2024-06-28
etc
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NTSB sanctions Boeing for sharing unauthorized Alaska 1282 info with media
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Two Killer Asteroids Are Flying by Earth, and You May Be Able to See One
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Seafood consumption per capita drifts higher in the United States
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100-foot-wide sinkhole opens up under soccer field in Illinois
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For a Vacation Without Crowds, Look to Your Nearest State Park
Horseshit
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Why it takes NYC nearly 10 years to install 500 feet of pipes – Gothamist
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Hawaii home mistakenly built on Bay Area woman's land to be torn down
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The Soylent delusion and the folly of food-hacking
Soylent embodies the hubris and pitfalls of tech culture’s impulse to reduce the irreducible. The same naive confidence that code can optimize every aspect of our lives — the mindset that produced the mantra “everything should be as easy as ordering an Uber”- convinced Rhinehart and his team that they could engineer a better human fuel in defiance of millions of years of evolution. It’s an attractive illusion that technology can neatly solve the messy realities of existing in a body, of being a biological creature instead of a computer. But again and again, biology proves more complex and unpredictable than software, with squishy and distinctive needs that aren’t so easy to generalize. Soylent is hardly the first or last startup to run aground chasing the seductive vision of human perfectibility through technology. But it offers a vivid object lesson in the limits of this worldview.
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Why the Taylor Swift economy isn't real
"Swiftonomics" is not actually real. She may be a megastar revolutionising the music industry, but once the excitement wears off, you will need a magnifying glass to spot the economic benefit.
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Ask HN: How do you deal with being more intelligent than the general population?
Electric / Self Driving cars
celebrity gossip
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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A Russian Propaganda Network Is Promoting an AI-Manipulated Biden Video | WIRED
The video is called “Bye, Bye Biden” and has been viewed more than 5 million times on X since it was first promoted in the middle of May. It depicts Biden as senile, wearing a hearing aid, and taking a lot of medication. It also shows him giving money to a character who seems to represent illegal migrants while denying money to US citizens until they change their costume to mimic the Ukrainian flag. Another scene shows Biden opening the front door in a family home that features a Confederate flag on the wall and allowing migrants to come in and take over. Finally, the video contains references to stolen election conspiracies pushed by former President Donald Trump.
The video was created by Little Bug, a group that mimics the style of Little Big, a real Russian band that fled the country in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The video features several Moscow-based actors—who spoke with Russian media outlet Agency.Media—but also appears to use artificial intelligence technology to make the actors resemble Biden and Trump, as well as Ilya Prusikin, the lead singer of Little Big.
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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Is Wikipedia Politically Biased? - by David Rozado
Results show a mild to moderate tendency in Wikipedia articles to associate public figures ideologically aligned right-of-center with more negative sentiment than public figures ideologically aligned left-of-center. These results suggest that Wikipedia’s neutral point of view policy (NPOV) is not achieving its stated goal of viewpoint impartiality in Wikipedia articles.
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Opinion | Should American Jews Abandon Elite Universities? - The New York Times
More dismaying than the fact that student protesters are fellow traveling with Hamas is that with their rhyming chants and identical talking points, they sound more like Maoist cadres than critical thinkers. As the sociologist Ilana Redstone, author of the smart and timely book “The Certainty Trap,” told me on Monday, “higher education traded humility and curiosity for conviction and advocacy — all in the name of being inclusive. Certainty yields students who are contemptuous of disagreement.”
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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YouTube dominates streaming, forcing media companies to decide if friend or foe
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The Over-Intellectualization of Consumer Apps
It’s been 15 minutes of pitching, and I still don’t know what the product does. I know it’s a consumer app because the founder mentioned it in the cold email. But there was no demo link or an App Store link. No traction or usage data either. We’re on slide 13, the founder is painting a picture of the world in 2035—but I still have no idea what the app does now! Today, first-time founders are suffering from a severe case of over-intellectualizing consumer apps: an unnecessary and performative act of making their apps sound more than they are and more than they should be.
Don’t get me wrong, I like philosophy—I actually love it!—but the best advice for founders is not found in René Girard's memetic theory or Straussian philosophy but rather in common sense: don’t run out of money, build something people want, charge for it.
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Identity Verification Used by X, TikTok, and Uber Exposed Driver's Licenses
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Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile customers roaming internationally can't connect
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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DNSSEC, which has been tied up in progressive adoption for some 30 years. Over this time, we’ve seen many theories appear as to why the pace of adoption of DNSSEC has been so lacklustre, including a lack of awareness, poor tooling, inability to automate operational management, too much operational complexity and a general inability to sustain a case that the incremental benefits of adoption of DNSSEC far outweigh the increased operational costs and added service fragility. Because of the lack of clear signals of general adoption of DNSSEC over three decades, is it time to acknowledge that DNSSEC is just not going anywhere? Is it time to call it a day for DNSSEC and just move on?
As a collection of service operators, we appear not to care sufficiently to invest in supporting the additional costs to operate a DNSSEC-secured DNS. After some 30 years of living with a largely insecure DNS infrastructure, we appear to be comfortable with this outcome.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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An AI-designed horse purse is tearing apart this small but passionate community - The Verge
The most common complaints were around a “lack of transparency” that AI was used. Shoppers, it seems, wanted more of a heads-up or more prominent disclaimers. Others objected to the collaboration on moral grounds, saying AI tools trained on other artists’ work without consent is theft. And finally, the environmental impact of generative AI is also a common concern, perhaps because Baggu touts its eco-friendly brand ethos. Baggu didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Gemini 2M context window, code execution are available today
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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SpaceX building NASA craft to destroy the International Space Station
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Bezos' Blue Origin Wants to Cap SpaceX's Starship Launches
- Is your market full of competition making you look bad? Do your efforts seem like a pitiful token, more an excuse for investor fleecing than an actual effort, in comparison to those of others? The Government can help! It's not "racketeering" and "restraint of trade" when the Government does it!
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ULA will launch its second Vulcan rocket without a real payload
The second flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket will take off in September with a dummy payload in place of Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane, preserving a chance for ULA to begin launching US military satellites on the new rocket by the end of the year, officials announced Wednesday. Tory Bruno, ULA's CEO, announced the change in flight plan for the second Vulcan rocket in a conference call with reporters. There was little hope Sierra Space's Dream Chaser would be ready to make its first resupply run to the International Space Station before the end of the summer. Dream Chaser had been booked to launch on the second test flight of ULA's Vulcan rocket for the last five years. With the near-flawless inaugural flight of Vulcan in January and a successful second flight later this year, ULA's Vulcan will be certified by the US Space Force to loft the military's most sensitive national security satellites into orbit.
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Astronauts take shelter in Starliner, other spacecraft after satellite breakup
The procedure was a "precautionary measure", NASA officials added, stating that the crew only stayed in their spacecraft for about an hour before they were "cleared to exit their spacecraft, and the station resumed normal operations. NASA did not specify which satellite was associated with the incident, but satellite monitoring and collision detection firm LeoLabs identified a "debris-generating event" that same evening. "Early indications are that a non-operational Russian spacecraft, Resurs-P1 [or] SATNO 39186, released a number of fragments," the company wrote on X
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Walgreens plans store closures as CEO says consumers 'stunned' by prices
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JPMorgan Chase: stress test losses should be higher than what the Fed disclosed
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Bay Area tech's 'layoff surge' has slashed salaries, report says
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Chewy, Petco Shares Soar as 'Roaring Kitty' Posts Dog Image on X
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Why are State Farm and others leaving California's home insurance market?
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Biden Aides Furious CNN Won't Fact Check Trump During Debate
CNN political director David Chalian confirmed to the New York Times that the network will not live fact-check Trump while he debates Biden in the first televised presidential debate this election cycle. However, he said that hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will be allowed to make “egregious” misstatements from either candidate “that needs to be checked or the record needs to be made clear.” Chalian insisted, though, that Bash and Tapper will not be there to “participate in this debate.” In response, the president’s aides claim that by not fact-checking Trump, the network has “exemplified a primary failing of the press corps for several years now.”
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Supreme Court curbs SEC powers to enforce securities laws
The Supreme Court on Thursday put new limits on the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission to enforce securities laws — the latest ruling in a series of cases that take aim at federal agencies. The court ruled 6-3 that adjudication of cases by in-house judges violates the right to trial by jury. The case is one of several on the docket involving conservative and business-led attacks on the power of federal agencies. The court’s 6-3 conservative majority is often sympathetic to such arguments.
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Social Security could have been paying us twice as much
Unfortunately for you and me, there is another difference that completely decimates the effectiveness of Social Security. With your 401(k) account, you can choose how you want to invest it. Bonds, domestic stocks, international stocks – you have the ability to invest your money and grow your nest egg. With Social Security however, you have no say at all in how your 12.4% paycheck contributions are invested. Is this because the average person can’t be trusted to wisely manage their own investments? No, the true reason is far worse. The reason you don’t get to invest your money, is because most of your contributions aren’t capable of being invested. The vast majority of your contributions are being used to pay out Social Security benefits to those who are currently retired. Only a tiny surplus ends up getting invested in low-risk bonds. And even that is poised to change. For the last few years, Social Security has been running at a deficit. And it’s projected to continue running at a deficit for the foreseeable future. During which time, none of your contributions will be invested at all. To put it simply, your savings today are being used to pay for someone else’s retirement. And once you retire, the program will use the savings from some other working stiff to pay for your retirement.
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San Francisco's grassroots visa network for 'extraordinary aliens."
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9p ET How to watch the first US Presidential Debate 2024 online
To watch CNN's US Presidential Debate online, it will be streamed in full and for free on the CNN YouTube channel
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Biden's debate performance sends Democrats into a panic - NBC News
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Is Biden sick? Debate viewers take note of hoarse voice - USA TODAY
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Dems freak out over Biden’s debate performance: ‘Biden is toast’ - POLITICO
Joe Biden is currently listed with the United States Golf Association as holding a 6.7 handicap playing out of Fieldstone Golf Club in Delaware. Biden hasn’t logged a score in the system since 2018. Scores are typically self-reported, and a handicap comes from an average of the lowest 8 of the most recent 20 posted scores. The lower the handicap you have, the better golfer you are. Ivanka Trump, for instance, is a 20.9 handicap and Eric Trump is listed as a 13.6 (without a round since 2015). Donald Trump is in the system as a member of the prestigious Winged Foot Golf Club in New York. He lists a handicap of 2.5 but hasn’t posted a score since 2021.
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Who Will Win The First Biden-Trump Presidential Debate? | FiveThirtyEight
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Biden struggles early in presidential debate with hoarse voice - CBS News
Forty-five minutes into the debate, sources familiar with Mr. Biden's debate preparations said he has had a cold for the past few days. A top official said the president was examined by a doctor at Camp David, who confirmed the cold. The president tested negative for COVID, they said. In addition, the president lost his train of thought and struggled to name Medicare when he was answering a question about the tax rate for wealthy Americans.
President Biden has a cold, a White House official told The Hill amid the first presidential debate. “He has a cold, started slow but obviously had started to hit his stride,” another source, who is familiar with Biden’s campaign, told The Hill.
At times, Biden uttered nonsensical phrases. On another question about the war in Gaza, Biden flubbed, saying, "We are the biggest producer of support for Israel of anyone in the world." During another question about the national debt, Biden inexplicably concluded by saying "We finally beat Medicare."
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Satisfaction with Democracy Has Declined in Recent Years in High-Income Nations
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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INDOPACOM's Most Likely COA contra the PRC? I think it is called, "COA-Lotus"
What is not being done instead but should be is maximizing production, readiness, and sustainability of those systems that are proven, funded, and operationally proven that will be ready to sail west of the International Date Line to secure the self-determination of the Taiwanese people, the sea lanes to Japan, the world’s primary production center of microchips that modern society depends on, and most importantly - the international order that is underwritten by the US military that in turn enables our primary position on the world stage - that by itself allows our economy to maintain the standard of living expected by the American people.
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South By Southwest festival bars Army, defense industry from ‘sponsoring’ 2025 event.
World
China
Health / Medicine
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Synthetic psychedelic found in candies linked to seizures, intubation
The US Food and Drug Administration has identified a synthetic psychedelic compound as well as compounds from a potentially toxic plant in the Diamond Shruumz-brand microdosing candies linked to a growing number of severe illnesses nationwide that have included seizures, intubation, and admissions to intensive care units.
It remains unclear what is in the candies and what may be causing the severe illnesses. Diamond Shruumz does not provide a full list of ingredients. The term "microdosing" and other marketing used by Diamond Shruumz suggests the candies contain a psychedelic compound, but the company does not name any. To figure it out, the FDA has been analyzing multiple samples of Diamond Shruumz-brand candies, including chocolates, gummies, and candy cones. On Tuesday, the FDA reported finding the synthetic psychedelic compound 4-AcO-DMT in the company's Dark Chocolate Bar and its Birthday Cake Chocolate Bar. dditionally, the FDA found three compounds from the Kava plant (Piper methysticum) in the company's dark chocolate bar, though not the birthday-cake flavored bar. The compounds are kavalactones—desmethoxyyangonin, dihydrokavain, and kavain.
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Ultra-processed foods need tobacco-style warnings, says scientist
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Journals issue corrections noting vaping researchers' undisclosed ties to Juul