2023-12-18

etc

• Live rough and know the real world - Writers On The Range

  Stepping out of the system to take responsibility for ourselves, even for a few days in the wild, can be eye-opening. It’s amazing to realize how fragile our luxuries are, from toilets that whisk waste away to having clean water pour out of a tap. It is unwise to take these luxuries for granted.

  • HN comment

• Ask/Tell HN: Our Problem with Identity | Hacker News

Horseshit

• A celebrated startup promised Kentuckians green jobs. It gave them hell on Earth

• 1996 vintage Mind Control… No, Not Like That | Hackaday

• Southwest will pay a $140M fine for its meltdown during the 2022 holidays

• Why It's So Hard to Search Your Email

• How Africans are changing French, one joke, rap and book at a time | Hacker News

• L.L. Bean joins the national privacy wars

• Inside the Booming Business of Cutting Babies' Tongues

• Baby found alive in tree after Tennessee tornado

• "I just bought a 2024 Chevy Tahoe for $1"

  • HN comments

• Why Do We Build Houses in the Same Way That We Did 125 Years Ago?

• Dr Terror deals the Death card: how tarot was turned into an occult obsession

celebrity gossip

• The unmasking of the narcissistic, conspiracy-spreading baby-boomer rock star

• Jan Marsalek's Deep Connections with Russian Intelligence Revealed - Vindobona.org | Vienna International News

• Jeffrey Epstein Kept Abusing Women – His VIP Circle Helped Make It Possible

• Zuckerberg hunkers down in Hawaii to wait out apocalypse

Obit

• Michael Bishop, Genre-Busting Writer Known for Science Fiction, Dies at 78

Musk

• Tesla Drivers Upset That Government Wants Their Cars to Be Safer

• X Is Profitable or Nearly Profitable

• EU opens proceedings against X over efforts to combat information manipulation

  • Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

  the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas' terrorist attacks against Israel, the Commission has decided to open formal infringement proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act.

  • HN comments

  • EU takes action against Elon Musk's X over disinformation

  • X to be investigated for allegedly Not Complying with EU laws

  • EU Investigates Elon Musk's X for Spreading Illegal Content

• Elon Musk joins Italy PM at festival, says ‘make more Italians’ to counter migration.

• Tesla removes Disney+ from some cars amid Elon Musk's Twitter beef with Bob Iger

• The X Files: Leaked documents reveal X staff stripped of moderation power

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Doctors in meltdown as mystery China virus 'stops responding' to all antibiotics

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Facebook diversity chief’s scam captures spirit of the DEI racket.

• Pope formally allows priests to bless same-sex couples

  The new document repeats that rationale and elaborates on it, reaffirming that marriage is a lifelong sacrament between a man and a woman. And it stresses that blessings should not be conferred at the same time as a civil union or even with the clothing and gestures that belong in a wedding. But it says requests for such blessings should not be denied full stop.

  • Pope approves blessings for same-sex couples if they don't resemble marriage

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Wikipedia Does Fire Drill To Downplay Harvard's Gay Plagiarism/Antisemitism Scandal | ZeroHedge

Entertainment / ShowBiz / Advertising

• With VHS and video stores, 'tapeheads' are fueling an analog revival

• Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling | Hacker News

• Canada to keep pressure on Facebook to pay for news, Trudeau says

• In Search of Cash, Studios Send Old Shows Back to Netflix

• The "Cheap" Web

  • HN comments

• A Handful of Companies Rule the Internet with DDoS Mitigation

  • HN take: "this is the kiwifarms founder crying how nobody wants to host his website anymore."

• Google's Stadia Controller salvage operation will run for another year

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• (2020) What I've Learned Fixing Optical Drives

  • 20 years of engineering excellence developed these products. 10 years after that, a distillation of how well they did, informed by the harshness of the real.

• Wasm3 entering a minimal maintenance phase | Hacker News

• (Oct 2023) Python, C, Assembly - 2'500x Faster Cosine Similarity

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Buzzword amalgamation ohno! AI and mixed reality are converging according to Meta

Economicon / Business / Finance

• US manufacturing output increases in November, underlying trend soft

• The shift of manufacturing out of China is shaking up shipping

• Greyhound bus stops are valuable assets. Here's who's cashing in on them

• Adobe, Figma to terminate $20B deal over regulatory hurdles

  • Adobe, Figma to terminate $20B deal

  • Figma and Adobe are abandoning our proposed merger

  • HN comments

• 40 Percent of student loan borrowers missed first payment since Covid pause

• Japan's Nippon Steel To Buy US Steel For $14 Billion  | ZeroHedge

  • US Steel, once the largest corporation, agrees to sell to Nippon Steel

  • HN comments

• over "Beeper Mini" Investigation into potential anticompetitive conduct by Apple

• Apple to Halt Watch Sales as It Prepares to Comply With U.S. Import Ban - WSJ

  • Apple Watch Series 9 sales to be halted over patent dispute

• Car Buyers Increasingly Owe More Than Their Vehicles Are Worth as Interest Rates Rise.

• SF-based Bolt's fall from pandemic highs continues with 29% layoff round

• Everyone expected a recession. The Fed and White House found a way out

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Haley's Top Backers Include Democrat Donors, Silicon Valley Billionaires

• OSHA Personnel Switching from Hard Hats to Safety Helmets

• Horrified Joe Biden looks on as car smashes into his motorcade: President is bundled away by Secret Service as agents draw guns on driver outside Delaware campaign HQ

  • Driver Who Crashed into President Biden's Motorcade Charged With DUI - The Messenger

• Biden Kicks Off Process Which Could Restrict Open-Source Software

• Why liberalism and leftism are increasingly at odds

• Yes, Hunter is Now in Contempt of Congress – JONATHAN TURLEY

• SF reparations office on hold due to budget cuts.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FBI Arrests Head of Neo Nazi Child Exploit Cult

• Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Sentenced to Four Years for Fraud

  • Nikola founder to be sentenced for federal fraud charges

  • HN comments

  • Nikola founder Trevor Milton sentenced to four years in prison

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Global Trade At Risk As Shippers Shun Red Sea Over Houthis Attacks

  • BP pauses all Red Sea shipments after rebel attacks

  • Pentagon expected to announce task force to protect Red Sea shipping

• Mastermind ‘Fat Leonard’ Gets the Last Laugh in Disastrous Navy Corruption Trial.

World

• Miss France: Short-haired winner sparks 'diversity' debate

• China South City Warns Can't Pay Bond Interest Due Wednesday

• Ahead of the Olympics, France embraces AI video surveillance

• China is subtly increasing military pressure on Taiwan

Israel

• Iran, Israeli media say cyber attack disrupts petrol stations across Iran

• Guided Parachute System Used by Israel for First Time in Gaza

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukrainian strikes have changed Russian naval operations in the Black Sea

• Analysis: Ukraine has had a terrible week. Blame the US and the EU | CNN

Health / Medicine

• Some people can eat and not gain. How metabolism affects the calories you burn

• Sex chromosomes responsible for much more than determining sex, study shows

• Why are Americans getting shorter?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Alarm at plan to stash planet-heating CO2 beneath US national forests

• Hot rocks can glow brighter than the sun

• Mystery of the quantum lentils: Are legumes exchanging secret signals?

• What Would It Mean to Treat Animals Fairly?

• Why everything you think you know about methane is probably wrong

• COP28 and the nuclear energy numbers racket

• Why do people feel the need to litter?

• Oh Good, Hurricanes Are Now Made of Microplastics

• Cuz there isn't any real news? Why people still fall for fake news about climate change

• How Mounting Demand for Rubber Is Driving Tropical Forest Loss

• Carolina chemists discover eight new PFAS with novel testing method

  • HN comments

• Middle-class fear of green policies fuels the far right, Colombia's Petro warns