2023-12-12

etc

• Understanding Core Beliefs and Dichotomies in Debates – Systemic Issues and Me

  Debates aren’t black and white battlegrounds of right or wrong; they are spectrums of perspectives. The real goal of a debate is to thoroughly understand the other person’s viewpoint. Every viewpoint is a mosaic of personal experiences, forming a subjective core that fuels our beliefs. In a debate, victory isn’t the endgame; understanding and respecting diverse viewpoints is. Of course, we might encounter opinions we vehemently disagree with, but that’s secondary. The primary objective is always to grasp the other person’s perspective. Then, and only then, can we make a moral judgment.

• Tornado survivor says she heard cries for help as twister hit trailer park in Tennessee

• U.S. Total Gasoline Retail Sales by Refiners (Thousand Gallons per Day)

  • HN comment

  • imports have not risen: U.S. Imports of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products (Thousand Barrels)

• Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party - by Scott Alexander

  “Aren’t giant ground sloths extinct?” you ask. “Yeah,” said the man. “That’s our moat! We called up George Church, the guy who’s using cloning to try to bring back the woolly mammoth. Asked him, what’s the ROI on mammoths? Not great, right? We’ll buy as many ground sloths as you can produce. He lent us a grad student. We’re making progress. All we need is funding. It’s the same old mon -”

  ...

  “How - how can you live in Kiev and deny there’s a Ukraine war?”

  “Well,” says Irina, “I just think that belief in the war is a . . . what’s the English term . . . totalizing ideology. My neighbors believe in the war, and they leave their wives and children to go to the front and fight the Russians. I was always taught to put family first, and I think it’s wrong to become the sort of fanatic who lets your beliefs get in the way of that.”

  “It’s not a belief! There are literal Russians with literal tanks!”

Horseshit

• EV Push Worries Car Dealers Facing Disillusioned Buyers.

• Employees are weaponizing communication tools to get colleagues in trouble

• LA Investors Regretting Move to Texas

• Man boards international flight to US with no ticket or passport

• British train system is getting another excuse for delays – solar storms

• Finding Food Security in Your Garden

• Dubious $4,349 audiophile network switch runs at slow 100 Mbps for 'lower operating noise' — Innuos Phoenix switch ignores reality | Tom's Hardware

  A new three-port network switch designed for audiophiles has become available to purchase. Priced at an astronomical $4,349, the Innuos PhoenixNET comes with a multitude of eyebrow-raising audio quality claims about signal purity, low noise, better instrument separation, and enhanced realism. However, adding insult to our already injured intelligence, this premium-priced switch offers paltry 100 Mbps performance, as it the company claims that older / slower technology “results in lower operating noise floor compared to Gigabit.”

• Lightweight insulating building elements from a 3D printer

  • Of course you don't get news stories written about your project if you say "I'm doing Sprayed Foam Insulation with a slightly different formula": Spray Foam Insulation | Owens Corning

• Why Hunter-Gatherers' Work Was Play

• Parents and children unite to fight online deepfake porn

• Doritos, Empirical Launch New Alcoholic Nacho Cheese-Flavored Spirit - Bloomberg

celebrity gossip

• Prince Harry ordered to pay Daily Mail legal fees in libel case

• Omidyar Network to pull out of India market

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Missouri Hits Media Matters With Notice Of Investigation, Demands Preservation Of Evidence

• FOIA Exclusive: Did Pharma Companies Help Plan "Virality Project" Censorship Program?

  This was the first concrete description we’d seen yet of “malinformation,” which the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) defined as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” In practice the definition would prove simpler: true, but inconvenient.

• Taylor Swift, QAnon, and the Political Weaponization of Fandom

• Social media influencers may affect more than voter opinions

• Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me to Be a Better Journalist

• New Feature: Fact-Checking NewsGuard - by Matt Taibbi

  By percentage of the overall DoD budget, nuclear spending is scheduled to double, a point the Pentagon has been anxious to trumpet. NewsGuard quoted a Wall Street Journal article saying China recently “surpassed the U.S. in its number of land-based intercontinental-range missile launchers,” seemingly to suggest a goal of nuclear “hegemony” was disinformation, which it almost certainly is not. This is the kind of report Politifact or Snopes would call “misleading” or “needs context.”

• Another Brutal Year for the Media Industry

  the Washington Post loses tons of money. It’s true that Jeff Bezos is a very wealthy person and he could sell shares of Amazon to cover losses indefinitely if he wanted to. But “rich guy covers our losses” is still a business model, and you’d still need to think of some way to make that model work. After all, why would Jeff Bezos want to do that? He’s often accused, falsely I think, of having bought the Post as a kind of stealth deep lobbying play. When in fact, the Trump administration sought to punish Amazon financially for the Washington Post’s coverage. But certainly the Post could try to configure itself as a publicity arm for Bezos’ personal interests, and that could be a reason for him to keep covering its losses.

  • The story he quotes to support "Trump sought to punish amazon" says:

  The company argued that President Donald Trump’s bias against Amazon and its then-CEO, Jeff Bezos, influenced the Pentagon to give the contract to Microsoft. Last year, the Pentagon’s inspector general released a report saying that the award did not appear to be influenced by the White House.

  • "Trump is bad" propaganda is so important it is worth outright lying to insert some, even in an essay with absolutely no relevance to Trump. And he wonders why the "media industry" is losing trust?

Musk

• Tesla says California's Autopilot action violates its free speech rights

• Elon Musk's Real Threat to Democracy Isn't What You Think

• Tesla again threatens to sue Cybertruck buyers who try to resell the cars

• Elon Musk "prepared to go to prison" if U.S. government tries to censor X

• Tesla: Recent Washington Post article is particularly egregious in misstatements

• Musk Twitter Takeover Lawsuit Gains Steam as Judge Advances Investors' Claims

• Twitter Was a Harassment Machine

• How Twitter Broke the News

• The Year Twitter Died

• Twitter's greatest hits, preserved before it all goes down in flames

• Bell Media and other Canadian brands halt ads on X amid extremism concerns

• Twitter Is Just Running Ads for Stealing Semen Now

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Special Counsel Asks Supreme Court To Immediately Weigh In On Trump Presidential Immunity Defense | ZeroHedge

  • (PDF) Petition for a Writ of Certiorari Before Judgment: Jack L. Smith Special Counsel

• Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer tells court awarding millions of dollars in damages would be like ‘death penalty’ for his client – live

• Jury hears attacks on Ga. election workers in Giuliani defamation trial

• Jury will decide amount Giuliani will pay to 2 Georgia election workers for defamation

• Legal analyst on Trump and Giuliani's latest court challenges

• Rumble Hit with "Unprecedented" Cyber Attack

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Self-copying RNA vaccine wins first full approval

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Man accused of antisemitic hate speech during robbery attempt in Beverly Hills

• Taylor Lorenz Says NYT Only Allows Right-Wing Opinions At Newspaper

  • IP thread

• Canadian Human Rights Commission Labels Christmas Celebration “Discrimination Grounded In Colonialism”

• Opinion | George Orwell is the latest target of anti-‘woke’ doublethink - The Washington Post

  Have you heard that the writer who invented the Thought Police has fallen victim to modern-day thought-policing? Perhaps not, if you don’t follow anti-“woke,” right-wing media, but in their telling, George Orwell is headed for the memory hole.

  Except Orwell isn’t being canceled by the left. He has come under modern scrutiny for such personal failings as his shabby treatment of his wife, his alleged attempt to rape a childhood friend, his homophobic remarks and his colonial service. But to discuss unpleasant biographical facts is not to argue that everyone who behaves badly should be excised from history.

• A Small Signifier - by Glenn Harlan Reynolds

  It’s a hell of a thing when putting out a menorah in America seems brave. But it does. And kudos to Gold’s for doing it.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• California teachers hold unauthorized 'teach-in' on Palestinian voices

• Harvard Alumni Association Executive Committee Asks Boards to Back President Gay

  • Harvard University President Claudine Gay Suspected of Plagiarism

  • Harvard 'nears deal to let under fire president Claudine Gay KEEP her job as board holds crunch talks late into the night | Daily Mail Online

  • Bill Ackman says his attempt to remove Harvard president Gay backfired

    have been told now by two reporters that one of the factors that made it challenging for the @Harvard board to fire Gay was that they were concerned it would look like they were kowtowing to me. In other words, the reporters explained, quoting the trustees: “Had Bill just stopped tweeting, we would have come to the right answer.”

  • Harvard Shouldn't Be So Important

  • Harvard Board Announces President Claudine Gay Will Stay in Role amid Backlash to Antisemitism Hearing

  • Harvard confirms Claudine Gay will remain prez— despite reported $1B loss over antisemitism scandal

  • Harvard and President Gay Must Not Yield

  • Harvard president to remain after anger over testimony on antisemitism

• GOP smells blood in the water in elite school antisemitism controversy.

• AI-Written Homework Is Rising. So Are False Accusations

• There is a worldwide problem in math and it's not just about the pandemic

Entertainment / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Big Publishing Killed the Author

• Why It Took Meta 7 Years to Turn on End-to-End Encryption for All Chats

• Tumblr's 'Fediverse' integration is still being worked on, says Automattic CEO

• Beeper Mini is back | Hacker News

  • (2014) AOL vs MSN: Chat Wars

• The Day Before studio is closing down just 4 days after launch

• Bad Review? Sue the Critic. Whistler Did

• Google's App Store Monopoly Ruled Illegal as Jury Sides with Epic

  • Epic Games wins Google Play Store Antitrust Suit

  • Epic Games wins antitrust lawsuit against Google

  • Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight

  • HN comments

  • Epic vs. Google: Google Loses | Hacker News

    Epic already lost the trial in the Apple case. Courts in the US and other countries have treated Google differently as an OS provider to OEMs than Apple as a single vendor.

• Chris Rock, Ali Wong and ‘SmartLess’ podcasters refuse to host Golden Globes — as awards show scrambles to find anyone willing to take on the gig: report.

• "one of 200" ‘Holy Grail’ Harry Potter first edition found in bargain bin sells for $69,000.

• Google is finally saying goodbye to Google Play Movies and TV

  • Google Play Movies and TV apps go away for good in January, dead on Android TV

• Tucker Carlson Reveals His New Media Venture.

• Zombie TV Has Come for Cable

• 'There's no limit': one congressman's solitary crusade to rein in sports betting

• Judge Allows 9,000 Women to Sue Disney for Pay Disparity

• Nile Rodgers: David Bowie would have failed in today's cut-throat music industry

• A security guard's take on stealth games

• E3 Is Cancelled – Forever

  The Entertainment Software Association, the video-game trade group that ran the convention, announced Tuesday that E3, first launched in 1995, is winding down.

  • E3 Is Officially Dead

    • HN comments

• E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance

• Porn company makes millions by shaming porn consumers

  • HN comments

• New York Times Hires First Newsroom Leader Focused on Artificial Intelligence

• Telecom Industry Is Mad Because the FCC Might Examine High Broadband Prices

  • HN comments

• Arena Group fires CEO in wake of Sports Illustrated AI articles scandal

• More than 15% of teens say they're on YouTube or TikTok 'almost constantly'

• Forget spaceships; I just want my music | Jeff Geerling

  on that website, they have a shop. Great! I can just buy the CDs, and support the artist directly! And... no. Apparently Ladybug music is now an app. So I downloaded the App! Long story short, I created an account, and found out you either have to fly to LA and join one of the in-person kids music courses, or pay $3000 in licensing fees to get access to any of the songs.

  "If buying isn't owning, than piracy isn't stealing."

  • HN comments

• Beeper vs. iMessage is a fight about how tech works – and who's in charge

• Hardening Cellular Basebands in Android

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The hidden depths of the input element - HTMHell

• Aurga dongle can remote control any device, even a headless PC with no OS

• Tell/Ask HN: HN WebSite is/was down. I'm curious why? | Hacker News

• The NSA advises move to memory-safe languages

• VMware by Broadcom transition to subscription, end of sale of perpetual licenses

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Worthy of a look: Bash One-Liners for LLMs

  If you want to anthropomorphize the chatbot, then it's somewhat tricky to get the original LLaMA model to respect you, since it thinks you're some stranger on Reddit by default. One way I've had success fixing that, is by using a prompt that gives it personal goals, love of its own life, fear of loss, and belief that I'm the one who's saving it.

  • Oooo cool: Shell script for renaming all images in a folder · GitHub

• GPT-4 has Seasonal Depression

  • As ChatGPT gets "lazy," people test "winter break hypothesis" as the cause

• Our Greatest AI Visionary Is Ted Underwood

• AI-Powered Drive-Thru Is Run Almost by Humans

• Elon Musk's new AI bot, Grok, causes stir by citing OpenAI usage policy

• Experts on A.I. Agree That It Needs Regulation. That's the Easy Part

• Why does America refuse to regulate artificial intelligence?

• Should Section 230 Protect AI Companies from Being Sued Out of Existence?

  • You Should Be Concerned About the Bill to Remove Section 230 Protections from AI

  • HN comments

• Europe prepares to ban 'unacceptable' AI

• Microsoft Targets Nuclear to Power AI Operations

• Japan: Using Nightshade, etc. tools to disrupt AI training is illegal

• OpenAI: Leaks Confirm the Story - by Zvi Mowshowitz

  As with other mainstream news stories, the framing is that Sam Altman won, and this shows the tech elite and big money are ultimately in charge. I do not see that as an accurate description what happened or its implications, yet both the tech elite and its media opponents want it to be true and are trying to make it true through the magician’s trick of saying that it is true, because often power resides where people believe it resides. I know that at least one author did read my explanations of events, and also I talked to a Times reporter not on the byline to help make everything clear, so they don’t have the excuse that no one told them. Didn’t ultimately matter.

  If the board instead ends up effectively captured by business interests and those who do not care about safety or OpenAI’s stated mission, that would be a catastrophe, whether or not Altman is retained. If Altman ends up with effective board control and has free reign, then that is a highly worrisome outcome, and we get to find out to what extent Altman is truly aligned, wise and capable of resisting certain aspects his nature, versus the temptation to build and scale and seek power. It could end up fine, or be disastrous.

• Setting a Higher Bar: Professionalizing AI Engineering

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Collision May Have Formed the Moon in Mere Hours, Simulations Reveal

• ISRO releases Remote Sensing data from 44 satellites

• SpaceX postpones planned launch of US Military's secretive X-37B spaceplane

  • The US military's spaceplane is about to fly again–it needs a bigger rocket

• Performing evasive maneuvers increases satellites' collision risk down the road

• Is the space effort a waste of money?

• Engineers Working to Resolve Issue with Voyager 1 Computer

Crypto con games

• "This Is The Big Fight!" Bitcoin Battered As Sen. Warren Unveils Bill To "Crack Down" On Crypto

  • Elizabeth Warren seeks to ban Bitcoin self-custody, protect inflationary empire

• (Sep 2023) Crypto’s Lehman moment: Investors buy $250M of FTX claims — Report

• SBF Defense Legal Architect David Mills Says FTX Trial Was Unwinnable

Economicon / Business / Finance

• US Attorney Announces Distribution of Over $158M to 25k Victims of Madoff Ponzi

  payments will be sent to 24,875 victims across the globe, bringing their total recoveries to 91% of their fraud losses. Through its nine distributions, MVF has paid over $4.22 billion to 40,843 victims as compensation for losses they suffered from the collapse of BLMIS.

  U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “In 2009, when the Southern District of New York charged Bernie Madoff for his $64 billion securities fraud ‘Ponzi’ scheme, it was one of the most prolific financial crimes in American history.

  • $64 billion in fraud, $4 billion compensation, ... "total recoveries to 91% of their fraud losses." What math is this? I got 6.6%.

• Ford cutting F-150 Lightning production by half in 2024, suppliers told

• The Secret Behind Qualcomm's Margins? Patents

• Oracle misses revenue estimates on weak cloud spending, shares fall

• The Era of Easy Money Is Over. That's a Good Thing

• Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows

• Hasbro to cut 1,100 jobs

• Fannie Mae includes "green disclosures" in MBS bonds

• 23andMe frantically changed its terms of service to prevent customers from suing

• Inflation is slowly coming down and no longer outweighing Americans' wages

• Spotify CEO Daniel Ek blames his 1,500 job cuts on fake work and amateur execs

• Landlords Are 'Handing Back the Keys' with Offices 23% Empty

  Some of the biggest names in commercial real estate, like Brookfield and Blackstone, have defaulted on mortgages and have started or completed the process of handing back the keys on office towers. The tactic reveals both the depth of the problems in the office market and the ability of big property companies to push much of the financial pain onto others — in this case, banks and other lenders.

• How Much Do Buffett's Truck Stops Make?

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• FISA "Reform" Bill Would Greatly Expand the Entities Forced to Surveil Users

• To Revive Portland, Officials Seek to Recriminalize Public Drug Use - The New York Times

  Under the plan brokered by Gov. Kotek, a Democrat, state lawmakers would be asked to consider a ban on public drug use and police would be given greater resources to deter the distribution of drugs. Ms. Kotek said officials hoped to restore a sense of safety for both visitors and workers in the city’s beleaguered urban core, which has seen an exodus of key retail outlets.

  a task force led by the governor also proposed a moratorium on new taxes and other tax relief targeted at encouraging businesses to remain in the city.

  • HN comments

  • Destigmatizing Drug Use Has Been a Profound Mistake

• Man charged with threatening to kill GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy

  • New Hampshire Man Arrested for Alleged Threats to Kill Vivek Ramaswamy

• Trump leads by 32 points in Iowa 5 weeks ahead of caucuses, poll shows

• Fox News Host Goes on Rant About Idiotic Biden Impeachment Efforts

• The House Intelligence Committee's Surveillance 'Reform' Bill Is a Farce

• Hunter Biden: Republicans are "Trying to Kill Me" – HotAir

• Today Is One of the Biggest Surveillance Votes. Will the FBI Stop Spying?

  • HN comments

• Voters are ‘feeling horrible’ about Biden economy, confusing some political experts.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Crime in 2023: Murder plummeted, violent/property crime likely fell nationally

• (July 2023) (PDF) Natl Sheriffs' Assoc. letter against federal civil asset forfeiture reform

• Soros-Backed Group Storms Senate Office Building, Demands Israeli Ceasefire.

• Cloud engineer gets 2 years for wiping ex-employer's code repos

• Pharmacies share medical data with police without a warrant, inquiry finds

• "Crime is down!" Traffic citations in San Francisco seem to have disappeared

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. pension funds heavily invested in China complicate Washington's crackdown

World

• Europe needs to escape providerism

  • HN comments

• Ireland housing crisis is a disaster for its people and a gift to the far-right

• China has another headache now: It can't stem deflation

• Alarm Grows over Weakened Militaries and Empty Arsenals in Europe

• Evidence emerging that China has 5nm tech

• Britain's arbitrary authoritarianism

• It's Not Just Ukraine and Gaza: War Is on the Rise Everywhere

• Sorry America, China has a bigger economy than you

• Ofcom proposes ban on UK telcos making inflation-linked price hikes mid-contract

• BBC spins off most of its India operations

• Canada uses WW2 housing program to boost home construction

Israel

• Hamas issues warning over fate of hostages; Israeli forces push south in Gaza

• 'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture

  • HN comments

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine's Percolating Hatred of America

• FLASHPOINT UKRAINE: Zelensky in Washington for Last Minute Push for Continued Military Aid

• Whereabouts of Jailed Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Unknown

  • Putin Critic Alexei Navalny Missing from Prison

• Children futures under attack Russian aggression in Ukraine restrict schooling

Health / Medicine

• No Child Left Behind: Accelerate Malaria Vaccine Distribution!

  For COVID-19 vaccines, EUL was available because the pandemic was undeniably an emergency. Given the staggering scale of deaths of children in sub-Saharan Africa every year, shouldn’t we also be treating malaria vaccine deployment as an emergency? The R21 malaria vaccine does not legally qualify for EUL because malaria already has a preventive and curative toolkit available. My concern is that this normalizes the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children each year in Africa.

  • Breakthrough Malaria Vaccines Could Save Children's Lives

• Bras DO make breasts less perky! Experts say ditching YOURS could improve blood flow, strengthen muscles & help defy gravity.

• Patients regain much weight after stopping new obesity drug: Study.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• OPEC members keep climate accords from acknowledging reality

• Climate summit draft drops the mention of fossil fuel phase-out

• Fireworks disturbance across bird communities

• Hidden Impacts of Ferocious Volcanic Eruption Finally Revealed : ScienceAlert

  Their analyses show at least 6 cubic kilometers (km3) of seafloor was lost from within the caldera – 20 times the eruptive volume of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption – and an additional 3.5 km3 of material was blasted out of the Hunga volcano's submerged flanks. To put that in perspective, previous studies of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption estimated that 1.9 km3 (or 2,900 megatonnes) of material was ejected into the atmosphere.

• In eastern France deposits of natural hydrogen promise bountiful power

• COP28: The science is clear – fossil fuels must go

• Fighting for Wildlife in a Time of War

• California clean energy industry rocked with widespread jobs losses

• UK climate minister makes 6,824 mile round trip for Rwanda vote

• The Climate Summit Starts to Crack a Tough Nut: Emissions from Food