2024-07-10

etc

• Are there more solar flares than expected during this solar cycle?

• (Jan 2023, PDF) Design Guide for New Tornado Load Requirements

Horseshit

• Sexsomnia: What to Know About Sleep Sex

• Chipotle staff are sick of TikTokers trying to catch them 'skimping'

• The secret hospitals offering criminals new faces

• Airbnb's Hidden Camera Problem

• White-Collar Work Is Just Meetings Now

• Civil Rights Analyst Calls FedEx Surveillance Program 'Profoundly Disconcerting'

• Running with the Bulls Through Pamplona Streets

• Butter made from CO2 could pave the way for food without farming

• Is It OK to Get Food Stamps When You're Just Pursuing Your Passion?

• The Quest for the Brown Note

Boeing

• Boeing to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud FAA Aircraft Evaluation Group

  • Boeing accepts plea deal stemming from 737 MAX crashes

• FAA orders inspection of 2,600 Boeing 737s over oxygen mask issue

• Wheel Falls Off Boeing Plane in Mid-Air

• You Want to Fix Boeing? Prosecute Its Executives

• Boeing sold just three passenger jets in the past month

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Europe's battery industry hit by EV slowdown

celebrity gossip

• How Swizz Beatz Climbed to the Top of Saudi Arabia’s Camel Racing Scene - The New York Times

  Though the camels sprinting past were the main event, Mr. Dean, better known as Swizz Beatz, felt as if all eyes in the room were on him — one of the newest competitors in Saudi Arabia’s deep-pocketed camel racing scene. Four years since he entered and won his first race, he has spent millions of dollars to buy 48 racing camels, ascending into the most elite circles of the sport.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Meta Expands Policy to Remove More Posts Attacking 'Zionism'

  • Meta starts censoring criticism of Zionism

• Justice Department Disrupts Covert Russian Government-Operated AI Bot Farm

  The Justice Department today announced the seizure of two domain names and the search of 968 social media accounts used by Russian actors to create an AI-enhanced social media bot farm that spread disinformation in the United States and abroad. The social media bot farm used elements of AI to create fictitious social media profiles — often purporting to belong to individuals in the United States — which the operators then used to promote messages in support of Russian government objectives, according to affidavits unsealed today.

  According to the affidavits, FSB Officer 1, Individual A, and other members of the PIO had access to the social media bot farm. The following are examples of Russian-government narratives that the bot farm posted on X in October and November 2023:

  • A purported U.S. constituent replied to a candidate for federal office’s social media posts regarding the conflict in Ukraine with a video of President Putin justifying Russia’s actions in Ukraine;

  • A purported resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, posted a video of President Putin discussing his belief that certain geographic areas of Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania were “gifts” to those countries from the Russian forces that liberated them from Nazi control during World War II;

  • A purported U.S. resident of a city identified only as “Gresham,” posted a video claiming that the number of foreign fighters embedded with Ukrainian forces was significantly lower than public estimates;

  • The same purported individual posted a video of President Putin claiming that the war in Ukraine is not a territorial conflict or a matter of geopolitical balance, but rather the “principles on which the New World Order will be based.”

  The actors obtained and controlled the domain names “mlrtr.com” and “otanmail.com” from a U.S.-based provider. They then used those domains to create the email servers that ultimately allowed them to create fictitious social media accounts using the bot farm software.

Musk

• Tesla parental controls keep teenage lead feet in check

• Growth stalls at Elon Musk’s X

  In previously unreleased figures, X said its number of global daily active users in the second quarter of this year was 251mn, a rise of 1.6 per cent from the same period the year before. This contrasts with the double-digit growth experienced in the years leading up to the acquisition by Musk,

• Tesla prioritizes Musk's and other 'VIP' drivers' data to train FSD

Trump / War against the Right / Jan6

• New Republic Savaged For It’s ‘Trump Is Literally Hitler’ Cover - modernity

• Gay Furry Hackers Claim Credit for Hacking Heritage Foundation over Project 2025

  • Hackvists release two gigabytes of Heritage Foundation data

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Effective altruism is stumbling. Can "moral ambition" replace it?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Bloomberg gives $1B to Hopkins to make tuition free for most medical students

  • Johns Hopkins medical school will be free for most after $1B donation

• Ranking Fields by p-Value Suspiciousness

• Is college worth it? Poll finds only 36% in US have confidence in higher ed

• DEI Becomes Discrimination

• How PhD students and academics are fighting the mental-health crisis in science

• Gallup: Confidence in higher education plunges to 36% from 57% in 2015

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Etsy bought a PR package today:

  • Sex product sellers are left scrambling after a sweeping Etsy ban

  The ban also impacts media made by porn publishers, such as Playboy magazines, nudity on human models, including “female nipples” and items that contain sexual language that references family relationships, such as “daddy” or “mommy,” according to the announcement.

  • Strengthening Our Approach to Mature Content

  • Etsy: Company escaping 'race to the bottom', getting back to its artisan roots

  • A Message from Etsy's CEO: Strengthening our commi... - Welcome to the Etsy Community

  • Etsy loses its 'handmade' and 'vintage' labels as it takes on Temu and Amazon

• Time Dropped Its Paywall One Year Ago. Here's What's Happened Since

• Possibly people are buying food instead of games? Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom blamed for 40% drop in US games spending this year

• It's not them, it's us: the real reason teens are 'addicted' to video games

• Linksys Velop routers send Wi-Fi passwords in plaintext to US servers

  This discovery involves the Linksys Velop Pro 6E and Velop Pro 7 mesh routers. During routine installation checks, Testaankoop detected several data packets being transmitted to an Amazon server in the US. These packets included the configured SSID name and password in clear text, identification tokens for the network within a broader database, and an access token for a user session, potentially paving the way for a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack.

• Netflix's Greg Peters on a new culture memo and where ads, AI, and games fit in

• Instagram is experimenting with square profile pictures instead of circular

• Pulitzer winning reporter faces jail for protecting funding scandal sources

  just over a year after Anna Wolfe secured journalism’s top award for exposing how $77 million in federal welfare funds went to athletes, cronies and pet projects, she and her editor, Adam Ganucheau, are contemplating what to pack for an extended stay behind bars. Sued for defamation by the state’s former governor — a top subject of their reporting — they have been hit with a court order requiring them to turn over internal files including the names of confidential sources. They say the order is a threat to journalism that they will resist.

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Beyond bufferbloat: End-to-end congestion control cannot avoid latency spikes

• PySkyWiFi: completely free, unbelievably stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights | Robert Heaton

• (2016) Rolling Back Rolling Codes: Decoding ASK/OOK and pwning a garage door opener

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Pop Culture

  A week and a half ago, Goldman Sachs put out a 31-page-report (titled "Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?”) that includes some of the most damning literature on generative AI I've ever seen. And yes, that sound you hear is the slow deflation of the bubble I've been warning you about since March. For Goldman to suddenly turn on the AI movement suggests that it’s extremely anxious about the future of generative AI, with almost everybody agreeing on one core point: that the longer this tech takes to make people money, the more money it's going to need to make.

  What makes this interview – and really, this paper — so remarkable is how thoroughly and aggressively it attacks every bit of marketing collateral the AI movement has. Acemoglu specifically questions the belief that AI models will simply get more powerful as we throw more data and GPU capacity at them, and specifically ask a question: what does it mean to "double AI's capabilities"? How does that actually make something like, say, a customer service rep better? And this is a specific problem with the AI fantasists' spiel. They heavily rely on the idea that not only will these large language models (LLMs) get more powerful, but that getting more powerful will somehow grant it the power to do...something. As Acemoglu says, "what does it mean to double AI's capabilities?"

  • (PDF) Goldman Sachs AI Report

• We Cannot Cede Control of Weapons to Artificial Intelligence

• Chinese developers scramble as OpenAI blocks access in China

• OpenAI and Arianna Huffington are working together on an 'AI health coach'

• AI 'useless,' creating a risky 'fake it till you make it' bubble

• The AI Summer

• New York Times Developing Use of OpenAI for Headlines

• The Washington Post debuts AI chatbot

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket launching for first time ever on July 9

Crypto con games

• A violent gang's ruthless crypto-stealing home invasion spree

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Dyson to cut a quarter of UK workforce

  Dyson is axing about 1,000 jobs in the UK, more than a quarter of its workforce in the country. Staff at the vacuum cleaner and air filter manufacturer were told on Tuesday morning about the redundancies, which are part of a wider move to reduce the company’s 15,000-strong global workforce, according to people familiar with the matter.

  • Dyson to cut 1000 jobs in UK

  • Dyson to axe around 1k jobs in Britain

• Fed Chair Powell Welcomes Cooling Inflation - The New York Times

  “The Committee has stated that we do not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range for the federal funds rate until we have gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent,” Mr. Powell said. He added that data earlier this year failed to provide such confidence, but that recent inflation readings “have shown some modest further progress, and more good data would strengthen our confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent.”

• Synapse Bankruptcy: When a Fintech Isn’t a Bank and Savings Accounts Are Frozen - The New York Times

  Unlike stodgy brick-and-mortar institutions, this group’s pitch is that banking can be downright fun. “Play Games. Win Big,” says Yotta, which features a lottery-like system that boosts returns for some lucky customers. This model is increasingly popular — especially among 20- and 30-somethings — and legal. The rub is that although these start-ups may look and feel like banks, they are not. They simply collect customer money and pass it through financial technology intermediaries like Synapse to old-school banks that may have as few as one physical branch and minimal online presence. The banks, including Evolve Bank & Trust of West Memphis, Ark., according to filings, are the ones that actually manage the depositors’ money.

  If one link breaks in this sequence, it can become intensely complicated for people to access their funds.When it filed for bankruptcy in the spring, Synapse said it had only $2 million of cash on hand and owed multiples of that. Shortly thereafter, account holders at Juno, Yotta and elsewhere, with nearly $300 million in cumulative deposits and no direct relationship with Synapse, could no longer access their money.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Biden hosts NATO summit with dual tasks: Unite the alliance behind Ukraine and his party behind his candidacy

  President Joe Biden heads into the NATO summit meeting he's hosting in Washington this week with two distinct challenges, neither of them easy. On the international stage, he wants to make a case for preserving global alliances in an era when many populist and nationalist leaders are looking inward, his advisers say. But the tougher task will be on the domestic front, where he'll need to plow through three days of meetings, speeches and dinners — capped by a news conference Thursday — with the vigor and focus that were noticeably absent during his debate with Donald Trump. The summit should be a friendly forum for Biden, who is trying to stave off calls from fellow Democrats to drop out of the presidential race after his poor debate showing. It's happening on his home turf, so he won’t have to grapple with the overseas travel and late hours that he says left him depleted ahead of the debate.

• Joe Biden Is A Good Man? Please Don’t Insult Our Intelligence – Issues & Insights

  Among the first to tell us just how fine a man Biden was Barack Obama, who called his former vice president “someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life.” It is, of course, a lie. Biden is not a good man, and the idea he’s “fought for ordinary folks” for even a single day of his “public service” is risible.

  The man who occupies the highest office in the world is a pathological liar. We need go no further back than 1987, when he had to drop his campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination because he plagiarized a speech from Neil Kinnock, then a Labor Party member of the British Parliament.

  There are many other self-aggrandizing inventions, such as his claim that he drove an 18-wheel rig; his oft-repeated implication that late son Beau died a war hero in Iraq; that he was a teen civil rights activist and once arrested for standing up for black family that had moved into a neighborhood during desegregation; that he “had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see (Nelson Mandela) on Robben Island,” a total fabrication; that he was the first in his family to go college (yet Biden also said his grandfather was a star college football player); and that he had been nominated to attend the United States Naval Academy.

  The inveterate braggart has also implied that he had an uncle whose last act was to serve as featured guest at a party of cannibals and has told different audiences that he was “brought up by both the Puerto Rican community and the black community,” is “more Jewish than the Jews” and “came close to trying out as a walk-on in the NFL.“

• How Biden’s inner circle worked to keep signs of his aging under wraps

  Senior White House advisers for more than a year have aggressively stage-managed President Biden’s schedule, movements and personal interactions, as they sought to minimize signs of how age has taken a toll on the oldest president in U.S. history. The White House has limited Biden’s daily itinerary and shielded him from impromptu exchanges. Advisers have restricted news conferences and media appearances, twice declining Super Bowl halftime interviews -- an easy way to reach millions of voters -- and sought to make sure meetings with donors stuck to scripted pleasantries. Senior aides dismissed travel suggestions over worries the president didn’t have the stamina for them, including an idea for Biden to make weekly cross-country trips in 2022 to tout the benefits of his infrastructure law.

• Colbert: Biden a ‘Great President’ Without a Brain

• (2022) Fanfare for the First Lady

  The United States Marine Band was instructed last fall to produce an entrance theme exclusively for the first lady, according to a knowledgeable source. The band now has in its repertoire an original and highly unusual composition titled “Fanfare for the First Lady.” It’s Jill Biden's personal “Hail to the Chief,” a source said. Longtime veterans of the U.S. Marine Band have characterized the situation as a first, remarking that they’ve never been asked before to provide a first lady with her own entrance music. Jill Biden’s press secretary, Michael LaRosa, says the story is malarkey. “The first lady does not have a song anybody has written for her specifically. She has no ‘Hail to the Chief’ song.

  The U.S. Marine Band, which did not respond to my request for comment, has already performed “Fanfare for the First Lady” at least twice, including in October of last year for a Teacher of the Year event at the White House.

• Biden rebels in Congress see their revolt crumbling

  ust before House Democrats' Tuesday morning "come-to-Jesus" meeting on President Biden's path forward, a smaller group of swing-district Democrats held what sources described as a despondent gathering with "actual tears." The bloc of battleground House Democrats is one of the last firm pockets of a rapidly disintegrating movement on Capitol Hill to get Biden off the ticket.

  One House Democrat who was in both meetings said: "Most of our caucus is still with him ... meaning he'll stay in. Which sucks for our country." Going in and out of the meeting, several House Democrats who have previously raised concerns about Biden said they are now with him: "Whether or not I have concerns is besides the point. He is going to be our nominee, and we all have to support him," said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.).

• Biden Missed Meeting With German Chancellor to Go to Bed: Report - Business Insider

  President Joe Biden canceled an early evening meeting with the German chancellor Olaf Scholz at the last minute because he had to go to bed, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reported that the event was an informal gathering in Germany amid the G7 summit in June 2022, and was meant to be a low-key meeting to discuss Ukraine. Two unnamed people who were there told the Journal that Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that Biden would not make an appearance because he had to rest. According to the report, the chancellor and his aides were surprised by Biden's absence and Blinken's appearance.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Canada became a car theft capital of the world

• Metal Thieves are Stripping America’s Cities - The New York Times

  The lights are going out across American cities, as a result of a brazen and opportunistic type of crime. Thieves have been stripping copper wire out of thousands of streetlights and selling it to scrap metal recyclers for cash. The wiring typically fetches only a few hundred dollars, but blacked-out lights pose safety hazards to drivers and pedestrians, and are costing cities millions to repair. Metal theft has been an urban plague for decades, often rising alongside commodity prices. But the combination of the economic ills and social malaise lingering since the pandemic and soaring demand for metals, especially for copper, has brought this street crime to new levels.

  • HN comments

  • "soaring demand for metals"? Market doesn't seem to reflect that:

  • Still below 2007 peak: Lead Historical Data

    • barely above 2011 peak: Copper Historical Data

• What we know about the White nationalist group Patriot Front

  With their faces concealed behind white cloths and sunglasses, dozens of protesters marched down the streets of downtown Nashville this weekend, chanting “Sieg Heil” and “Deportation saves the nation,” according to a statement from the Tennessee Democratic Party. “Reclaim America,” one banner at the front of the group read. Behind it, uniformed marchers in dark shirts and khaki-colored pants hoisted a plethora of Confederate and historic US flags, with some of the American flags turned upside down. Their attire and tactics are hallmarks of the Patriot Front white supremacist group, with which the protesters are believed to be affiliated. And they’re just part of a multifaceted shift in political rhetoric purportedly aiming to drastically reshape America during this crucial presidential election cycle. While “no criminal activity took place” during the Nashville rally, police said, the demonstration drew disdain from local critics.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• US blocks British court from British territory

  The US government has blocked a British court hearing from taking place on a British territory, citing security concerns, the BBC understands. The supreme court of British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot) was due to hold a hearing this week, attended by the BBC, on whether a group of migrants was being unlawfully detained on the island of Diego Garcia. The US last week withdrew consent for lawyers representing the migrants and the BBC to access the island, and said it would not provide those arriving for the hearing with transport, accommodation or food until its concerns had been addressed, the BBC understands. Late on Thursday night - hours before flights for the first leg of the journey from the UK were due to depart - the court shared with the BBC an order vacating the hearing.

• AI-Powered Super Soldiers Are More Than Just a Pipe Dream

World

• Samsung workers begin three-day general strike over pay

• French leftist coalition poised to pull off surprise victory to defeat nationalist Le Pen.

  • The left-wing French coalition hoping to introduce 90% tax on rich

  • Paris prosecutor opens probe into Le Pen's 2022 campaign financing

• Lucy Letby: killer or coincidence? Some experts question the evidence

• Silk, Great Value plant-based beverages recalled across Canada

• Spain sentences 15 schoolchildren over AI-generated naked images

• Speed Limiters Now Mandatory in All New EU Cars

• Post Office Horizon inquiry told of 'incomplete curiosity' and 'toxic culture'

Iran / Houthi

• Houthi rebels are operating their own GuardZoo spyware

Israel

• Genocide in Gaza: Enabled by AI, Powered by Big Tech

• How Hezbollah is trying to counter Israel's high-tech surveillance

• Gaza: Israeli strike on camp next to school kills 25 - hospital

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• He created Oculus headsets, now he makes AI weapons for Ukraine

China

• Taiwan's Digital Minister Has an Ambitious Plan to Align Tech with Democracy

• China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts

Health / Medicine

• Doctors try a controversial technique to reduce the transplant organ shortage

• Middlemen have outsized influence on drug prices due to market consolidation,FTC

  • FTC Slams Middlemen for High Drug Prices

  • FTC Releases Interim Staff Report on Prescription Drug Middlemen

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Some landfill 'burps' contain airborne PFAS, study finds

• Electric Vehicle Batteries Surprising New Source of 'Forever Chemical' Pollution

• Oregon county seeks to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for extreme heat

• California to impose permanent water restrictions on cities and towns

• Satellite megaconstellations threaten ozone layer recovery, study confirms

• Taxing Cows a Pragmatic Step Toward Mitigating Climate Change

• First local extinction due to sea level rise identified in the US

  • Florida: Tree cactus becomes first local species killed off by sea-level rise

  • First local extinction in the U.S. due to sea level rise

• New Heat Map Shows Scorching Streets That Can Burn Skin in Seconds

• The driest desert on the planet is in bloom

• Public universities hooked America on meat

• Google Is No Longer Claiming to Be Carbon Neutral

• NASA map shows temperatures up to 160 degrees on Phoenix streets

  The data was recorded on June 19, when the daily high was 106 degrees, but the map shows asphalt across the city that day was between 120 and 160 degrees. Surface temperatures that hot can cause severe contact burns within minutes or seconds. The Arizona Burn Center – Valleywise Health reports it has seen a dramatic rise in these types of injuries over the past few years. Among the 136 patients treated for these burns last year, the average hospital stay was 12 days. About 10% of those patients died as a result of their injuries, the hospital reports.

  • The people who died were probably not suffering from "street too hot" burns, but we're preaching here, not reporting. How much is the road life shortened by use at these temps? 160F is too cold for building but too hot for driving.

  • Feeling the heat - Asphalt magazine

  The Asphalt Institute has weighed in on this topic. “Mixes must be placed and compacted before they cool to 185°F, so the minimum temperature will depend on the temperature of the layer upon which it is being placed as well as ambient conditions,” according to the AI website. “Generally, agency specifications will spell out a minimum acceptable temperature for the mix behind the screed, usually 250°F.”

• The 'wood wide web' theory – charming but now a subject of scientists clashing

• Integrating Economic and Climate Data Will Strengthen Climate Policy

• Curb 'stupid plastics' and stop industry BS: urgent actions to prevent a crisis