2024-07-20
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What would it take to recreate Bell Labs?
Bell Labs is most famous for being the birthplace of the transistor, but that’s just one of dozens of major inventions and discoveries that originated there. Bell Labs also spawned: the silicon solar PV cell, the first active and passive communications satellites, the first videophone, the first cellular telephone system, the first fiber optic telephone cable, the quartz clock, Information Theory, Statistical Process Control, the UNIX computer operating system, and the discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. Many of Bell Labs' less famous inventions were among its most important: the discovery of compounds that could protect polyethylene from decomposing in sunlight isn’t typically mentioned on lists of Bell Labs’ most impressive achievements, but the patents for them were the most valuable that AT&T ever produced.
Horseshit
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Nuclear fusion experiment hits new record for magnet strength
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Costco starts to sell 'apocalypse bucket' with food that lasts 25 years
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Pac-Man on a vape: electronic cigarettes target youth as gaming devices
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Is Crowdstrike the Final Straw?
Governments will impose laws upon us, as software developers, to develop as they demand. They will not merely require quality; they will demand downright dominance, and they will force us to give it to them. And if you think governments are so powerful that you need F-16s to fight back, imagine how much more powerful governments would be if they controlled all of the software on Earth. Is Crowdstrike the final straw? Or will governments and industry both do nothing? If governments do anything, and I fear they will, we have already lost.
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Couple that with a propane refrigerant fridge and you've got a barbecue Impulse Induction Stoves Come with a Battery to Power Your Whole House
Electric / Self Driving cars
Obit
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Conspiracy theories polarize society and provoke violence
“BlueAnon” theories suggested that the attack was staged to influence the upcoming election. BlueAnon, a play on QAnon, refers to conspiracy theories espoused by liberals. The rapid dissemination of such theories has fuelled already existing echo chambers, where misinformation was amplified often without verification or critical examination. However, the attempt of Trump’s life is hardly a novel phenomenon. Political violence, like assassinating political leaders, has repeatedly happened at regular intervals — particularly in the United States. What is new is the way technology, particularly social media, is amplifying conspiratorial rhetoric and making it harder to challenge.
In recent years, for example, QAnon has emerged as a significant phenomenon, promoting ideas like a deep state controlling the United States government and aiming to maintain power. The COVID-19 pandemic saw a plethora of conspiracy theories about everything from the origin of the virus to the safety of vaccines. In Canada, conspiracy theories swirled during the so-called Freedom Convoy that occupied downtown Ottawa for weeks in 2022.
Today, social media platforms have become the primary avenue for the spread of such theories. Followers often exist in echo chambers where they draw and reinforce their beliefs from each other. Sometimes, information that appears harmless to share. However, once it’s shared, it can lead to significant negative consequences, including the radicalization towards violence. Many might associate conspiracy theories with far-right politics. However, radicalization scholars have observed that “a more conspiratorial mindset has become more pronounced in liberal circles over the last eight months.” Meta’s Threads has become a hotbed for BlueAnon conspiratorial content, demonstrating that conspiracy theories are not confined to any single political spectrum.
It is crucial for political leaders to show restraint and temper their language. Social media companies have an equal obligation to take down harmful content as soon as it appears. Addressing the consequences of conspiracy theories requires a multifaceted approach. Governments and tech companies must collaborate to create and enforce policies that reduce the spread of harmful content while respecting freedom of speech.
Musk
Trump / War against the Right / Jan6
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J.D. Vance Left His Venmo Public. Here’s What It Shows | WIRED
US senator J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican and former US president Donald Trump’s pick for vice president, has a public Venmo account that gives an unfiltered glimpse into his extensive network of connections with establishment GOP heavyweights, wealthy financiers, technology executives, the prestige press, and fellow graduates of Yale Law School—precisely the elites he rails against. A WIRED analysis of the account, the people listed as Vance’s friends, and, in turn, the people listed as their friends highlights sometimes bizarre and surprising connections. Experts, meanwhile, worry that the information revealed by the peer-to-peer payment app raises the potential for stalking, trolling, and impersonation.
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Twitch will be reinstating Donald Trump's account today
"We reinstated former President Trump’s channel. We believe there is value in hearing from Presidential nominees directly, when possible. Trump is now the official Republican nominee for US president."
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Man accused of Nazi salute during US Capitol attack jailed for nearly five years
Shooting
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Whistleblowers Reveal What Secret Service Said During Briefings Before Trump Assassination Attempt.
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basically four competing theories about what led to the assassination attempt
Regardless, the longer the Biden regime continues to peddle obvious lies, the more likely people will be to assume that what happened was no accident.
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FBI Used Unreleased Cellebrite Software to Crack Trump Shooter's Phone
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There were four counter-sniper teams stationed around the rally, according to the Secret Service – two from the agency and two provided by local law enforcement. Of the four teams, two opened fire, one local and one from the Service. A federal sharpshooter fatally struck the gunman seconds after the gunfire erupted.
Crooks struck at least four people with AR-15 fire from the rooftop, killing a 50-year-old father of two named Corey Comperatore and seriously wounding David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74. Trump later said he had been shot in the right ear, and photos from the scene showed him getting back to his feet after ducking for cover with blood on the right side of his head. He appeared publicly at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, later in the week, wearing a bandage on his ear.
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whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI),” he wrote. “This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations.”
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Trump Gunman Flew Drone Over Rally Site Hours Before Attempted Assassination - WSJ
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
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Covid-19 origins: plain speaking is overdue
the fanciful ideas put forward by self-described free thinkers are more in keeping with popular movies than the realities of working with pathogens. It is admirable to pursue curiosity wherever it might lead and to reject the constraints of received wisdom when exploring the unknown, but doubling down on flawed assumptions in the face of growing evidence calls motivations into question. It is difficult to say what these motivations might be, and it is certain that not everyone has the same reasons for their intransigence. It is well within the bounds of probability that some people genuinely believe in an unnatural origin of SARS-CoV-2, but these people are simply wrong.
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Tennessee anti-drag law: Federal appeals court dismisses challenge | CNN Politics
The appeals court ruled 2-1 that Friends of George’s, a Memphis-based nonprofit that produces drag performances and comedy sketches, lacked the legal standing challenge the law, with the dissenting judge saying that he thought the plaintiffs had standing to challenge the measure, which he called an “unconstitutional content-based restriction on speech.”
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
Crowdstrike
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Global IT Outage Grounds Flights and Hits Businesses: Live Updates - The New York Times
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Crowdstrike – Statement on Falcon Content Update for Windows Hosts
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This was not a cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.
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CrowdStrike shares sink as global IT outage savages systems worldwide
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CrowdStrike CEO: "defect in a single content update for Windows"
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Microsoft/Crowdstrike outage ground planes, banks and the London Stock Exchange
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Over 670 US flights canceled as global IT outage prompts ground stop
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Just in: Windows BSoD causing Airports and TVs down, happening worldwide
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Crowdstrike and Microsoft: What we know about global IT outage
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CrowdStrike outage sparks global chaos – NOT a security incident
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Mass IT outage hits airports, businesses and broadcasters around the world
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Microsoft has serious questions to answer after the biggest IT outage in history
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CrowdStrike fixes start at "reboot up to 15 times", get more complex from there
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To Fix CrowdStrike Blue Screen of Death Simply Reboot 15 Straight Times, MS Says
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CrowdStrike's terms and conditions say most customers would just get a refund
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How Windows 3.1 is saving Southwest's butt | Digital Trends
Southwest is still flying high, unaffected by the outage that’s plaguing the world today, and that’s apparently because it’s using Windows 3.1.
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What is CrowdStrike, and how did it cripple so many computers?
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An angry admin shares the CrowdStrike outage experience • The Register
Sadly, for our administrator, things are less than ideal. He told us: "The fix, while pretty simple, requires hands on the machine, which is not great when most are remote. Talking a warehouse operator through the intricacies of BitLocker recovery keys and command prompts is not for the faint-hearted!" The grumbling went on: "Maybe less time sponsoring every sports team and more time testing would fix the issue!"
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The CrowdStrike file that broke everything was entirely full of null characters
this fits in with what I heard on the grapevine about this bug from a friend who knows someone working for Crowdstrike. The bug had been sitting there in the kernel driver for years before being triggered by this flawed data, which actually was added in a post-processing step of the configuration update - after it had been tested but before being copied to their update servers for clients to obtain.
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posted hours before the fun kicked off: CrowdStrike is not worth 83 Billion Dollars : wallstreetbets
- CrowdStrike customers sign up to get their firm’s data added to a bank which CrowdStrike then has license to use for “correlation”
- CrowdStrike is a sitting-duck datamine for the FBI/NSA to subpoena.
- CrowdStrike could potentially behave as a propaganda arm of the US government by creating “fake hacking stories” which are un-disprovable.They are able to do this due to information asymmetries in society.
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Where do we know that name from?
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(2019) Why CrowdStrike is a part of the Trump whistleblower complaint?
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(2019) CrowdStrike mentioned when Trump talks to Zelensky in 2019
I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.
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TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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Double trouble: ESA's Gaia hit by micrometeoroid and solar storm
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May solar superstorm caused largest 'mass migration' of satellites in history
According to a pre-print paper published on the online repository arXiv on June 12, satellites and space debris objects in low Earth orbit — the region of space up to an altitude of 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) — were sinking toward the planet at the speed of 590 feet (180 meters) per day during the four-day storm. To make up for the loss of altitude, thousands of spacecraft began firing their thrusters at the same time to climb back up. That mass movement, the authors of the paper point out, could have led to dangerous situations because collision avoidance systems didn't have time to calculate the satellites' changing paths.
- This will be forgotten entirely the next time someone wants to use "Kessler Syndrome" as an excuse for limiting space exploration.
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Jamal Adeen Thomas: Son of Supreme Court Associate Justice, Clarence Thomas
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One Law for Corruption, Another for Immunity - The Atlantic
The Roberts Court has violated its own precedent by redefining what constitutes an “official act.” Donald Trump is the beneficiary.
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The motions track the analysis of Judge Cannon and argue that “the Attorney General relied upon the exact same authority to appoint the Special Counsel in both the Trump and Biden matters, and both appointments are invalid for the same reason.” However, a key difference between Smith and Weiss is that it could lead these courts to asking “why is a Weiss like a Smith?” The extent that he is not could prove a critical distinction. Weiss is a Senate confirmed U.S. Attorney where Smith was a private citizen plucked by Merrick Garland from the general population for the position.
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ABC, NBC morning shows give blunt assessment of Biden's future: 'Code red' | Fox News
It's almost like they're saying, ‘we can do this the easy way or the hard way,'" NBC’s Kristen Welker said Thursday on "Today," referring to several reports of leaked, private conversations the president has had with prominent Democrats. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., publicly called on the president to bow out on Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also reportedly told the president on a phone call that he should drop out, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told Biden he can't win.
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Biden faces fresh wave of Democratic doubt as party’s fissures deepen - The Washington Post
The private but widely voiced doubts of the party’s top leaders — including former president Barack Obama, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) — have begun to spill out into public view as people familiar with their thinking have confirmed their growing sense of angst about Biden’s candidacy. Obama, seen by many Democrats as the party’s most influential figure, has told allies that Biden should think seriously about the viability of his reelection bid, The Washington Post reported. Pelosi has conveyed a similarly blunt message directly to Biden and his aides in recent days, according to people familiar with the conversations, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. Jeffries and Schumer, in separate private meetings with Biden last week, told him directly that his continued candidacy imperils the Democratic Party’s ability to control either chamber of Congress next year. The turmoil comes as polls suggest that Biden has slipped dangerously behind Republican nominee Donald Trump in swing states, Democratic donors signal they may start withholding support, and Republicans put on a contrasting display of unity at their convention this week.
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Biden campaign co-chair says prez still seeking 'input,' despite claim he's committed to 2024
“In my conversations with the president, he’s been asking for input,” Coons told CNN. “He’s been asking from all of us who talk to him regularly for advice, for counsel, for input on the polls, on the opinion of our colleagues, but he has communicated to every Democrat in writing that he intends to continue this campaign,” he added.
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"Don't watch cable news": Biden campaign tries to rally staff
President Biden's campaign chair convened an all-staff call Friday and urged staffers to tune out news coverage that has focused on whether Biden will be pushed aside as the Democratic nominee, according to a recording of the call obtained by Axios. The call is the latest example of Biden campaign leadership working to turn around the low morale among staffers in the aftermath of Biden's debate. "Don't watch cable news all the time," chair Jen O'Malley Dillon told staff at the campaign and the Democratic National Committee. "That is not the real world. The real world is the voters that are standing with us, the delegates that are with us, and we're going to weather this because of this organization."
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Secluded in Rehoboth, Biden Stews at Allies’ Pressure to Drop Out of the Race - The New York Times
Sick with Covid and abandoned by allies, President Biden has been fuming at his Delaware beach house, increasingly resentful about what he sees as an orchestrated campaign to drive him out of the race and bitter toward some of those he once considered close, including his onetime running mate Barack Obama. Mr. Biden has been around politics long enough to assume that the leaks appearing in the media in recent days are being coordinated to raise the pressure on him to step aside, according to people close to him. He considers Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, the main instigator, but is irritated at Mr. Obama as well, seeing him as a puppet master behind the scenes. The friction between the sitting president and leaders of his own party so close to an election is unlike anything seen in Washington in generations — especially because the Democrats now working to ease him out were some of the allies most critical to his success over the last dozen years. It was Mr. Obama who elevated Mr. Biden from a presidential also-ran to the vice presidency, setting him up to win the White House in 2020, and it was Ms. Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, who pushed through his landmark legislative achievements. But several people close to Mr. Biden, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters, described an under-the-weather president coughing and hacking hundreds of miles from the corridors of power as his presidency meets its most perilous moment.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
World
Iran / Houthi
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
Health / Medicine
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Preventive antibiotics may help curb the STI epidemic, experts say.
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contrast: “Alarming Development” – First-Line Treatment for Deadly Superbug Is Weakening.
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Online Health Providers Are Making Money on Young Men's Sense of Shame - Business Insider
"These companies are in the business of selling drugs," McCoy said. "A medical provider ideally is in the business of providing the best medical care, which sometimes involves writing prescriptions for drugs, but sometimes involves alternative modalities or nothing at all." One man who got generic Viagra through Hims told me he went through the platform to avoid the "8 million" questions his doctor would ask — and he knew he'd probably be approved. "I mean, whenever you deal with these drug companies that are trying to do direct-to-consumer, you've got to know that their doctors are just checking a box," he said. "They're not going to give you too much crap. If you have a pulse, they're going to give you a prescription." (He was also concerned about privacy, but he said the packaging wasn't as discreet as he'd hoped — "Hims" was on the shipping label, and he knows his mail guy.)
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Recalled Diamond Shruumz gummies contained illegal controlled substance, testing finds.
The Blue Ridge Poison Center at the University of Virginia says they found psilocin among the undisclosed substances mixed into Diamond Shruumz gummies. Psilocin, like the hallucinogenic psilocybin found in some kinds of mushrooms, is a schedule I controlled substance by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Except it wasn't a "wild" horse to begin with, and the recreated breed is neither "real" nor particularly useful. The Conservation Efforts That Brought Back the Last Wild Horse
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"Organic" Hydroponic Operations Allowed to Spray Glyphosate on the Soil
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The Indian Farmers Battling Climate Change with 10k-Year-Old Emmer Wheat
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Earth's Water Is Rapidly Losing Oxygen, and the Danger Is Huge
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Coal-filled trains are likely sending people to the hospital
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A novel way to save rhinos: Inserting radioisotopes into 20 live rhinoceros