2022-01-18

Cool

• Hash tables for parallel programming, including lock-free, wait-free tables

  • Algorithm discussion

etc

• Why India's fossil wealth has remained hidden - BBC Future

• Arlington, MA Recognizes Polyamorous Domestic Partnerships.

• Death during sex very rare among those under 50.

• Where Aliens Could Be Watching Us - Issue 111: Spotlight - Nautilus

  • Of course "communication" at that distance is power intensive: communication - Can we "Communicate" with Tau Ceti? - Space Exploration Stack Exchange

  • and there's disagreement: Michael Busch's answer to Could Earth pick up signals from a hypothetical 'clone' of Earth, 12 lightyears away? - Quora

• Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Passing by Earth on Tuesday

• Tonga Volcano: ‘Catastrophic’ damage spotted in low-lying islands

  • Tonga tsunami sparks 'unprecedented disaster'

  Meanwhile, the UN said it would try to maintain Tonga's Covid-free status when aid starts arriving.

• Jamaican Bobsled team has qualified for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

Horseshit

• Conspiracy mentality and political orientation across 26 countries

• Universal basic income could come to California colleges

• Why the Yuppie Elite Dismiss Bitcoin

• Sotheby's unveils 555.55-carat black diamond thought to come from outer space

• NFT Group Buys Copy of Dune for €2.66M, Believing It Gives Them Copyright

• NYT: Scientists Studying Privilege, Inequality in Animal Kingdom

• “Bambi” Is Even Bleaker Than You Thought

COVID / VaxCult

• Cypriot Scientist Says Deltacron Covid Variant Isn’t Error

• Myocarditis: Covid-19 is a much bigger risk to the heart than vaccination

• With Boston’s proof-of-vaccination mandate set to begin, businesses worry

• China Halts All Foreign Mail Due To COVID Threat As Tianjin Reports 80 New Cases

• The Silent, Vaccinated, Impatient Majority

• Covid passes boosted economies and vaccine uptake, study shows

• Pfizer and Moderna expect seasonal booster shots after omicron wave

• Australia has record COVID-19 deaths, hospitals under stress

• Genetic risk factor found for Covid-19 smell and taste loss, researchers say

• Vaccine Mandate for Cross Border Trucking Now in Effect, Mandate for Domestic Trucking Begins in a Week, Prepare Your Affairs Accordingly - The Last Refuge

• Rand Paul Wonders If YouTube Will “Kiss My… And Apologise” After CDC Admits Cloth Masks Aren’t Effective – Summit News

• Hong Kong will cull thousands of hamsters after Covid cases in a pet shop

  • So, someone knew, very newar the beginning of all this fuss, that mice and rodents catch and pass COVID. Anyone think that wouldn't have been good for the rest of the world to know? Anyone think it did not take a lot off effort to keep the possibility out of all the "COVID response" plans utterly kneecapped by this fact?

  • Hong Kong to kill 2k hamsters over Covid-19 outbreak at pet shop

• Walensky faces CDC burnout as pandemic enters third year

• Honesty and humility will help combat COVID pseudo-science

• What Will it Take to Vaccinate the World?

• Past local government health spending was not correlated with COVID-19 control in US counties

• French parliament approves law that will exclude unvaccinated people from all restaurants, sports areas, tourist sites and even trains: Macron faces criticism rule is overkill with 91 per cent of the population already jabbed against Covid

• Israeli trial, world’s first, finds 4th dose ‘not good enough’ against Omicron

• Respiratory viruses that hijack immune mechanisms may have Achilles' heel

• One Change to the Coronavirus Spike Influences Infectivity

• The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts

• Order your rapid tests from the USPS (US only)

  Residential households in the U.S. can order one set of 4 free at-home tests from USPS.com.

  • COVIDTests.gov has gone live a day early, letting you order 4 free rapid tests

• Citation Needed? Wikipedia Bibliometrics During First Wave of COVID-19 Pandemic

Culture War / Re segregation / Faith Fights

• MLK is revered today but the real King would make white people uncomfortable

• (Bee) Far-Right Extremist Suggests Treating People Of All Races Equally

• Biden Called Kyle Rittenhouse a White Supremacist, but Won’t Speculate on Motive of Malik Faisal Akram.

• Why anti-Muslim apps keep reappearing on GitHub

• The Washington Post compiled first database of slaveholding members of Congress

• We should be much more worried about population collapse – Elon Musk

Media / ShowBiz / Censorship

• The War on Disinformation Is Dead

• Mojang services outage impacting Minecraft

• As required by law, no? Tencent is limiting kids' access to its gaming platform

  • Tencent scanning kids' faces to stop them using older relatives' gaming accounts

TechSuck

• Nerd-dictation, hackable speech to text on Linux

• Victory: Google Releases “Disable 2g” Feature for New Android Smartphones

• U.S. FAA clears 45% of commercial plane fleet after 5G deployed

  • Airlines call for Biden admin's “immediate intervention” in 5G deployment

• Intel to Unveil Bitcoin-Mining 'Bonanza Mine' Chip at Upcoming Conference

  Intel has a presentation scheduled in the 'Highlighted Chip Releases' category to outline a new "Bonanza Mine" processor, a new chip described as an "ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC." That means Intel could soon compete with the likes of Bitmain in the market for specialized ASICs for Bitcoin mining.

  • The Intel Split – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

• Open source developers, who work for free, are discovering they have power

Economicon / Business / Finance

• The Working Poor: Lousy Jobs or Lazy Workers?

• Two-thirds of 2021 IPOs are trading below offering price

• Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard in an all-cash transaction at $68.7B

  • This explains the "sexual harrasment" noise thats been in media for weeks; taking the shine off the company to lower the price.

    • Activision Blizzard has got rid of almost 40 employees for workplace misconduct

  • Microsoft Nears Deal to Buy Activision

  • Microsoft agrees to buy Activision Blizzard for $70B, a big bet on the metaverse

  • HN thread

• Workers are calling out sick in droves

• Why Millions of Americans Are Quitting Their Jobs

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Texas abortion law remains in effect after appeals court ruling

• U.S. Political Party Preferences Shifted Greatly During 2021

• Venmo, PayPal and Zelle must report $600 in transactions to IRS

  • HN thread

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Union Pacific Weighs Avoiding Los Angeles as Cargo Theft Rises

• More Trouble for the FBI in the Whitmer Kidnapping Case › American Greatness

  In a stunning move, defense lawyers now want prosecutors to offer immunity not to their clients but to FBI agents and informants. A new defense filing took the rare step of asking the judge to order the Justice Department to offer “use immunity” to every FBI asset involved in the plot. Fearing they will invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in court, defense attorneys are attempting to compel testimony that would be immune from prosecution, except charges of perjury.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• British military aircraft rapidly supplying weapons to Ukraine

  • Germany has not threatened to shoot down British aircraft

  • Secretary Blinken’s Travel to Ukraine and Germany

• Bipartisan group of senators meet with Ukraine President Zelenskyy as Russian troops amass on border

• How rebel fighters are using 3D-printed arms to fight the Myanmar junta

World

• Foreign seafarers say they were tricked into servitude on Iranian ships

• Zoroastrians make a comeback in northern Iraq, but still face stigma

• Ireland to Launch Universal Basic Income Program for Artists

• What We Know and Don’t Know about the Cyberattacks Against Ukraine

• Giant googly eyes appear around Adelaide

• Turks Pile into Bitcoin and Tether to Escape Plunging Lira

• Global risk matters much more than local risk. What can the government do?

• China to Curb Purchases of U.S. Farm Goods, Fitch Solutions Says

• Pay Your Power Bill, Myanmar Soldiers Say, or Pay With Your Life

• Lithuania wins microchip windfall from Taiwan in China clash

• Israeli police accused of using Pegasus spyware on Netanyahu's opponents

Health / Medicine

• Ginnie Graham: Medical debt nonprofit ends campaign after inability to access more overdue bills

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Chemical pollution has passed safe limit for humanity, say scientists

• We need to prepare to fight the Net Zero culture war

  Like most people, I am looking forward to the end of the Boris Johnson era. But as disastrous as his time in office has been, there has been one positive: the continued elite consensus on the need to achieve Net Zero on carbon emissions.

• What if Democracy and Climate Mitigation Are Incompatible?

• The Climate Conversation No One Wants

• The Surprisingly Low Price Tag on Preventing Climate Disaster