2024-06-04
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Toyota apologizes for cheating on vehicle testing, halts production of 3 models
The wide-ranging faulty testing at Japan’s top automaker involved the use of inadequate or outdated data in collision tests, and incorrect testing of airbag inflation and rear-seat damage in crashes. Engine power tests also were found to have been falsified. Toyota Motor Corp., based in Toyota city, central Japan, suspended production in Japan of the Corolla Fielder, Corolla Axio and Yaris Cross. The faulty tests were also found on discontinued models.
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"What if?" The Sauronic Empire
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Ford restores grandeur to Detroit train station that once symbolized decline
Horseshit
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The ominously perfect 2015 'dress' meme marked the splintering of shared reality
Do you really need me to tell you what happened next? In just a few days, the BuzzFeed post got 73 million page views, inspiring debate across the world. Seemingly every news outlet (including this one) weighed in on the phenomenon. How was it possible that this one image divided people so neatly into two camps? You either saw — with zero hint of variability — the dress as black and blue, or white and gold. There was no ambiguity. Only a baffling sense of indignation: How could anyone see it differently? Looking back, the posting of “the dress” represented the high-water mark of “fun” on the mid-2010s internet. Back then, the whole media ecosystem was built around social sharing of viral stories. It seemed like a hopeful path for media. BuzzFeed and its competitors Vice and Vox Media (which owns this publication) were once worth billions of dollars.
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The field of existential risk helps us reason through terrifying headlines
Electric / Self Driving cars
celebrity gossip
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Alex Jones Says Infowars Could Be Shut Down Within Hours
In what he described as an "emergency broadcast" on Saturday, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed that his far-right news company, Infowars', studios in Austin, Texas, might be shut down by federal authorities soon. "This is going to be Infowars' last show, because I learned yesterday that they were going to padlock the door and kick us out last night," Jones said while on Infowars on Saturday. Jones said that he spotted "guards looking at me weird" at the entrance of the Infowars building and believed that his company was going to be shut down.
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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EU: Users who refuse scanning to be prevented from sharing photos and links
According to the latest draft regulation dated 28 May (Council document 9093/24), which is presented as “upload moderation”, users of apps and services with chat functions are to be asked whether they accept the indiscriminate and error-prone scanning and possibly reporting of their privately shared images, photos and videos. Previously unknown images and videos are also to be scrutinised using “artificial intelligence” technology. If a user refuses the scanning, they would be blocked from sending or receiving images, photos, videos and links (Article 10). End-to-end encrypted services such as Whatsapp or Signal would have to implement the automated searches “prior to transmission” of a message (so-called client-side scanning, Article 10a). The initially proposed scanning of text messages for indications of grooming, which is hardly being used to date, is to be scrapped, as is the scanning of voice communication, which has never been done before. Probably as a concession to France, the chats of employees of security authorities and the military are also to be exempted from chat control.
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Iran’s PressTV, Russian outlets paid U.S. contributors who also run Grayzone - The Washington Post
Hacked emails and other documents from the Iranian government-funded Press TV show payments of thousands of dollars to a writer who is now a Washington-based editor for Grayzone, whose founder regularly appears on Russian television and once accepted a trip to Moscow for a celebration of Russian state-controlled video network RT that featured Vladimir Putin. Misinformation experts say the overlap in funding underscores concern that the spread of falsehoods and propaganda online is entering a more complicated stage as the November election draws closer.
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Feds Indict Far-Right Media Exec in Massive Money Laundering Scheme
Bill Guan, the chief financial officer of the far-right Epoch Times, was indicted Monday on charges of allegedly participating in a massive money laundering scheme. The charges do not relate to the Media Company’s newsgathering activities.
From at least in or about 2020, through in or about May 2024, GUAN, while working as the Chief Financial Officer of a multinational media company headquartered in New York, New York (the “Media Company”), conspired with others to participate in a sprawling, transnational scheme to launder at least approximately $67 million of illegally obtained funds to bank accounts in the names of the Media Company and related entities (together, with the Media Company, the “Media Entities”). In furtherance of the money laundering conspiracy, GUAN managed, among other teams, the Media Company’s “Make Money Online” team (the “MMO Team”), which was located in a particular foreign office of the Media Company. Under GUAN’s management, members of the MMO Team and others used cryptocurrency to knowingly purchase tens of millions of dollars in crime proceeds, including proceeds of fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits, that had been loaded onto tens of thousands of prepaid debit cards. The crime proceeds were generally purchased by the scheme participants, including members of the MMO Team and others working with them, using a particular cryptocurrency platform, at discounted rates of approximately 70 to 80 cents per dollar, and in exchange for cryptocurrency.
Once the crime proceeds were purchased, the MMO Team and other participants in the scheme used stolen personal identification information to open accounts, including prepaid debit card accounts, cryptocurrency accounts, and bank accounts, that were used to transfer the crime proceeds into bank accounts associated with the Media Entities. After the crime proceeds reached those bank accounts, they were often further laundered through other bank accounts held by the Media Entities, GUAN’s personal bank accounts, and through GUAN’s personal cryptocurrency accounts.
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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Donald Trump Could Weaponize US Surveillance in a Second Term (Archive)
Donald Trump, a now convicted felon and the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has said he plans to prosecute his political opponents should he return to the White House. He’s said he would allow states to monitor pregnant women and prosecute those who seek abortions. Trump wants to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. He plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell civil unrest, which means sending the military into the streets. The much publicized Project 2025 outlines how he would quickly replace thousands of career civil servants in the federal government with loyalists. If a president was interested in prosecuting their political opponents, crushing protests, targeting undocumented immigrants, and had the right people in place to help them carry out those plans, surveillance could become a valuable tool for accomplishing those goals. Like former US president Richard Nixon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Trump could use the surveillance powers available to him to monitor his political opponents, disrupt protest movements, and more.
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Trump's attacks on US justice system after guilty verdict encourage Putin, other autocrats: experts
Hill and other analysts say Trump’s attacks could be useful to Putin and other autocrats as they look to boost their standing among their own citizens, potentially sway the upcoming US presidential election in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the United States’ global influence.
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Rand Paul Warns Of “War In The Streets” Coming From Trump Verdict - modernity
The Senator responded that it is “a sad day in America,” adding “what I worry about is something even bigger than Donald Trump.” “I worry about strife. I worry about war in the streets. I worry about 50 percent of the public believing that the court system will be used against them,” Paul further urged. “I worry when half the country thinks they won’t be treated fairly, what happens and how people react,” the Senator continued.
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
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Although how the pandemic started has been hotly debated, a growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China. If so, it would be the most costly accident in the history of science.
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Fauci to face Covid investigators amid growing concerns about virus research
Democrats vigorously defended the public health bureaucracy — and especially its leader, Anthony Fauci — when Republicans sought to tear it down during the pandemic. But now, in an unexpected twist, Democrats on a House investigative panel are starting to join their GOP colleagues in questioning whether government-backed scientists were fully transparent about controversial virus research and whether a longtime adviser to Fauci skirted public records requests.
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Top scientist alleges he was barred from studying mystery brain illness
A leading federal scientist in Canada has alleged he was barred from investigating a mystery brain illness in the province of New Brunswick and said he fears more than 200 people affected by the condition are experiencing unexplained neurological decline. The allegations, made in leaked emails to a colleague seen by the Guardian, have emerged two years after the eastern province closed its investigation into a possible “cluster” of cases. “All I will say is that my scientific opinion is that there is something real going on in [New Brunswick] that absolutely cannot be explained by the bias or personal agenda of an individual neurologist,” wrote Michael Coulthart, a prominent microbiologist. “A few cases might be best explained by the latter, but there are just too many (now over 200).”
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Scientists confirm that pasteurisation effectively inactivates influenza viruses
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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TikTok preparing a US copy of the app's core algorithm, sources say
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Fans can listen to the Wu-Tang Clan's one copy album but there's a catch
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The enormity of MS's Windows Phone shutdown mistake is becoming clear in AI era
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Rainbow Six Siege Fans Boo $9.99 A-Month Membership Announcement
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Microsoft confirms layoffs in mixed reality, will keep selling HoloLens headsets
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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HN Jobs:
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HDMI has become the USB of home theater, and I mean that as a compliment and an insult. So, like USB, HDMI comes in a confusing array of versions with various mandatory, optional, and extension features. The capabilities of HDMI vary by the devices on the ends, and in an increasing number of cases, even by the specific port you use on the device. HDMI actually comes to this degree of complexity more honestly than USB. USB started out as a fairly pure and simple serial link, and then more use-cases were piled on, culminating in the marriage of two completely different interconnects (USB and Thunderbolt) in one physical connector. HDMI has always been a Frankenstein creation. At its very core, HDMI is "DVI plus some other things with a smaller connector."
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
World
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Mexico's Sheinbaum wins landslide to become country's first woman president
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Finnish police use classical music to prevent young people from partying
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Abnormally Dry Canada Taps U.S. Energy, Reversing Usual Flow
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Nigeria suffers national power outage as labor unions shut down grid
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Multibillion pound syndicates are destabilising countries, says Interpol
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Homeless people removed from Paris region in pre-Olympics 'social cleansing'
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
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Ukraine's F-16s Can Strike Inside Russia, NATO Ally Confirms
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Russia coopts far-right politicians in Europe with cash, officials say - The Washington Post
For nearly a year, European intelligence officials said, the Czech authorities secretly recorded hours of meetings between several far-right politicians from across Europe and the associate, Artem Marchevsky, who was running the propaganda website, Voice of Europe, including at its offices on a quiet side street in the center of Prague. E.U. and Czech authorities, which have shut down the site, have labeled Voice of Europe a Russian propaganda operation. The Czech probe rapidly expanded into Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and France, European security and intelligence officials said, as investigators concluded that Voice of Europe represented far more than its official veneer as a pro-Russian website interviewing favored European politicians about ending aid to Ukraine.
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Revealed: Russian legal foundation linked to Kremlin activities in Europe
China
Health / Medicine
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The growing link between extreme rain and respiratory health in Japan
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One year and counting: Male birth control study reaches milestone
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Woman repeatedly told she was drunk diagnosed with rare condition
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Earning $30 too much a month keeps a cancer patient in Georgia from cheaper care
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Ozempic (semaglutide) associated with a 50-56% reduction in alcohol addiction
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We know that moving our bodies is good for us. So what keeps us from doing it?
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Wild 'superpigs' from Canada could soon invade some U.S. states
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A periodic table for flowering plants has been created – includes 9,500 species
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Orchid plants nurture their seedlings via shared underground fungal network
"By supplying early stage seedlings with essential nutrients via shared fungal connections, the parent orchids give the seedlings an advantage over neighboring plants that are competing for the same resources. "This finding is exciting because why these orchids are often found in clumps, despite their seeds being wind dispersed, has been a puzzle for hundreds of years."
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the Earth's irregular magnetic field is causing headaches for polar navigation