called alar...

+ ChatGPT Health lets you connect medical records to an AI that makes things up—New feature will allow users to link medical and wellness records to A...

+ ChatGPT falls to new data-pilfering attack as a vicious cycle in AI continues—Will LLMs ever be able to stamp out the root cause of these attacks? P...

+ The nation’s strictest privacy law just took effect, to data brokers’ chagrin—Californians can now submit demands requiring 500 brokers to delete th...

+ Supply chains, AI, and the cloud: The biggest failures (and one success) of 2025—The past year has seen plenty of hacks and outages. Here are the ones ...

+ From prophet to product: How AI came back down to earth in 2025—In a year where lofty promises collided with inconvenient research, wo...

+ Condé Nast user database reportedly breached, Ars unaffected—A serious data breach has occurred, but Ars users have nothing to worr...

+ GPS is vulnerable to jamming—here’s how we might fix it—GPS jamming has gotten cheap and easy, but there are potential solutio...

+ How AI coding agents work—and what to remember if you use them—From compression tricks to multi-agent teamwork, here's what makes the...

+ OpenAI’s new ChatGPT image generator makes faking photos easy—New GPT Image 1.5 allows more detailed conversational image editing, f...

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As of 1/15/26 1:17pm. Last new 1/15/26 11:00am.

+ Cyber body ISC2 signs on as UK software security ambassador—Professional cyber association ISC2 pledges support to UK government’s...

+ Texas judge throws out second lawsuit over CrowdStrike outage—A US judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by CrowdStrike shareholders o...

+ Microsoft DCU uses UK courts to hunt down cyber criminals—Microsoft has taken down the RedDVS cyber crime-as-a-service network a...

+ UK government backtracks on plans for mandatory digital ID—The proposed national digital identity app will no longer be compulsor...

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As of 1/15/26 1:17pm. Last new 1/15/26 10:28am.

+ Building a Carousel Autosampler—A common task in a laboratory setting is that of sampling, where a bit...

+ The Random Laser—When we first heard the term random laser, we did a double-take. After...

+ AC Motor Converted into DC eBike Powerplant—AC induction motors are everywhere, from ceiling fans to vehicles. The...

+ ISS Medical Emergency: An Orbital Ambulance Ride—Over the course of its nearly 30 years in orbit, the International Spa...

+ Looking at a Real Fake Raspberry Pi RP2040 Board—Since the RP2040 microcontroller is available as a stand-alone compone...

+ Windows? Linux? Browser? Same Executable—Weve been aware of projects like Cosmopolitan that allow you to crank ...

+ Philips Kid’s Kit Revisited—[Anthony Francis-Jones], like us, has a soft spot for the educational ...

+ Making Code a Hundred Times Slower With False Sharing—Writing good, performant code depends strongly on an understanding of ...

+ Dad Makes Kid’s Balance Bike Into Electric Snow Trike Like a Boss—The balance bikes toddlers are rocking these days look like great fun,...

+ A New Life For An Old Amplifier—An audio amplifier was once a fairly simple analogue device, but in re...

+ FLOSS Weekly Episode 860: Elixir Origin Story—This week Jonathan and Randal chat with Jose Valim about Elixir! What ...

+ Genetic Therapy Aims To Bring Hearing To Those Born Deaf—For those born with certain types of congenital deafness, the cochlear...

+ ESP32-P4 Powers Retro Handheld after a Transplant—The ESP32-P4 is the new hotness on the microcontroller market. With RI...

+ Clone Wars: IBM Edition—If you search the Internet for Clone Wars, youll get a lot of Star War...

+ Pushing China’s EAST Tokamak Past the Greenwald Density Limit—Getting a significant energy return from tokamak-based nuclear fusion ...

+ An Open Source Electromagnetic Resonance Tablet—Drawing tablets have been a favorite computer peripheral of artists si...

+ Atari Brings the Computer Age Home—[The 8-Bit Guy] tells us how 8-bit Atari computers work. The first Ata...

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As of 1/15/26 1:17pm. Last new 1/15/26 1:17pm.

+ Daily Deal: The Ultimate Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows License + Windows 11 Pro Bundle—Microsoft Office 2021 Professional is the perfect choice for any profe...

+ State Department Threatens UK Over Grok Investigation, Because Only The US Is Allowed To Ban Foreign Apps—So let me get this straight. The United States government spent years ...

+ Trump, Ellison Wage War On ‘Woke Netflix’ In Effort To Scuttle Warner Brothers Deal, Dominate U.S. Media—The Trump empire is nothing if not predictable. Last year we noted rep...

+ New Year, But The Same Measles Crises Rages On—Meet the new year, same as the old year, at least as far as Americas m...

+ We Found More Than 40 Cases Of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds And Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing—This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a...

+ ICE Is Going On A Surveillance Shopping Spree—U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a new budget under ...

+ Bari Weiss Is Sad That People Aren’t Enjoying Her Clumsy Destruction Of CBS News—If you missed it, Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison and his nepob...

+ Daily Deal: The Complete CompTIA And IT Exam Prep Bundle—The Complete CompTIA and IT Exam Prep Bundle has a variety of courses,...

+ Prosecutors Flee DOJ After Being Told To Investigate The Murdered Woman, Not The Murderer—Last week, we wrote about how ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Renee N...

+ DHS Wants To Harvest Biometric Data From Anyone Helping A Foreigner Stay In This Country Legally—Weve always known the ultimate goal was to subject everyone to biometr...

+ Trump Tries To Disappear Impeachment References At Smithsonian—Donald Trump is the only president in American history to have been im...

+ Online Gaming’s Final Boss: The Copyright Bully—Since earliest days of computer games, people have tinkered with the s...

+ Elon Musk Plays Disinfo Telephone: How Oregon’s Mundane Voter Roll Cleanup Is Turned Into False Claim Of ‘Fake Voters’—I made the mistake of opening up X yesterday to look something up, and...

+ Trump’s Loyalist Prosecutors Continue To Get Kicked Off Cases Because They’re Not Legally Appointed—Trumps binge-and-purge approach to handling the DOJ definitely isnt wo...

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As of 1/15/26 1:17pm. Last new 1/15/26 12:34pm.

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As of 1/15/26 1:17pm. Last new 1/3/26 5:01am.

+ U.S. billionaire backs first binational park between Uruguay, Argentina—U.S. philanthropist Gilbert Butler has financed purchase and donation ...

+ U.S. seizes 6th sanctioned oil tanker carrying Venezuelan oil—U.S. Southern Command forces seized a sixth sanctioned oil tanker earl...

+ Argentina lists Muslim Brotherhood branches as terrorist entities—Argentina's president said the government has designated branches of t...

+ Appeals court ruling opens path to rearrest of Mahmoud Khalil—A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a lower court didn't have ...

+ Iran says it won't execute protester Efran Soltani—Iran's judiciary has denied reports that it planned to execute protest...

+ Chile stock market posts region’s best performance in 2025—Chile's stock market delivered its strongest performance in 32 years i...

+ Venezuela claims drug trafficking logistics routes dismantled—The Venezuelan government said it dismantled the country's main drug t...

+ Education Department investigating 15 K-12 schools over trans athletes—The Department of Education has opened investigations into 15 K-12 sch...

+ European countries begin sending troops to Greenland—Several European countries have sent troops to Greenland after Wednesd...

+ President Donald Trump threatens to invoke Insurrection Act amid Minnesota protests—President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to st...

+ Two people killed in Thailand in second crane collapse in as many days—A crane collapsed on an expressway in Bangkok, Thailand Thursday killi...

+ Russia ejects diplomat it says was spying for British intelligence—Russia's Foreign Ministry expelled a British diplomat from the country...

+ U.K. Palestine Action protesters end hunger strike over government contract—An MOD decision not to use a Israeli defense contractor was cited as o...

+ Elon Musk's xAI to stop allowing Grok to undress images of real people—Elon Musk's xAI announced it will stop allowing Grok to undress real p...

+ ISS crew safely home after unprecedented medical evacuation—The four members of NASA's Crew-11 safely splashed down off southern C...

+ Asia’s foreign press clubs recalibrate amid regional political changes—Media correspondent clubs in Asia, storied institutions once synonymou...

+ BOK again holds key rate steady amid weak won, hints at prolonged pause—South Korea's central bank again left its benchmark interest rate unch...

+ Trump: Executions, killings 'stopped' in Iran—President Donald Trump on Wednesday night said Iran has called off sch...

+ 75% of registered S. Koreans separated from family in North have died, gov't says—More than three-quarters of South Koreans registered as members of fam...

+ On This Day, Jan. 15: Disabled US Airways flight lands in Hudson River—On Jan. 15, 2009, all 155 people aboard US Airways Flight 1549 escaped...

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As of 1/15/26 1:17pm. Last new 1/15/26 1:17pm.

+ Elon Musk's Grok ‘Undressing’ Problem Isn't Fixed—X has placed more restrictions on Grok's ability to generate explicit ...

+ Save $50 on the OnePlus Watch 3, Which Has Revolutionary Battery Tech—Save some cash on this Wear OS smartwatch with a revolutionary battery...

+ Why ICE Can Kill With Impunity—Over the past decade, US immigration agents have shot and killed more ...

+ OpenAI Invests in Sam Altman’s New Brain-Tech Startup Merge Labs—Merge Labs has emerged from stealth with $252 million in funding from ...

+ Minnesota Is Just the Beginning. California and New York Are ‘Next’—The Trump administration appears to be planning to leverage the same p...

+ Hands On With Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, an AI Agent That Actually Works—Cowork is a user-friendly version of Anthropic’s Claude Code AI-powere...

+ Best Packing Cubes for Every Kind of Trip (2026), Tested and Reviewed—Whether you’re a no-frills backpacker or a bag-checking fashionista, t...

+ 11 Best Smartwatches (2026): Apple, Wear OS, Hybrid & Kids’ Watches—These WIRED-tested wearables reduce your reliance on a phone while kee...

+ 9 Best Blind Boxes—Bag Charms, Plush Pendants, and More (2026)—In the market for a mystery treat? There’s more out there than Labubu....

+ Former CISA Director Jen Easterly Will Lead RSAC Conference—The longtime cybersecurity professional says she’s taking the helm of ...

+ Former CISA Director Jen Easterly Will Lead RSA Conference—The longtime cybersecurity professional says she’s taking the helm of ...

+ What Is VO2 Max? Here’s What You Need to Know About the Longevity Metric (2026)—VO2 max can predict cardiorespiratory health and longevity, but only i...

+ Livestream: Welcome to the Chinese Century—Join our livestream — and pose a question to WIRED’s panel of experts ...

+ Hundreds of Millions of Audio Devices Need a Patch to Prevent Wireless Hacking and Tracking—Flaws in how 17 models of headphones and speakers use Google’s one-tap...

+ The Tea App Is Back With a New Website—Months after major data leaks, the app where women leave Yelp-style re...

+ The Real AI Talent War Is for Plumbers and Electricians—The AI boom is driving an unprecedented wave of data center constructi...

+ Asus ROG Falcata Review: A Split Gaming Keyboard—With the looks and speed of a gaming keyboard and the comfort of an er...

+ Wikipedia’s Existential Threats Feel Greater Than Ever—As the free online encyclopedia turns 25, it’s facing political opposi...

+ Lizn Hearpieces Review: Affordable but Uncomfortable Hearing Aids—These odd-looking hearing aids double as solid earbuds, but comfort is...

+ Our Favorite Coway Air Purifiers Are on Sale (2026)—Breathe easier with these discounts on one of WIRED’s favorite air pur...

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As of 1/15/26 1:17pm. Last new 1/15/26 1:17pm.