2024-02-02

Worthy

• Wright and Wrong - by Arnold Kling - In My Tribe

  When America undertakes military intervention in the world, are we the heroes or the villains? The debate has largely been between two sides. I call one side the Moral Humility approach, or MH. I call the other side the neoconservative approach, or NC. I am dissatisfied with both.

  My problem with MH is that it has a blind spot regarding groups that are willing to engage in violence for objectives that go beyond legitimate aspirations. Maybe there are a lot of Palestinians who aspire only to a state that lives in peace with Israel. But there sure are a lot of well-armed organizations, both within and outside the Palestinian territories, that seek a less ideal outcome, at least for the Jews now living there.

  NC thinks that the world would be better if America intervened on the side that comes closest to reflecting our values. We should promote Western democracy as best we can. My problem with NC is that it presumes that we have the knowledge and skills to manufacture state capacity and democracy anywhere. My reading is that such a presumption leads to disaster.

  I think that MH tends to suffer from the fallacy of the Moral Dyad. The general fallacy is to regard one actor as a robot, having agency but no feelings, while the other side is a baby, having feelings but no agency. If you think that Palestinians have no alternative but to engage in terrorism, chances are you are seeing them as babies and seeing Israelis as robots.

etc

• Canada’s fertility rate has hit its lowest level in recorded history.

• This Time It’s Toyota: Takata Airbag Recalls Continue

  Previously they were dangerous if deployed, now they’re dangerous always.

  • I recall debating airbag mandates; no one (but me) thought that “allow airbags to be removed by consumers” was a good idea. They had to kill some kids with them before they decided that the “passenger safety” off switch for that side of the car was OK. “Safety mandates” are a way to spread the cost of individual stupidity across a greater portion of society; enabling the stupid individuals to continue incurring those costs without ever noticing the expenses themselves.

Horseshit

• Malta: The Rarest Passport

• Microsoft Wants Your Driving Time to Belong to Your Boss

• New Superlubricity Research Could Turbocharge Industrial Energy Efficiency

• Social Media Is Warping History

• You may be eating predigested food. Here’s why | CNN

  According to emerging science, it may be due to manufacturing processes that “predigest” raw food ingredients — creating ultraprocessed foods that bypass the body’s signals of fullness. You read that right: We are eating predigested food.

  • The cooking process begins breaking foods down; doesn't that count as "pre digesting" too? After all, there's reason to think that some of human evolution came out because of the extra energy cooked foods made available to our species. But it sounds gross so it's a great way to open a sermon on the Perils of Ease and the Sins of Modern Existence.

• Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults

  • You could prove that all Democrats are physically incapable of perceiving the difference between imagination and reality; and that information would still not be used to any good purpose.

• up to $185ea: Snap is recalling and refunding every drone it ever sold

  Snap gave up on its Pixy flying selfie camera drone after just four months, but it turns out the company sold under 71,000 drones — and now the company is recalling every one of those drones because their batteries pose a fire hazard. Yes, the entire drone is being recalled, not just the removable battery, likely because Snap doesn’t make those batteries anymore.

  you’ll need to return the entire drone, minus the batteries. You’ll need to find a safe way to dispose of the batteries yourself; hardware stores and big box stores like Target often have a bin near one of the entrances to drop them

  • "the company is recalling every one of those drones because their batteries pose a fire hazard." and then "you’ll need to return the entire drone, minus the batteries. You’ll need to find a safe way to dispose of the batteries yourself" .. WTF? "we want all but the dangerous bit back"

  • Snap Recalls All of Its Selfie Drones, Fears They'll Become Flying Fireballs

• Peter Thiel backs 'Olympics on steroids' event that allows athletes to dope

• Gen Z is facing a 'fringe friend' crisis

• America's headed for car insurance crisis

• Running the Numbers on Rape and Pregnancy

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Toyota Is Developing New Combustion Engines

celebrity gossip

• ‘I should not have written ‘A Clockwork Orange’’: How Anthony Burgess came to disown his own novel

  • HN comments

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• A fake recording of a candidate saying he'd rigged the election went viral

• An AI-generated image of a Victorian MP raises wider questions on digital ethics

Musk

• Winning lawyers in Musk's $83B pay dispute in line for fee bonanza

• Elon Musk makes moves to shift Tesla to be incorporated in Texas

• Tesla sued for allegedly mishandling hazardous waste in California for years

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• A 'Well-Funded Cabal' Influenced The 2020 Election—What Lies Ahead In 2024? | ZeroHedge

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The Babylon Bee Guide To Which Statues You Can And Can't Tear Down | Babylon Bee

• Study finds emerging gender divide in young people's attitudes

• Polyamory, the Ruling Class's Latest Fad

• New Results on the Disparities between Same-Sex and Different-Sex Couples in the Home Mortgage Market

  we find that same-sex couples are 8.8 percent more likely to be denied a home mortgage than similar opposite-sex couples and conditional on being approved, are quoted an interest rate that is 0.8 percent higher. ... Interestingly, we also find that same-sex couples default significantly more (53.9%) than similar different-sex couples,

  • 50% more likely to default; 1% higher interest rate and 9% more likely to be denied a loan... That doesn't sound like the risk is adequately priced in.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• (Dec 2022) Voter Suppression, Harvard-Style

  There are elections in Hong Kong, but to get on the ballot you have to be nominated by a committee controlled by Beijing government. Elections for the Harvard Board of Overseers—one of Harvard’s two governing bodies—are almost as well-controlled. A Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) nominating committee curates a slate of candidates, from which alumni make their selections.

• Paper mills are bribing editors at scholarly journals, Science investigation finds

  Rather than targeting potential authors and reviewers, someone who called himself Jack Ben, of a firm whose Chinese name translates to Olive Academic, was going for journal editors—offering large sums of cash to these gatekeepers in return for accepting papers for publication.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• The Pixel 8 Pro can now read body temps, if you swipe it across your face

• FCC wants to make AI-generated robocalls illegal

• Over 500 journalists were laid off in January 2024 alone.

• Walt Disney extends CEO Bob Iger's contract to end of 2026

• Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to

• Wizards deny reports that Tencent are buying D&D

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• HN Jobs:

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2024)

  • Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2024)

  • Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (February 2024)

• Making a PDF that's larger than Germany

  I could keep going. And I did. Eventually I ended up with a PDF that Preview claimed is larger than the entire universe – approximately 37 trillion light years square. Admittedly it’s mostly empty space, but so is the universe.

  • HN comments

• FBI disrupts Chinese botnet by wiping malware from infected routers

• Markov Chains Are the Original Language Models

  • HN comments

• Self Righting Tripod: Dane Kouttron

  To keep a weight of Y pounds at the end of the pole vertical, the center of gravity of the entire system (pole + half sphere) must be directly below the point where the weight is located. This will ensure that the weight does not cause the system to tilt or topple over. For the sake of this we can ignore the mass of the upright pole so the center of gravity will be located at the center of the half sphere. The center of gravity of the entire system should be at the same height as the weight. Now, let's calculate the size of the half sphere needed. We know that the camera light / camera / weight is at a height of h feet from the ground, the center of the half sphere must be at the same height h to maintain equilibrium.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Cops bogged down by flood of fake AI child sex images, report says

  • Law Enforcement Braces for Flood of Child Sex Abuse Images Generated by A.I. - The New York Times

• OpenAI Says ChatGPT Probably Won't Make a Bioweapon

• Meta to deploy in-house custom chips this year to power AI drive

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Pilots describe 'bizarre' lights and 'triangles' over Canada in ATC audio

• Pentagon Seeks Direct Control over Elon's Big Rocket for Select Missions

• Skyscraper-sized asteroid to pass within 1.7M miles of Earth on Friday

Crypto con games

• Coinbase slashes trading fees for high-volume traders

• The $400M FTX Heist Mystery May Have Been Solved

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Six in 10 live ‘paycheck to paycheck,’ 24% have $0 in bank - Washington Examiner

• Deutsche Bank announces 3500 layoffs, €1.6B in share buybacks and dividends

• Regional bank stability issues? New York Community Bancorp Stock Plunges 38%

• Kroger's all self-checkout Dallas store brings back cashiers

• Riskier mortgages make up more than 20% of Canadian bank portfolios

• U.S. GDP growth higher than any other large advanced nation in the world

• Ozempic maker now worth more than $500B

• Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Results

  • HN comments

  • Meta Beats Sales Forecast Estimates; Announces First Dividend

  • Meta is paying first-ever dividend, authorizes $50B buyback

• Amazon reports better-than-expected results, as revenue jumps 14%

• Intel Delays $20B Ohio Project, Citing Slow Chip Market

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• 'Obviously Political': WaPo Editorial Board Slams Biden's Move To Halt Natural Gas Terminals

  • Opinion | Biden’s natural gas curbs aren’t good for the climate or the world - The Washington Post

• Did Mark Zuckerberg just lie to Congress?

• House votes to restore Section 174 expensing for US-based R&D investments

• Corporations Openly Trying to Destroy Core Public Institutions. We Should Worry

  • Corporations describing nanny state burrocrats with no Constitutional authority as "Core Public Institutions" is also a long standing problem that worries many.

  • HN comments

• Online safety legislation is opposed by many it claims to protect

  • If I didn't already distrust this sort of thing by default; the media furor over the past few days would have convinced me that this latest effort can only be to the benefit of the forces of Media Orthodoxy.

  • Both parties are using emotional manipulation to push an agenda of censorship

• Los Angeles County looks to require rental units to stay cool in summer

• No Charges For Dem Staffer Who Filmed Gay Porn Video in Senate Hearing Room.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• CISA directs federal agencies to disconnect Ivanti products by Friday midnight

• Congress told Chinese attackers plan to incite 'societal chaos' in the US

• Joshua Schulte, largest leaker of CIA material in history, sentenced to 40 years

  • Ex-CIA software engineer sentenced to 40 years for giving secrets to WikiLeaks

• 17 year old 'serial swatter' charged after police say he made threats across US

• They Firebombed My Office | Power Line

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• White House says first response to Jordan drone attack WON’T be the last as it prepares for ‘weeks’ of strikes and blames Islamic Resistance in Iraq for ‘facilitating’ killing of three U.S. troops.

• US To Launch Multi-Day Strikes Against 'Iranian Targets' Across Syria, Iraq | ZeroHedge

  The attacks which will reportedly focus on 'Iranian targets' inside Syrian and Iraq are meant as retaliation and a supposed deterrent in response to the weekend drone attack which killed three American soldiers at a Jordanian base near the Syrian border. The attacks might extend to the Iranian navy as well, in addition to targeting Iranian personnel or 'Iran-backed militias' in Syria and Iraq. While the Pentagon has said that said the Jordan base attack had the "footprints" of Kataib Hezbollah (or the Shia 'resistance' group of Iraq), no culprit has been definitively named, and US officials have also admitted they have not evidence Iran was behind it. But they are now reportedly saying the drone used in the attack was manufactured in Iran.

• Terror Groups Evacuate Their Positions After Biden Admin Tips Them Off To Their Plans | The Daily Wire

  CBS News reported late on Wednesday that the the terror groups that make up Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iranian-backed terrorist group, have “evacuated their bases in Iraq and Syria, fearing U.S. retaliatory strikes after Sunday’s attack.”

• Biden Imposes Sanctions on Israeli Settlers over West Bank Violence

  • Biden imposes sanctions on Israeli West Bank settlers

World

• Chaos Erupts In Brussels As Rubber Bullets Fired At Farmers Protesting Outside EU Parliament

• Germany explores 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

• Curtain falls on Abe faction's 45-year history but scrutiny to continue

• Protests by farmers block highways to Paris and elsewhere in France

• Argentina’s Inflation Challenge

  • Argentina's Milei Withdraws Key Fiscal Reforms In Omnibus Bill | Barron's

• Spain Extends Probe into Russian Involvement in Catalonian Independence Plans

  The Spanish judge investigating Russian interference in the Catalonian independence process has extended the probe for another six months after receiving an anonymous letter containing an article that identifies the Russian who offered Catalonian separatists US$500 billion and a small army if they break away from Madrid.

Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean

• Phalanx CIWS Downs Houthi Missile Dangerously Close to Destroyer: Report

Israel

• U.S. Court Concludes Israel's Assault on Gaza Is Plausible Case of Genocide

• Oil Plunges On Report Israel, Hamas Have Agreed To Major Ceasefire Deal | ZeroHedge

  "The proposed three-part deal, formulated during international intelligence chief meetings in Paris, includes a notable provision—Hamas's demand for the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners for each female Israeli soldier set free,"

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Why are Russian covert actions so easily unmasked?

• Precision equipment for Russian arms makers came from U.S.-allied Taiwan

• India's oil imports from Russia hit 12-month low in Jan as sanctions bite

China

• In China, clean energy is now THE driver of overall economic growth

Health / Medicine

• Soon to be as effective as copper foil tape: New surface has virucidal properties but does not use any chemicals

• US Is Dealing with an 'Out-of-Control' STI Epidemic

• Scientists found a major clue why 4 of 5 autoimmune patients are women - The Washington Post

• Did the ancient Greeks and Romans experience Alzheimer’s?

• Even More Evidence That Alzheimer’s Was Being Spread by Now-Banned Injections.

• Obesity drugs have another superpower: taming inflammation

• Our brains do leak out of our noses: Nasopharyngeal Lymphatics Found to Be Crucial for Cerebrospinal Fluid Outflow

• It's Finally over for Aduhelm, the Sketchy Alzheimer's Drug Everyone Hated

• Why did NIH abruptly halt research on the harms of cell phone radiation?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• UK Wind Farms Are Overstating Their Output

  • HN comments

• Spider webs capture environmental DNA from terrestrial vertebrates

• Climate deniers met an AI chatbot?

• Sea Otters Are Protecting the California Coast Against Climate Change

• Trees struggle to 'breathe' as climate warms

• Biden's Western solar plan sounds scary. But it's better than climate change

• Just how climate-friendly are timber buildings? It's complicated

• Insects Aren't Attracted to Artificial Lights. They're Tortured by Them