2023-11-28

etc

• Range Energy's electric trailer can improve semi-truck mpg by 36%

• Confederate Weapons Dump Found in South Carolina

• Internet use does not appear to harm mental health, study finds

• A 27k-year-old pyramid? Controversy hits an extraordinary archaeological claim

• Why Navajo is the hardest language to learn

• 38% of Europeans no longer eat three meals a day

Horseshit

• You can hire a Guinness World Records consultant to help set or break a record

• Bona Vacantia

  The latest fuss was kicked up by the Guardian with an article that describes the whole thing in accurate but lurid terms:

  The king is profiting from the deaths of thousands of people in the north-west of England whose assets are secretly being used to upgrade a commercial property empire managed by his hereditary estate, the Guardian can reveal.

• Should cars have built-in speed limits? Some think it's time

• I think they had a point, but I missed it. "Somebody tranq that child "

• Research finally reveals ancient universal equation for the shape of an egg

• Google Maps routed drivers into a desert during dust storm

• We trained a deep learning model to identify poverty

celebrity gossip

• Stephen Colbert ruptures appendix, cancels 'Late Show' episodes

• Why Captain Beefheart quit music for the easel

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Substack Has a Nazi Problem

  the platform has become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Substack has not only been hosting writers who post overtly Nazi rhetoric on the platform; it profits from many of them.

  • The last 6 weeks explosion of "eliminate the Jews" sentiment certainly shows how Substack Nazis have taken over all public discourse, doesn't it.

Musk

• Big brands keep dropping X over antisemitism; $75M loss, report estimates

• Elon Musk breaks world record for largest loss of personal fortune in history

• X Has Become a 'Global Sewer,' Mayor of Paris Says

• Brits turn off Twitter, although teens and tweens keen on generative AI

• The stainless-steel body of Tesla's Cybertruck is reportedly leading to issues

• Cybertruck Is Already a Production Nightmare for Tesla

• Cybertruck To Price Between $50,000 To $80,000, Wedbush Says Ahead Of Thursday's Launch

• The Cybertruck Fiasco

• Elon Musk Is Giving QAnon Believers Hope Just in Time for the 2024 Elections Archive

  As the US was preparing for Thanksgiving, Musk tweeted “Q*Anon” out to his 164.5 million followers. Musk’s post, which has been viewed 7.8 million times, linked to a story referencing a secret OpenAI project known as Q* (pronounced Q star). Instantly, the online spaces where QAnon still flourishes—message boards, Telegram, and X itself—lit up with excited believers cheering Musk’s post.

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Trump to Testify Again Next Month in Civil Fraud Trial

• Judge Denies Trump’s Request To Subpoena Jan. 6 Records In Federal Election Case

• Judge denies Trump's 'fishing expedition' to subpoena Jan. 6 committee records

• Not Only Can Trump Win, Right Now He’s the Favorite To Win.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• What's behind China's mysterious wave of childhood pneumonia?

• California vs. Florida: which state handled Covid better

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Tech Conference Collapses After Organizer Admits to Making Fake Female Speaker

  • DevTernity conference collapses amid claims women speakers were faked

• George Floyd’s death led to a racial reckoning — where’s the antisemitism reckoning?

• Compare this coverage to the guy (and his SUV) who drove through a Christmas parade: Suspect charged over shooting of Palestinian students in US

  US Attorney General Merrick Garland warned Monday of increasing threats from "domestic violent extremists" amid growing attacks against minority groups, as he vowed a full investigation into the shooting.

  • 'Granny, I've been shot,' said Palestinian student targeted in Vermont

  • Man pleads not guilty to shooting Palestinian students

  • Bernie Sanders discusses Vermont shooting, Israel-Hamas war

  • Suspect in Burlington shooting allegedly told ATF agent: 'I've been waiting for you'

  • What we know about the shooting of 3 Palestinian American college students

  • Biden condemns shooting of Palestinian students in Vermont

  • Suspect pleads not guilty to attempted murder in Vt. shooting of 3 Palestinian men

  • Suspect in Vermont Shooting of Palestinians Pleads Not Guilty

  • Shot Palestinian Student’s Family Thought He'd Be Safer in U.S.

  • Vermont gunman fired as financial adviser weeks before arrest in Palestinian student shooting

  • 'I've been waiting for you': Details emerge after Vermont shooting; motive still unclear

  • Vermont shooting: Victim jumped fence to escape attack after he was hit

• Deadspin Tried to Destroy a Kid for Wearing 'Blackface,' Then the Real Story Came Out – RedState

• Liberals Once Embraced Interracial Marriages Like Mine. What Changed? | The Free Press

• The DEI Backlash Is Here

• As Democrats push to ban caste discrimination, some Indian Americans object

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• How to get a real education: The Teenage Liberation Handbook

Entertainment / ShowBiz / Advertising

• EFF Urges FTC: Address American Resellers of Malware on Android TV Set-Top Boxes

• Cool toy, nice writeup My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar

  • HN comments

• Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers | Hacker News

• Hollywood Franchises Must 'Take a Breather and Let Audiences Get Excited Again'

• After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine

  • HN comments

• Google is deleting inactive accounts. Here's what that means

• Robert De Niro Accuses Apple of Editing His Gotham Awards Speech

• Top journalism school pushes taxpayer funding of reporters and media outlets.

• Evernote pushes users to upgrade with free plan limited to only 50 notes

• PeerTube v6 is out, and powered by your ideas | Hacker News

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort? (2023) | Hacker News

• The "hanging-punctuation property" in CSS | Hacker News

  • HN comments

• Hackers spent 2 years looting secrets of chipmaker NXP before being detected

• Software Development in the Old Days: Try Being Agile on an IBM 370

  the software engineers of the 20th century should not be faulted for failing to invent the agile approach. They did not have the rapid feedback available to 21st-century developers on the Internet. They could not have used agile methods even if they had wanted to.

• Analyzing the Monoprice Blackbird HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 Down Converter

  • HN comments

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• How AI could help optimize nutrient consisten | EurekAlert!

• God Help Us, Let's Try to Understand AI Monosemanticity

  • HN comments

• Cory Doctorow: The real AI fight

• Rumor is Q-Star figured out how to break AES, and OpenAI tried to warn the NSA

• Margaret Mitchell: 'People most likely harmed by AI have no seat at the table'

• Warnings Emerge over Emirati A.I. Firm G42's Ties to China

• Amazon announces Q, an AI chatbot for businesses

  • AWS Chatbot now supports Amazon Q conversations in Microsoft Teams and Slack

  • Amazon Introduces Q, an A.I. Chatbot for Companies

• The frantic battle over OpenAI shows that money triumphs in the end

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Aliens Are Out There – But They Probably Don't Care About Us

• wheee! Are UAPs Relics from an Earlier Civilization on Earth? | by Avi Loeb | Nov, 2023 | Medium

  Could these relics be evidence for a civilization that predated us on Earth 252 million years ago? This possibility would overcome the challenges associated with UAPs arriving to Earth through interstellar travel and the puzzle of why such UAPs are here right now despite the vastness of cosmic space and time.

• What is going on with Mars sample return mission

  The brief summary is that MSR’s architecture, pictured below, is incredibly complicated, slow, and expensive. In addition to that, it specifically avoids solving key problems, such as Mars downmass capacity, that would both greatly simplify the mission (albeit at some cost) and also feed forward into future human exploration. The result is a series of compromises that require Rube Goldberg sequencing, no central authority or responsibility that can fight for mission success, and billions of dollars of R&D on technologies that will probably never be used ever again.

• 'It's amazing': scientists analyse 4.6B-year-old dark dust from Bennu asteroid

• CIA's office has conducted UFO retrieval missions around the world

  Multiple sources briefed on the OGA's activities told DailyMail.com that most of its operations involve more conventional retrieval missions, such as stray nuclear weapons, downed satellites or adversaries' technology. But they claimed some missions coordinated by the OGA have involved retrieval of UFOs.

  'The task at hand is simply to get it into custody and protect the secrecy of it,' one source said. 'The actual physical retrieval is by the military. But it's not kept under military control, because they have to keep too many records. So they start moving it out fairly quickly into private hands.'

Crypto con games

• Binance founder Changpeng Zhao ordered by judge to stay in U.S. ahead of prison sentencing

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Jack Dorsey is getting rid of annual reviews and PIPs at Block

• The McDonald's theory of why everyone thinks the economy sucks

  The point is simply this: it’s very easy to spend a lot more these days on fast food in ways that don’t necessarily show up in inflation data. Three years ago, I might have walked down the block and ordered a Super Duper Double Cheeseburger, fries and a Diet Coke for $9.67 before tax. Now, because Uber Eats and the restaurant have correctly determined that I’m lazy and they can price-discriminate against me and I fell for their viral marketing campaign, I’ll have them deliver me a Triple Super Duper Cheeseburger Deluxe with grilled onions, plus fries and a Diet Coke — at a price of $24.25 before tax.

• Black Friday Is Dead

  This year we've got multiple examples of Black Friday "sales" where the prices are the same as last week, they just changed the accent color on the tag. There's stacks of stuff in the stores no one wants at any price. TVs that watch you as you watch them. "Home assistants" with 8 channel sonar systems that offer less and less of the capability they have to their hosts. Appliances with legally mandated inefficiency.

• US stocks end lower as Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales come into focus

• Is it cheaper to rent or buy property?

  By our calculations, for 89% of Americans renting a two-bedroom dwelling is now cheaper than buying a comparable property. Three years ago the figure was 16%. Our calculations do not cover long-term potential costs and benefits, such as outlays on maintenance, the asset value of a home once a mortgage has been paid off, or the opportunity cost of investing in a deposit for a house rather than, say, the stock market.

• Nvidia's earnings are up 206% from last year as it continues riding the AI wave

• Volkswagen says its core VW brand is ‘no longer competitive’ financially.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• The Biden Energy Slush Fund: A $400 billion pile of cash dwarfing most private green investment vehicles.

• Hunter Biden's team weighs House subpoena as James Biden cooperates with GOP panel

• Speech is freer in California than in Florida, watchdog warns ahead of Newsom-DeSantis debate

• Conservative judges have come for what’s left of the Voting Rights Act.

• Car Dealers Press Biden to Ease US Electric Vehicle Mandates

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. airman missing in France since 1944 now accounted for after remains analyzed

World

• Germany's Overzealous Debt Brake

• NHS Slammed For Recording "Gender Identity" Of Newborn Babies

• Tax, healthcare, immigration: why Dutch people voted for Geert Wilders

• Serbia: Civil Society Threatened by Spyware

• event happened in in 2020: Six teens on trial in Paris in the beheading of a French teacher

• Trudeau Demands End to Antisemitic Acts After Attack in Montreal

• Finland Shuts Border with Russia

Israel

• 4-year-old American Israeli hostage Abigail Edan released by Hamas - The Washington Post

• Elon Musk Visits Israel

• Here's How NYT Covered This 'Disfigured Woman' Who Was One of Palestinians Released From Jail

• Freed Palestinian prisoners report physical abuse in Israeli jails

• Hamas says it's open to a longer cease-fire and more hostage releases

• If This Pause in the Conflict in Gaza Is Allowed To Turn Into a Durable Ceasefire, It Would Be a Decisive Defeat for Israel.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Kyiv Confirms Poisoning of Intel Chief Budanov's Wife

Health / Medicine

• Nearly 40% of conventional baby food contains toxic pesticides, US study finds

• Left-sided Cancer: Blame your bed and TV?

• A father didn't believe his daughter was dead. The hospital harvested her organs

• Cyber-attack closes hospital emergency rooms in three US states

• Mobile Phones And The Question Of Declining Sperm Quality | Hackaday

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Mexican ecologists start campaign to save axolotl

• An Invasive Tick That Can Clone Itself Is Spreading Across the U.S.

• Revisiting the greenhouse effect–a hydrological perspective

• Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model

• Bears in Far East Russia Struggle to Hibernate Amid Abnormally High Temperatures

• Vietnam Relied on Environmentalists to Secure Billions. Then It Jailed Them

• American Airlines burying sawdust to combat climate change

  • American Airlines will pay to bury 10k tons of CO2 underground

• How effective are climate protests at swaying policy?

• United Nations set to call on Americans to reduce meat consumption

• A first-of-its-kind geothermal project is now operational

  • Google's new geothermal energy project is up and running

• Relentless consumption driving the climate crisis

• World leaders seek $25B levy on oil states' revenues to pay for climate damage

• Coal Power Kills a 'Staggering' Number of Americans

• Files Suggest UN Climate Summit's Leader Is Using Event to Promote Fossil Fuels