2024-06-05
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My theory is that neither individuals nor organizations feel comfortable being frivolous or indulgent with their wealth anymore. Instead, all wealth is now used to accumulate even more wealth, power, and status.
In the past, efficiency and optimization were less critical. Successful businesses and wealthy individuals could afford to indulge. However, today’s businesses aim for efficiency, optimization, and indefinite scaling. No business is satisfied with where it is but instead wants to be much larger. Why design a lavish company tower when that money could be invested in growth? Or dedicate all your time to constructing a beautiful house when you could instead buy a condo in NYC to spend a few months per year. Think of how the market and your customers would judge you for being so wasteful!
Once enough people and businesses shift away from beautiful indulgences, the norms and markets that support them dissipate.
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Pasteurisation: Probably Why You Survived Childhood
If you lived in most large cities in the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution had likely placed you far enough from the nearest cow that your milk had a significant journey to make to reach you even with up-to-date rail transport. Without refrigeration, during that journey it had become a bacterial soup to the extent that even though it might not yet have gone sour, it had certainly become a bacterial brew. It was thus responsible for significant numbers of infections, and had become a major health hazard.
Horseshit
Electric / Self Driving cars
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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A Nonprofit Tried to Fix Tech Culture—but Lost Control of Its Own | WIRED
In a couple of short years, the Integrity Institute, a think tank founded by former Facebook employees, has become an influential voice on how to make social media safer. Its research on issues like election misinformation and online bullying have influenced European Union regulators and US lawmakers, and have become required reading inside tech companies. “We’re crushing it,” the institute’s executive director, Sahar Massachi, wrote in a December blog post. But by March, when the nonprofit brought its dozen or so staff and research fellows to a small New York conference room for a strategic planning retreat, the mood was grim. As Massachi and cofounder and chief research officer Jeff Allen presented their visions for growing the institute, many in the audience stared at the ground or folded their arms, and few wanted to socialize after hours. The institute’s rank and file had grown tired of hearing the founders’ sometimes dueling plans for the nonprofit, which left them unsure what to prioritize. They were drained by a fight in Slack over Israel’s assault on Gaza. And a few staffers knew that the institute’s external HR agency had just begun investigating Massachi after a number of workers alleged he was verbally hostile to women in the workplace.
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Epoch Times CFO charged in $67M crypto money laundering plot
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Pro-Russian influence campaign targets Australian media, researchers find
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New York's creative solution to targeting children online: Block the algorithms
Musk
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Musk ordered Nvidia to ship AI chips reserved for Tesla to X/xAI
In a Tuesday morning post on X, Musk said: "Tesla had no place to send the Nvidia chips to turn them on, so they would have just sat in a warehouse," adding "The south extension of Giga Texas is almost complete. This will house 50k H100s for FSD training."
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Elon Musk does not grasp EU fears about disinformation on X, official says
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See the Cybertruck's Steer-by-Wire System in Action (Including a Disturbing Lag)
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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Donald Trump joins TikTok and rapidly wins three million followers
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‘Now he’s seen as a symbol’: Republicans rally around Trump - POLITICO
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Republicans Vow To Scorch the Earth After Trump Conviction | RealClearWire
“The good guys must be as tough as the villains or freedom is doomed,” senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller told RealClearPolitics without offering exact details. Rep. Mike Collins, meanwhile, was explicit. “Time for Red State AGs and DAs to get busy,” the Georgia Republican said Thursday, floating the idea that Republicans should begin using the courts to pursue their political enemies. “Hillary Clinton’s campaign-funded Steele dossier is a good start,” Collins continued, referencing how the former Secretary of State’s presidential campaign misreported their spending on the infamous opposition research document. Clinton was later fined $11,000 by the Federal Election Commission. No criminal charges were brought. “The statute of limitations expired but I’m told that’s not a thing anymore,” Collins said.
Republicans on Capitol Hill are preparing a more traditional counter-offensive, one within established parliamentary rules. Led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, eight Republicans have vowed to oppose all major legislation “not directly relevant to the safety of the American people” and blockade all judicial nominees in protest of Trump’s conviction.
- I can just hear the opposition trembling in their cutie booties.
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How the World Can Deal With Trump | Foreign Affairs
The caricature of Trump as a one-dimensional, irrational monster is so entrenched that many forget that he can be, when it suits him, intelligently transactional. Like most bullies, he will bend others to his will when he can, and when he cannot, he will try to make a deal. But to get to the deal-making stage, Trump’s counterparts have to stand up to the bullying first.
Foreign leaders who need to get business done with Trump should be able to do so, but they will need to deal with him directly and persuade him why their proposal is a good deal for him. Leave the sentimental stuff about alliances and friendship for the press conferences. Trump’s question is always, “What’s in it for me?” His calculus is both political and commercial, but it is very focused. That should be no surprise—“America first” is his explicit slogan.
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
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Excess mortality across the Western World since the Covid pandemic
Writing in the BMJ Public Health, the authors from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, said: “Although Covid-19 vaccines were provided to guard civilians from suffering morbidity and mortality by the Covid-19 virus, suspected adverse events have been documented as well.“ Both medical professionals and citizens have reported serious injuries and deaths following vaccination to various official databases in the Western World.” They added: “During the pandemic, it was emphasised by politicians and the media on a daily basis that every Covid-19 death mattered and every life deserved protection through containment measures and Covid-19 vaccines. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the same moral should apply.”
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5 million doses of vaccine against H5N1 avian flu being prepared.
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Meta algorithms push Black people more toward expensive schools, study finds
"We find that Meta’s algorithms steer ads to for-profit universities and universities with historically predatory marketing practices to relatively more Black users than the ads for public universities," Korolova told The Register.
- Wouldn't it be even worse "discrimination" to steer that demographic towards cheaper schools? Implying they're not good enough for the expensive places? Isn't the discrimination of other identifiable demographics and marketing to them intrinsically Racist and Wrong?
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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Harvard's Largest Faculty Division Will No Longer Require Diversity Statements
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The 'promised land' of stable, high-pay jobs for recent grads is falling apart
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A physicist dismantles Terrence Howard's nonsensical "theory of everything"
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For Decades, Officials Knew a School Sat on Former Dump; Did Little to Clean Up
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Microsoft blocks Windows 11 workaround that enabled local accounts
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Windows Recall demands an extraordinary level of trust Microsoft hasn't earned
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Independent websites are dealing with the end of Google traffic
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Palmer Luckey now selling pixel-perfect ultrabright magnesium Game Boys for $199
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MixesDB to shut down on June 29th "cannot be run on modern servers anymore,"
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Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee Heads for the Exit
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AT&T reporting 'nationwide' outage as customers report issues across US
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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The AI module is a 13 tera-operations per second (TOPS) neural network inference accelerator built around the Hailo-8L chip. The module uses the M.2 2242 form factor, and comes pre-installed in the M.2 HAT+, to which it connects through an M key edge connector. The M.2 HAT+ communicates between the AI module’s M.2 interface and the Raspberry Pi 5’s PCIe 2.0 interface.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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People are using AI music generators to create hateful songs
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I watched Nvidia's Computex 2024 keynote and it made my blood run cold
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Google Cut Back AI Overviews in Search Even Before Its 'Pizza Glue' Fiasco
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Millions forced to use brain as OpenAI's ChatGPT takes morning off
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Shutterstock's AI-Licensing Business Generated $104M Last Year
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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Chang'e-6: Moon dark side samples collected and launched into lunar orbit
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We need to take satellite ground station security seriously
In addition to being more interconnected and accessible than ever before, these workstations tend to stick around for a long time. It is possible to see satellite ground stations operating older, deprecated operating systems as far back as Windows 7. These machines are still fully capable of handling their operational duties of communicating with satellites, but the operating systems and other software have long since stopped receiving security patches or other upgrades. The historical pattern of keeping these assets essentially air-gapped inaccurately reduces the perception of exposure to growing risk of cyberattacks in the broader technology ecosystem. Therefore, the cost and complexity of upgrading them purely to improve their security posture is not considered justified.
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SpaceX lands FAA license for Starship megarocket launch on June 6.
Economicon / Business / Finance
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FDIC Quarter 1 2024: US banks sitting on $517B in Unrealized Losses per
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‘The manufacturing side of the economy appears to have stalled,’ ISM says.
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Some rural Californians can't sell their businesses because LA is their landlord
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IKEA is hiring workers for its online Roblox store for £13.15 per hour
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First time since 2022: Home prices are falling amid sky-high mortgage rates
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CEOs got hefty pay raises in 2023, widening gap with the workers they oversee
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CrowdStrike's strong stock rally set to sustain following upbeat earnings
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Social Security’s Financial Outlook: The 2024 Update in Perspective – Center for Retirement Research
The 2024 Trustees Report slightly lowered the projected 75-year deficit to 3.50 percent of taxable payroll, compared to 3.61 percent in 2023. The improvement is attributable primarily to an upward revision in the rate of productivity growth over the projection period and a further reduction in the assumed disability incidence rate. These positive developments are partially offset by a lower assumed long-term fertility rate. The projected depletion date for the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund assets did not change; it remains at 2033. Yes, the Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund has enough to pay benefits for the full 75-year period, so the date of depletion for the combined OASDI trust funds has moved back a year to 2035. But combining the two systems would require a change in the law; hence, under current law, the action-forcing date is 2033 – nine years from now.
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President Joe Biden 2024 TIME Interview Transcript: Read | TIME
But Mr. President, won’t your newly announced tariffs raise the prices on American consumers?
Biden: No, because here's the deal. There's a difference. I made it clear to Putin from the very beginning that—I'm not, we're not engaging in…For example, Trump wants a 10% tariff on everything. That will raise the price of everything in America. [Editor’s note: Biden appeared to mean Xi here, not Putin.]
What I'm talking about, I said, we're gonna play by the same rules. You tell me if I want to, if an American corporation wants to invest in China, it has to give 50% ownership, 51% ownership to a Chinese operator. And that goes on from there. And I said, so you're gonna do that to us? (unintelligible) We’re going to do the same thing if you want to invest here. We're not putting a tariff on. We’re just saying, if you want to do that, well, we're gonna do that. And you cannot change the market in a way where you flood the market by—ignore all Chinese government subsidies to undercut their ability as to deal with electric vehicles. And we're not going to put up with it. That’s the thing we talked about. And that's what we're talking about. We're not talking about tariffs across the board.
Large majorities of Americans, including in the Democratic Party, tell pollsters they think you are too old to lead. Could you really do this job as an 85-year old man?
Biden: I can do it better than anybody you know. You’re looking at me, I can take you too.
What Biden Said: “Wage increases have exceeded what the cost of inflation…”
The Facts: New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows hourly wage growth topping inflation for the past 12 months. In April, nominal hourly earnings were up 3.9% from a year ago; inflation held at 3.4%. But cumulative inflation has outpaced wage growth for most of the Biden presidency.
Described as "lightly edited" by TIME, the transcript from President Joe Biden's exclusive foreign policy-focused interview with the magazine is still a mess of confused statements, mistaken assertions, and flat-out falsehoods — according to a fact-check published concurrently by TIME.
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Biden interview audio highlights AI misuse worries
Releasing an audio recording of a special counsel's interview with President Joe Biden could spur deepfakes and disinformation that trick Americans, the Justice Department said, conceding the U.S. government could not stop the misuse of artificial intelligence ahead of this year's election. A senior Justice Department official raised the concerns in a court filing on Friday that sought to justify keeping the recording under wraps. The Biden administration is seeking to convince a judge to prevent the release of the recording of the president's interview, which focused on his handling of classified documents. The admission highlights the impact the AI-manipulated disinformation could have on voting and the limits of the federal government’s ability to combat it. A conservative group that's suing to force the release of the recording called the argument a “red herring."
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Biden issues order limiting asylum seekers from crossing US-Mexico border
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Ex-Facebook and Nike diversity manager gets 5 years in jail over $5M fraud schem
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Inside the Biggest FBI Sting Operation in History | WIRED
the people in charge at Anøm told their staff to bear with Microsoft. Because his goals—to make Anøm the organized criminal’s handset of choice—were closely aligned with theirs. As an aggressive and successful international drug trafficker who vouched for Anøm by using it for his own drug deals, he was a perfect ambassador for the brand. When it came to tapping into international criminal networks to sell phones, Microsoft was second only to Ayik. As Anøm became more popular in the criminal underground, the people at the very top of the company watched everything unfold from a set of desks in San Diego, California. When sales really started to pick up, they moved into a larger office space and set up more rows of computers and brought in more staff. Given Anøm’s international reach, the team sorted its office space into geographical regions, with people focused on different countries in different parts of the room.
Anøm, the visiting attaché said, was in fact even more of a honeypot than EncroChat had been. The FBI wasn’t just intercepting its messages. The FBI was secretly managing the whole company, under the code name Operation Trojan Shield. The people at the top of its pyramid scheme were actually a bunch of agents, furiously reading messages between criminals.
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EPA will step up cyber regulation of water systems amid increase in cyberattacks
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Juror excused after woman offers bag of $120k in cash to acquit defendants
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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Miner targeted in suspected cyber attack after removal of Chinese investors
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OPEC+ Agrees to Extend Production Cuts in Bid to Boost Oil Prices.
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Mexican mayor killed hours after first woman elected president
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Japanese authorities inspect Toyota HQ over certification irregularities
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A shock election result in India humbles Narendra Modi
Indian PM Narendra Modi is on course for a third consecutive term in a much tighter general election than anticipated. His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looks set to fall short of a majority and is leading narrowly in the 543-seat parliament, below the required 272 seats. However, its coalition partners have gained additional seats.
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Online streaming services in Canada must hand over 5% of domestic revenues
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
Health / Medicine
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A new discovery about carbon dioxide is challenging old ventilation doctrine
over the last three years, researchers in the U.K. working with next-generation bioaerosol technologies have discovered that CO2 is more than a useful bystander. In fact, it plays a critical role in determining how long viruses can stay alive in the air: The more CO2 there is, the more virus-friendly the air becomes.
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The new obesity drugs work, but it's a dilemma when people stop taking them
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Study shows most doctors endorsing drugs on X are paid to do so
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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The homeowner mutiny leaving Florida cities defenseless against hurricanes
the result of a standoff between local residents and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that handles flood prevention and protects many of the nation’s beaches. The Corps often rebuilds eroded beaches by hauling in thousands of tons of sand, but the agency is refusing to deliver $42 million of new sand to Pinellas County unless the area’s coastal property owners grant public access to the slivers of beach behind their homes. Hundreds of these property owners, however, are in turn refusing to sign documents that grant these points of access, which are known as easements. The faceoff has brought the area’s storm recovery to a near standstill.
This standoff highlights growing tensions between the federal government and homeowners in coastal areas that are threatened by climate change. As sea levels have risen and strong storms have caused greater damage than ever before, the costs of protecting and insuring beach fronts in Florida and other states have increased rapidly.
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Comparing the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture
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Trove of Whaling Logbooks Will Help Scientists Understand Changing Climate
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The warring conmen at the heart of a €5B carbon trading scam
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Southwest US in first heat wave of season with highs topping 110
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Stable sperm counts in Denmark cast doubt on 'spermageddon' fears