2023-12-09

etc

• Firewater | No Mercy / No Malice

  The irony — and in part, the answer — is that no generation has ever had more support and protection. We used to joke about “helicopter parents” who hovered above their kids, but now we have “snowplow parents” who carve a path for their offspring, clearing life’s obstacles. Parents are closer than ever with their young adult children, thanks to technology that tracks their every movement.

  As a member of Gen X, I’d leave home Saturday morning with my Bahne skateboard, 35¢, and an Abba-Zaba bar, not to be seen or heard from for 12+ hours. If my kid is more than 15 minutes late, the Navy Seals and MI6 are activated. Kids’ lives are programmed, pre-planned, and packaged — leaving them with 50% less unstructured time than earlier generations enjoyed. The result is lower resilience and greater anxiety. We use so many sanitary wipes on our kids’ lives, they don’t develop their own immunities.

• Ford F-150 Lightnings will soon offer home AC power, possibly cheaper than grid

• Spain's Failing Avocado Harvest Is a Warning for the Rest of the Supply

• Study suggests greeting strangers can boost happiness levels.

Horseshit

• The Hybrid-Car Dilemma

  • HN comments

• Cherokee Barbie: fitting or misguided tribute for Wilma Mankiller?

• Moving Company Touts Its Young, Chiseled Workers. Feds Say That's Discrimination

• No Exit | Markets and the Good | Issues | The Hedgehog Review

  One of the scandalous revelations of the COVID pandemic was just how many of America’s superrich—our digerati, venture capitalists, corporate monopolists, hedge fund managers—had long been planning to abandon their fellow citizens should a dire national crisis arise. While poorly paid EMTs and other frontline health workers were risking their lives caring for the desperately ill, wealthy Americans who had amassed their fortunes during our tech-driven Gilded Age were fueling their private jets and stocking their remote shelters in unabashed displays of their proudly vaunted libertarian creed.

• New York approves the first congestion toll in the US: $15 to enter Manhattan

  • HN comments

• Don’t Ever Set Your Electric Car on Fire

  This is a true story. Although it's not directly about artificial intelligence, it does concern electric vehicles (EVs), which are a significant part of the broader AI discourse.

• Kids are losing the Chuck E. Cheese animatronics

celebrity gossip

• Newly revealed 1994 photo of RFK Jr with Jeffrey Epstein raises questions

• Apple Computer Check Signed by Steve Jobs Sells for $46,000

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Can a social media post change public opinion? Researchers weigh in

Musk

• After losing everywhere else, Elon Musk asks SCOTUS to get SEC off his back

• Tesla Cybertruck's stiff structure, sharp design raise safety concerns

• Tesla Model Y 2nd in new vehicle registrations in the US, overtaking Toyota RAV4

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• The Liberal Media’s Desperate New ‘Trump Will be a Dictator’ Narrative.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Could Long Covid 'Brain Fog' Be an Acquired Form of ADHD?

• Child Mask Mandates Have No Clear Benefits and Cause Harm, BMJ Review Finds

• Researchers redesign mRNA therapeutics to prevent harmful immune responses

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Shots fired outside Jewish temple in Albany as Hanukkah begins; no injuries reported

  A man fired a shotgun twice outside a Jewish temple in upstate New York, hours before the start of Hanukkah on Thursday, then said “Free Palestine” as he was taken into custody, police said. No one was injured. Officials said no one was injured and police said they did not know the man’s motive.

  • Mufid Fawaz Alkhader in court in gunfire at Albany's Temple Israel

  Mufid Fawaz Alkhader, a U.S. citizen who was born in Iraq, allegedly also told members of a Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco & Explosives task force that “events in the Middle East have impacted him,” ... Alkhader, a resident of Schenectady, shouted “Free Palestine” during the incident, according to city police

• The Cult of the Hindu Cowboy | Snigdha Poonam | Granta Magazine

  The cowboy believes everything that comes from a cow – milk, curd, ghee, urine and dung – is packed with magical powers. He believes stroking a cow’s hump can send a surge of strength through his muscles. The cowboy believes, most of all, in holy war against everyone whose culture approves the killing of the blessed bovine – Muslims, Christians, Hindu outcastes. The cow is for him a symbol not just of Hinduism, but of India itself. He believes the time has come to cleanse the country of cow-eaters.

  As the motto of India’s fiercest band of cowboys puts it, ‘To protect our culture and our civilization, we must do as the Vedas say. And the Vedas tell us this – if an infidel kills a cow, we are to pump his body with bullets.’ The ancient texts are unlikely to have issued an order involving the use of guns. What they repeatedly do is rate the flesh of the cow as the best meat known to mankind and mandate its offering to gods and guests alike. But one can either read a multivolume Sanskrit text or put together an army; apparently one can’t do both.

• LA vegan restaurants are putting meat back on the menu

• California law requires gender-neutral toy, baby sections in retail stores

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Shake-up of French science system is biggest in decades

• Boys Are Struggling. It Can Take Coaches, Tutors and Thousands a Month to Help

• Harvard University Awarded 'Abysmal' Speech-Climate Rating

• Fareed Zakaria: Why university presidents are under fire

+Inside America's School Internet Censorship Machine

Entertainment / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Google announces April 2024 shutdown date for Google Podcasts

• France bans Signal and WhatsApp, thinks they are hacked

• Verizon fell for fake "search warrant," gave victim's phone data to stalker

• If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing | Hacker News

• Child safety groups and prosecutors criticize encryption of Facebook/Messenger

• Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access | Hacker News

• Threads is counting down to an EU launch next week

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Stealthy Linux rootkit found in the wild after going undetected for 2 years | Ars Technica

  evidence to date shows it almost exclusively targets victims in Thailand and “poses a severe risk to critical systems and sensitive data given that it is able to grant attackers remote access to the targeted network.

  Notably, Krasue uses RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol) messages to serve as a disguised “alive ping,” a tactic rarely seen in the wild.

• Originally discovered in 2020, announced in July 2023 Backdoor found in secure TETRA radios | Hacker News

  They don't so much backdoor the keying as that they have 4 different cipher profiles, and the one approved for global rather than European use (TEA1) compresses the key from 80 to 32 bits. It's essentially a surreptitious version of what the US did in the 1990s with "export ciphers".

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI leaders warned of abusive behavior before Sam Altman's ouster

• Europe reaches a deal on the first comprehensive AI rules

  • The EU Just Agreed Sweeping New Rules for AI

  • HN comments

  • E.U. reaches deal on landmark AI bill, racing ahead of U.S.

  • Europe reaches a deal on the first comprehensive AI rules

  • EU negotiators strike political deal on AI Act

• Microsoft says it does not own any portion of OpenAI

• OpenAI Acknowledges GPT-4 Getting "Lazier"

  • ChatGPT being investigated over reports of 'laziness'

• OpenAI's Altman Ouster Was Result of Drawn-Out Tensions

• On the "Hallucination Problem"

• New Report Accuses Sam Altman of Being a Terrible Boss

• Why the U.S. Needs a Moonshot Mentality for Artificial Intelligence - WSJ

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Why is there so much military interest in the moon?

• Halley's Comet begins its 38-year journey back toward Earth tonight

• On the Gimbal incident

Crypto con games

• The resurgence of crypto

  It is time to realize that crypto is more like a lottery ticket than a bubble or a fraud, and it is a lottery ticket with a good chance of paying off. It is a bet on whether it will prove possible to build out crypto infrastructure as a long-term project, integrated with mainstream finance. If that project can succeed, crypto will be worth a lot, probably considerably more than its current price. If not, crypto assets will remain as a means for escaping capital controls and moving money across borders, or perhaps to skirt the law with illegal purchases.

Economicon / Business / Finance

• It's been the year of the worker. West Hollywood employers are so over it

• Record U.S. oil output challenges Saudi mastery

• 'Excess profits' at big energy and consumer companies pushed up inflation,report

• U.S. payrolls rose 199,000 in November, unemployment rate falls to 3.7%

• 'Greedflation' study finds many companies were lying to you about inflation

  • HN comments

• Inflation expectations plunge in closely watched University of Michigan survey

• We Can't Stop Writing Paper Checks. Thieves Love That

• Judge Allows 9k Women to Sue Disney for Pay Disparity

• Morgan Stanley Boosts Apple Stock Target to $220 over Vision Pro and AI

• Extra virgin olive oil is getting expensive. And it might not even be real

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Nikki Haley's Path to Beating Donald Trump

• ‘Dirty voter rolls’ slammed, 131% of eligible DC voters registered.

• ‘Bunch of Lies’: Biden's Clintonesque Denial Before a House Impeachment Inquiry Vote - The Messenger

  The vote this coming week in the House not only will bring a moment of truth for Biden but for his party. House Democrats will have to decide whether, despite the extensive evidence of influence peddling and the president’s apparent lies, they will not support even an inquiry into allegations of corruption. This is the same party which used a "snap impeachment" for the last president without holding a single hearing.

• Vivek Vivisects Van Jones Over 'Great Replacement' Hypocrisy | ZeroHedge

• Sewage Garlic Grown in Communist China Has No Place in American Grocery Stores

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon Stupidity Is a Design Choice

World

• How China Made a Youth Unemployment Crisis Disappear

Israel

• The pro-Israel information war | Hacker News

• Israel increases Gaza strikes, UN decries 'humanitarian nightmare'

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Putin seeks to extend his rule

• Hollywood plays unwitting Cameo in Kremlin plot to discredit Zelensky

• Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 654

Health / Medicine

• Vitamin B6 deficiency leads to social deficits and cognitive impairment

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• American Chestnut Foundation Ceasing Distribution of Blight-Resistant Seeds

  Throughout 2023, TACF and its partners observed disappointing performance results from broad-scale field and greenhouse tests of advanced generations of Darling trees across several geographic locations. As discussed in the September 15, 2023 episode of TACF’s Chestnut Chat webinar series (Darling 58 Update), analysis indicated striking variability in Darling trees’ blight tolerance, significant losses in growth competitiveness, and reduction in overall fitness including stunted growth, leaf browning and curling, and increased mortality. View the body of evidence about Darling’s issues on the Darling 58 Performance page.

  • HN comments

• EPA orders packaging firm Inhance to stop making PFAS

• Despite Heat, Despite Rising Seas, Despite Habitat Loss, Big Oil Marches On

• Once They Were Pets. Now Giant Goldfish Are Menacing the Great Lakes.

• $7T annually invested in nature-negative activities

• The legal battles changing the course of climate change