Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

I'm not going to bother talking about the nominees. There was a point in time where I had a minimal interest in that, but not anymore. Most of the Best Picture nominees never show at my local theater, and my theatrical movie watching has really declined over recent years.

The thing that I find interesting is that in two years, we'll have the last broadcast on broadcast television. It is estimated that ABC/Disney paid over $100,000,000 for last years broadcast, and were looking for lower fees as viewer numbers have been declining. With the broadcast going streaming, there's no time limit: as the article says, the broadcast could be six hours long with Mr. Beast hosting.

It will be mildly interesting to see what kind of viewership numbers YouTube/Google can pull. Most people with streaming can pull it up on the same TV with which they watched it on ABC, but now they can easily view it in more countries than ABC/Disney was able to reach. And people can probably watch it more easily on devices while at work.

But I still don't really care.

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/oscars-youtube-2029-1236610989/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/17/210247/the-oscars-will-abandon-broadcast-tv-for-youtube-in-2029

I thought they might fix it quick, and they did. This patch, and one other, can be downloaded and installed via Windows Update.

What I didn't know was there was another bug also addressed by these patches.

The problem involved Remote Desktop and prevented you from connecting to a computer via Remote Desktop, I'm not sure if it bugged your computer trying to do the connecting or bugged the remote host that you were trying to connect to. Regardless, it should be fixed now.

The thing that I don't get is that I thought MS patches like this were tested through the beta program before public release. Perhaps they're just tested internally and their QA department slipped up and didn't do sufficient testing to catch these problems before they shipped.

Who knows. But at least they were prompt fixing it.

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-issues-emergency-out-of-band-update-for-windows-11-to-address-major-bugs-that-broke-pc-shutdowns-and-sign-ins

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/18/1932246/microsoft-forced-to-issue-emergency-out-of-band-windows-update

Just a minor issue!

From the article: "The bug appears to be tied to Secure Launch, a security feature that uses virtualization-based protections to ensure only trusted components load during boot. On systems with Secure Launch enabled, attempts to shut down, restart, or hibernate after applying the January patches may fail to complete. From the user's perspective, everything looks normal – until the PC keeps running anyway, refusing to be denied life.

Microsoft says that entering the command "shutdown /s /t 0" at the command prompt will, in fact, force your PC to turn off, whether it wants to or not."

It hasn't affected my two Win 11 computers, haven't powered up my laptop in a month, so it hasn't updated. I would expect this will be updated with next month's Patch Tuesday release, but they may release an out of schedule patch to fix it.

Of course, make sure all your documents are saved before issuing that shutdown command or you may risk losing information.

And all computers will shut down when you pull the plug out of the wall or bus strip.

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/16/patch_tuesday_secure_launch_bug_no_shutdown/

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/2144202/patch-tuesday-update-makes-windows-pcs-refuse-to-shut-down

This is one specific manufacturer, WHIIL. Researchers found that the Bluetooth channel, used normally for configuring the wheelchair upon delivery and for service, was completely unsecure. No authentication, no certificates, no nothing.

The researchers were able to take complete control of the wheelchair, making it run at top speed (5 MPH) and sent it careening down stairs.

One comment on Bruce Schneier's blog commented about OpenBSD, a Unix fork that prides itself on being very secure. They do not support Bluetooth at all. When asked about it, they said that the Bluetooth stack cannot be secured. I'm surprised that something like a wheelchair interface isn't secured with just a panel and a USB cable. Simple controlled physical access. The scariest part is that they can now do Bluetooth well over half a mile, both send and receive - so theoretically hacks like this and transactions can be phished and the baddies are no where near you.

https://www.securityweek.com/researchers-expose-whill-wheelchair-safety-risks-via-remote-hacking/

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/01/hacking-wheelchairs-over-bluetooth.html

Very interesting article in The Guardian. When I was a kid in the '60s and '70s, we had glass bottles, tin and aluminum cans. But the petroleum industry knew that they could make plastic out of what they were extracting, and suddenly we had this huge outlay of plastic crap: PROFITS! Now glass bottles are almost only seen in alcohol containers, largely the same with aluminum cans. Plastic is everywhere and it's hard to drive for a day without seeing a grocery bag in or blowing across the street. We eat microplastics, we breathe microplastics, they're everywhere.

We've been told that our bodies are simply full of microplastics. Some pay $8,000+ to do through dialysis like those with failed kidneys go through to supposedly rid their bodies of microplastics.

Now there's questions being raised.

From The Guardian article: "...micro- and nanoplastic particles are tiny and at the limit of today’s analytical techniques, especially in human tissue. There is no suggestion of malpractice, but researchers told the Guardian of their concern that the race to publish results, in some cases by groups with limited analytical expertise, has led to rushed results and routine scientific checks sometimes being overlooked.

The Guardian has identified seven studies that have been challenged by researchers publishing criticism in the respective journals, while a recent analysis listed 18 studies that it said had not considered that some human tissue can produce measurements easily confused with the signal given by common plastics."

Another very telling excerpt: “Levels of microplastics in human brains may be rapidly rising” was the shocking headline reporting a widely covered study in February. The analysis, published in a top-tier journal and covered by the Guardian, said there was a rising trend in micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) in brain tissue from dozens of postmortems carried out between 1997 and 2024.

However, by November, the study had been challenged by a group of scientists with the publication of a “Matters arising” letter in the journal. In the formal, diplomatic language of scientific publishing, the scientists said: “The study as reported appears to face methodological challenges, such as limited contamination controls and lack of validation steps, which may affect the reliability of the reported concentrations.”

One of the team behind the letter was blunt. “The brain microplastic paper is a joke,” said Dr Dušan Materić, at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany. “Fat is known to make false-positives for polyethylene. The brain has [approximately] 60% fat.” Materić and his colleagues suggested rising obesity levels could be an alternative explanation for the trend reported in the study.

Materić said: “That paper is really bad, and it is very explainable why it is wrong.” He thinks there are serious doubts over “more than half of the very high impact papers” reporting microplastics in biological tissue."

False positives mimicking polyethylene. Contamination control problems. Interesting. I run into a similar thing when I get certain types of bloodwork done: my quantities are below the calibration level of the equipment. I might have certain types of antibodies, but they can't be easily detected, therefor they are functionally zero. But if we don't know how much microplastic is building up in people or animals, how can we know how much of a threat it is? It's easy to say that anything greater than zero is not good, but we commonly are exposed to air pollution and environmental pollutants that are greater than zero and live with minimal or no health problems. Of course, there are others living in areas with greater levels of pollution, or people with greater health risks, where it is a problem.

And that's the problem: we just don't know.

Which obviously doesn't mean that we can ignore the problem. Plastics is a scourge, and it may be a major problem. Medical instrumentation improves every year, so we will begin to know. We do know that there are rising trends in mental health impairment as we get older. And also in the young: I read yesterday about a 24 y/o in the UK who just died of frontal-temporal lobe dementia, youngest documented case yet of someone dying of dementia. Maybe it's related to plastics, maybe not. We don't know.

In today's world we're increasingly forced to live fast. And in many cases it seems like dying young is becoming a result. And no corpse is good-looking - it's still a corpse.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/microplastics-human-body-doubt

https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/01/14/004231/doubt-cast-on-discovery-of-microplastics-throughout-human-body

It also will not seek any tax abatements or incentives.

Well, that's one heck of a move!

MS has a new "Community First" initiative where it is paying the full costs of its data centers, which will cause no increase in costs for area residents. They have taken tax abatements in the past, that apparently will end. There's a lot of hate for the big tech companies right now, and justly so: "In data‑center hubs such as Virginia, Illinois and Ohio, residential power prices jumped 12–16% over the past year — noticeably faster than the U.S. average, according to U.S. government data — as grid operators scrambled to add capacity for large new facilities."

A certain moron last night spilled the news on his private social media platform and said that his administration is talking to the other major tech platforms about them taking responsibility to eat their own costs, as they should, we shall see what happens. They certainly have the money, but as we've seen so often in the past, it's always been 'privatize the profits, socialize the costs'.

https://www.geekwire.com/2026/microsoft-responds-to-ai-data-center-revolt-vowing-to-cover-full-power-costs-and-reject-local-tax-breaks/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/01/13/146211/microsoft-pledges-full-power-costs-no-tax-breaks-in-response-to-ai-data-center-backlash

"No one wants to go in there when a random f***ing tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country."
-- oil industry investor, about Venezuela

I was reading a quote from an Exxon exec, talking about how all of Exxon's assets had been nationalized by Venezuela TWICE. Yeah, not a place where oil companies are going to be eager to rush back in to rebuild their infrastructure.

Not going to bother talking about a certain person's habit of changing international policy via social media posts, waste of finger and mental energy.

65 books for $18!

We've got Sarah Monet, Elizabeth Bear, Vonda McIntyre, Jo Walton, Cherie Priest, Nancy Kress, Catherine Asaro, and Andre Norton, among others! We have John W. Campbell Award winners, Tiptree Award winners, Hugo winners, Nebula winners, Bram Stoker winners, Nebula winners, Philip K. Dick winners, among others!

THAT'S A LOT OF BOOKS, PEOPLE!

All in epub format, which is easily converted to Kindle format via Calibre.

The bundle supports Active Minds, "...the nation's leading nonprofit promoting mental health for young adults ages 14-24. Their focus is on changing the culture around mental health, by changing the way we talk about, care for, and value mental health in our lives and in our communities. They're best known for their National Chapter Network at high schools and universities, an iconic Send Silence Packing suicide-prevention exhibit, Active Minds Speakers, and their new work corporate programs."

It just launched and will be available for another 20 days.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/fierce-women-science-fiction-fantasy-horror-open-road-media-books

We'll start with the good news.

Microsoft may soon start allowing sysadmins to uninstall the CoPilot AI assistant from managed devices. Specifically, the Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot systems. There are a couple of restrictions: "The new policy will apply to devices where the Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot are both installed, the Microsoft Copilot app was not installed by the user, and the Microsoft Copilot app was not launched in the last 28 days."

This is currently being released in the Dev and Preview builds in the Insider Channel.

FYI, and I was going to post about this but I'm still kinda wrecked over events in December and it didn't happen. MS renamed their Office 365 app to 365 Copilot as they integrated their Copilot system into it. This makes me really glad that I bought licenses for a slightly older version of the stand-alone version of Office and don't touch 365.

Now, they're specifically talking about sysadmins being able to remove these programs from managed devices. That means this is exclusively the realm of larger, usually corporate networks. However, there are so many clever boffin system administrators out there who look out for the little people that within a week or few that instructions will start spreading on how to uninstall them from any Windows 11 system, it'll just take a little time to write up and test. But it'll get out.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-may-soon-allow-it-admins-to-uninstall-copilot-on-managed-devices/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/2219256/microsoft-may-soon-allow-it-admins-to-uninstall-copilot


On the bad news side, Windows Media Player. AKA WMP, is a decent product for ripping music CDs to formats including MP3. I've used it myself in the last year when my Apple USB DVD R/W went on walkabout, I was able to buy another at an estate sale last year. As most media players work, WMP would read the CD and supply the metadata for the album: album name, song titles, artwork.

Until last month.

Something changed, and it's unknown if MS will fix is. At this time, the only straightforward solution is to manually type all that info - readily available (usually) at Amazon, or rip it using another program which can provide the metadata (lots mentioned in the Slashdot article).

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/09/microsoft_windows_media_player_forgets/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/1742218/microsoft-windows-media-player-stops-serving-up-cd-album-info

"We live in a world, in the real world...that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."
-- Trump adviser Stephen Miller

"'Iron laws of the world'? Some of America's most important national accomplishments are about leading humanity away from this kind of bullshit. If we let ideologues like Stephen Miller drag us back into a world where brute force is all that matters, all of us will be less safe."
-- Pete Buttigieg

I think Stevie would have been a lot happier if he'd been born in the 17th or 18th century, preferably in Europe. It would have been a better fit. And with any luck, he would have ticked someone off, been challenged to a duel, and run through.