2024-03-04
Horseshit
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I Was a Heretic at the New York Times | Hacker News
- (Feb 27 2024) I Was a Heretic at the New York Times (Archive)
I had to answer the pink prompt, which had me respond with my favorite sandwich. Russ & Daughters’ Super Heebster came to mind, but I figured mentioning a $19 sandwich wasn’t a great way to win new friends. So I blurted out, “The spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A,” and considered the ice broken. The HR representative leading the orientation chided me: “We don’t do that here. They hate gay people.” People started snapping their fingers in acclamation. I hadn’t been thinking about the fact that Chick-fil-A was transgressive in liberal circles for its chairman’s opposition to gay marriage. “Not the politics, the chicken,” I quickly said, but it was too late. I sat down, ashamed.
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Over 180 professional tennis players participated in a global match-fixing ring
So this ring began in 2014, and it began in Brussels, Belgium. There was a young man named Grigor Sargsyan who, at that point, was a law student in Brussels, and he was surrounded by friends who were gambling on sports. And Grigor started wondering whether there was a way to gamble on tennis that would guarantee the outcome of the wager. And what he learned as he did a little bit of research is that tennis players at the lowest tier of the sport make almost nothing. And once he figured out that these players were corruptible, that they were vulnerable to this sort of bribery, he grew the network from one player to more than 180 over the course of two or three years.
one of the things that surprised me in my reporting was just how huge gambling on tennis has become. It's now a $50-billion-a-year industry. And it's not just people betting on the outcomes of matches. It's people betting on parts of very obscure matches, as you said, a point or a set or a game.
- "gambling on tennis has become ... a $50-billion-a-year industry." Just for fun I looked up another bullshit statistic to compare that to: "U.S. pet owners spend a collective $42 billion on pet food and treats annually." (Its 120+ bn globally)... I cannot quite believe that tennis gambling has become bigger than pet food.
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NYC's smallest apartment is 55 square feet and costs $1,400 per month
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American serves drinks to 1st class after telling economy it's too turbulent to
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All this weirdness, Swisher says, was there, whether consciously or not, to smooth over the fact that the new tech industry was not the big-hearted humanitarian project its founders often talked about, but something much more straightforward: the latest iteration of rapacious capitalism. “I thought it was all performative. It was like: ‘Aren’t we different?’; and I was like: ‘You’re not really that different.’ I was irritated by the performative nature of it all, you know: all soft and squishy, but hard as nails on the inside. And that’s what these people were, right? They were always killers. Every one of them.”
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The “Disney adult” industrial complex - New Statesman
In the popular imagination, a Disney adult is a childless, self-infantilised and overly excitable millennial; someone who lacks both self- and social awareness.
Whether Disney adults are embarrassing or enchanting is largely a matter of opinion. What is missing from endless comment sections is the fact that they are a creation of the Walt Disney Company – a character constructed just as carefully as Elsa or Donald Duck. Disney does not hide its desire to create lifelong consumers. In 2011, Disney representatives visited new mothers in 580 maternity wards across the US, gifting them bodysuits and asking them to sign up for DisneyBaby.com. In 2022, the company announced plans to build residential “Storyliving” communities across America, with special neighbourhoods for those aged 55 and up.
Electric / Self Driving cars
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‘Simply good’ Chinese electric cars power ahead of inferior US rivals
“They are simply good cars and people buy them,” he said in an interview, referring to Chinese vehicles. “The American ones [producers] seem to struggle to bring good electric vehicles [to market].”
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Why Wikileaks Matters - Lee Fang
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, as of this writing, faces a final attempt to appeal his extradition from the U.K. to the U.S. If he fails, he faces Espionage Act charges that could lead to living out the remainder of his life in federal prison. The case is a flashpoint for the future of journalism. Press freedom groups around the world argue that if Assange is extradited and successfully prosecuted for espionage, it would create a dangerous precedent for the government to suppress future reporting.
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Lessons from the past on how to beat disinformation
Today’s propagandists play on the same needs. In a time of rapid economic, social and technological change it can be comforting to be part of a large, angry crowd. Online conspiracy theory communities are particularly effective at pulling together a sense of being part of a group with a secret knowledge and mission. Such media also give people a role to play in a confusing world: as a Proud Boy or a “patriot” storming the Capitol. Social media, where you are encouraged to label who you are, only exacerbates this performance. Meanwhile the allure of “strongmen” has never gone away. Whether you buy into the psychoanalytic theories, the grievance narratives work – from Trump’s crusade to Make America Great Again to Putin promising to get Russia back off its knees.
- as always only the Enemy is propaganda, our propaganda is Gospel
Musk
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Why Elon Musk Is the Second Most Important Person in MAGA (Archive)
We’re familiar with Trump’s arc, of course. But why is Musk so important to the right? Why is a reported illicit drug user and unmarried father of 11 children by three women, a man whose social media site, X, is overrun with hatred and pornography, celebrated across the length and breadth of the new right, including parts of the Christian right? The answer is that if Trump is MAGA’s champion, Musk is its gatekeeper. He doesn’t just use his immense reach (he has 174 million followers on X) to fight the left, he owns the right wing’s public square. This is because outside of X, the public isn’t reading the right. And as a result, X now shapes the right as much as even Fox News.
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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The Pipe Bombs Before Jan. 6: Capital Mystery That Doesn't Add Up | RealClearWire
Responding to the video discovered by this reporter, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, the Georgia Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee subcommittee now conducting a separate inquiry into Jan. 6, asked, “How could a bomb-sniffing dog miss a pipe bomb at the DNC? We’ll add this to our long list of unanswered questions and continue getting to the truth.”
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Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images
BBC Panorama discovered dozens of deepfakes portraying black people as supporting the former president. Mr Trump has openly courted black voters, who were key to Joe Biden's election win in 2020. But there's no evidence directly linking these images to Mr Trump's campaign.
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
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'Pandemic Babies' developed 'fascinating' protection against common condition
Infants raised when coronavirus social distancing restrictions were in place were found by Irish researchers to have more of the beneficial microbes acquired after birth from their mother, which could act as a defence against disease. The scientists believe this led "pandemic babies" to have lower than expected rates of allergic conditions, such as to food, compared to pre-COVID babies. The findings, published in the journal Allergy, highlighted the gut health benefits for the youngsters as a result of the COVID-19 lockdowns, including lower rates of infection and consequent antibiotic use, and increased duration of breastfeeding.
Fellow joint senior author Liam O'Mahony, professor of immunology at University College Cork, said: "While we all start life sterile, communities of beneficial microbes that inhabit our gut develop over the first years of life." He added: "One fascinating outcome is that due to reduced human exposures and protection from infection, only 17% of infants required an antibiotic by one year of age, which correlated with higher levels of beneficial bacteria such as bifidobacteria.
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Older US adults should get another COVID-19 shot, health officials recommend | KSL.com
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Americans 65 and older should get another dose of the updated vaccine that became available in September — if at least four months have passed since their last shot. The advisory panel's decision came after a lengthy discussion about whether to say older people "may" get the shots or if they "should" do so. That reflects a debate among experts about how necessary another booster is and whether yet another recommendation would add to the public's growing vaccine fatigue.
- Presumably there's people still gamely attempting medical science here. Feel sorry for them. They're attempting agriculture on the shattered No Man's Land left over from years of COVID political wars. To stretch a metaphor: I fear their earnest efforts may refine and propagate poisons and corrupted life forms, to areas as yet uncontaminated.
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Florida is swamped by disease outbreaks as quackery replaces science
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Pornhub owner broke law by not getting 'valid' consent for content: watchdog
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Commerce Department Proposes Imposing "Know Your Customer" on IaaS Providers
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Google's morale crisis is about to get worse (Archive)
While most employees will still be getting an overall increase to their compensation, the majority won’t be getting anywhere near as much of an increase as they have in years prior, according to internal emails and documents shared with managers that I’ve seen. For the “significant impact” rating that the majority of employees are assigned by their managers, there will be no salary increase in most cases.
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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We've been here before: AI promised humanlike machines – in 1958
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We 'messed up' with black Nazi blunder, Google co-founder admits
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Apple is right not to rush headlong into generative AI (Archive)
Yet you do not have to be a true believer to see why Apple may be right to take its time. First, there will be more to gen AI than chatbots. They appear to be a revolutionary technology. But so far they are just a better (and accident-prone) way of putting in a query and getting an answer. That is not Apple’s forte. “They are features, not products,” as Horace Dediu, an expert on Apple, puts it. Nor does Apple compete with other tech giants, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, to run cloud-computing platforms with large language models (LLMs) on which other firms can build gen-AI apps. Instead of relying on cloud services, it seems to be working on ways to embed gen AI in its own devices, bolstering its ecosystem. Since 2017 it has been using homemade chip technology called neural engines to handle machine-learning and AI functions that its gadgets use behind the scenes.
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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I Canceled My Unused Subscriptions. The Money I Saved Paid for a Tesla. - WSJ
The financially responsible among us might cancel streaming services between seasons of their favorite shows. I tend to add new ones and forget about the old ones, doing my share to support America’s ballooning subscription economy. People pay about $273 a month for subscriptions, which is almost $200 more than they think they do, according to a 2021 survey. (Since then, services like Disney+ and Discovery+ have raised their prices further.)
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Caldara: Restaurant closures a glimpse into Colorado's future - Complete Colorado
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Everything is rising at a scary rate: Why car, home insurance costs are surging
Inflation is partly to blame for those big payouts. The cost of fixing or replacing damaged homes and cars has jumped sharply in recent years as a result of rising labor and material prices. Even as those prices start to level off, though, insurers are having to contend with a mounting toll of natural disasters, and not just in the usual places like Florida and California.
A survey by the Insurance Information Institute last year found 12% of homeowners had no insurance, up from 5% four years earlier. Going without coverage is risky, though, for both individuals and communities.
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Rich Countries Are Becoming Addicted to Cheap Labor - WSJ
Many business owners say that bringing in low-skilled foreign workers has become essential, as local populations age and labor forces shrink. In rural Wisconsin, John Rosenow says it is impossible to find locals to work on his 1,000-acre dairy farm. He relies on 13 Mexican immigrants, up from eight to 10 a decade ago. That has enabled him to avoid making costly investments in robots that can help milk cows, as some other dairy farmers have.
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Santander cuts 320 US jobs in digital shift, Bloomberg reports
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PG&E claims no connection between rate increases and $2.2B jump in earnings
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Aipac uncorks $100M war chest to sink progressive candidates
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After 111 years, SF finally moving to oust PG&E and create a public-power system
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US Republicans call for McKinsey to be banned from federal contracts
Marco Rubio, the vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, and Michael McCaul, the chair of the House foreign affairs committee, said McKinsey had undermined US security through the think-tank’s role in the development of Beijing’s 13th five-year plan in 2015.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood
The sensors are pretty much what I imagined, innocuous beige boxes clamped to street light arms. There are a number of these boxes to be found in modern cities. Some are smart meter nodes, some are base stations for municipal data networks, others collect environmental data. Some are the police, listening in on your activities. This is not as hypothetical of a concern as it might sound. Conversations recorded by ShotSpotter sensors have twice been introduced as evidence in criminal trials. In one case the court allowed it, in another the court did not. The possibility clearly exists, and depending on interpretation of state law, it may be permissible for ShotSpotter to record conversations on the street for future use as evidence. This ought to give us pause, as should the fact that ShotSpotter has been compellingly demonstrated to manipulate their "interpretation" of evidence to fit a prosecutor's narrative---even when ShotSpotter's original analysis contradicted it.
APD received about 14,000 ShotSpotter reports last year. The accuracy of these reports, in terms of their correctly identifying gunfire, is contested. SoundThinking claims impressive statistics, but has actively resisted independent evaluation. A Chicago report found that only 11.3% of ShotSpotter reports could be confirmed as gunfire. APD, for its part, reports a few hundred suspects or victims identified as a result of ShotSpotter reports.
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Paris Olympics 2024: Testing algorithmic video surveillance begins
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Unhoused man accused of trying to steal a Waymo self-driving car in downtown LA
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
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Russians Keep Turning Up Dead All over the World (Archive)
Since the invasion of Ukraine, prominent Russians have died in unusual circumstances on three continents. Some were thought to harbor politically subversive ideas, while others may have been caught up in run-of-the-mill criminal warfare. Some may have actually died of natural causes. But there are enough of them that Wikipedia publishes a running list, at 51 names, entitled “Suspicious deaths of Russian business people (2022–2024).”
Health / Medicine
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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A San Francisco carve out could wreck California's landmark coastal protections
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Decades after US buried nuclear waste abroad, climate change could unearth it
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The Staggering Ecological Impacts of Computation and the Cloud
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Are datacenters drinking all of Arizona's water? No.
- comment: "Takes a lot of scrolling, but one of Microsoft's massive datacenters uses as much water as, uh, 670 families. Say 2500 people."
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Satellites are burning up in the atmosphere – we still don't know the impact
Initially, neither the space sector nor the astrophysics community considered burning up satellites on re-entry to be a serious environmental threat – to the atmosphere, at least. After all, the number of spacecraft particles released is small when compared with 440 tonnes of meteoroids that enter the atmosphere daily, along with volcanic ash and human-made pollution from industrial processes on Earth.
So are atmospheric climate scientists overreacting to the presence of spacecraft particles in the atmosphere? Their concerns draw on 40 years of research into the cause of the ozone holes above the south and north poles, that were first widely observed in the 1980s. Today, they now know that ozone loss is caused by human-made industrial gases, which combine with natural and very high altitude polar stratospheric clouds or mother of pearl clouds. The surfaces of these ethereal clouds act as catalysts, turning benign chemicals into more active forms that can rapidly destroy ozone.
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How a warming climate is setting the stage for destructive wildfires
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Fish weight reduction in response to competition under climate change