2021-02-11

Cool

• HN Comment: Some problems in Consensus Protocol Design

  • Distributed data systems. There are of course those wanting to apply the lessons to society, too. The long discussion is hilarious in context:

    I am implementing a Multi-Paxos variant called Viewstamped Replication

    VR is -not- a variation of Paxos much less the later multi-paxos.

  ... there's no consensus on what the names of the algorithms define, or that the algorithms are doing the same things. That level of absurdity marks this field of research Holy To Eris and Touched by her Noodly Appendage.

• Uncovering a 24-year-old bug in the Linux Kernel – Skroutz Engineering

  Apparently the Linux implementation did not update snd_wl1 while in the receiver fast path. If a connection uses the fast path for too long, snd_wl1 will fall so far behind that ack_seq will wrap around with respect to it. And if this happens while the receive window is zero, there is no way to re-open the window, as demonstrated above. What’s more, this bug had been present in Linux since v2.1.8, dating back to 1996!

• Super High-Speed Footage Captures the Moment a Lightning Bolt Forms | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine

• Physics - The Many Personalities of Oil Mixed with Water

Worthy

• Astronomers Confirm Solar System’s Most Distant Known Object Is Indeed Farfarout | NOIRLab

• Richard Smith: Peer reviewers—time for mass rebellion? - The BMJ

• Black Lives Certainly Mattered to Abraham Lincoln

• Dec 2020, near the time when the blackout on this guy's story lifted and it became permissible to say he'd partied too hard Tony Hsieh and the Mirage of High-functioning Addiction - Fridays on the oLo

• The Scientific Method Has a Big Problem

  So I propose a new method: believe whatever the hell you want and yell at anyone who believes anything different (or even proposes to test your beliefs) and call them a heretic and burn them at the stake.

• The Lost History of Yellowstone | History | Smithsonian Magazine

  “The next day he attacked our camp,” says MacDonald. “He peed in my tent, pooped everywhere, destroyed the fire pit, licked the grill, just trashed everything. We stayed up all night making noise, and thankfully it worked. He didn’t come back. I still have that tent and it still reeks of bear pee.”

• The Great Indian Kitchen: Serving an unsavoury tale of sexism in home - BBC News

etc

• NIST Finalizes Cybersecurity Guidance for Positioning, Navigation and Timing Systems | NIST

• Live coverage: At least 5 killed in 75-100 vehicle pileup crash on I-35W in Fort Worth, officials say | wfaa.com

• Pigs can play video games with their snouts, scientists find

• Man kills self outside home of Texas congresswoman

• Los Angeles Times Review of Andy Ngo's Antifa Book Compares Him to Nazi Josef Goebbels | Newsbusters

• Serial Killer Era: Why 1970 - 2000 Saw So Many Murders in America - Rolling Stone

  • the entertainment industry stopped being fascinated by them

• Conservationists plead with public to stop milking psychedelic toads

Horseshit

• Researchers built an AI that recognizes and rewards good doggos | Engadget

• Gina Carano’s Firing Is the Product of Yet More Calvinball

• China Swears It Isn’t Building a Time Machine.

• Former FBI Officials Tapped for Amazon’s Growing Security Apparatus

• Breached water plant employees used the same TeamViewer password and no firewall

• Our failing healthcare system costs us countless lives. It’s time to adopt Medicare for All

• Tucker Carlson Goes ‘Straight Up Tinfoil Hat’ With Latest Monologue

• Tennessee gov: 'Transgenders participating in women's sports will destroy ...

• Georgia prosecutor opens criminal investigation into Trump's "attempts to influence" election - CBS News

• (Video) When parents become strangers: How QAnon is tearing families apart - CNN Video

• These People Rushed to Buy Homes During Covid. Now They Regret It

• Woman turned down by dating site as clients 'don't date people in wheelchairs'

• Is China Building a Time Machine? | Time Travel News and Science

TechSuck

• Cyberpunk 2077 studio’s hacked data has reportedly been sold - The Verge

• "regulation" not found. "monopolistic competition" not found. "not sexy enough for google" Alphabet's Loon Failed to Bring Internet to the World. What Went Wrong? - IEEE Spectrum

• Twitter Suspends Project Veritas For 'Doxing' Facebook Exec | ZeroHedge

• Clubhouse Is Suggesting Users Invite Their Drug Dealers and Therapists

• "Targeted Advertising" is bad now? just some targets? Google’s advertising system allowed discrimination against nonbinary people

• Instagram bans Robert F Kennedy Jr over Covid vaccine posts

• Google is now telling users its apps are out of date. No updates are available | Hacker News

  • Appears to be iOS / Apple only, no google apps have been updated since Dec 8th when Apple began requiring a privacy policy be met?

• Aurora Partners with Toyota on Self-Driving Sienna Taxis

  • "Self Driving" to take over from "VR" as the buzzword investor scam... perhaps there's room for both.

• With a $10B cloud deal snarled in court, the Pentagon may go without it

• Tesla Recalls Cars With EMMC Failures, Calls Part A ‘Wear Item’ | Hackaday

• before anyone reported it... Update on Our Progress on AI and Hate Speech Detection - About Facebook

  in the first three months of 2020, our systems spotted just 16% of the bullying and harassment content that we took action on before anyone reported it. By the end of the year, that number had increased to almost 49%, meaning millions of additional pieces of content were detected and removed for violating our policies before anyone reported it. We expect more improvements to come as this field of AI technology continues to advance.

• Instagram bans anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over Covid falsehoods

  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been banned from Instagram

Economicon

• Confused About Dogecoin? Here’s How It (Doesn’t) Work

• Dogecoin’s Creator Is Baffled by Meteoric Rise to $9B

• Amsterdam displaces London as Europe's top stocks centre after Brexit

• Nouriel Roubini: SEC should probe Elon Musk's Bitcoin tweets

• MasterCard to open up network to cryptocurrencies

• Elon Musk's Dogecoin Tweets Worry Crypto Community

• Again, its news to the reddit people Reddit trader-favored cannabis stocks jump again on Thursday

  • Pot Stocks Smoked | ZeroHedge

• Top Publisher Conde Nast Skips Rent Payment At One World Trade | ZeroHedge

• BNY Mellon to offer Bitcoin services

• GameStop missed out on capitalizing on the Reddit rally

• Labor Dept.: About 800,000 more U.S. workers file new unemployment claims

• Webinar Takeaways: Cathie Woods on Ark Becoming Too Big

  In the section right before this Tasha highlighted that earnings from robotaxi networks could reach $1tril by 2030. Earnings. Not revenue. Let that sink in.

Politickles

• Biden to sign executive order addressing chip supply chain shortage

• Biden warns China will ‘eat our lunch’ if U.S. doesn’t move on infrastructure

• Dozens of former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump third party

• Oath Keepers leader waited for Trump's direction before Capitol attack, DOJ says - CNNPolitics

• Trump Impeachment Live Updates: Democrats wrap up case for conviction

• Computer programmer downloaded key impeachment videos as Parler went offline | TheHill

• Video: Graham Asks ‘What Did Pelosi Know’ About Capitol Riot – Summit News

• Fact check: Trump's lawyer blows up one of Trump's biggest lies - CNNPolitics

• Jonathan Turley: Trump impeachment – Lee-Raskin exchange reveals this glaring hole in the case | Fox News

• Few expect Trump conviction, even fewer to watch Senate trial.

• Analysis: Lindsey Graham has a very bad take on the Senate impeachment trial

• Biden Eyes More Foreign Workers While Skirting H-1B Visa Row

• Where Biden's Cabinet nominees stand

• Panel report faults former President Donald Trump for 'appalling' COVID-19 ...

• Michigan Senate leader on hot mic after apologizing for calling Capitol riot a hoax: 'I don't take back points I ...

• Amid tragic blunders, former pandemic hero Andrew Cuomo now compared to Trump: "He's a ...

• Josh Hawley Getting Canceled on Social Media Can Derail a Book Deal

• ‘I Miss My Mom’: Kids of QAnons Are Trying to Deradicalize Their Parents

World

• BBC World News barred from airing in China

  • BBC News banned in China, one week after CGTN's license withdrawn in UK - CNN

• South Sudan: Rampant abusive surveillance by NSS instils climate of fear | Amnesty International

• Haiti Police Fire Tear Gas on Journalists Covering Peaceful Anti-Government ...

Health / Medicine / COVID

• Cuomo aide admits they hid nursing home data from feds

• Apple developing THz radiation sensor tech for non-invasive glucose monitoring

• Covid-19: Social murder, they wrote—elected, unaccountable, and unrepentant | The BMJ

  After two million deaths, we must have redress for mishandling the pandemic

• British variant was likely "to sweep the world"

• German sniffer dogs detect Covid-19 with 94% accuracy

• Carbon dioxide sensors detect poor indoor air quality to fight covid spread - The Washington Post

  It may sound like yet another politicized, Trump-era battle over coronavirus restrictions — yet this one ended in something that looks less like polarization and more like compromise. After Crandall and others complained and took to the media, state regulators introduced a new policy, which appears to be one of the first of its kind, allowing certain restaurants to count as “open air” dining even if they have four walls. In a new pandemic trend, these establishments can open up large windows or doors and actively measure levels of carbon dioxide, the gas we all exhale when breathing, as a key indicator of how much fresh air is circulating.

  • 450ppm (fresh air is 415ppm) measured w/ $200+ meters

• The syringes were fine until like 2wk ago when someone discovered that there was another type, now not using that type is unconsionable waste... Short On Syringes, Japan May Waste Millions Of Pfizer Vaccine Doses : NPR

  The Pfizer vaccine normally contains five doses per vial. But a special syringe, known as a low dead space syringe, which expels more medicine from the space between a syringe's needle and plunger, can eke out six doses per vial. "We will use all the syringes we have that can draw six doses, but it will, of course, not be enough as more shots are administered," Health Minister Norihisa Tamura said Tuesday. This means that the Pfizer vaccines, that could have been enough for 72 million people, will only cover 60 million. The Kyodo news agency reports that Japan will try to purchase additional doses from Pfizer.

• Biden Considering Stronger Travel Restrictions On Red States Than On Mexico

• Suspicions mount that the coronavirus was spreading in China and Europe as early as October, following a WHO investigation

• Vaccinated people need not quarantine post Covid-19 exposure, CDC says

• UK virus restrictions to include hotel quarantines, threats of fines and prison

• CDC weighs virus testing for domestic flights, industry voices fierce opposition

• CDC expected to release new guidelines for reopening schools

• Study finds fewer older people are having strokes.

Green Propaganda

• Not that kind of biodiversity! Pablo Escobar's hippos must be culled to halt biodiversity disaster

• Air pollution in US subway systems stuns researchers

• EMBATTLED MASSACHUSETTS CLIMATE OFFICIAL DAVID ISMAY RESIGNS ‘IMMEDIATELY:’

  Ismay laded on the hot seat after MassFiscal posted a video of the undersecretary saying the state needs to “break their will” and “turn the screws on” ordinary people to force changes in their consumption of heating fuels and gasoline. Ismay described the ordinary people as the “person across the street” and the “senior on fixed income"

Obit

• Jazz Keyboard Legend Chick Corea Has Died