2022-05-26

Cool

• Nicely illustrated: Uniformly Sample Points in a Disk | Hacker News

etc

• InSight's Final Selfie

• NASA: ‘Something weird’ is expanding universe amid Hubble discovery

• Fastest-Growing Cities Are Still in the West and South

• Japanese companies are taking "furries" to a whole new level with realistic animal costumes straight out of your nightmares | Not the Bee

Horseshit

• Foxconn factory fiasco could leave Wisconsinites on the hook for $300m

• AI Inventing Its Own Culture, Passing It on to Humans, Sociologists Find

• Wild animal suffering is the new frontier of animal welfare

• Plant-based proteins are no longer a side dish in diets

• China-Bound Children in Ukraine/Russia Surrogate Baby Factories Are Piling Up

• Serious crime in the metaverse should be outlawed by the U.N., UAE minister says

• Evidence and strategies for alcohol control as crime control

• Science and Education are bad for humanity | Hacker News

• Norwegian Feminist Facing Up to Three Years in Prison over Tweets

• How to avoid a monopoly on space

• ‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey’ Director Teases Slasher Film Plot

celebrity gossip

• I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

  • HN comments

• Actor Kevin Spacey charged with sexual assault

Obit

• Ray Liotta, ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Field of Dreams’ Star, Dies at 67

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Mike Rowe Says Feds "Revoked" Film Permit Because Official "Didn't Like His Personal Politics"

• They're Worried About The Spread Of Information, Not Disinformation | ZeroHedge

• Why unprecedented birdflu outbreaks sweeping the world are concerning scientists

• Vigil, Rally Planned for 2nd Anniversary of Floyd Killing

• (Sep 2021) Fake science Part II: Bots that are not | by Mike Hearn | Mike’s blog

  quietly uploaded to a preprint server in March by Gallwitz and Kreil, two German investigators, and has received little attention since. Yet their work completely destroys the academic field of bot research to such an extreme extent that it’s possible there are no true scientific papers on the topic at all.

• Building The YIMBY Faction - by Misha David Chellam

Gun Control / Mass Shooting

• Beto O’Rourke Ejected After Crashing Governor’s Uvalde Press Conference – Called a ‘Sick Son of a Bitch’ for Making the Shooting a Political Issue.

  • "Sick Son Of A Bitch": Beto O'Rourke Crashes School Shooting Press Conference

• America should make it harder to buy guns

• Texas Forces Companies to Be Neutral on Guns, or Lose Business

• U.S. gun production has nearly tripled since 2000

• Only 3 school mass shootings between 1903-1966. Didn't take off until the 90s

  • HN comments

• A brief overview of options for addressing mass shootings and gun violence

• Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

  • HN comments

• We must confront the cultural mess that gave us Uvalde.

• Witnesses, Video Suggest Stunning Inaction From Uvalde Cops During School Shooting

• Onlookers urged police to charge into Texas school

  • Parents were asked for DNA samples to help identify victims

• The Police Timeline of the Texas School Shooting Has a Lot of Holes

• Parents begged police for upward of 40 minutes to stop Texas school shooter: Report

• "Go In There!": Distraught Parents Begged Texas Cops To Enter School As Gunman Inside For 'Up To An Hour'

• Distressing videos show parents begging cops to stop Texas school shooting

• The Washington Post Invents A New History For AR-15s

  A 2018 Washington Post article about AR-15s is recirculating today after senior editor Marc Fisher tweeted it out in the wake of the Texas elementary school shooting. In it, he contends that the AR-15 was “[i]nvented for Nazi infantrymen” and “is a descendant of the machine guns Nazi infantrymen used against Soviet forces in World War II.”

• Obama slammed for linking Uvalde massacre to George Floyd

• Mass Shootings Are Contagious

• Sen. Ted Cruz angrily quits interview after being asked about gun violence

  • Sen. Ted Cruz Storms Out When Asked Why School Shootings Only Happen in America

• Uvalde Police Went in for Their Own Kids During Shooting

Musk

• Elon Musk will put up $6B to drop Tesla loans from his Twitter deal

• Elon Musk must find more cash for Twitter deal after scrapping margin loan

• Elon Musk needs more cash for Twitter buy after Tesla margin loan lapses

• Elon Musk’s proposed Hyperloop is all smoke and mirrors

• Who is helping Elon Musk fund his $61.4B takeover of Twitter?

• Jack Off the Board of Twitter

• Elon Called Off His Margin Loan

• Elon Musk is planning a 24-hour Tesla restaurant in Hollywood

• (May 22) SpaceX looks to raise $1.7B in new funding

Twitter

• FTC Fines Twitter $150M for Using 2FA Phone Numbers for Ad Targeting

  • HN comments

• Jack Dorsey leaves Twitter's board of directors

  • HN comments

Abortion

• Google urged to stop collecting phone location data before Roe vs. Wade reversal

COVID / VaxCult

• Long Covid poses risks to vaccinated people, too

• Long Covid risk drops only slightly after vaccination, large study shows

  • Vaccines offer little protection against long Covid, study finds

• Covid-19 Rebound After Paxlovid Treatment

• ‘Nobody Wants Them’: Moderna Throwing Out 30 Million Vaccine Doses, CEO Says.

• Pushback: Navy loses in attempt to fire officer who refused COVID shots.

• What explains school reopening decisions during Covid?

• (PDF) The unintended consequences of Covid-19 vaccine policy

  Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarisation, and adversely affects health and well-being

Culture War / Tribal / Re segregation

• Female avatar sexually assaulted in Meta VR platform, campaigners say

• Dutch gov't to admit to institutional racism at Tax Authority

• It’s Official: Barbie Goes Transgender

• Foreskin regeneration: Human Clinical Trials Expected April 2023 for Victims of Male Genital Mutilation

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• What Princeton Did to My Husband - by Solveig Lucia Gold

Media / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Take-Two and Zynga merge in the biggest deal in gaming history

• After 30 years, the world can now play the lost Marble Madness II

• Zuckerberg’s metaverse to lose significant money in the near term

TechSuck

• Mitsubishi Electric again admits to widespread quality control cheating

• Ask HN: Is every contracted developer over-employed nowadays?

• (PDF) Broadcom to Acquire VMware for Approximately $61B in Cash and Stock

  • Chipmaker Broadcom to buy software group VMware for $69bn

  • Broadcom to Acquire VMware for $61B

  • HN comments

• What happened to Perl 7? | Perl Steering Council

  • HN comments

• Google Hardware’s latest weird defect: Quickly deteriorating phone cases

• AMD underwhelms at Computex - SemiAccurate

  Last up we have the worst part, the upcoming Ryzen 7000 line and likely Mendocino are not safe to use. They all contain a remotely exploitable hardware backdoor that can not be turned off. Actually you can flip a BIOS switch that says off but if you do, Windows won’t run. On top of that since it is the block that brings the system up, if it is actually off, not just listed as such in the BIOS, the system can’t post so ‘off’ means nothing. In SemiAccurate’s opinion, these CPUs are too insecure to use, and that is sad to say.

• Not really: Practical Power Beaming Gets Real - IEEE Spectrum

  • HN comments

Crypto con games

• Guggenheim’s Minerd Sees Bitcoin Sinking to $8k with Crypto Now ‘Suspect’

• Hotels Using NFTs to Create a StubHub for Lodging Reservations

• Is Cryptocurrency a Ponzi Scheme?

• The Winklevoss twins have fortunes riding on crypto comeback

• The Luna crash might have been Intentional, here’s why

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Gun and ammo stocks soar after the Uvalde mass shooting

• One Man Helped Credit Suisse Make Billions from Russia Tycoons

• Nvidia will slow down its hiring pace and control expenses

• Amazon Drone Crashes Hit Jeff Bezos’ Delivery Dreams

• CBO predicts inflation has topped, will cool to 2% by 2024 with higher GDP

• Tech Layoff Tracker | Hacker News

  • "It's not just 'tech' so ..."

• What Will Happen with House Prices?

  If I put odds on the likely scenarios, I’d say a stall is probably 50/50, and slow growth the next most likely scenario. A “bust” with 5% to 10% nominal price declines nationally is the least likely.

• The Household Mystery: Part II

  Was this a one-time surge in household formation as the pandemic eased? Or will we see further increases in household formation even with little population growth (perhaps due to more work-from-home)? This is a key question for housing. My suspicion is household formation will slow significantly, taking pressure off of demand.

• The Tech Rout Isn’t Just Cyclical–It’s Well-Earned, and Overdue

• Bolt Financial's loans come due

  Bolt offered loans to employees who wanted to buy vested shares. ... A Bolt spokesperson says that only a "single digit" number of laid-off employees took out the loans, and that the aggregate amount was below $200,000. Moreover, she says the company plans to "work with" those individuals.

  • HN comments

• Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212m CEO pay

Shortages

• FDA says senior officials didn’t receive infant formula whistleblower report due to 'mailroom issues' - POLITICO

• The Bots Behind the Game Console Shortage

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Lawmakers vote to legalize recreational marijuana in RI

• Trump reacted with approval to 'hang Mike Pence' chants from rioters on January 6

• NIL first: UT-Martin QB Dresser Winn announces candidate endorsement

  In what is believed to be the first time a college student-athlete and a political candidate have struck a NIL deal, University of Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn announced he was supporting Colin Johnson in his run for District Attorney General in the 27th Judicial District of Tennessee.

  • Football Player Signs NIL Deal to Promote Local Candidate

  Winn declined to disclose financial terms of the deal.

• Why it’s hard for the Biden to figure out how much student debt to forgive

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• SEC weighs crackdown on phony environmental and social justice funds

• How to Murder Your Husband writer found guilty of murdering husband

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• That is now, this was then, Taiwan edition

World

• Could Siberia be a Greater Prize than the South China Sea for China?

• As hunger spreads in Somalia, babies start to die

• Quebec moves to protect French language and restrict use of English

• The rise of ‘bai lan’: why China’s frustrated youth are ready to ‘let it rot’

• South Korean Workers Turn the Tables on Their Bad Bosses

• The New York Times wrote Israel’s signature on the assassination that shook Iran

• Turkey Has Detained Islamic State’s New Leader

• Israeli Forces Murdered Star Al Jazeera Journalist: CNN

Health / Medicine

• Antioxidants don't work, but no one wants to hear it

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Forty percent of all shipping cargo consists of fossil fuels – Quartz

• ‘Unsustainable’: how satellite swarms pose a rising threat to astronomy

Ukraine War

• Zelensky Rejects Kissinger Concession Comments, Says "Russia Must Also Leave Crimea"

• Ruble Slides From 4-Year-High On Russian Rate-Cut

• Nuland-Pyatt Tape Removed from YouTube After 8 Years

  The smoking gun proving U.S. involvement in the 2014 coup in Kiev has been removed from YouTube after eight years. It was one of the most watched versions of the intercepted and leaked conversation between then Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, in which the two discuss who will make up the new government weeks before democratically-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a violent coup on Feb. 21, 2014. The two talk about “midwifing” the unconstitutional change of government and “gluing it together” and of the role then Vice President Joe Biden should play and what meetings to set up with Ukrainian politicians.

etc

• Ukraine war: World Bank boss warns over global recession