2021-03-23

Cool

• Nokia releases complete historical Plan9 source under permissive licence

• AI Weirdness • GPT-3 tries pickup lines

  Do you like ... pancakes?

Worthy

• A Biden Appointee's Troubling Views On The First Amendment - TK News by Matt Taibbi

  This idea of needing a more activist conception of speech control is clear in Wu’s writing. He speaks about the First Amendment operating as a “negative right against coercive government action,” while in the modern environment, the government not only needs to secure the freedom to speak, but freedom from abuses. He posits a First Amendment that acts as a “right that obliges the government to ensure a pristine speech environment.” Because that would be difficult to accomplish in the First Amendment’s current form, he suggests “expanding the category of ‘state action’ itself to encompass the conduct of major speech platforms like Facebook or Twitter.”

• Former ACLU Head Ira Glasser explains why there’s no such thing as “hate speech”

  “When people say they want to ban hate speech, what they mean is they want to ban speech that they hate,” Glasser said. “But if you allowed something called ‘hate speech’ to be banned, then the only important question would be ‘who decides?'”

etc

• Venus Could Have Been Habitable for Billions of Years

• BREAKING: Boulder, CO shooting suspect identified as 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa (Updated) – twitchy.com

  • Gun in supermarket shooting bought 6 days earlier

  • Colorado marks latest mass tragedy after 10 killed

    • First Atlanta, Then Boulder: Two Mass Shootings in a Week

• Epstein Pal Ghislaine Maxwell Denied Bail A Third Time

• Homosexual Behavior Among Fish Increases Attractiveness to Females

• Ancient Native Americans were among the world’s first coppersmiths

Horseshit

• Pasco County’s Sheriff Must End Its Targeted Child Harassment Program | Electronic Frontier Foundation

• rms-open-letter.github.io

  RMS, has been a dangerous force in the free software community for a long time. He has shown himself to be misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety. These sorts of beliefs have no place in the free software, digital rights, and tech communities. With his recent reinstatement to the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation, we call for the entire Board of the FSF to step down and for RMS to be removed from all leadership positions.

  • OSI Response to RMS’s reappointment to the Board of the Free Software Foundation | Open Source Initiative

  The Open Source Initiative calls upon the Free Software Foundation to hold Stallman responsible for past behavior, remove him from the organization’s leadership and work to address the harm he caused to all those he has excluded: those he considers less worthy, and those he has hurt with his words and actions. We will not participate in any events that include Richard M. Stallman and we cannot collaborate with the Free Software Foundation until Stallman is removed from the organization’s leadership.

  • Outreachy bars FSF from participation in its program

• Prince Harry joins $1bn Silicon Valley startup as senior executive

  • Prince Harry Takes Job as Chief Impact Officer at BetterUp

Media / Ministry of Truthy

• Facebook guidelines allow for users to call for death of public figures

• The Quest to Tell Science from Pseudoscience

• Trump Plans to Launch a Social Media Platform

• Press Freedom Group Sues Facebook Over Misinformation, 'Hate Speech'

• The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science

• Bernie Sanders Thinks Donald Trump's Removal from Twitter Was a Mistake

• Medium Offers Buyouts to Editorial Employees

Identity Politics / Race Baiting / Re segregation

• High-IQ teens are more liked by peers, but they don't much care for those peers

• Decolonizing the Hunt for Dinosaurs and Other Fossils

• Duke launches investigation after George Floyd’s toxicology report posted on bulletin board | The College Fix

• Will appealing to white grievance be the ticket for the GOP in 2022? Ron Johnson may be the test case.

• Liberal Media Scream: Seth Meyers rants against rural whites, Constitution

  the electoral system is “heavily tilted toward a minority of voters that are predominately white and rural, thanks in large part to anti-majoritarian institutions like the Electoral College and the Senate.” He cited new Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s “impassioned speech in favor of sweeping voting reforms” and accused Republicans of pushing Jim Crow-style election changes.

• Kim Janey Becomes First Woman And Person Of Color To Be Boston Mayor

• How Politics Tested Ravelry and the Crafting Community

• VIDEO: With Katie Herzog on the Expansion of LGBTQ Identity and How it is Wielded in Political Discourse - Glenn Greenwald

  After a lifetime of identifying as cis people in heterosexual marriages, these two writers very recently announced that they are, in fact, trans. And because of this recent announcement, they evidently believe that they are not only entitled to catapult toward the top of the LGBT marginalization mountain but to take the rainbow flag they picked up roughly seven seconds ago and use it to bludgeon those of us — myself, Sullivan, Herzog — who have actually experienced multi-pronged and deep-seated oppression of every kind (legal, societal, familial, emotional, psychological and cultural) not since last Tuesday but our entire lives.

• Illinois City Becomes 1st In U.S. To Offer Black Residents Reparations

• Ga. GOP Goes All Out to Suppress Black Votes Amid MAGA Civil War

TechSuck

• The End of AMP – lafoo – ramblings about the online world

• Fire Destroys 300mm Line of Renesas’ Naka Factory

• U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs Facebook appeal in user tracking lawsuit

• Microsoft in talks to buy Discord for more than $10B

  • Microsoft to Acquire Discord for $10B

• Google expands cloud chip design efforts with veteran Intel hire

• Encrypted Phone Firm Encrochat Used Signal Protocol

  unable to read the content of intercepted messages, authorities may turn to hacking the end-point device, or phone, itself to siphon communications. In the Encrochat case, French police deployed malware to Encrochat phones and obtained the content of users' messages.

• OVH flames scorched cloud customers with pledge to build data centre fire simulation lab • The Register

• Less Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

Economicon

• Intel CEO Fast-Tracks Turnaround Bid with $20B Investment Plan

• Sales of new homes plunged 18.2% in February

• Major employers scrap plans to cut back on offices – KPMG

• GoPuff raises $1.15B with an $8.9B valuation

• Robinhood Files for Public Offering

Poilitcks

• DeJoy Announces 10-Year Reorganization Of U.S. Postal Service

• Pro-Trump lawyer says ‘no reasonable person’ would believe her election lies

  • Sidney Powell gives up the game, admits Trump’s election conspiracies weren’t factual

• Democrats argue for D.C. statehood at hearing; GOP cites 'power grab'

• Democrats Reviewing Whether To Overturn A Certified Iowa U.S. House Election

• With updates and additions Aaugh! A Brief List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus - TK News by Matt Taibbi

• Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell denies guilt by arguing "no reasonable person" would ...

Security / Militaria

• Biden wrestles with Afghanistan troop dilemma as time to make a decision runs out

• Senate Swears In New Head Of Security After Insurrection Shakeup

• 'This is My Person,' CIA Director Allegedly Said of Anwar al-Awlaki | The American Conservative

  former CIA Director George Tenet had, in 2001, asked then-President of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh to release an unnamed prisoner connected to the Al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in October of the previous year, which killed 17 U.S. sailors and injured 37 others.

• Man accused of holding National Guard members at gunpoint

World

• North Korea fires off first missile test since Biden took office

• Ethiopia's Leader Says Atrocities Committed in Tigray War

• Top Saudi official issued death threat against UN's Khashoggi investigator

• Weary Israelis head to polls for fourth election in two years

• Saudis Offer Cease-fire to Yemeni Rebels

• Bangladesh Probes Fire at Rohingya Refugee Camp that Killed Seven

• Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

  • Grounded 'Mega Ship' Blocking Suez Canal in Both Directions – gCaptain

Health / Medicine / COVID

• E.U. Set to Curb Covid Vaccine Exports for 6 Weeks

• Near Misses at UNC Chapel Hill’s Lab Show Risk of Accidents with Coronaviruses

• The next big challenge in the Covid-19 vaccine rollout: Tackling hesitancy

• Estrogen Shots Can Help Men Survive Covid

• Mayor Ends Remote Work for 80k in Signal to Rest of New York City

• 'Basically In A New Pandemic,' Says Merkel, As Germany Extends Lockdown

• The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• America colonisation ‘cooled Earth's climate’ (2019)

• Maps Show How Dramatically Fertilizer Is Choking the Great Lakes