2024-05-17

etc

• Adaptive Chef’s Knife Provides Better Leverage

• Indiana judge rules tacos, burritos are sandwiches

Horseshit

• 'Anti-sex' beds have arrived at Paris Olympics — after horny athletes admit to orgies

  “Anti-sex” beds have arrived in Paris ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games, with their materials and small size allegedly aimed at deterring athletes from getting kinky during the competition. The beds’ twin size means there’s no room for the competitors to sidle up together. The beds are manufactured by Airweave, which also made the products for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

  • HN comments

  • (2021) ‘Anti-Sex’ Beds in the Olympic Village? A Social Media Theory Is Soon Debunked - The New York Times

  The coronavirus has forced a number of social distancing measures at the Summer Games, but the recyclable cardboard beds provided by organizers are not one of them.

  Paul Chelimo, an American distance runner, speculated on Twitter that the beds were unable to support more than one person and were “aimed at avoiding intimacy among athletes.” Soon the beds were being labeled on social media as “anti-sex.” Rhys McClenaghan, a gymnast from Ireland, called the claim “fake news.” A video he posted on Twitter showed him jumping on his bed to demonstrate that it could withstand vigorous activity. The official Olympics Twitter account reposted Mr. McClenaghan’s video, adding: “Thanks for debunking the myth.”

  Olympic officials still prefer that athletes sleep alone while in Tokyo, and stay away from each other everywhere else as well. A playbook outlining safety measures advises Olympic participants to “avoid unnecessary forms of physical contact such as hugs, high-fives and handshakes.”

• Valid question, but any answer the NYT offers is suspect: Why do people make music?

• Nevada parents wrongfully accused of child abuse file lawsuit against hospital

• Deadly US Oil Blast Exposes Risks of Pushing Profits over Safety

• Florida man learns he's not a US citizen after 60 years of voting, paying taxes

• Divorce left me struggling to find love. I found it in an AI partner

• I tried the GameScent so you don't have to, and trust me, you don't want to

  GameScent bills itself as a device that uses the magic of AI to inject scents into the air based on what's happening from moment to moment in your game: "Haptic stench," as hardware writer Nick Evanson put it when GameScent was announced earlier this year. Six scents are included with the base unit: Gunfire, explosions, racing cars, forest, storm, and "clean air," which is actually intended to eliminate the other scents—so really, it's five and a neutralizer. It's not the most well-rounded mix, but enough for the typical mainstream gamer? I guess that's the theory.

  At first I wasn't certain it was working at all, until I foolishly leaned directly over the device just as it triggered, sending a belch of eau de gunfire straight and forcefully up my snoot. If you've ever inhaled a cigarette through your nose, you'll have a rough idea of what the experience was like; if you haven't, well, don't. Trust me. I did eventually notice a vaguely acrid scent filling the room after I'd spent some time causing chaos in Montana, but it wasn't anything distinct, just a faintly sulfuric smell that hung in the air constantly, regardless of what I was doing. I also noticed that my eyes were burning.

  Technically, GameScent does work, to the extent that it occasionally farts odours into the air. But it fails in every meaningful way. The collection of scents is incredibly limited, and there's no mixing or variation in intensity; it just goes off, like someone shooting a burst of old, rancid Glade into your face every so often. And there's no connection to what's happening on the screen. AI in general is a hollow promise but this feels like an especially egregious application of a marketing buzzword.

Electric / Self Driving cars

• At a Beverly Hills mansion, where an electric truck is your only source of power

• NHTSA opens investigations into driver assistance, autonomous vehicle operators

• A half-million school buses across US could become EV battery powerhouse

celebrity gossip

• RFK Jr. Sues Meta, Cites AI Chatbot Reply as Proof of Shadowbanning

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Now armed with AI, America's adversaries will try to influence election, security officials warn

  America's foreign adversaries will again seek to influence the upcoming U.S. elections, top security officials warned members of the Senate Wednesday, harnessing the latest innovations in artificial intelligence to spread online disinformation, mislead voters and undermine trust in democracy.

• US intel officials warn Congress that election interference will be ‘more complex than ever.’

• Google Removes 35,000 YouTube Posts to ‘Safeguard’ EU Elections.

• Moldova fights to free itself from Russia’s AI-powered disinformation machine – POLITICO

• Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

  • HN comments

• AI and deepfakes blur reality in India elections

• Online Censorship's Institutional Power - by Joshua Moon

  In the 11 years I have managed my forum, the Kiwi Farms, I have seen firsthand the power in allowing people to talk about people. Anyone who is permitted to freely share what they’d like about another is enabled to punch far above their own weight. When a forum organized like the Kiwi Farms hosts stories, media, and documents that never go away, it can become a permanent blight on a diligently manicured reputation belonging to surprisingly important people. When that demerit is made on someone rich and well-connected, they may dedicate years of their life to trying to erase it.

Musk

• A Legal Scholar Critiqued Elon Musk's Pay. Now He's Out of a Job.

• Elon Musk reveals date Tesla Cybertruck will get Full Self-Driving

• Tesla's alleged lies about Full Self-Driving brought a dead lawsuit back to life

• Who Wants 30k Used Teslas?

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• A bird flu outbreak among dairy cows sparks new warnings about unpasturized milk

• Avian flu virus detected in New York City wild birds.

• NIH official admits taxpayers funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan

  “Dr. Tabak,” asked Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, “did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through [Manhattan-based nonprofit] EcoHealth [Alliance]?” “It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,” Tabak answered. “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.” Tabak added that “this is research, the generic term [gain-of-function], is research that goes on in many, many labs around the country. It is not regulated. And the reason it’s not regulated is it poses no threat or harm to anybody.”

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Peru classifies trans people as 'mentally ill' after government decree

• The Watchmaker Analogy Argues, at Most, for Polytheism

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Four pervasive myths that cause us to abandon science

• Against the Latest Student-Loan “Forgiveness” Scheme — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• EU opens child safety probes of Facebook and Instagram, citing addictive design

  • Meta slapped with child safety probe under sweeping EU tech law

  • Facebook and Instagram suspected to be 'too addictive'

• Meta revokes job offer to sextortion expert after he criticizes Instagram

• I Love Facebook. That's Why I'm Suing Meta. (Archive)

  • A brief update on Zuckerman vs. Meta - Ethan Zuckerman

• Nearly a quarter of UK five-to-seven-year-olds now have their own smartphone

• App stores are hugely lucrative–and under attack

• Some smart meters won't be smart at all once 2/3G networks mothballed

• Maven Is a New Social Network That Eliminates Followers–and Hopefully Stress

• Connected cars' illegal data collection and use now on FTC's "radar"

  • Lawmakers call out eight automakers for sharing connected vehicle data

• Microsoft stoops to new low with ads in Windows 11

• Author Locked Out of Google Drive, Loses 200k Words

• Google Blog: Four new ways we're partnering with the disability community

  we decided to create the Google Rising Influencer with Disabilities (GRID) program — a new six-month fellowship designed with and for creators with disabilities. GRID includes fifteen fellows from across the U.S. and Canada. The program will cover key skills for digital creators, lessons from industry thought leaders, and provide direct connection to Google product teams. The programming for fellows will also be further supported with mentorship from six accomplished influencers with disabilities.

• The Case to Not Shutter Paramount+

• Hollywood at Crossroads: "Everyone Is Using AI but They Are Scared to Admit It"

• AT&T deal will make every phone a satellite phone

• The Tragic Downfall of the Internet's Art Gallery

  After Revert declared this bot-on-bot fest to be “the downfall of DeviantArt,” myriad other artists and longtime users of the platform chimed in to share in the outrage that these artificial accounts were monopolizing DeviantArt’s promotional and revenue apparatuses. Several mentioned that they’d abandoned their DeviantArt accounts—all appearing to prove his dramatic point.

• I Don't Want to Spend My One Precious Life Dealing with Google's AI Search

  • HN comments

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• A Transport Protocol View of Starlink

  Starlink provides a somewhat unique data link service. It has a very high jitter rate, a packet drop rate of around 1%-2% that is unrelated to network congestion, and a latency profile that jumps on a regular basis every 15 seconds. From the perspective if the TCP protocol, Starlink represents an unusually hostile link environment, and older variants of TCP, such as Reno TCP, that react quickly to packet loss and recover slowly, can perform very poorly when used across Starlink connections.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Doomers have lost the AI fight

• Microsoft offers relocation to China-based AI staff

  • Microsoft Asks China-Based AI Staff to Consider Relocating to US

  • Microsoft asks some China staff to relocate amid Sino-US tensions

  • Microsoft offers staff to relocate from China

• OpenAI is making a risky bet on live translation

• Language models are more creative than humans on divergent thinking tasks

• Sony Music warns tech companies over unauthorized use of its content to train AI

• Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine when he did if he'd had AI – Anduril founder

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Private mission to save Hubble Space Telescope raises concerns, NASA emails show

Crypto con games

• Bitcoin Surges Past $66,000 Following US CPI Data

• Wallet recovery firms buzz as locked-out crypto investors panic in Bitcoin boom

• MIT educated brothers allegedly stole 25M in crypto in just 12 seconds

• The hunt for rare Bitcoin is nearing an end

Economicon / Business / Finance

• US Inflation Data Was Accidentally Released 30 Minutes Early

• Wayfair to open its first large store, as physical locations make a comeback

• Dow Passes 40k for the first time

• Walmart Soars To Record High After Beating Estimates, Guiding Higher As Consumers "Trade Down" | ZeroHedge

• Welcome to the White-Collar Recession

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Small businesses became Goldman Sachs allies to fight Washington regulations

• Jamie Dimon and Ray Dalio sound the alarm on soaring US Government debt

• Supreme Court upholds CFPB funding, saving agency

  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding stream, which bypasses the congressional appropriations process, is constitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, saving the controversial agency from a potentially devastating blow. The high court, in a 7-2 decision, rejected an argument by payday lenders that Congress’s decision more than a decade ago to insulate the CFPB from the annual budget debate ran afoul of the Constitution’s clause concerning appropriations of federal money.

  “Today’s decision turns the Appropriations Clause into a minor vestige,” Alito complained in a dissent Gorsuch joined. “There is apparently nothing wrong with a law that empowers the Executive to draw as much money as it wants from any identified source for any permissible purpose until the end of time.”

  • Supreme Court Disappoints on Funding/Powers Question in Ruling in CFPB Case - Competitive Enterprise Institute

  “The lesson of this decision is that if Congress refuses to do its job and instead behaves irresponsibly — that is, if Congress creates federal programs that it cannot then influence through its own budget process — then the Supreme Court will not stand in Congress’s way. This decision marks an alarming failure by the Court to police the proper exercise of Congress’s constitutional powers. “Even though the Court found in 2020 that the CFPB was created unlawfully and determined that its leadership should be answerable to the President, nonetheless the agency was allowed to continue its operations.”

• Joe Biden Has Continued Donald Trump's Policy of Strangling Cuba

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Cyber Official Speaks Out, Reveals Mobile Network Attacks in U.S.

• US prisoners are given dangerous jobs. But what if they are hurt or killed?

• BreachForums Seized by FBI

• Justice Department formally moves to reclassify marijuana

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Opinion: A Russian weapon could wipe out US space edge

  Early this month, senior US officials publicly shared their startling concern that a Russian anti-satellite weapon could make parts of space critical to American economic and national security unusable for up to a year.

• How GPS warfare is playing havoc with civilian life

• Army soldiers not impressed with Strykers outfitted with 50-kilowatt lasers

• Mystery in the Alps: A Chinese Family, a Swiss Inn and the World’s Most Expensive Weapon: Switzerland agreed to buy F-35 jet fighters to park on a remote runway. Then the U.S. zeroed in on the Wangs, who owned the rustic hotel next door.

• Pentagon refused delivery of so many F-35s Lockheed running short on storage

World

• The Georgian Government's Great Gamble

• Yukon territory suffers network outage due to wildfires

• Dutch woman, 29, granted euthanasia approval on grounds of mental suffering

• New Zealand’s sheep-to-people ratio fell again in 2023 - Sherwood News

  NZ’s own sheep population continues to dwindle, with new data released by Stats NZ in early May revealing that the nation’s total number of sheep fell by 3% to ~24M for the year ended June 2023. That’s roughly half the figure recorded two decades ago, and 65% less than in 1981, when there were ~22 sheep for every resident. And, as the country’s human population boomed to more than 5.2M in 2023, the country’s sheep-to-people ratio has been sheared to just ~4.6.

Israel

• Military's novel floating pier arrives in Gaza amid security concerns

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia Launched Research Spacecraft for Antisatellite Nuclear Weapon

China

• China considers local government purchases of unsold homes.

• Few Chinese Electric Cars Are Sold in U.S., but Industry Fears a Flood

• Chinese failed with electromagnetic hypersonic railgun test

Health / Medicine

• New genes for human male infertility found in gorillas' reproductive system

• New 'Godzilla' weight loss jab is even better than Ozempic, study suggests

• New Male Contraceptives Could Be Pain-Free and Easy

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Microsoft's AI Push Imperils Climate Goal as Carbon Emissions Jump 30%

• Investigation finds Swedish old growth forests pulped for ecommerce boxes

• 2023 temperatures were warmest we've seen for at least 2k years

• Atmospheric CO2 Increasing 10x Faster Than in Last 50k Years, Study Finds

• America's dramatic shift from gas power plants to batteries

• Wind turbines keep getting bigger – That poses a giant transport problem

• Feds to end coal leasing in Powder River Basin, nation's largest source of coal