2023-12-14

etc

• Southwest Airlines policy to give a full row to 'passengers of size' for free

• LA Sheriff Still Has 429 Ford Crown Vics in Service Because It Stockpiled Them

Horseshit

• Electric Vehicle Owners Are Not Driving Enough–and That's Bad

• "Drug companies have no motive to sell treatments instead of cures" A Weighty Puzzle-Answers

  Consider two lightbulbs, one lasts for 2 years the other lasts for 1 year. Which lightbulb is more profitable to sell? Any sensible analysis must begin with the following simple point: A lightbulb that lasts for 2 years is worth about twice as much as a lightbulb that lasts one year. Thus, assuming for the moment that costs of production are negligible, there is no secret profit to be had from selling two 1-year lightbulbs compared to selling one 2-year lightbulb. The firm that sells 1-year lightbulbs hasn’t hit on a secret profit-sauce because its customers must come back for more. If it did it could sell really profitable 1-month bulbs!

  • Phoebus cartel - Wikipedia

  The Phoebus cartel was an international cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925–1939. The cartel took over market territories and lowered the useful life of such bulbs. Following its dissolution, light bulbs continued to be sold at the 1,000-hour life standardized by the cartel.

celebrity gossip

• Decision on the Magnus Carlsen / Hans Niemann Case

  In light of GM Carlsen’s status as the foremost chess player in the world with a considerable influence and following, his withdrawal set a bad example for other chess players and he is therefore given a fine of 10,000 Euros.

Musk

• Tesla's recall will make it harder – not impossible – to misuse Autopilot

• Tesla Cybertruck's infamous wiper will reportedly cost $165 to replace

• Elon Musk goes after Biden Administration following $900 million SpaceX loss.

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Libs Face Narrative Collapse After Supreme Court Accepts Case That Could Demolish Entire Basis For Jan. 6 Prosecutions | ZeroHedge

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• A next-generation inhalable dry powder Covid vaccine

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• IBM Diversity Efforts Targeted by Stephen Miller's Legal Group

• Satanic display at Iowa Capitol: GOP lawmakers disagree on response

  • Satan welcomed. Jews must hide. - Don Surber

• Detransitioner suing American Academy of Pediatrics: ‘I don’t want this to happen to other young girls’.

• The secret life of gender clinicians

• Discord tips off FBI to 13-year-old's synagogue mass shooting plot

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Could the 'central dogma' of biology be misleading bioengineers?

Entertainment / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Quest 2 is outselling Quest 3

• A series of rubbish charts about Netflix’s rubbish viewing data

  • Author complains that the data is not inclusive of things like TV or movie, Genre, episode count... Apparently unaware that such data is available elsewhere; and we have some rather well developed technologies to allow us to combine data sets like this. This might assist them: [IMDb Non-Commercial Datasets]

• 5Ghoul: The 14 Shambling 5G Flaws Used For Disruptive Attacks On Smartphones

• Smart TV Knows What You're Watching

• As Media Reckons with AI Giants, Another Major Publisher Takes the Money

  • ChatGPT to summarize Business Insider articles in first of its kind deal

• Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Take Aim at AI Freeloading

• Threads launches for nearly half a billion more users in Europe

• FCC votes to ban termination fees for cable and satellite services

• The Old Internet Is Dying, and Something Worse Is Being Born

  • HN comments

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• AMD's New Threadripper Chips Have a Hidden Fuse That Blows When Overclocking

• Trains were designed to break down after third-party repairs, hackers find

  • HN comments

• Intel's Core Ultra CPUs are here – & they all come with silicon dedicated to AI

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI image platform CivitAI dropped by cloud provider after reports of CSAM

• Not one you can get: AMD and: Large Language Models Out-of-the-Box Acceleration with AMD GPU

• Why AI Gets to Create Art While Humans Get the Minimum Wage Jobs

• Dropbox spooks users with new AI features that send data to OpenAI when used | Ars Technica

• H&R Block launches AI tax filing assistant

• Suckup software: How sycophancy threatens the future of AI

• Pope Francis calls for binding global treaty to regulate AI

• OpenAI thinks superhuman AI is coming – and wants to build tools to control it

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• The US government should tell the public what it knows about UFOs

• NASA's Voyager 1 Spacecraft Is Speaking Gibberish

  • Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

• Probably No Coincidence X-37 and Chinese Space Plane Will Launch Near Each Other

Crypto con games

• Sam Altman's Weird Eyeball Scanning Crypto Tech Comes to Minecraft

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Fed flags end of rate hikes

  • Powell "Pivots", Sends Dow To Record High With Election-Year Rate-Cut Projection

  • Fed holds rates steady, indicates three cuts coming in 2024

  • Federal Reserve holds interest rates at 22-year high,signals three cut next year

• Microsoft Agrees to Remain Neutral in Union Campaigns

• Trade Up at Port of Long Beach as Cargo Returns

• Tech Layoffs due to IRS tax code change

• S&P 500's gains this year push past 20% as market nears all-time high

• GM's Cruise robotaxi unit dismisses nine execs after safety probe

  • Cruise slashes 24% of self-driving car workforce in sweeping layoffs

  • HN comments

• Salesforce's Benioff Cashing Out at Rate of $3M a Day

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Hunter Biden’s Attorneys Argue That Drug Users Can No Longer Be Barred from Gun Ownership.

• NYT Doctors Hunter Biden Quote About Joe Biden's 'Financial' Involvement In Business Dealings | ZeroHedge

  Hunter said: "Let me state as clearly as I can: My father was not financially involved in my business." The Times chose misinformation instead, alleging Hunter said: "Let me state as clearly as I can: My father was not involved in my business," omitting the enormously significant 'financially' qualifier.

• Republicans Rage After Hunter Biden Snubs Subpoena.

• The secretive Judicial Conference is tasked with self-governance

• US House of Representatives votes to approve impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden

• White House cleans up Biden’s claim that Israel is losing support: John Kirby insists the U.S. and Netanyahu STILL have a close relationship and the president still believes in a two-state solution as he’s bombarded with questions.

• Newsom administration advances delta tunnel project despite opposition

• Bush v. Gore destroyed us | The Hill

  More important to our country now is understanding how Bush v. Gore ushered in an era that has culminated in the Republican Party’s abandonment of democracy in favor of Trump-styled strongman authoritarianism.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• US police agencies took intelligence directly from IDF, leaked files show

• Police Have Undermined the Promise of Body Cameras

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Should we pray to the DOD?

  does it occur to anyone in here to pray to the Marines? We can sit in a heated room and "self care" ourselves to death in a safe and stable environment protected from adversaries and terrorists who seek to destroy our way of life. ... I'm not saying we should all take a moment every day to thank the generals, but I'm saying maybe it makes more sense than thanking ourselves?

World

• Australia to Ban Engineered Stone

Israel

• Ultimate Beneficial Ownership is Dangerous | Omar Abid - Personal Blog

• On the Gaza War and What Could Be

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• The Destruction of the Nord Stream Pipeline Is the Mystery No One Wants Solved - The Atlantic

• Putin confronted with deep-fake of himself during Russian national town hall

Health / Medicine

• Landmark Study Shows Antibody Therapy Controls 92% of Severe Asthma Cases.

• CDC rift w Cal/OSHA over N95 masks could put California health workers at risk

• Men should abstain from drinking at least three months prior to conceiving

  • HN comments

• Moderna Melanoma Vaccine Cuts Death Rate in Half

• 'It's all gone': CAR-T therapy forces autoimmune diseases into remission

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• California DFW Releases Beavers into the Wild for First Time in Nearly 75 Years

• Red Alert: Scientists Have Discovered a Dolphin with Thumbs

• New class of 'ozone-safe' refrigerants may have unexpected downside

• California children sue EPA over climate change

• COP28: The struggle to say 'fossil fuels' out loud