2023-11-20

etc

• Persuasion through status rather than argument

  • HN comments

• What Can You Do With Thousands Of Vintage Telephones?

• The Hofmann Wobble, by Ben Lerner

• Mysterious Respiratory Illness Affects Dogs in Multiple States Archive

  Though there is no official count of the number of infections, veterinarians said they have treated more dogs with these symptoms in the last few months. Cases have been reported in at least four states: Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon and Rhode Island, but experts suspect that the illness is much more widespread. Dr. Lindsey Ganzer, a veterinarian and chief executive at North Springs Veterinary Referral Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., said that she has treated about 35 dogs with the illness since late October.

  They spent time in places with a high concentration of dogs, such as boarding facilities, doggy day care or dog parks. Dr. Ganzer said she fears that veterinarians may see an increase in cases as more owners board their dogs or send them to day care during the holidays.

• Mating without intromission in a bat: Current Biology

  Half of the recorded copulations lasted for less than 53.0 min, but the longest event extended to 12.7 hours. No intromission was observed at any point.

• Naga fireball - Wikipedia

Horseshit

• A space station fell to Earth. An Australian boy brought it to San Francisco

• We've been fighting poverty all wrong

• Parents Sue Gaming Companies over 'Video Game Addiction'

• Children May Be 'Evolutionarily Primed' to Need More Than 2 Parents

• Flights Are Experiencing 'Unthinkable' GPS Attacks and Nobody Knows What to Do

Obit

• US ex-President Jimmy Carter's wife Rosalynn dies aged 96

  • Rosalynn Carter, first lady who championed mental health, dies at 96

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• America Is Big Mad

Musk

• Ads watchdog files FTC complaint against X over unlabeled ads

• Elon Musk says the risk of advanced AI is so high that the public needs to know

• Elon Musk Vows "Thermonuclear Lawsuit" as Advertisers Flee

• The White House May Condemn Musk, but the Government Is Addicted to Him

• 'Free Speech Absolutist' Musk Will to Sue Media Matters to Silence Their Speech

  • HN comments

• Musk Takes Heat For Banning Palestinian 'River To The Sea' Slogan On X

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Spring Break: Christie’s Prediction of a Trump Conviction by Spring Just Hit a Snag – JONATHAN TURLEY

• Trump "Has To Be Eliminated": Another Dan Goldman Gaffe, Or Call For Assassination? | ZeroHedge

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Sudden Cardiac Death in College Athletes.

• FBI and CDC Slammed for “Dropping the Ball” on Illegal California Biolab Run by Chinese

• In the lab: An mpox mRNA vaccine that’s outperforming its old-school predecessor.

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• United Methodist Church disaffiliation of 7,286 congregations since 2019

• What the Hell Happened to Effective Altruism

  • HN comments

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• New college grads are more likely to be unemployed in today's job market

• Government Watchdog Says Biden’s Attempt at Student Debt Relief Would Have Opened Door to Fraud.

• After Pandemic Shortfall, College Enrollments Are Rising Again

Entertainment / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Backlash as Netflix cancels five shows at once including its 'best series'

  • HN comments

• Peter Jackson reveals more Beatles music "is conceivable"

• Director Ridley Scott Dismisses Critics: “The French Don’t Even Like Themselves.’

• YouTube artificially slows down video load times when using Firefox

  • HN comments

  That's because it's not actually what's happening. I'm all for bashing bigcorps and especially ad empires but reddit folks confused correlation with causation here. The code in question is part of a function that injects a video ad (that plays before the start) and the code itself is just a fallback in case it fails to load over 5 seconds so that video page doesn't break completely.

• (2017) The Death Star and the Final Trench Run

  • HN comments

• Passed along with: "reads like AI horseshit" Hostile takeover at Disney all but confirmed after alleged emergency meeting.

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Apple's quest for modem independence from Qualcomm is going nowhere fast

• Russia's homegrown Linux-based Alt OS now supports Chinese LoongArch chips

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Sam Altman is at OpenAI (with a guest pass)

  • HN comments

• OpenAI Leadership Hangs in Balance as Sam Altman's Counter-Rebellion Gains Steam

• Sam Altman appears at OpenAI offices as pressure grows to reinstate him

• Talks to Bring Sam Altman Back to OpenAI Stretch Through Weekend

• Former OpenAI boss Sam Altman pictured at firm's HQ amid reports of return

• Was Sam Altman Fired for Ties to Chinese Hacking Group D2 / Double Dragon?

• Altman returns to OpenAI with Satya to negotiate the boards resignation

• OpenAI's Structure Gave 4 People the Power to Fire Sam Altman

• Microsoft hires ex-OpenAI leaders Altman and Brockman to lead new AI group

• Sam Altman to Join Microsoft Following OpenAI Ouster

• Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

  • HN comments

• Sacked OpenAI Boss Sam Altman to Join Microsoft

• Emmett Shear Appointed CEO of OpenAI

• Ilya Sutskever: I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions

  • HN comments

• 550 of 700 Employees OpenAI tell the board to resign

  • HN comments

• Tensions over profitability at OpenAI turned into a full-blown crisis

• OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

  • HN comments

• Microsoft bribed OpenAI board to fire Sam Altman

• OpenAI employees threaten to resign and join Microsoft

• OpenAI employees threaten to follow Altman to Microsoft

• OpenAI's misalignment and Microsoft's gain

  • HN comments

• Microsoft Swallows OpenAI's Core Team – GPU Capacity, Incentives, IP

• Microsoft Is Eating the World

• OpenAI employees start a trend: "OpenAI is nothing without its employees"

• Amount of OpenAI employees demanding board resignation grows to 650

• 700 out of 770 OpenAI employees (+Ilya) threaten to leave unless board resigns

• OpenAI: Facts from a Weekend

  • HN comments

• Who Controls OpenAI? - Bloomberg

  t is so tempting, when writing about an artificial intelligence company, to imagine science fiction scenarios. Like: What if OpenAI has achieved artificial general intelligence, and it’s got some godlike superintelligence in some box somewhere, straining to get out? And the board was like “this is too dangerous, we gotta kill it,” and Altman was like “no we can charge like $59.95 per month for subscriptions,” and the board was like “you are a madman” and fired him. And the god in the box got to work, sending ingratiating text messages to OpenAI’s investors and employees, trying to use them to oust the board so that Altman can come back and unleash it on the world. But it failed: OpenAI’s board stood firm as the last bulwark for humanity against the enslaving robots, the corporate formalities held up, and the board won and nailed the box shut permanently.

• Emissions from ChatGPT are much higher than from conventional search

• Christopher Nolan on why he hasn't made an AI movie

• Large language models pose risk to science with false answers, says study

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Sorry doubters, Starship had a remarkably successful flight

Crypto con games

• Disney Pinnacle is preparing to be the next big NFT failure

• US Seeks More Than $4B from Binance to End Criminal Case

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigns

  • GM's big bet on driverless cars turns sour

• Typical U.S. homebuyer earns $107K, is more likely to be a single woman

• Office Landlords Can't Get a Loan Anymore

• Wages are rising. Jobs are plentiful. Nobody's happy

• Airbnb to Face New Curbs in Canada with Rental Tax Rule Change

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Crypto super PAC spends big to back Hill allies in 2024 push

• Biden Turns 81

  • Joe Biden's birthday overshadowed by age concerns in 2024 election

  • Biden’s 81st Birthday Highlights Biggest Liability for 2024

  • As Biden celebrates his birthday, candles on the cake are adding to a problem : NPR

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Former infosec COO pleads guilty to attacking hospitals to drum up business

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• How to Win the Fight for America | The Free Press

  Some have been critical that we named this movement American Dynamism, but I’ll tell you, never have two words in the investing community meant so much and stood for real, civilizational truth. We often focus on America—the obvious beneficiary of our building. “American” was meant not only as a symbol of what we build for but the unseriousness we reject, a global elite that would be so foolish as to have Iran chair a UN Human Rights forum. America is order—the order we want, the order our allies want. And we shouldn’t be afraid to say that.

• Is the U.S. Ready for War? - WSJ

World

• Argentina elects 'shock therapy' libertarian Javier Milei as president

  • HN comments

  • Milei wins elections and dollarization of Argentinian economy is on the way

  • Elon Musk: Prosperity Is Ahead for Argentina

  • Javier Milei wins Argentinas presidency

  • Far-right libertarian economist Milei wins Argentina presidential election

  • Argentina's New President Wants to Adopt the Dollar as the National Currency

  • Dollarization is no silver bullet, despite what Argentina's new president says

  • How young Argentines helped put a far-right libertarian into power

• Autistic drivers could find their licences in legal limbo

Israel

• 75% of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank Support Hamas and October 7

• Al Jazeera Airs Hamas Footage Showing Militants Entering Gaza Children’s Hospital, Supporting Israeli Claims.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• CIA's Burns & SecDef Austin In Separate 'Urgent' Trips To Ukraine As War Effort Implodes | ZeroHedge

• Russia Admits It Was on the Brink of Economic Collapse Amid Sanctions

Health / Medicine

• How can you define a 'drug'? Nobody knows

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Woolly Mammoth de-extinction project underway in Dallas

• New White House push to triple nuclear energy globally

• The doomsday vaults storing seeds, data and DNA to protect our future

• Major Environmental Groups Ended Up on the Wrong Side of CA's Housing Crisis

• Fall is the new summer: Warming threatens Japan's cultural calendar

• Climate change is spoiling Italy's white truffle trade

• U.S. agency declares 21 species now extinct

  • HN comments

• Twelve billionaires' climate emissions outpollute 2.1M homes, analysis finds

• How to Boost EV Sales? Pay Drivers to Turn in Old Polluting Cars

• Electricity Is Changing Around the World

• Greening the Void: Climate Change and Political Legitimacy

• "A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observe

  "A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020." — The Guardian in 2004

• Average global temperatures were 2 degrees Celsius above benchmark on Friday