Los Angeles and California Current Events, December 2025
• A judge blocked the National Guard deployment requested by Trump in Los Angeles, issuing a sharp rebuke.
• An investigation backed by insurance found that early adopters of the "zone zero" concept fared better in L.A. County fires.
• L.A. traffic congestion is improving, though this trend is characterized as not entirely a good thing.
• LA City Councilman John Lee was found by a judge to have violated gift laws concerning a lavish Vegas trip.
• Powerful men in politics and media were revealed in new images from the Epstein estate.
• A young musician was gunned down in Northridge, leading to an investigation into whether childhood friends may have set her up.
• The leaders of a secretive California religious group known as "His Way Spirit" were accused of murder following the disappearance of a member and an ex-member.
• California’s last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon, cleared a major hurdle allowing it to power on.
• Guests at Disneyland reported waits of up to 11 hours just to receive a gingerbread cookie.
• Kristi Noem was grilled during a congressional hearing regarding an L.A. Purple Heart Army veteran who self-deported to South Korea.
• A Los Angeles man, Joey Morales, known as the 'Cone King,' stated he has removed 5,000 illegal cones used by residents to reserve public parking spots, emphasizing that public parking does not belong to residents simply because it is in front of their home.
December 2025 Security Alerts and Threats Index
• The critical "React2Shell" remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2025-55182) is being actively exploited by China-linked threat actors, with over 77,000 Internet-exposed IP addresses vulnerable. This emergency patching effort even caused a Cloudflare outage.
• Apple released updates to fix two zero-day vulnerabilities reportedly being exploited in "extremely sophisticated attack[s]" targeting specific individuals.
• Google issued an emergency update for another actively exploited Chrome zero-day vulnerability, marking the eighth such fix in 2025.
• The Coupang data breach, which exposed 33.7 million customers, was linked to a former employee who retained access to internal systems.
• U.S. financial services company 700Credit is notifying over 5.8 million customers about a data breach exposing their personal information.
• The adult video platform PornHub is facing extortion demands from the ShinyHunters gang after data from Premium members (search and watch history) was stolen during a Mixpanel breach.
• A previously unpatched zero-day flaw in the self-hosted Git service Gogs allowed hackers to achieve remote code execution, compromising 700 servers.
• The UK Information Commissioner's Office fined LastPass £1.2 million because the firm failed to implement security measures that could have prevented a 2022 breach that affected up to 1.6 million UK users.
• Japanese e-commerce giant Askul confirmed that RansomHouse hackers stole approximately 740,000 customer records in an October ransomware attack.
• A new Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) information stealer called SantaStealer is being advertised to steal data from browsers and cryptocurrency wallets while operating solely in memory to evade detection.
Hacker News Top Headlines: December 2025
• AI agents are beginning to disrupt and potentially replace traditional Software as a Service (SaaS) business models.
• A discussion topic questioned whether AI systems should pay taxes if they replace human workers.
• The maker of the Roomba device filed for bankruptcy and was subsequently acquired by a Chinese owner.
• Adafruit publicly stated that Arduino's rules are "incompatible with open source" principles.
• Technical advice was offered recommending developers avoid using Version 4 UUID Primary Keys in PostgreSQL.
• Arborium, a tool for code highlighting using Tree-sitter, supports both native and WebAssembly (WASM) targets.
• SoundCloud implemented measures to block users attempting to access the service via Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
• Headlines also included an internal discussion prompt ("Ask HN: What Are You Working On?"), a mention of the technical announcement "Unscii", and a story focused on the carrier landing sequence in Top Gun for the NES.
NPR Top Ten News: December 15, 2025
• Consumers shopping for Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans are encountering "sticker shock" due to high costs, with Congress stalling on related legislation.
• Ford announced the discontinuation of production for the all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck.
• Australia swiftly enacted strict new gun laws.
• A deadly attack at Bondi Beach followed a rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia.
• A bystander was praised as a hero for disarming the gunman in Sydney.
• Tributes were paid to Rob Reiner, known for making movies for people who love them, while his son, Nick Reiner, was arrested.
• Former President Trump posted that Rob Reiner had "Trump Derangement Syndrome" following his death.
• The number of executions nearly doubled in 2025, driven by a "dramatic rise" in Florida.
• Victims of the Brown University shooting were identified, though the gunman remains at large.
• Brian Walshe was convicted of the murder of his wife.
Proverb of the Day
The way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns: but the way of the righteous is made plain.
Sources Used:
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Daily Hacker News - yCombinator
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Security Alerts Index - Western Networks
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National Public Radio daily text feed
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Book of Proverbs - Pereira Classics
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NLT Study Bible - Tyndale House Publishers
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