2024-01-26

Worthy

• Smoother sailing: Studying audio imperfections in Steamboat Willie

  the Internet Archive delivers something even better. There's a lossless 4K scan of the movie with the optical soundtrack partially included (above)! The lossless version is 34 GB, but there's a downscaled 480p MP4 one thousandth of the size.

  I listened to the optical soundtrack from this low-resolution version with a little pixel-reader script. Turns out the flutter is already present on the film! (Edit: Note that we don't know where this particular film print came from. When was it created? Is there an original somewhere?)

  • Steamboat Willie Never Sounded Better

  • HN comments

etc

• Law of Jante - Wikipedia

  a code of conduct originating in fiction and now used colloquially to denote a social attitude of disapproval towards expressions of individuality and personal success.

  • You're not to think you are anything special.
  • You're not to think you are as good as we are.
  • You're not to think you are smarter than we are.
  • You're not to imagine yourself better than we are.
  • You're not to think you know more than we do.
  • You're not to think you are more important than we are.
  • You're not to think you are good at anything.
  • You're not to laugh at us.
  • You're not to think anyone cares about you.
  • You're not to think you can teach us anything.

  • sounds like a modern school syllabus to me

• (German) In Germany, over 90 percent of drivers feel dazzled by car headlights

• Georgia wanted to attract more data centers. Now it needs more power

Horseshit

• Developers dangle homes as perk of big construction deals

• A Wild Claim about the Powers of Pi Creates a Transcendental Mystery | Scientific American

  the circle still holds many mysteries. One of them revolves around the question of what happens when you repeatedly multiply pi by itself: Could it be that π to the power of π to the power of π to the power of π results in a natural number? The notion that raising an irrational number to multiple powers could result in a number with no numbers after the decimal point may seem far-fetched at first.

• Personas and other psychoccultism. – Jay

  it is ignored that in addition to introverts and extroverts, there are also ambiverts and omniverts. I am sure that there are also xenoverts and protoverts btw. In any case, it makes it too easy to just open a drawer. Label it and close it. You are sorted out as a certain type and robbed of your possibilities. Almost like astrology: “Scorpions are difficult, they can’t do that, Pisces would be better.” And have you noticed lately how often people say someone is a narcissist?

  The remaining guidelines, development workshops, HR discussions remind me of homeopathy.

  • People are messily fractal, individual, and won't sort neatly into boxes. Dealing with them requires individual attention. Arbitrary categories are so much simpler, they haven't got the fuzzy edges and hard points sticking out at odd angles. So much easier to look at the world that way. When the bitter reality bites, when the individuals insist on being quirky humans rather than their neat entries in the Book of Breed Standards; we can always blame the Wreckers, the Reactionaries, and the Kulaks.

• FAA says 'we've sort of stopped trying' to predict when 737 flights will resume

• What if you just bought everyone air purifiers?

• South Korea warns against social media trend of eating fried toothpicks

• Hugo Awards: Understanding the world science fiction convention

Electric / Self Driving cars

• San Francisco sues California over 'unsafe,' 'disruptive' self-driving cars

  • HN comments

• Cruise Releases Third-Party Findings Regarding San Francisco Incident

Obit

• Carl Andre, Austerely Minimalist Sculptor, Is Dead at 88

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Florida House OKs bill forcing kids off social media

  HB 1 would restrict teens under 16 from using social media, banning them from creating new accounts and forcing those with existing accounts off platforms.

  • Sure to be as successful as the efforts of the Law to shield childrens from pornography, alcohol, and tobacco. We need more motivations for kids to learn a little about computing; perhaps circumventing access controls will help inspire their curiosity.

• It’s merely a matter of time until disinformation leads to calamity

  There are several reasons why the fire hose of falsehood can work, despite the fact that the individual lies are not especially plausible. Fast, relevant spin from lots of different sources, all pushing the same basic perspective, can create an overall impression that feels quite believable. And the fire hose of falsehood can also deliver results even if nobody believes a word of it. When it works, it floods social media (and sometimes the conventional media too) with distractions, toxicity, shitposting and obvious nonsense. The result may well be to turn news consumers off completely. Why would you waste effort trying to understand the world when everyone seems to be lying about it all the time?

• Ben Franklin Was All About Content Moderation

  Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and the writers pleaded, as they generally did, the liberty of the press, and that a newspaper was like a stage-coach, in which any one who would pay had a right to a place, my answer was, that I would print the piece separately if desired, and the author might have as many copies as he pleased to distribute himself, but that I would not take upon me to spread his detraction; and that, having contracted with my subscribers to furnish them with what might be either useful or entertaining, I could not fill their papers with private altercation, in which they had no concern, without doing them manifest injustice.

  The ridiculous amicus brief argues that this is Ben Franklin supporting that printers are a “common carrier” who should expect to print whatever people want. But, it’s hard to read that full quote as anything like that at all. Franklin is clearly stating that printers have no obligation to print whatever customers want, and certainly not to put it next to other content they do support. In fact, he’s suggesting that they should refuse to do so, and actually seems to suggest that “augmenting animosity” through the use of their printing presses is not a noble pursuit.

  • As usual, this outlet is in a completely different reality than I am. My interpretation, in more modern terms:

    I don't want to publish $BadThunk on my site. I might well help those wishing to speak $BadThunk to set up a site of their own, where they can say whatever the hell they please and not bother me.

    Then he regrets the editorial choices of other publications in typical pointed circumlocutions that make more sense in the context of the day: he was razzing other papers for doubting the commitment of the French to the American Revolution, specific.

Musk

• Texas Parks and Wildlife Department delays decision on SpaceX land swap

• Tesla set to erase $50B in valuation after Musk's sales warning

• Musk, who once scoffed at Chinese EV, believes they pose an existential threat

• Elon Musk Spreads Election Misinformation on X Without Fact Checkers - The New York Times

  This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide open for fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens. Since taking control of the site, Mr. Musk has dismantled the platform’s system for flagging false election content, arguing it amounted to election interference.

  Now, his early election-year attacks on a tried-and-true voting method are raising alarms among civil rights lawyers, election administrators and Democrats. They worry that his control over the large social media platform gives him an outsize ability to reignite the doubts about the American election system that were so prevalent in the lead-up to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

  • "attacks on a tried-and-true voting method" and "raising alarms among civil rights lawyers, election administrators and Democrats" are both hilarious in this context. Free and fair elections are in everyone's interests. Everyone should have the chance to comment, not just Ultra Democrats, System Democrats, and confessed Democrats.

• X is being flooded with graphic Taylor Swift AI images - The Verge

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• Trump Trade Advisor Navarro Sentenced To Four Months For Ignoring J6 Subpoena

  • Peter Navarro sentenced to 4 months in prison for defying J6 committee

  • Trump Trade Advisor Peter Navarro Sentenced to Four Months in Prison, for Stiffarming the Fake J6 Committee's Fake Subpoenas

• Trump lawyers move to dismiss DA Fani Willis from election fraud case, accusing her of ‘racial prejudice’.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Kidney Dialysis Patients Were the Pandemic's Perfect Victims

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Nvidia Reverses Course on Donation Matching for Gaza Charities, Causing Rift

• Religious 'Nones' in America: Who They Are and What They Believe

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Florida Eliminates Sociology as a Core Course at Its Universities

• College Is All About Curiosity. And That Requires Free Speech. - The New York Times

• More elite universities settle suit over alleged 'price-fixing' aid policies

• TED Fellows Resign after Bill Ackman, Bari Weiss Invited to Speak at Conference.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Sports Illustrated Implosion Shows the Ugly, Ongoing Collapse of U.S. Journalism

• Facebook and Instagram will block DMs to teens unless they're from a friend

  • Instagram stops letting random adults send messages to teenagers

  • Meta has not done enough to safeguard children, whistleblower says

• Samsung advertising new phone in my notifications

• Dungeons and Dragons turns 50 today

  • HN comments

• What the hell is going on in online media?

  I think it’s worth considering the possibility of a post-news world, and the responsibility lies on Google and Meta. I think editorial could functionally cease to exist as we knew it. We’ve spent the past 20 years building a business model around tech distribution of free news, and all it’s done is degrade the editorial industry. Now neither any tech but AI nor editorial seem to be able to survive, and the youngest generation of adults probably doesn’t really care because they never lived in a world where newspapers and local TV news were the norm. They’ll let it die because to them it was never alive in the first place.

• Jon Stewart’s Return a ‘Bad Omen’ for Late Night TV.

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (2014) | Hacker News

• Why computers such as the Raspberry Pi are important? (many don't know it)

• ArVid: how Russians squeezed 4 hard drives into one VHS tape in the 90s – Jacob Filipp

  • HN comments

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The Sleepy Copyright Office in the Middle of a High-Stakes Clash over A.I (Archive)

• AI will increase the number and impact of cyber attacks, Intel officers say

• Etching AI Controls into Silicon Could Keep Doomsday at Bay

• Elon Musk's AI startup seeks to raise $6B from investors to challenge OpenAI

• (Sep 2023) Why Silicon Valley AI prophecies just feel like repackaged religion - Vox

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Japan's precision moon lander has hit its target, but appears to be upside-down

  • Stricken Japanese Moon mission landed on its nose

• NASA predicted the Jan. 21 asteroid crash over Germany

  The impactor, designated 2024 BX1, had been discovered less than three hours earlier by Krisztián Sárneczky at the Piszkéstető Mountain Station of the Konkoly Observatory near Budapest, Hungary. 2024 BX1 was just the eighth asteroid to be detected before slamming into our planet, according to NASA officials. The asteroid's path was successfully plotted by the Scout hazard-assessment system,

  • the first step in an active planetary defense system will be finding the threats needing counter action. Or we could erect a shield around the earth and sidestep the issue entirely.

• (2021) Interplanetary Lobbing

  Scientists at Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems were unavaliable for comment.

• Could Moon Mining Spoil Its Untouched Grandeur And Science Value?

• Peregrine moon lander limps to lunar distance

• AWWW good run tho Due to blade damage, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will not fly again

  • HN comments

  • NASA's Mars helicopter has made its last flight above the red planet

  • NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has last flight after suffering rotor damage

Crypto con games

• Sam Bankman-Fried Is Still Messing Up Bitcoin's Big Comeback

• US Will Sell $117M in Bitcoin Seized from Silk Road Drug Trafficker

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Red Sea Blockage Leads To "Out Of Control" Shipping Rates; Charters Hits $100,000 Per Day | ZeroHedge

• Housing is now unaffordable for a record half of all U.S. renters

  • HN comments

• The 4 best industries to work in, according to Glassdoor—some jobs can pay 200k+

• SPAC Mania Is Dead. The SEC Wants to Keep It That Way

• What Recession? The U.S. Economy Grew 3.1% in 2023, GDP Report Shows - WSJ

  • The GDP Number Was Great... There Is Just One Huge Problem | ZeroHedge

    while Q4 GDP rose by $329 billion to $27.939 trillion, a respectable if made up number, what is much more disturbing is that over the same time period, the US budget deficit rose by more than 50%, or $510 billion. And the cherry on top: the increase in public US debt in the same three month period was a stunning $834 billion, or 154% more than the increase in GDP. In other words, it now takes $1.55 in budget deficit to generate $1 of growth... and it takes over $2.50 in new debt to generate $1 of GDP growth!

• Microsoft Lays Off 1,900 from Its Video Game Workforce

  • Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

  • Microsoft lays off 1,900 workers, nearly 9% of gaming division

  • Microsoft Cuts 8% of Videogaming Staff

  • Microsoft Laying Off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox Employees

  • Microsoft video games division lays off 1,900 staff

  • Microsoft Cuts 8% of Videogaming Staff - WSJ

  • Microsoft to lay off 1,900 Activision Blizzard, Xbox staff

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Texas Defies 'Lawless' Biden, Invokes Right To Self-Defense From 'Invasion' With More Razor Wire

  • Texas' border standoff with feds continues, despite U.S. Supreme Court order

  • War? 25 Red States Rally 'Round Texas As Battle Brews With Biden Over Border

  • Republican Governors Band Together, Issue Joint Statement Supporting Texas’ Constitutional Right to Self-Defense

  • The Press Misleads – The Supreme Court has not Eliminated Texas’ Right to Defend Its Property.

  • It Is Not Texas That’s Defying the Law — It’s Biden.

• "My Party Is Completely Delusional": Dean Phillips Destroys Democrat Demagoguery Of Republicans After Attending Trump Rally

• FAA Halts Boeing Max Production Expansion to Improve Quality Control

• Expert shows how to tamper with Georgia voting machine in security trial.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Ring will no longer allow police to request doorbell camera footage from users

  • Amazon's Ring to shutter video-sharing program popular with police

  • Ring to Require a Warrant Before Handing over Footage to Police

  • Ring steps back from sharing video with police – mostly

  • Amazon’s Ring will stop allowing police to request doorbell video footage from users.

  • If the video exists, and is stored somewhere; someone can access it. If someone can access it, many someones can access it. Which of them are interested in you?How interested do they have to be? "machine vision" is pretty good now...

• With Oregon facing rampant public drug use, lawmakers backpedal on pioneering decriminalization law.

• Kenneth Smith 'struggled for life' for 22 mins in Alabama nitrogen gas execution

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US wants to end reliance on Chinese lithium. Its policies are doing the opposite

• Defense Startups Risk Becoming 'Failed Experiment' Without More Pentagon Dollars

• Biden Dispatches CIA Director To Negotiate Major Gaza Ceasefire Deal

  • Biden to deploy CIA’s William Burns to help broker major Gaza deal - The Washington Post

  President Biden plans to dispatch CIA Director William J. Burns in the coming days to help broker an ambitious deal between Hamas and Israel that would involve the release of all remaining hostages held in Gaza and the longest cessation of hostilities since the war began last year, according to officials familiar with the matter. Burns is expected to travel to Europe for the talks and meet with the Israeli and Egyptian intelligence chiefs, David Barnea and Abbas Kamel, and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations. The planned gathering has not been previously reported.

World

• Turkey hikes interest rate again to 45% after inflation nears 65%

• Proposed UN cybercrime treaty has evolved into an expansive surveillance tool

• Vienna’s co-housing model offers a key to keeping families in the city

  Unlike a 1970s commune, residents have their own separate apartments as well as access to the communal spaces on the 700 sq m rooftop.

• In India, an algorithm declares them dead; they have to prove they're alive

• Sweden verges on NATO membership after Turkey vote, Hungary signal.

• UK halts trade negotiations with Canada over hormones in beef ban

Israel

• Ahead of ICJ Ruling, Israel Declassifies Documents to Prove Its Efforts to Protect Civilians - Israel News - Haaretz.com

• A Group of Israel-Linked Hackers Has Pushed the Limits of Cyberwar

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Most of Russia's War Chips Are Made by US and EU Companies (Intel, AMD, STM)

• Russia’s egg shortage is panicking Putin’s regime | The Spectator

  the Kremlin has been moving so decisively to address Russia’s egg crisis, after prices rose by over 40 percent last year. On Friday, the Investigatory Committee – loosely analogous to an FBI on steroids – ordered an enquiry into potential price fixing, following on the heels of Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov’s decision to launch his own probe. Rather more directly, the much-feared Federal Security Service (FSB) has been instructed to arrest anyone hoarding eggs.

Health / Medicine

• Are cavities 'contagious'? Tooth-decay yeast can pass from moms to babies

• The Opioid Crisis Is Now Being Tracked with Wastewater

  • "wastewater monitoring" was one of those controversial things that slid through unremarked during COVID.

• An Overview of Cannabidiol as a Multifunctional Drug: Pharmacokinetics and Cellular Effects

• Deaf Children Can Now Hear After a Single Injection

• Robitussin cough syrups recalled due to microbial contamination

• Scientists are finally taking altered states of consciousness seriously

• Is Glucose the New Gluten? Inside the Blood-Sugar Health Craze - WSJ

• Impacts of lid closure during toilet flushing

  • HN comments

• The Prostate Cancer That Some Doctors Don't Want to Call Cancer

• Fewer and faster: Global fertility isn't just declining, it's collapsing

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• I discovered a tiny frog that lives its whole life inside one plant

• Asbestos found in mulch at new sites across Sydney

• Coping with climate change could be a matter of what building you're in

• Last male of his kind: The rhino that became a conservation icon

• Storm drops snow across the Sierra. Will it stave off the snow drought?

  • (April 2023) California surpasses all-time snowpack record - KTLA

• Coal: Don't Burn It, Compute with It

• What a hand-cranked drill just revealed about the West's 'megadrought'

• Lions making fewer zebra kills due to 'chain reaction' involving invasive ants

• Hermit crabs are 'wearing' humanity's plastic rubbish