2024-04-30

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• Stowaway Cat Gets from Utah to California in Amazon Returns Package

• Roman object that baffled experts to go on show at Lincoln Museum

  The object is one of only 33 dodecahedrons found in Britain, and the first to have been discovered in the Midlands. The artefact is also one of the largest found, measuring about 3in (8cm) tall and weighing 8oz (245g).

• Winner of $1.3B Powerball jackpot is a immigrant from Laos who has cancer

• A better title might be "Air jet effectors effective", this has nothing to do with sailboats. Scientists harness the wind as a tool to move objects

  The team’s analysis showed that even though the airflow is generally chaotic, it’s still regular enough to move objects in a controlled way in different directions – even back towards the nozzle blowing out the air. ‘We designed an algorithm that controls the direction of the air nozzle with two motors. The jet of air is blown onto the surface from several meters away and to the side of the object, so the generated airflow field moves the object in the desired direction. The control algorithm repeatedly adjusts the direction of the air nozzle so that the airflow moves the objects along the desired trajectory,’ explains Zhou. ‘Our observations allowed us to use airflow to move objects along different paths, like circles or even complex letter-like paths. Our method is versatile in terms of the object’s shape and material – we can control the movement of objects of almost any shape,’ he continues.

• 4 Zebras Broke Free on a Highway. A Rodeo Clown Stepped In. - The New York Times

  Kristine Keltgen said she had bought the zebras from a farm in Washington State and was hauling them on Interstate 90 on Sunday to the petting zoo she runs in Anaconda, Mont., when she saw that the latch on the zebras’ trailer was loose. Ms. Keltgen said that when she stopped on a highway exit in North Bend to fix the latch, the zebras “bolted out.” “It happened really fast,” she said in an interview on Monday.

Horseshit

• T. rex not as smart as previously claimed, scientists find

  • T. Rex was not as smart as primates, new study finds

• The Threat of a Solar Superstorm Is Growing–and We're Not Ready

• Bodies Don't Decompose as Normal in This Colombian Town, and Nobody Knows Why

• All dog noses–whether a pug's or a bloodhound's–are created equal

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Sleeping Tesla driver caught on Swedish highway – after 25 miles

• Mercedes-Benz CEO on not using Apple's next-gen CarPlay, why EVs are the future

• Ford BlueCruise driver assist under federal scrutiny following 2 deaths

  • Ford's BlueCruise hands-free system under investigation after fatal crashes

• EV fast-charging comes to condos and apartments

• Fisker starts new round of layoffs to 'preserve cash'

• EV Fast Chargers Are Catching Up to Gas Stations in California

celebrity gossip

• Marc Andreessen Is a Maniac

  While Andreessen may be all over the place ideologically, when you burrow down to his core beliefs they seem pretty simple. He’s a big fan of power. That is power for certain people—i.e., people like him. Rich people, in other words. I used to consider Andreessen to be something of a buffoon—a guy who has been so rich for so long that it’s effectively addled his brain. His love of investing in bad ideas had me convinced of this. Now, however, I think a more apt descriptor might be “maniac.” He seems like a zealous believer in anything that helps sustain or enhance the American elite’s power accumulation, all other considerations be damned.

• Jony Ive's bold plans to reshape a small slice of San Francisco

• Russian Arrest Warrant Issued for Ex-Chess Champion Garry Kasparov

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Democratic states are regulating digital platforms

• The limits of foreign propaganda and the foundations of an effective response

  American leaders and scholars have long feared the prospect that hostile foreign powers could subvert democracy by spreading false, misleading, and inflammatory information by using various media. Drawing on both historical experience and empirical literature, this article argues that such fears may be both misplaced and misguided. The relationship between people’s attitudes and their media consumption remains murky, at best, despite technological advances promising to decode or manipulate it. This limitation extends to foreign foes as well. Policymakers therefore risk becoming pessimistic toward the public and distracted from the domestic, real-world drivers of their confidence in democratic institutions. Policy interventions may also prove detrimental to democratic values like free expression and to the norms that the United States aims to foster in the information environment.

Musk

• Demise of Twitter: how a 'utopian vision' for social media became a 'toxic mess'

• Tesla strikes deal with China's Baidu for driver assistance

  • Musk Wins China's Backing for Tesla's Driver-Assistance Service

  • Tesla Reaches Deals in China on Self-Driving Cars

• Supreme Court rejects Elon Musk over SEC agreement to vet social media posts

  • Elon Musk loses at Supreme Court in case over "funding secured" tweets

  • Elon Musk's 'Twitter sitter' appeal over Tesla posts rejected by Supreme Court

• Elon Musk's Malign Influence in Brazil

• SpaceX Employees Are Getting Hurt in Alarming Numbers

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Bird flu in US cows: is the milk supply safe?

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Message From a Gazan to Campus Protesters: You're Hurting the Palestinian Cause | Opinion

  The truth is that the manner in which many gather to voice their support for Palestinians does more to hurt our cause than help it. You know what would help the Palestinians in Gaza? Condemning Hamas' atrocities. Instead, the protesters routinely chant their desire to "Globalize the Intifada." Apparently they do not realize that the Intifadas were disastrous for both Palestinians and Israelis, just as October 7 has been devastating for the people of Gaza. They should be speaking up for the innocent victims of Hamas—both Palestinian and Israeli. Instead, they endorse Hamas's ideology with posters announcing resistance "by any means necessary" and chants of "from the river to the sea," effectively glorifying the Al-Qassam brigades, Hamas' military wing, whose ideology is entirely based on the elimination of more than 6 million Israelis from the land.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The Hippies vs. The Woke - by Arnold Kling - In My Tribe

  Most of the 1960s anti-war protesters were not pro-Vietcong. They were upset with the sacrifices Americans were making and the casualties on both sides in a war that seemingly had no end. They wanted American policy to aim toward peace, even if this meant conceding that the war would not be won.

  In 2024, my sense is that the protesters are limited to the fringe that supports the bad guys. There is no broader peace movement, as far as I can tell. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the anti-Israel movement on campus is not as popular with the student body as the anti-war movement in 1968. For most people, sympathy for Hamas is too much of a stretch.

  The social justice activists strike me as closer to being a cult than a movement. I think that the cult attracts people who are unhealthy psychologically. They have a lot of negative emotions, and the social justice ideology serves to validate and reinforce those emotions. At the work place, they are increasingly being viewed as toxic and impossible to integrate. And perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part, but I doubt that their anti-Israel protests are winning many converts among the general public.

• Class of 2024, It's Not in Your Head: The Job Market Is Tough (Archive)

  • Talent Disrupted: College Graduates, Underemployment, and the Way Forward — The Burning Glass Institute

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Netflix and Other Streaming Services Charge You Forever

• Home Assistant to transition to a mainstream consumer product

• Boston radio pirate faces $600k fine for staying on air even after earlier fines

• Second Life's Formula Will Never Be Replicated

• Xbox Console Sales Are Tanking as Microsoft Brings Games to PS5

• FCC Fines Largest Wireless Carriers for Sharing Location Data

  • FCC fines AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon for sharing location data

• Rural, older Americans get hurt as affordable internet program runs out of cash

• Canceling Your Credit Card May Not Stop Netflix's Recurring Charges

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Motherboard makers apparently to blame for high-end Intel Core i9 CPU failures

• Farewell MFJ

  We were sad to hear that after 52 years in operation, iconic ham radio supplier MFJ will close next month. On the one hand, it is hard not to hear such news and think that it is another sign that ham radio isn’t in a healthy space.

  • HN comments

• Z80 is dead – The chip that changed my world – and yours

• Cheyenne Super Computer Auction

  • Nodes: 4,032 dual socket units configured as quad-node blades
  • Processors: 8,064 units of E5-2697v4 (18-core, 2.3 GHz base frequency, Turbo up to 3.6GHz, 145W TDP)
  • Memory: DDR4-2400 ECC single-rank, 64 GB per node, with 3 High Memory E-Cells having 128GB per node, totaling 313,344 GB

  The system is provided in its current condition. It comprises 7 E-Cell Pairs, each originally part of the Cheyenne Supercomputer initiated in 2016 and operational for 7 years. However, the system is currently experiencing maintenance limitations due to faulty quick disconnects causing water spray. Given the expense and downtime associated with rectifying this issue in the last six months of operation, it's deemed more detrimental than the anticipated failure rate of compute nodes. Approximately 1% of nodes experienced failure during this period, primarily attributed to DIMMs with ECC errors, which will remain unrepaired. Additionally, the system will undergo coolant drainage.

  • HN comments

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The Financial Times announced partnership and licensing agreement with OpenAI

• I Witnessed the Future of AI, and It’s a Broken Toy - The Atlantic

  Until now, consumer AI has largely been defined by software: chatbots such as ChatGPT or the iPhone’s souped-up autocorrect. Now we are experiencing a thingification: Companies are launching and manufacturing actual bits of metal and plastic that are entirely dedicated to AI features. These devices are distinguished from previous AI gadgets, such as the Amazon Echo, in that they incorporate the more advanced generative-AI technology that has recently been in vogue, allowing users more natural interactions. There are pins and pendants and a whole new round of smart glasses.

Crypto con games

• Wasabi Wallet-Developer Blocks U.S. Citizens After Samourai Wallet Arrests

• Stablecoin Issuer Tether Invests $200M in Brain-Computer Interface Firm

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Meta and Reasonable Doubt

  you might think that I’m here to once again raise the Meta flag and declare investors insane; in fact, this time is different: I understand the market’s reaction and, at least partially, share their skepticism about Meta’s short to medium-term future. The big question is the long run.

• Young Americans' wealth has soared since the pandemic

• Less Is More: The Case for 'Slow Productivity' at Work

• Paramount expected to fire CEO Bob Bakish after clash with Shari Redstone

• Wall Street Has Spent Billions Buying Homes. A Crackdown Is Looming

• Jane Street is big. Like, really, really big

  sheds some light on one of Wall Street’s hottest players. We won’t upload the whole thing though: we checked it for watermarks and scrubbed its metadata, but Jane Street is paranoid and publicity-shy enough that they might have inserted a few subtle changes in different docs to see if anyone leaks it. Jane Street estimates that, thanks to its strong growth in equities wholesaling, it accounted for 10.4 per cent of all North American equity trading in 2023, up from 7.6 per cent in 2022. In other words, it is catching up on Citadel Securities, which reckons that it accounts for 23 per cent of US equity market volume.Globally, Jane Street thinks that it now accounts for over 2 per cent of all trading in over 20 countries

• In-Demand Workers Are Staying Put as US Labor Market Cools

• WeWork agrees restructuring deal that shuts out Adam Neumann's comeback bid

• Stocks Trade for 390 Minutes a Day. Increasingly, Only 10 Matter

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• No One Should Have That Much Power

  These authorities and their proxies say that they must have access to encrypted communications to keep us safe. They have been doing so for years – at first bluntly, now in a more subtle way. Encryption backdoors aren’t politically viable, so they take pains to say that they don’t want them while at the same time asking for a level of access that cannot be achieved except through backdooring encryption.

• It's not just TikTok. ByteDance has a variety of apps that could also be banned

• What's Hiding Inside the 1,069 Page, $105B FAA Bill?

• Kristi Noem defends dog slaying: I was being ‘a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor’ - POLITICO

  Amid waves of backlash from both sides of the aisle, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Sunday defended her decision to shoot and kill her 14-month-old puppy named Cricket years ago. “The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did,” she added.

• "Do Not Disclose This Is An Ad": OnlyFans Creator Says Biden Admin Paid For "Full On Political Propaganda" | ZeroHedge

  I was doing full-on political propaganda," she said, adding "The funny thing is they're like, do not disclose this is an ad because technically it's not a product so you don't have to disclose it's an ad. Because I think they just wanted, like, some edgy girl of color to just tell people — like when they nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, they’re, like, ‘Can you say “as a person of color,” you know, that you feel “reflected”?’"

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Toronto small business forced to close after losing money to cheque fraud that TD couldn’t stop - The Globe and Mail

  A Toronto staffing agency says it was forced to close its doors after losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to cheque fraud – and the former owners are asking why their bank was repeatedly unable to stop the scam from happening.

• Man impersonated law enforcement, sought to investigate own crimes, police say

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Another US precision-guided weapon falls prey to Russian electronic warfare

• London's first defense tech hackathon targets Ukraine war

• An assassination plot on American soil reveals a darker side of Modi's India

• How the right U.S. chip strategy can keep Taiwan free

• Biden Looks To Prevent Future President From Ending Ukraine War With 10-Year Agreement | ZeroHedge

World

• Long lines form and frustration grows as Cuba runs short of cash.

• 'Urination equality': Amsterdam women win fight for more public toilets

• Manufacturing in Mexico is having its moment – USA and China are buying

• Scotland’s Humza Yousaf resigns after conflicts over climate change, gender identity weakened government

• Royal Mail pauses fines for 'fake' stamps after apparent flaw in fraud scanners

• Devices with awful default passwords now illegal in the UK

• Fentanyl Laid Waste to Guatemala's Time-Worn Opium Trade

• Argentine President Javier Milei has stabilized the currency

• Saudis Scale Back Ambition for $1.5T Desert Project Neom

Iran / Houthi / Red Sea / Mediterranean

• Secret document says Iran security forces molested and killed teen protester

Israel

• The IDF Unit Responsible for Demolishing Homes Across Gaza

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia Clones Wikipedia, Censors It, Bans Original

• Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

China

• EU would need 50% tariffs to curb imports of Chinese electric cars

• China set to fetch first rocks from mysterious far side of the Moon

• China scientists talk of powering hypersonic weapon with cheap Nvidia chip

• Suddenly, Chinese Spies Seem to Be Popping Up All Over Europe - The New York Times

  In all, six people in three separate cases have been charged this week in Europe with spying for China: two in Britain and four in Germany.

• Is China stockpiling resources in case of future war?

Health / Medicine

• Research shows 'profound' link between dietary choices and brain health

• California moves to cut medicine prices with novel deal on opioid overdose drugs

• A reply to Dynomight's "Thoughts on seed oil"

  Any article that insists we know how to reverse obesity, and if fat people could just EAT THEIR GODDAMN VEGETABLES ONCE IN A WHILE, and then reasons back from there - let’s just say I’m less than impressed. Modern nutrition is not a court of law. Seed oils are not innocent until proven guilty.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Scientists and comedians join forces to get climate crisis message across

• Discovery of material that can store greenhouse gases faster than trees

• Human activities have an intense impact on Earth's deep subsurface fluid flow

• Cicadas Are Basically Safe for You–and Your Dog–To Eat. Here's What to Know

• More people prefer cow’s milk over plant-based milks, new Yahoo/YouGov poll finds. Here’s what nutritionists think about that.

• Amateur birder in Oregon accidentally photographs bird never before seen in US