2021-05-11

Cool

• The Russian Woodpecker: Official Bird Of The Cold War Nests In Giant Antenna | Hackaday

• A SpaceX booster now trails only 4 space shuttles in flight experience

• Using a PCIe Slot to Install DRAM: New Samsung CXL.mem Expansion Module

  • Someday soon, backplanes will happen again, and someone will begin to address the issue of memory latency. hope

Worthy

• The one where writing books is not really a good idea - The Novelleist

  According to Bookstat, which looks at the book publishing market as a whole, there were 2.6 million books sold online in 2020 and only 268 of them sold more than 100,000 copies—that’s only 0.01 percent of books. By far, the more likely thing is to sell between 0 and 1,000 copies—and there were 2.6 million of those last year (96 percent).

• Reporters Once Challenged the Spy State. Now, They're Agents of It - TK News by Matt Taibbi

  Multiple outlets announced plans to track “extremists” in either open or implied cooperation with authorities. Frontline, ProPublica, and Berkley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program used “high-precision digital forensics” to uncover “evidence” about the Boogaloo Bois, and the Huffington Post worked with the “sedition hunters” at the Twitter activist group “Deep State Dogs” to help identify a suspect later arrested for tasering a Capitol police officer. One of the Huffington Post stories, from February, not only spoke to a willingness of the press to work with law enforcement, but impatience with the slowness of official procedure compared to “sleuthing communities”:

  “That a media outlet founded in order to battle mass surveillance of ordinary citizens and to safeguard privacy rights is now trolling through stolen digital data of private citizens in order to expose and punish them for thought crimes and ideological dissent is as grotesque as it is ironic,” says Greenwald.

etc

• Why Do Older Individuals Have Greater Control of Their Feelings?

• Understanding engagement and addiction mechanism in online games

• An incomparable intellectual who fell through the cracks of history

  Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, worked at the heart of seventeenth-century scientific debates — in the shadow of her brother, Robert Boyle.

• Into the Mystical and Inexplicable World of Dowsing

Horseshit

• NASA Administrator Statement on Chinese Rocket Debris | NASA

  It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.

  • Ahem. "Skylab"

celebrity gossip

• Chelsea Clinton Calls For Global Crackdown On "Anti-Vax" Social Media Posts

Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination

• Facebook Pledges to Remove Discriminatory Credit and Loan Ads

• Think reading means you're smart?

Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship

• Section 230: How Ken Zeran's Fight With AOL Sealed The Tech Industry's Power : NPR

TechSuck

• Much of the OSS world is critically underfunded yet critically important

• Amazon Echo will start sharing your Internet with neighbors in June

  If I disable Amazon Sidewalk, will my Sidewalk Bridges still work? Yes. All of your Sidewalk Bridges will continue to have their original functionality even if you decide to disable Amazon Sidewalk. However, disabling means missing out on Sidewalk’s connectivity and location related benefits. You also will no longer contribute your internet bandwidth to support community extended coverage benefits such as locating pets and valuables with Sidewalk-enabled devices.

• Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money? · Babel

  After a few months, the fundraising efforts allowed paying Henry every month: we settled on $11,000 per month as a baseline salary for working full-time on open source.

  • Project founder: Sebastian on Twitter: "Babel used by millions, so why are we running out of money? Bluntly: Because funds were misallocated for years, and the project has been too slow to improve." / Twitter

  The reason there's no money is because someone took a $130k annual salary and didn't actually work on the project.

Economicon

• Gas shortage: Gov. Cooper declares state of emergency for NC

  • "Gas Run Has Begun" - Fuel Stations Run Dry Amid Hacked Pipeline

  • Colonial Pipeline Partially Reopens; EPA Waives Environmental Rule To Boost Fuel Supplies

• Dogecoin’s value tumbles after Elon Musk calls the virtual currency a ‘hustle’

• Ethereum: What is it and how is it different from Bitcoin?

• ‘No one wants to work anymore’: the truth behind this unemployment benefits myth

Poilitcks

• Biden reviving a philosophy of growth that the party hasn’t embraced since LBJ

• Reporters fume at White House 'quote approval' rules - POLITICO

  the Biden White House frequently demands that interviews with administration officials be conducted on grounds known colloquially as “background with quote approval,” according to five reporters who cover the White House for outlets other than POLITICO.

World

• Russia Shocked By Rare School Massacre - 8 Killed, 21 Wounded After Gunman Targets Children

• Egypt Reduces Compensation Fine Against Ever Given By $300 Million

• Craig Murray sentenced to 8 months in jail for contempt of court

  Craig Murray watched two days of the former First Minister’s trial in March 2020 from the public gallery of Edinburgh’s High Court and wrote about it on his website. Judges subsequently ruled that Murray, 62, a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, was in contempt of court relating to material capable of identifying four of the women accusing Mr Salmond of sexual abuse.

  • Persistiently reported on Julian Assange too.

• Statement by Olga Misik, protestor who read Russia's constitution to soldiers

Health / Medicine / COVID

• Slovakia suspends use of the AstraZeneca jab for first-time vaccinations

• Just 2% of SARS-CoV-2−positive individuals carry 90% of the virus in circulation

• A Misleading CDC Number

• Pfizer vaccine FDA Approval for Adolescents

• CDC Limits Review of Vaccinated but Infected; Draws Concern

  Federal health officials this month decided to limit how they monitor vaccinated people who have been infected with Covid-19, drawing concern from some scientists who say that may mean missing needed data showing why and how it happens.

  • Can't have anyone publishing data showing inneffectiveness when that's not the narrative... cf tests, still.

• Bose Hearing Aids Are Finally Here

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• The Cicadas Are Coming. Let's Eat Them!