2021-11-24

Cool

• With tonight’s launch, NASA starts getting serious about planetary defense

  • Cool but the headline is ... umm... stretched farther than can be called realistic.

  • NASA's asteroid-slamming mission will test new ion drive system

Worthy

• The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger

  The essence of the financial arguments against crypto assets are quite easily summarized. As I previously described, crypto assets have no claim to be currencies because their deflationary properties and volatility don’t fulfill the theoretical or even practical function of money. They aren’t commodities because they have no non-circular economic use case. There is a somewhat coherent proposition that crypto assets are effectively unregistered securities contracts, basically like stock in an empty company that doesn’t do anything except promote the sale of its own stock. Historically these investments would have been called “Blue Sky Contracts” in the era before the Uniform Securities Act of 1956 outlawed such things. And then there’s the claim that crypto assets are a piece of performance art about libertarian politics, but this is an unfalsifiable proposition.

  I’m not alone in believing in the fundamental technical uselessness of blockchains. There are tens of thousands of other people in the largest tech companies in the world that thanklessly push their organizations away from crypto adoption every day. The crypto asset bubble is perhaps the most divisive topic in tech of our era and possibly ever to exist in our field. It’s a scary but essential truth to realise that normal software engineers like us are an integral part of society’s immune system against the enormous moral hazard of technology-hyped asset bubbles metastasizing into systemic risk.

etc

• Why Deep Frying Turkey Can Go Very Wrong | Hackaday

  Avoiding hot burning oil spraying all over your guests and backyard is often cited as key to enjoying any holiday season, not just Thanksgiving.

• Political Calculations: Number of Turkeys Produced in U.S. Continues to Fall

• 'Incident' Delays Launch of James Webb Space Telescope

• Einstein general relativity manuscript sells for €11M

Horseshit

• Frank Sinatra Was Offered the Role of John McClane in Die Hard

• New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

• Prayer apps are flooding the market, but how well do they work?

• "Manslaughter" plea deal Man who ran over and stabbed girlfriend 30 times after eating 'space cake' cleared of murder

celebrity gossip

• Kevin Spacey Ordered To Pay $31 Million To 'House Of Cards' Producer Over Sexual Harassment Scandal

• NFL Star JJ Watt to Pay for Waukesha Funerals. – PJ Media

• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Apologizes for CCP Joke

COVID / VaxCult

• Biden Now Trying to Mandate Inter-State Covid Vax

• US to Require Vaccines for All Border Crossers in January

• Covid Made Democracies More Authoritarian and Authoritarian Regimes Even Worse

• US COVID Deaths In 2021 Have Surpassed 2020's Total... Despite Vaccines, Treatments

• Vaccination passport app shares personal user data with Amazon and Royal Mail

• First Known Covid Case Was Vendor at Wuhan Market, Scientist Says

• Back to work: why French workers are resisting the Covid ‘Big Quit’

• California County Mandates Masks in Private Homes

• Google employees sign manifesto against widened Covid vaccine mandate

• Ask HN: How do I know my Covid-19 vaccine is working? | Hacker News

• (June 2021) NOT-HD-21-035: Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) to Encourage Administrative Supplement Applications to Investigate COVID-19 Vaccination and Menstruation (Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)

  • The "Available June 17 Expires June 18" thing confuses me. Some dodge to assign a grant to a specific applicant while technically having a public process?

• TSA Says Vaccine Mandate Won't Keep Them from Harassing Holiday Travelers

  The statement suggests that a single dose or an exemption is enough for the employees to be considered compliant. That contradicts the instructions the White House set out for the vaccination mandate for federal employees, requiring them to be fully vaccinated two weeks prior to the deadline.

  Janell Goodwin, of TSA’s media relations provided this response:

  Compliant means they have reported their status as either vaccinated or claimed an exception on medical or religious grounds.

• WHO director says Europe is again centre of pandemic

  • Pandemic skyrockets in Europe; Covid is the No. 1 cause of death

• In major shift, EU says vaccine boosters should be considered for all adults

• In quest for ‘people’s vaccine’, South African scientists try to crack the code

Culture War / Re segregation / Identdoctrination

• Buffalo chicken wings: The little-known Black history of the wing

• I Grew Up Poor. How Am I Supposed to Raise My Middle-Class Kids?

• Robots in Europe Vote for the Radical Right

  They find that individuals that, due to their characteristics and to those of the labor market in which they are inserted, are more exposed to the automation shock are significantly more likely to vote for a radical right party.

• Deprogram your relatives this Thanksgiving

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Controversy Rages as California Follows SF’s Lead with New Math Curriculum

• Minority professor denied grants because he hires on merit

Media / Many Ministries of Truths / Censorship

• The battle to close Tattle – the most hate-filled corner of the web

• CNN airs live footage of its reporting on tennis star being censored in China

• Activision's Bobby Kotick Has Always Been a Slimy Asshole

Facebook

• Computer pioneer says Metaverse will manipulate the public worse than social media

• Russia is using Facebook to launch disinformation campaigns in Sudan

• Vulnerable people harmed by Facebook, Instagram lost in Meta’s average user data

TechSuck

• The unbearable fussiness of the smart home - Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis

  I have complained about Alexa getting too proactive before, and had turned off as many of the options that led it to make suggestions in my Alexa app (here’s how to do that), but she just kept talking to me. In the last three weeks, Google has made one unsolicited suggestion while Alexa has made at least five. Two of these were emergency alerts for slow-onset flooding in my area, which I had to go in and turn off. I didn’t even know Alexa tracked minor National Weather Service bulletins and alerted customers, much less when that feature was added. And it’s frustrating to have a device behave differently without foreknowledge, especially if the new function interrupts me with non-essential information while I’m working or reading

Economicon

• The £3 chicken: how much should we be paying for the nation’s favourite meat?

• Amex Sold Some Tax Deductions

• Samsung plans $17B chip plant in Taylor, Texas

  • HN thread

  • ‘Impossible’: TSMC founder Morris Chang on US dreams for onshoring chip supply chain | Taiwan News | 2021-10-28 12:41:00

  • This is about the war with China

  • Samsung says it will build $17B chip factory in Texas

• China's disappearing ships: The latest headache for the global supply chain

  "We are currently seeing an industry wide reduction in terrestrial AIS signals in China," said Charlotte Cook, head trade analyst at VesselsValue. But analysts think they've found the culprit: China's Personal Information Protection Law, which took effect November 1. It requires companies that process data to receive approval from the Chinese government before they can let personal information leave Chinese soil — a rule that reflects the fear in Beijing that such data could end up in the hands of foreign governments.

  The law doesn't mention shipping data. But Chinese data providers might be withholding information as a precaution, according to Anastassis Touros, AIS network team leader at Marine Traffic, a major ship-tracking information provider.

• Central Banks should Abandon The King Canute Theory of Inflation

• Part of the 'great resignation' is mothers forced to leave their jobs

Gubmint / Poilitcks

• Democrats and media cool with inflation, urge Americans to have 'perspective' | Washington Examiner

• "Prices...Have Gone Up" - Kamala Harris 'Explains' Decade-High Inflation In The US | ZeroHedge

Law / Crime / Police

• CVS, Walgreens and Walmart Fueled Opioid Crisis, Jury Finds

• Eighty people simultaneously broke into a Nordstrom near San Francisco

• Organized Retail Crime in the US and How Ecommerce Turned It into a Big Business

• (stomped quick) Tell HN: Ideas from a developing country to curb shoplifting in Bay Area | Hacker News

• Arbery Jury Declares All 3 Defendants Guilty Of Murder In Racially Charged Case | ZeroHedge

Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon Forms a Group to Examine Unexplained Aerial Sightings

  • US DoD Opens New UFO Office

• China accuses US of ‘mistake’ after Biden invites Taiwan to democracy summit

• The US Navy Is Rusting Away - 19FortyFive

• China's July hypersonic vehicle test released payload for unclear reasons

• Flurry Of Air Force Transports Head To East Africa As Potential For Ethiopia Evacuation Grows

World

• Farm laws: Sikhs being targeted by fake social media profiles

• China bars celebrities from showing off wealth and 'extravagant pleasure'

• Explainer: How ‘Common Prosperity’ Is Changing China

• China trying to export its Great Firewall and governance model

• China suspends Tencent from updating existing apps or launching new apps

• Ethiopian P.M., a Nobel peace laureate, will lead battle from front line

• Germany's new governing coalition unveiled

  • New German government wants to allow sale of cannabis

• Sweden′s first female prime minister resigns hours after appointment

  • Sweden’s New Leader Quits Hours After Historic Appointment

• Turkish lira crashes to historic low

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• The biggest problem facing the U.S. electric grid is climate change

• White House creates new energy division to coordinate climate change policies

• The latest farm product: carbon credits

• OK: Southern California May Spend Thanksgiving on Fire, in the Dark