2021-03-03

Cool

• Images from the Mars Perseverance Rover - NASA Mars

• Valheim, a game made by just five people, sells 5M copies on Steam

• Apparently it blew up some minutes after landing SpaceX lands Starship prototype (SN10) successfully

  • SpaceX’s Starship SN10 prototype flies to 32,000 feet and sticks the landing

Worthy

• Schnorr confirms paper is his, claims it “destroys RSA cryptosystem” | Hacker News

  Schnorr converts the integer factorization problem to lattice problems: SVP and CVP. Then he claims he had an efficient algorithm to solve this particular instance of SVP and CVP, thus RSA is destroyed. But, the hardness assumption of SVP and CVP in general is the very foundation that another branch of public-key cryptosystems - lattice-based cryptography - is built upon.

  • Did Schnorr destroy RSA? Show me the factors

• Apophis Passes the Earth on Friday

  Scientists will be watching the 370 meter-wide asteroid 99942 Apophis fly by the Earth this Friday, albeit from a safe 0.11 AU away. On Friday the 13th, April 2029, however, Apophis will pass within 31,000 km of the Earth’s surface, inside the orbit of geostationary satellites. Fortunately, while originally estimated at a 1-in-37 chance of a collision in 2029, that possibility has since been ruled out.

• Molybdenum disulfide ushers in era of post-silicon photonics

  Researchers have measured giant optical anisotropy in layered molybdenum disulfide crystals for the first time. The scientists suggest that such transition metal dichalcogenide crystals will replace silicon in photonics. Birefringence with a giant difference in refractive indices, characteristic of these substances, will make it possible to develop faster yet tiny optical devices.

  "Whereas previously we were limited to changes in geometry and effective refractive index to create new optical circuits and devices, giant anisotropy provides an additional degree of freedom to manipulate light," says Volkov. - "Unexpectedly, we found out that naturally anisotropic materials enable us to build compact waveguides literally on the edge of the diffraction limit. It gives us an opportunity to compete with silicon photonics. Now we can safely not only talk about post-silicon photonics but also implement it."

  • "Giant optical anisotropy in transition metal dichalcogenides for next-generation photonics"

• Uncomfortable knowledge | Climate Etc.

etc

• Pair of A-10 Warthogs circling Fort Knox

• Yard sale find turns out to be artifact worth up to $500,000

• How Zoom Is Changing American Sign Language

• Numbers are lower than yesterday, thankfully. Saw 15 and 17 reported. Crash kills 13 on route for illegal border crossings

• Why Are Fewer Young Adults Having Casual Sex?

  • 100+ comments, no mention of "incel" Why Are Fewer Young Adults Having Casual Sex? | Hacker News

• SpaceX Wants to Incorporate Boca Chica Village into Starbase City

• Popular flea collar linked to almost 1700 pet deaths. EPA has issued no warning

  Since Seresto flea and tick collars were introduced in 2012, the EPA has received incident reports of at least 1,698 related pet deaths. Overall, through June 2020, the agency has received more than 75,000 incident reports related to the collars, including nearly 1,000 involving human harm.

• A Cephalopod Has Passed a Cognitive Test Designed for Human Children

• Hacking is not a crime – the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative

• Canadian 'incel' killer found guilty of murder over Toronto van attack

• The Spanish Flu wasn't Spanish at all

• Boy Scouts Will Sell Nearly 60 Norman Rockwell Works to Pay Sex-Abuse Claims

• General Motors idles production at 3 plants due to chip shortage

Horseshit

• Freedom in the World 2021: Democracy under Siege | Freedom House

  • Trump's final year in office was the worst for global democracy in a decade and a half, watchdog says

• "Had a fuse and could not be detonated remotely" Pipe bomb found, safely detonated at Iowa polling location

  Located about 15 miles north of downtown Des Moines, the center was one of the 14 sites in Ankeny where voters were casting their ballots on a local school spending measure.

• New hypothesis argues the universe is a "mental self-simulation"

• ‘Lolita’ Escaped Obscenity Laws and Cancel Culture

• Opinion: The real reason for the Dr. Seuss freakout

  As social mores and cultural preferences change, companies adjust. They change what they sell, adding or updating products and letting others go. This isn't news -- or at least it wasn't, until American right-wing media outlets became obsessed with so-called "cancel culture."

• Democrats propose creation of monument for Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Capitol Hill

Media / Ministry of Truthy

• Why a YouTube Chat About Chess Got Flagged for Hate Speech

• Far-right pages that publish misinformation get the most interaction on Facebook

  • Far-right misinformation gets by far the most engagement on Facebook, study says

• Colorado Bill Seeks to Impose $5k/Day Fine to Social Firms for 'Fake News'

• Parler drops case against Amazon for pushing it offline over Capitol violence

  • They've dropped their federal suit but are refiling in Washington State.

• ‘Truly Disgusting’: Fox News Staffers Left Stunned as Kayleigh McEnany Joins Network

• Facebook Lifts Ban on Political Advertising

• ‘VIAL OF DEATH:’ Louis Farrakhan Pushes Vaccine Conspiracy Theories In Videos Posted On Facebook, Twitter

• Why Does Big Tech Censor Conservatives and Not Terrorists? - 19FortyFive

• NYT David Brooks’s Project Funded by Facebook and Bezos’s Dad

Identity Politics / Race Baiting

• 3-month-old babies are racist, says Arizona Department of Education's 'equity' toolkit | The Post Millennial

  babies start to become racist at just three months of age. The toolkit insists that babies must be spoken to about race, as "letting children draw their own conclusions based on what they see" leads to racism. It is unclear how allowing children to think for themselves leads to racism.

• Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall recall hiring Louie Anderson after forced to cast White star in ...

• New Harry Potter video game will allow users to create transgender characters

• $20m suit: Bay Area school forced boys out for ‘blackface’, was green acne meds

• Percent of people with political words in their Twitter bio is up 3x since 2015

TechSuck

• Peak Design Calls Out Amazon for ‘Copycatting’ the Everyday Sling Bag

• How the AWS team will contribute to Rust’s success

  (comment)

  For context, one of the co-authors is Niko Matsakis, a recent hire at AWS and one of the longest-running leaders in the Rust community (among many things, inventor of the borrow checker and Rust's ownership system). So even if Amazon's involvement in the Rust community is only recently ramping up, I think this post suggests that they intend to invest in the Rust project itself.

  • Someone else notes this reads like religion; even moreso than is usual for the "Rust community"

• Microsoft is shipping a data centre in a 40-foot container. What's inside, and what's it for? - TechRepublic

• PayPal Bids $500M to Acquire Crypto Startup Curv

• 'Fortnite' maker Epic Games just bought the studio behind streamer hit 'Fall Guys'

• Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

• Brave buys a search engine, promises no tracking, no profiling

  • Brave is launching its own search engine with the help of ex-Cliqz devs and tech

• ICANN Refuses to Accredit Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Due to His ‘Background’

  • ICANN has a monopoly on domain names and is unaccountable

• Google Plows Ahead with Plan to Stop Selling Ads Tracking Users

  • Google to Stop Selling Ads Based on Your Specific Web Browsing

• Google declared “persona non grata” as sponsor for AI ethics conference by ACM

  • AI ethics research conference suspends Google sponsorship

• Google’s VR dreams are dead: Google Cardboard is no longer for sale

  • Google stops selling its Cardboard VR goggles after seven years

• Velodyne removes founder from chairman post, wife claims 'ambush'

• AMD announces it will have ‘significantly more GPUs available’

• The complicated business of disguising 5G equipment

• Refund of pre-installed Windows: Lenovo must pay 20,000 euros in damages - FSFE

• A jury says Intel owes $2.18 billion for infringing a zombie chip company’s patents - The Verge

  VLSI seemingly rose from the dead in 2019 specifically to sue. The last time it was an independent company was in 1999, when Philips purchased the semiconductor design firm for $1 billion. Its assets later traveled to Philips spinoff NXP (which you may know from its tap-to-pay NFC chips, among other things). NXP will reportedly get some of Intel’s money, too.

  Technically, the patents are newer than all of that VLSI history. They were originally issued to Freescale Semiconductor, and Sigmatel in 2009, 2010, and 2012, respectively, and the earliest of them was filed in 2005. But Bloomberg reports they were all assigned to the new VLSI in 2019, an LLC that’s attached to a Fortress Investment Group.

• Qualys hit with ransomware: Customer invoices leaked on extortionists' Tor blog

• Arizona passes bill to force Apple and Google to allow 3rd-party payment options

  • HB2005, requiring alternate payments for app stores, passes Arizona House

Economicon

• Major Chinese Bitcoin mining hub is shutting down its cryptocurrency operations

  • Bitcoin mining to be banned in coal-heavy region of China

• What Uses More Power Than Argentina But Doesn’t Dance The Tango? | Hackaday

  We have as good an estimate as possible of the power used by Bitcoin miners, in the form of the Cambridge University Centre for Alternative Finance’s Bitcoin network power tracker. At the time of writing it has an estimate of the network’s annual power consumption at 129.1 TWh.

  Everyone seems to treat the power estimates as revealed gospel, unquestionable and perfect. "even if thats not accurate, Bitcoin uses a lot of power" and continue as before; the question is one of faith and facts aren't relevant.

• Daily Mail owner buys New Scientist magazine in £70m deal

• The Four-Day Week Is Coming Soon

• Coinbase Is a $100B Crypto Cult

• Alamo Drafthouse Files for Bankruptcy

  Alamo Drafthouse, the popular Austin-based restaurant theater chain, has filed for bankruptcy and announced a sale. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing will allow Alamo Drafthouse to raise the money it needs to continue operating amid the lengthy pandemic

• Bill Gates and Amazon join $80M funding round for Turntide electric motor

  • Robert Downey Jr. and Bill Gates Bet on Electric Motor Startup

Poilitcks

• Biden's 42nd day without a press conference, apparently. Bush2's record was 33 days.

• (Feb 24) Fact check: No deadline is in place for delivering State of the Union

• FBI Counterterrorism Official: No Firearms Recovered During Jan. 6 Capitol Breach | ZeroHedge

• D.C. National Guard Commander Recalls 3-Hour Delay In Approval On Jan. 6 : NPR

  "At 1:49 p.m. I received a frantic call from then-Chief of U.S. Capitol Police, Steven Sund, where he informed me that the security perimeter at the Capitol had been breached by hostile rioters," Maj. Gen. William Walker told the Senate Homeland and Rules committees in a joint hearing.

  "Chief Sund, his voice cracking with emotion, indicated that there was a dire emergency on Capitol Hill and requested the immediate assistance of as many Guardsmen as I could muster."

  Walker said he "immediately" alerted Army senior leadership of the request. He was not informed of the required approval from then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller until 5:08 p.m., he said — "3 hours and 19 minutes later."

• FBI director Wray mum on Officer Brian Sicknick's cause of death

• FBI Director Says Domestic Extremism ‘Metastasizing’ Around The Country

• Malcolm Nance: It Sounded Like Josh Hawley 'Worried' FBI Has Something on Him

• House cancels Thursday session as FBI, Homeland Security warn of Capitol threat

  • Should We Be Worried About This March 4 QAnon Conspiracy?

  • D.C. Police Issue Emergency Alert On "Possible" Militia Plot To Breach Capitol Tomorrow

  QAnon conspiracists have peddled the baseless claim that March 4 is the date of Trump's true inauguration. This is based on the fact that presidents were inaugurated on March 4 prior to 1933.

  + [Capitol Police beefing up security this week amid 'concerning'
  intelligence](https://thehill.com/homenews/news/541314-capitol-police-beefing-up-security-this-week-amid-concerning-intelligence)
  

  • Police bolster security at US Capitol as QAnon theory claims Trump will become president ...

  • Police warn of possible threat to Capitol by militia group Thursday | FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports

• White House’s use of Zoom for meetings raises China-related security concerns

• Biden's outrageous giveaway to federal bureaucrats should enrage you

• Biden Gains Two Key Economic Advisers

  The Senate confirmed Gina Raimondo as President Biden’s commerce secretary and Cecilia Rouse as the head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

  • Senate confirms Cecilia Rouse as the first Black chair of White House economic council.

• House Oversight Committee subpoenas Trump's accounting firm ...

  • House Oversight panel reissues subpoena for Trump's accounting firm

• House Democrats launch investigation into One Medical's COVID vaccination practices

• WH: 'Assessing impact' of latest Iraq base attack

• U.S. Limits Counterterrorism Drone Strikes Away from War Zones

World

• Pope Francis set to make first papal visit to Iraq - Axios

• Environmental Warfare: Israel blames Iran for oil spill off its shores

• Strong Earthquake Shakes Central Greece, Felt in Balkans

• China Makes Move on Riyadh as Washington Considers Sanctions

• German far-right AfD first party put under surveillance since Nazi era

• At least nine dead in Myanmar as police open fire

• Journalists Detained For Covering Democracy Demonstrations In Myanmar Face Prison

• Chinese study reveals Uighur 'assimilation' goal

• Freeports: What are they and will they make the UK money?

• Homosexuality can be called a mental disorder, rules Chinese court

• U.S. sanctions two Houthi leaders involved in Yemeni civil war

• US men accused of helping Ghosn flee arrive in Japan

• Israel introduces so-called “freedom bracelet” to enforce lockdowns

Health / Medicine / COVID

• Team Biden surprises with positive vaccine news

• Brazil outbreak is global threat that opens door to lethal variants – scientist

• NIH halts study of plasma in COVID-19 treatment citing lack of benefit.

• CDC Director Implores Texans To Keep Wearing Masks Regardless Of Governor's Orders

• Covid-19: Dolly Parton marks vaccination with Jolene rewrite

• New York, IBM begin testing Covid-19 digital health pass

• Vitamin D Insufficiency May Account for 9/10 Covid-19 Deaths (preprint)

Climate / Green Propaganda

• Petaluma, CA Bans New Gas Stations and Gas Pumps

• Meat consumption and risk of 25 conditions: outcome-wide analyses of 475K people

• Earth's Oxygen-Rich Atmosphere Will Last Only Another Billion Years

• In The Atlantic Ocean, Subtle Shifts Hint at Dramatic Dangers

• Volvo Transforms to Only Produce Electric Vehicles, Cancels Physical Sales

• A common soil pesticide cut wild bee reproduction by 89% – here's why scientists are worried

  Since their introduction in the late 1980s, robust scientific evidence has emerged to suggest these chemicals impair learning and memory, foraging behaviour, and pollination in bees. The EU banned neonicotinoids in 2019, and while the UK government pledged to follow suit, it granted a special exemption for sugarbeet farmers to use the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam throughout 2021, and possibly until 2023.

  Because honeybees don’t spend much time on the ground, environmental risk assessments for neonicotinoids often neglect to consider how exposure to these chemicals in the soil affects all pollinators. But in a landmark study published in Nature, researchers have shown how neonicotinoids affect bees not just by accumulating in the plants pollinators visit, but in the ground where most wild bees build their nests.

  Even tho they've got bans, they haven't shown a lot of harm in real studies; so they've got to discredit those studies and find some more "major threat to the ecosystem" from somewhere.

Obit

• Jahmil French, 'Degrassi: The Next Generation' actor, dead at 29

• Professor Roger Griffin, Astronomer, has died at the age of 85

  In 1967, Roger published his classic paper “A Photoelectric Radial-Velocity Spectrometer” ApJ, 148, 465, and changed the way astronomers measured velocities forever.

  As Roger himself put it, in modern astronomy “nobody would dream of measuring velocities in any other way”.