2024-06-25

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Electricity is replacing combustion for mastery over the physical world
No computers. Keep books. Seattle library network outage nears a month
The Eternal Truth of Markdown | WIRED

Markdown is not just a piece of software. It’s also a markup language—it’s used to format plaintext, which then appears the way you want it to on, say, the internet. Markdown the markup language was designed to be “as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible,” according to creator John Gruber’s syntax guide. “A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.”

This, I believe, is the cornerstone of Markdown’s success (and why related projects from that era, like reStructuredText and Setext, remain largely unknown): It looked at the world as it actually was and built on the informal conventions people were using. Markdown took common quirks of writing plaintext emails or message-board posts—like wrapping a word in asterisks to emphasize it—and extended those formatting customs. It did not come in and declare an entirely new syntax and ask people to adopt it.

Horseshit

On Paul Ryan's proposal for USD backed stablecoin as a solution to US debt
Anthropic CEO says we need to think bigger than a universal basic income
Picassos hung in toilet in response to adverse discrimination ruling

A Tasmanian museum and art gallery has hung multiple artworks by Pablo Picasso in a toilet to overcome a discrimination complaint by a man who couldn't access the venue's Ladies Lounge where the works were previously on display. Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) was found to have discriminated when it refused to let a New South Wales' man entry into its women-only Ladies Lounge in April last year. Jason Lau made a complaint to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (TASCAT) after he was refused entry to the lounge despite paying the museum entry fee. In April, the museum was given 28 days by TASCAT to stop refusing entry to people who don't identify as women to the lounge.
Tax the rich, say a majority of adults across 17 G20 countries
Social Media Broke Slang. Now We All Speak Phone
How the automobile industry turned us into SUV drivers
Sick of politics? Move off the grid
Powering Planes with Microwaves Is Not the Craziest Idea
Denver gave homeless people $1k/mth. Year later, nearly half had housing

Electric / Self Driving cars

celebrity gossip

Decades later, John Romero looks back at the birth of the first-person shooter
Banker Seen Punching a Woman in Brooklyn in Viral Video Resigns
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange strikes plea deal with the U.S.
- Assange Agrees to Plead Guilty in Exchange for Release, Ending Standoff With US (Archive)
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, agreed to plead guilty on Monday to a single felony count of illegally disseminating national security material in exchange for his release from a British prison, ending his long and bitter standoff with the United States. Barring last-minute snags, the deal would bring to an end a prolonged battle that began after Mr. Assange became alternately celebrated and reviled for revealing state secrets in the 2010s.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

Matt Taibbi on How the Trump Era Changed Media's Free Speech Stance

But then we started to find things that were clearly protected constitutional speech that they were recommending [for censorship]. They were saying, “We think this violates your terms of service” to things such as a video making fun of the Biden administration’s messaging on COVID-19. And then we found things that were more nefarious than that. There were these private, cross‐platform programs, some of them associated with big academic institutions, that talked openly about how we must consider suppressing true content that might promote vaccine hesitancy. An example of that would be showing somebody who took the vaccine dying of myocarditis. That’s true, it happened, but [the FBI] doesn’t think it’s a good story. They had a term for this kind of content; they called it “malinformation.” Malinformation is something that’s true but produces an adverse result. And this, we thought, was extremely dangerous because it was a way to get around the general journalistic idea, which is, “If it’s true, we print it.” It’s up to the public to figure out what to do with it.
Toby Young's Daily Sceptic and Free Speech Union are no allies of critical thinkers - The Skeptic

ust to be totally clear, I believe that the FSU has every right to only take an interest in cases they ideologically agree with and care about, and they’re also completely within their right to be silent about, or even actively condemn, free speech protests made by people or causes they disagree with. I believe they’re even allowed to do that while claiming to be non-partisan, though personally I’d prefer to see them be more honest with themselves about which causes are likely to move them to action. I only raise these criticisms because, if you didn’t know much about the FSU or the organisations in their orbit, you might argue that, while you disagree with them about vaccine science or whether the climate is changing, you can respect the fact that they have a wholly and impartially committed view on free speech. My point is that, in my opinion, their defence of free speech is more conditional than they might recognise. Personally, ideological hypocrisy is not the reason why I wouldn’t work with or endorse any project that involves Young or the FSU – for me, the red line is their associated contrarian positions on vaccines, Covid, and climate change. But for people who are willing to overlook those concerns in order to stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of free speech, that ideological hypocrisy ought to present an issue.

The risk here is that credible organisations that have worked hard to build a strong reputation for sound science, critical thinking, and open debate might end up lending some of their reputation and credibility to the FSU and, by extension, to organisations like the Daily Sceptic.
Misinformation interventions reduce misperceptions but increase skepticism

Musk

Brand-New Cybertruck Ends Up on Salvage Car Market, Looks Intact

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

Wikipedia’s Neutrality: Myth or Reality?

My study examined the average sentiment—positive, negative, or neutral—associated with 1,628 politically charged terms in English Wikipedia articles. This method, which reviewed Wikipedia mentions of hundreds of politicians, journalists, and more, sought to identify whether Wikipedia biases its content based on a public figure’s political orientation. My analysis found that Wikipedia was more likely to portray right-leaning figures negatively than their left-leaning counterparts. This “sentiment bias” was apparent across groups, including United States presidents, senators, representatives, governors, Supreme Court justices, and journalists. Notably, the disparity was not universal; I did not find significant sentiment bias, for example, in the site’s descriptions of U.K. Members of Parliament.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

TechSuck / Geek Bait

Folklore.org: Round Rects Are Everywhere!

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

Crypto con games

Economicon / Business / Finance

Prosus, largest investor in Byju's, writes off $22B edtech startup to zero
Digital price tags can change the cost of groceries 6 times per minute
With Pen and Paper in Hand, Car Dealers Improvise as Cyber Outage Persists
OpenAI buys database analytics firm Rockset in nine-figure stock deal
LockBit claims to exfiltrate 33TB of data from US Federal Reserve
Jain Raises $5.3B in Biggest Hedge Fund Debut Since 2018
Shein confidentially files for London IPO as U.S. listing stalls
Real Estate Investors Are Wiped Out in Bets Fueled by Wall Street Loans
‘It’s All Happening Again.’ The Supply Chain Is Under Strain. - The New York Times

As head of ocean freight for the Americas at Rhenus Logistics, a company based in Germany, Ms. Loomis spends her days negotiating with international shipping carriers on behalf of clients moving products and parts around the globe. Over the last few months, she has watched cargo prices soar as a series of disturbances have roiled the seas. Late last year, Houthi rebels in Yemen began firing on ships entering the Red Sea en route to the Suez Canal, a vital artery for vessels moving between Asia, Europe and the East Coast of the United States. That prompted ships to avoid the waterway, instead moving the long way around Africa, lengthening their journeys by as much as two weeks.
Rising health care prices are driving unemployment and job losses
Boomer Candy Business Is Booming - Bloomberg
The Fed Has Avoided a Recession. But Some Have Been Left Behind
Nvidia slides 13% in three days after briefly becoming most valuable company

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

Biden DHS docs suggested Trump supporters, military and religious people are likely violent terror threats | Fox News

The documents revealed that the board suggested "supporters of the former president" accounted for "most of the Domestic Terrorism threat" in the U.S.

"There is a political backdrop to all of this. It seems that most of the Domestic Terrorism threat now comes from supporters of the former president. It is not like you want a political advantage, but people have attacked the government and its institutions for the last six years," meeting notes from the board stated. Citing unnamed "researchers," the board also claimed that specific traits – like those who served "in the military" or are "religious" – are "indicators of extremists and terrorism" that the U.S. should be "more worried" about. "If you ask researchers to dive into indicators of extremists and terrorism, they might indicate being in the military or religious," the board said. "This being identified as an indicator suggests we should be more worried about those. We need the space to talk about it honestly."
Social Security to drop obsolete jobs used to deny disability benefits
TikTok confirms it offered US Government a 'kill switch'

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

Who will win a post-heroic war? - UnHerd

Back in 1994, I offered a simple theory: the wars of history were fought by “spare” male children. Even as late as the mid-20th century, the average European family had several children. In agricultural households, one male could inherit the family’s land, another might advantageously marry a land-owning wife, and one more might go into the Church — or off to war. If he failed to return, the survivors might miss him most intensely, but the family would not be extinguished. Today, however, with the average fertility of women across Europe less than two and still falling — the EU average was 1.46 in 2022 — there are no spare children.

The extreme case here is China, with its fertility rate of 1.1. President Xi is, by all accounts, a bellicose man who enjoys threatening war against Taiwan. And yet, curiously, in 2020 he took eight months to reveal that one PLA officer and three soldiers had died during the fighting on India’s Ladakh frontier. During that period of official silence, the families of the four were re-housed and provided with welfare payments or better jobs; the officer’s wife who taught piano in a village school was elevated to the Xi’an Conservatory of Music, with a new house to go with it. Each of the four also became the subject of dedicated media campaigns, which portrayed the youngest as cinematically good-looking and the officer as so conscientious that, up in cold Tibet, he would wake up before his soldiers to prepare hot-water bottles for them. Later, the names of the four were added to many highway bridges to remind all of their sacrifice. Why the grand acts of remembrance? The answer is demographic. Thanks to China’s one-child policy, imposed in 1980 with the abundant use of forced abortions, the four deaths extinguished eight family lines.

The good news, then, is that because of China’s low birth rates, the post-heroic syndrome makes it unlikely that Beijing will act on its pugnacious threats. Given the regime’s most elaborate response to four combat deaths, how could it cope with the 4,000 that might be lost in one day in a war for Taiwan? Incidentally, Iran is also suffering a crisis in fertility; it was only 1.7 when last measured, way below the replacement rate, with many of the births among restive minority populations rather than Persians. But Tehran has found an effective remedy: it arms, trains and funds expendable Arab militias while being extremely careful with its Persian manpower

World

Iran / Houthi

'Hamster Kombat' crypto craze has taken Iran, highlighting economic malaise

Israel

Hamas Skimmed $1 Billion in UN Aid for Weapons and Tunnels, Suit Says - The New York Times

For years, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency sent millions of dollars each month to Gaza to pay employees and support hospitals, schools and other infrastructure, according to a new lawsuit. The money was wired from New York, where the agency has an office, to the West Bank, where some of that the cash was loaded onto trucks and driven across Israel to Gaza.

The suit, filed Monday in federal court in Manhattan, said some of those dollars ended up funding the military operations of Hamas, the Islamist group that has controlled Gaza for nearly 20 years and has pledged to erase the Jewish state. The money trail is at the heart of the case against seven current and former top UNRWA officials who are accused of knowing that Hamas siphoned off more than $1 billion from the agency to pay for, among other things, tunneling equipment and weapons that aided its attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

About 100 Israeli plaintiffs — including at least one who was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, others who survived the attack, as well as the estates of some who died — are seeking unspecified financial damages. They claim that UNRWA is liable because it helped fund Hamas, which the United States and other countries deem a terrorist organization.

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

China

Health / Medicine

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

EPA releases report on Apple's hazardous waste violations in urban silicon fab
Apple's secret silicon fab next to thousands of homes
- HN comments
Humans Are Driving a New Kind of Evolution in Animals
A Global Push Fixed the Ozone Hole. Satellites Could Threaten It. - The New York Times

Yet no one knows how the vast increase in satellites orbiting Earth will affect the atmosphere, and therefore life down below. With the rush to send up more and more satellites, a new study proposes that the hole in the ozone layer, a problem scientists thought they had solved decades ago, could make a comeback. “Up until a few years ago, this was not a research area at all,” Martin Ross, an atmospheric scientist at Aerospace Corporation, said of the study, which looked at how a potential increase in man-made metal particles could eat away at Earth’s protective layer.
Earth’s Mysterious, Deep-Dwelling Microbes We’re Only Starting to Understand - The New York Times

Scientists like Osburn have shown that, contrary to long-held assumptions, Earth’s interior is not barren. In fact, a majority of the planet’s microbes, perhaps more than 90 percent, may live deep underground. These intraterrestrial microbes tend to be quite different from their counterparts on the surface. They are ancient and slow, reproducing infrequently and possibly living for millions of years. They often acquire energy in unusual ways, breathing rock instead of oxygen. And they seem capable of weathering geological cataclysms that would annihilate most creatures. Like the many tiny organisms in the ocean and atmosphere, the unique microbes within Earth’s crust do not simply inhabit their surroundings; they transform them. Subsurface microbes carve vast caverns, concentrate minerals and precious metals and regulate the global cycling of carbon and nutrients. Microbes may even have helped construct the continents, literally laying the groundwork for all other terrestrial life.

When we learn to see our species as part of a much larger life form — as members of a planetary ensemble — our responsibility to Earth becomes clearer than ever. Fossil fuels, industrial agriculture and widespread pollution have not simply raised global temperature or “harmed the environment”; they have severely imbalanced the largest known living entity, hurling it into crisis. The speed and magnitude of this crisis are so great that, without the necessary interventions, Earth will require anywhere from thousands to millions of years to fully recover on its own. In the process, it will become a world unlike any we have experienced, one potentially incapable of supporting modern human civilization and the ecosystems on which we currently depend.
- see also: Thomas Gold and Abiogenic petroleum origin
Ecology: A World Without Mosquitoes
Biodiversity loss from 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill worse than predicted