2024-02-23
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I don’t know why it is that garages became those spaces so perfectly conducive to outsized innovation origin stories. They are the successor to the old days of crazy innovation, of tinkering on a hydroplane with your fortune and a twinkle in your eye. But I do know we ought to find an answer to how we can create more such spaces, and encourage following the kind of passion that leads people to want to spend all their time tinkering on a problem, and try our damnedest to not let overthinking destroy it at the most nascent stages.
Horseshit
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The Everlasting KitchenAid Stand Mixer - The Atlantic
Why can’t other devices offer the same enduring marriage of function and design? Maybe Arens was just a genius with a rare idea. Or maybe there’s something singular about a machine that facilitates the act of baking, which requires skills and recipes that are themselves very old, passed down through families, connecting us with one another.
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US man accused of making $1.8M from listening in on wife's remote work calls
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American drivers even more distracted by phones. Pedestrian deaths are soaring
Electric / Self Driving cars
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
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X is withholding accounts and tweets in India to obey orders
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Employees saved Musk from himself over Twitter Files
According to the letter [PDF] from FTC chair Lina Khan: "Elon Musk had reportedly directed staff to grant an outside third-party individual 'full access to everything at Twitter ... No limits at all'." And it was a previous offender when it came to safeguarding personal information, and so the FTC was keeping a close eye on monitoring compliance with its orders to protest US citizen's data.As such, the FTC began looking into Musk's boasts of access and found that, in actual fact, direct access had not been given despite Musk's orders demands.
"Based on a concern that such an arrangement would risk exposing non-public user information in potential violation of the FTC's Order, longtime information security employees at Twitter intervened and implemented safeguards to mitigate the risks."
What actually happened was that company employees accessed Twitter's systems on behalf of the third parties. The staff were "right to be concerned," according to the letter, "given that Twitter's new CEO had directed employees to take actions that would have violated the FTC's Order." Musk had indeed been saved from himself. Or at least from a potential hefty fine from the FTC.
- So the stuff we heard about regarding government influence of Twitter editorial policies probably wasn't all there was. Even after Musk bought the company, the employees refused to follow his orders to release potentially damaging information about their behavior. Even with explicit orders to do so. What heroes they are.
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I just typed in a Google query, and the top two choices are pro censorship
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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The Harvard Crimson – Stop Telling Me There Are Only Two Sexes
Even when it is not being used to categorically deny the existence of trans people, this claim is weaponized to qualify our validity. The argument goes as follows: “Trans people can ask to be called whatever they want, but they can’t change the fact that there are only two sexes.” The idea that sex is binary is presented as an irrefutable fact of life, the most natural truth in the world. Anyone who dares question this “fact” is quickly discounted as a “radical, woke ideologue” or an agent of the “liberal DEI agenda.”
As many as one out of every fifteen hundred babies is born with ambiguous genitalia. Many more are born with another type of sex variation, though some are more subtle or late to manifest. People whose sex falls outside of the binary are known as intersex, and experts estimate that they make up as much as 1.7 percent of the population.
- "Intersex" individuals often have other problems arising from atypical genetic expressions that are still called diseases.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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we have public education, but nothing like our current system. All free children, both boys and girls, are entitled to three free years of primary education. The state is required to set up the schools and pay the teachers, which means taxes on all the citizens, but parents are not forced to send their children. The curriculum is also fairly straightforward: reading, writing, arithmetic, and history. It also makes no mention of the age of the children being offered this schooling, again leaving it to the parents’ discretion. Further education is also made available, but at the parent’s expense, and grammar schools are also provided for, which provide what we would consider high school level education. This is not guaranteed for all children, but only for a select few who are deemed suited for it, or for those willing to pay for it. And the control of each primary school fell to a geographic division called a hundred, which equaled about six square miles.
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Yale will again require standardized test scores for admission - The Washington Post
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Cable Companies Tell the Government That Bullshit Fees Are Good, Actually
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AT&T customers hit by widespread cellular outages in U.S.
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American Nationwide cellular outages from AT&T, Cricket Wireless others
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Powerful twin solar flares erupt from sun as cell phone outages spike across US
Two outbursts from the sun caused widespread cellphone outages throughout the United States on Thursday (Feb. 22).
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FTC fines cybersecurity company Avast $16.5M for tracking and selling user data
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It's Google that made the deal with Reddit for AI training data.
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ISPs keep giving false broadband coverage data to the FCC, groups say
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Replacement PCB Replicates Early 80s Modem
The WiFi Retromodem is a non-destructive replacement of the PCB in an external Hayes Smartmodem 1200 or 2400. Note: while it will fit in the later Smartmodems, the LEDs of the Retromodem in the Hayes Optima series aluminum cases are offset slightly from the letters below.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues
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ChatGPT ‘off the rails’ as AI starts ‘threatening users’ who worry chatbot is ‘sentient.’
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Gab’s Racist AI Chatbots Have Been Instructed to Deny the Holocaust | WIRED
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AI Is Turning Social Media into the Next Frontier for Suicide Prevention
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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Why it’s so difficult to land on the moon, even five decades after Apollo
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US nears attempt at first moon landing in 50 years with private robot spacecraft
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Watch Intuitive Machines' private Odysseus lander attempt moon landing today
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First U.S. moon landing since 1972 as private spacecraft touches down
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SpaceX seeks a waiver to launch Starship "at least" nine times this year
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Chicago is uniting to assist H-1B visa holders impacted by tech layoffs
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'It has gotten out of hand': wage theft rampant in US construction
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Jeff Bezos Sells More Amazon Stock, Reaching $8.5 Billion This Month.
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Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger: I hope to build chips for Lisa Su and AMD
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Vice Media to Stop Publishing on Vice.com, Plans to Cut Hundreds of Jobs
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The Fed Is Behind the Capital One/Discover Merger
That said, in many ways this deal is contingent upon the election. If there’s a change in administration, then there will be a different set of bank regulators and antitrust enforcers. It’s not clear what happens then. In his first term, Donald Trump was lax about banking consolidation, though his Antitrust Division did sue to stop the Visa merger with Plaid. So one could see this deal as a bet on Biden losing. But I think that’s overthinking it a bit, since there’s no reason Capital One couldn’t just wait until after the election to announce the deal. Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank is known as a super aggressive operator; he has already been fined for violating antitrust laws multiple times. If I had to guess, I’d say this one’s about ego, as many of these mergers are. Fairbank is a billionaire, and so he won’t be dislodged from his position as CEO regardless of whether he has to walk away from the deal. He’s probably thinking, swing for the fences, the worst that happens is you strike out.
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Democrats pushed climate action. Then utility bills skyrocketed.
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IRA Energy Provisions Cost Could Double With New Emissions Rule
With the emission rule in place, energy-related provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will cost almost $870 billion through 2031, more than double the original $400 billion estimate.
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Ala. hospital halts IVF after state's high court ruled embryos are "children"
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(1996) Kwitcherbellyachin'
if Congress opts for debt over taxation, you can count on thoughtless commentators to denounce the interest payments on that debt as a second, and separate, outrage. That’s wrong, because you can (if you wish) buy a $10,000 Treasury bill that will bring all your interest payments right back to you–thereby, in effect, taxing yourself to pay off the debt right away, and limiting your damage to the initial $10,000. The great burden of government is that it spends your money. Those politicians who have devoted their lives to exacerbating that burden–like Bob Dole and Bill Clinton–would prefer to divert your attention to relative nonissues like the deficit. Don’t fall for it.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Veterans groups join calls for Biden administration to reschedule marijuana
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Tampa Man Indicted for Tucker Carlson, Fox News, Kanye 'Hack'
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Why Toronto should 'be outraged...' over 'indiscriminate' bus stop shootings
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Bay Area hardware store offering one-on-one assistance to curb shoplifting
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Pharmacies nationwide face delays as healthcare tech company reports cyberattack
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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TheMoneyIllusion » What Trump and Tyler get wrong about NATO
The most important aspect of Nato is not the amount it spends on the military, rather its role is to provide a mutual defense pact so large that no nation would dare to attack even its tiniest members. In that regard, it’s a smashing success. Consider the recent war in the Ukraine, where Russia has been stalemated for 2 years. To say that Ukraine is weaker than Nato would be an understatement. Nato has 31 members, many of which are individually richer and more powerful than Ukraine. As long as Nato sticks together, Russia would not dare to attack even a small member like Estonia. It makes essentially no difference whether Germany spends 1.4% or 2.0% of GDP on its military. Nato is ten times over impregnable, if it sticks together.
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US forcing TSMC, Samsung, chipmakers to hand over business data
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Let's play "Whistle past the Fascism" shall we? Which Ties Will Bind? | Center for Security and Emerging Technology
Fascist governments encouraged the pursuit of private profit and offered many benefits to large businesses, but they demanded in return that all economic activity should serve the national interest.
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Two years of war in Ukraine: What the Pentagon has learned - The Washington Post
China
Health / Medicine
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"Valproate" The mothers fighting a scandal bigger than thalidomide
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Interestingly, zinc concentrations in the inner ear are highest of any organ or tissue in the body. But, despite this, the role of zinc in the cochlea and its effects on hearing and hearing loss hadn’t been studied in detail. The researchers found that, hours after mice were exposed to loud noise, zinc levels in the inner ear spiked and were dysregulated in the hair cells and in key parts of the cochlea, with significant changes to their location inside cells. Those changes in zinc were associated with cellular damage and disrupted communication between sensory cells in the inner ear.
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For Marijuana Users, Even Legalization Doesn’t Guarantee Safety - WSJ
Marijuana contaminated with arsenic, lead or mold is causing serious, even life-threatening illnesses around the country as use of cannabis products explodes. People who have used marijuana have higher levels of heavy metals in their blood and are more likely to develop fungal infections, according to studies. Researchers have linked contaminants found in marijuana to cases of sudden-onset numbness, fatal lung bleeding and artery disease that resulted in amputations.