2024-08-20

etc

• Rare blue supermoon to light up Monday night sky

• It also steals ours: Meteorites give the Moon its thin atmosphere

• How 3D Printing Is Changing the Nerf Hobby

• The Mennonites Making the Amazon Their Home

Horseshit

• Ask the Bosses who supposed to win, be sure to "count the ballots" so that happens. seem easy. What it's like administering the Hugo Awards

• Amazon's delivery drones are so loud they are like a 'giant hive of bees'

• Financial Scams Against Seniors Surge as Banks Fail to Protect Wealth

• Choice of Pet Could Predict What Kind of Personality You Have

• James Cameron: 'Harder to write sci-fi because we're living in a sci-fi world'

• The creatives pushing nail art to sculptural new lengths

• What Superfans Know That the Rest of Us Should Learn – The Power of Community

• Millennials Are Becoming Boomers

celebrity gossip

• Peter Thiel says he is thinking about leaving the US

• Is Bill Gates a savior or a villain?

• UK's Mike Lynch missing after yacht sinks off Sicily, source says | Reuters

  Lynch, aged 59, was acquitted in June by a jury in San Francisco of fraud charges linked to the sale of his software company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. The sale cemented Lynch's reputation as Britain's answer to Bill Gates, but it quickly turned sour after Hewlett-Packard wrote down Autonomy's value by $8.8 billion.

  • UK entrepreneur Mike Lynch reportedly missing after tornado sinks superyacht

• Billionaire Carl Icahn settles for using company to secure personal loans

Obit

• Phil Donahue, Talk Host Who Made Audiences Part of the Show, Dies at 88

  • Phil Donahue, Pioneering Talk Show Host, Dies at 88

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• The UK riots showed why we have to dismantle far-right misinformation machines

  how had Channel 3 Now News, the original source of the name, got this so wrong? It’s because there is no Channel3Now – in the UK, the third TV channel is called ITV, we don’t have a Channel 3. The source called Channel3Now is a now-suspended YouTube channel, whose first videos were Russian language motor racing videos. The channel was bought, repurposed, renamed, and retooled to try to generate income by mass producing news articles, regardless of their veracity. It’s unclear who first sent it to Bernie Spofforth – though she has since been arrested, so we may find out its route to her in due course – but once it was with her the existing conspiracist infrastructure of the UK went into full force, flinging lies to every confused and angry person in the network.

  For the complete avoidance of any doubt, there were no Muslims involved in this horrible crime – the killer wasn’t Muslim, and the people inciting the violence were not Muslim. But on Friday – apparently in response to the crime and in the memory of those girls – a mob gathered outside of the Abdullah Quilliam Society Mosque in Liverpool, whipped up on social media by all these same forces. Fortunately, they were hugely outnumbered,

Musk

• Twitter as the embodiment of the American ethos – Daniel Frank

  The post argues that the vast majority of online content is produced by a tiny group of highly unusual individuals. Citing the 1% rule, DinoInNameOnly suggests that only 1% of internet users create content, while the other 99% merely consume it. However, Twitter is an exception to this rule. Unlike most platforms, where content creation is dominated by highly unusual people, Twitter manages to engage “normal” people—those who don’t typically produce online content—by offering them an attractive reward: status and influence.

  Consider DinoInNameOnly, the author of the viral post. Despite the article going viral, he remains just “some random person” with a Reddit account. He or she doesn’t have a website or a blog; they gained no tangible profile or benefits from this hugely successful post. On Twitter, an article of this magnitude could have been a life-changing break—worth thousands and thousands of followers, and a springboard for significant social advancement. Yet by posting on Reddit, they remain in the same position as before, just some person.

  My theory is that high-status people, those who dominate Twitter, don’t post on Reddit because there’s little benefit for them. On Reddit, no matter how famous you are, you’re treated like any other user—there’s no guaranteed audience, and your ideas are likely to be ignored or criticized. This is in stark contrast to Twitter, where if you do well, you gain more power and influence.

• Tesla Trails Rivals in Offering Driver-Assistance Features in China

• Elon Musk's X is being sued again, this time over $120M of server parts

• Tesla semi-truck fire prompts I80 closure in CA as hazmat response halts traffic

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Lamborghini's first EV is nearly ready – but are we?

• The 6th Generation Waymo Driver

• Waymo is developing a roomier robotaxi with less-expensive tech

• Hyundai Motor Group hits double-digit EV market share in the US

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• South Korea's plan for AI textbooks hit by backlash from parents

• HHS Strengthens Head Start by Requiring Higher Wages for Staff

• Colleges Still Don't Have a Plan for AI Cheating

• University of California bans encampments and face masks

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• 'Local News Is Dying, but Not in San Francisco'

• Roblox is the biggest game in the world, but is unprofitable

• Company wants to give computers a sense of smell

• Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse. | Ars Technica

  The TV business isn't just about selling TVs anymore. Companies are increasingly seeing viewers, not TV sets, as their most lucrative asset. Over the past few years, TV makers have seen rising financial success from TV operating systems that can show viewers ads and analyze their responses. Rather than selling as many TVs as possible, brands like LG, Samsung, Roku, and Vizio are increasingly, if not primarily, seeking recurring revenue from already-sold TVs via ad sales and tracking.

• All Azure sign-ins will now need to use multi-factor authentication

• A 4 part series on how JavaScript broke US public services

• Black Myth: Wukong studio requests no feminist propaganda or Covid-19 references

• Actors demand action over "disgusting" video game sex scenes

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The Dying Computer Museum « ASCII by Jason Scott

  I have found, perhaps not to my surprise, that a few people in my orbit are displeased I have punched the dead billionaire, ostensibly about all the good the dead billionaire did. But I wish to point out the dead billionaire did give away all that money and yet still had 20 billion dollars at the end, money that went off and did not do as many nice things as the money given away. So much contributed, tax-free, and yet there’s even more. Perhaps this is not the best place to point out that every billionaire is, in many ways, a failure of society, but maybe we can put a pin in it when we have our first trillionaire, assuming that criticizing a trillionaire is not made illegal at that soonish juncture.

  I did have some people say, in not so many words, that of course the Living Computer Museum would collapse once its Master of the House was no longer in charge, and I would take this time to point out that Gordon Bell, co-founder of the Computer History Museum, passed on in May of 2024 and yet the Computer History Museum lives and breathes in his absence. It wasn’t a hard problem.

  It’s easy to call me ungrateful, but my ungratefulness comes from the narrative people weave near the power of money, like those myths formed around gods and devils, to explain why things are how they are. I appreciate life and its little whorls and eddies that capture us by surprise and we sink or swim. I do not appreciate acting like someone spending a lot of money on something that slightly amuses them earns them the greatest respect. Especially when, as I do now, I walk among a literal army of people working to clean up the mess left behind, after their march to oblivion.

  • HN comments

• The Downsides of Vintage Hardware | Brain Baking

  Getting hold of older boards either costs an arm and a leg or requires a great deal of luck on a flea market where grandchildren were clearing out the elderly house and have no idea what to do with those old PCs. Just like with Game Boy cartridges, the vast majority of the sellers know the market value of these things all too well.

• Phrack Issue #71 (tgz)

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• LLMs consistently generate high-quality content for election disinformation

• What comes after the AI crash?

  The crypto bubble imploded through 2022, but the crypto industry is far from dead. It’s one of the biggest funders in the ongoing US election cycle, seeking candidates that will pass permissive legislations for its fraudulent activities. The gig economy isn’t in the limelight these days either, even as Uber continues its campaign to carve workers out of employment law with significant consequences. Meanwhile, smart glasses are back and more invasive than ever, and social media continues to churn out social harm despite years of discussion about its problems. We can’t allow that same cycle of entrenchment to play out with generative AI. Chatbots and image generators may have more tangible use cases than crypto, but that also means they can be used against people in many more ways once the hype fades. We need to understand what that may look like to try to proactively head it off.

• Linux Foundation's adoption of OMI could pave way for ethical LLMs

• Google Releases Powerful AI Image Generator You Can Use for Free

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Astroscale begins contract for space junk harvest satellite

• Transitioning space propulsion to a nitrous-based industry standard

• SpaceX is about to send four people on a risky mission into the radiation belts

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Start-up failures up by 60% as founders face hangover from boom years

• Owner of 7-Eleven stores receives buyout offer from Canadian rival

• America's Home Insurance Time Bomb

• General Motors cutting salaried tech workforce to 'prioritize investments'

  • GM lays off more than 1k salaried software and services employees

  • GM Is Cutting More Than 1k Workers from Its Software Business

  • GM to cut at least 1k software jobs, biggest impact at GM Tech Center

• AMD to acquire server builder ZT Systems for $4.9B in cash and stock

• Magdeburg politicians raise concerns about possible Intel fab cancellation

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Crime-filled Chicago displays all that's wrong with Democrats in one failing city

  After nearly 100 years of Democratic rule, the Windy City is a basket case. Soaring crime, high taxes, crippling debt, crumbling infrastructure, and a declining population are just some of the miseries inflicted on its citizens. Chicago is the murder capital of America — with someone shot every two hours and someone killed every 17 hours. So far this year, 353 victims, most of them black, have been murdered in Chicago. The homicide rate is five times higher than New York’s. “Democrats wanted to hold the convention somewhere safer, but Beirut wasn’t available,” quipped one wag.

• Her name was on a filing agreeing to be a Cornel West elector. Her question: What's an elector?

  “I was shocked and surprised by it all. I didn't even know what an elector was," Mitchell told The Associated Press on Friday. "The crazy thing is it was all forged. None of it was my handwriting. It was definitely not my signature. My email was wrong, my address was wrong." Mitchell's case is the latest example of dubious tactics used in an effort to qualify West, a left-wing academic, for the ballot in states across the U.S. It's also among the more egregious. It's an effort that West himself apparently knows nothing about. His campaign did not immediately respond for comment Friday evening.

• Wyoming voters face mayoral candidate who vows to let AI bot run government

  • Wyoming mayoral candidate vows to let an AI bot run Cheyenne

  • (Aug 10) In This Michigan Town, the Mayor Was a Dog. Now, They’ve Elected a Horse | The Free Press

Harris / TBA 2024 / Democrats Demonstrate "Our Democracy"

• Protesters paused to reconsider opposing Harris at the DNC. They decided on full steam ahead.

  There are at least six major protests planned on the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. The biggest is planned for the first day, Monday, when “tens of thousands” are expected to march just blocks from the United Center, where Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will give their acceptance speeches. The “family-friendly march” is organized under a pro-Palestinian umbrella coalition that includes groups devoted to a variety of causes. Organizers are busing in protesters from Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana and Wisconsin, and activists are also coming in from New York and California, too. The switch-up at the top of the Democratic ticket prompted a conversation in the pro-Palestinian movement about its tactics. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago was widely perceived to be its biggest stage upon which to argue that the U.S. should change its policies toward Israel. But Harris, who called for a cease-fire earlier than some others in the party, made some activists wonder about taking a softer approach with the new Democratic nominee.

• DNC Releases 2024 Party Platform to be Voted on at Convention  - Democrats

  • (PDF) Final 2024 Democratic Platform

  This election is a choice between two very different economic visions for America: Donald Trump, who sees the world from his country club at Mar-a-Lago; and Joe Biden, who sees it from kitchen tables in Scranton like the one he grew up around. His economic agenda is about Main Street, not Wall Street. It’s about ending the days of trickle-down economics and investing in America – in all Americans – and delivering for communities too long left behind.

  President Biden believes that you shouldn't have to go to a four-year college to live a good, middle-class life. Democrats are working to make sure that every American can access these quality new jobs, where many people can earn over $100,000 a year. The American Rescue Plan supported more than 4,300 state- and local-government workforce development programs

  When the pandemic crushed supply chains, prices for everyday items, from food to gas to airfare, went up. But after supply bottlenecks eased, many companies didn’t lower prices in line with their falling costs. President Biden will keep calling those companies out for price gouging, and hold them accountable when they don’t pass savings on to consumers.

  President Biden will continue to appoint justices and judges across the federal bench who are like Justice Jackson: brilliant jurists committed to defending American rights and freedoms

  Democrats will pass and President Biden will sign the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act to fully secure the right to vote in every state, ensure fair congressional maps for every American, modernize and secure our elections, and curtail the corrupting influence of money in politics.

  And in his second term,President Biden will continue to support access to FDA-approved medication abortion, appoint leaders at the FDA who respect science, and appoint judges who uphold fundamental freedoms

  In his second term, President Biden will work with Congress to deploy more cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect fentanyl at our ports of entry. He will also leverage all resources of the federal government to stop tech platforms from being used for criminal conduct, including sales of dangerous drugs like fentanyl

  Congress must pass legislation to provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, farmworkers, careworkers, and other long-term undocumented individuals who contribute to this country, by paying taxes and contributing to their local economies, and in his second term, President Biden will continue pressing them to do so

  • I guess they didn't want to update it until after they've chosen the real candidate at the convention.

• How Democrats Reversed the Script on the GOP - POLITICO

  CHICAGO — Democrats arrive here, a city that’s played host to so many drama-filled political conventions, as a party lacking in drama. They are disciplined, orderly and united around Vice President Kamala Harris and, more to the point, thwarting former President Donald Trump’s restoration. This new era of good feelings for Democrats is a far cry from last month, when they faced their most existential crisis since Trump’s initial election, their leaders staring one another down in a sort of political version of nuclear brinksmanship. And it differs from so many previous conventions when there was often intra-party tension over policy, politics, personnel, or all three, looming above the proceedings.

Biden Inc

• House probe concludes Joe Biden committed impeachable offenses by helping to enrich his family | Just The News

  The House Oversight, Ways and Means and Judiciary Committees said they believe the evidence from their nine-month investigation establishes that Biden abused his office and violated his oaths under the Constitution, according to the 291-page report reviewed by Just the News. “First and foremost, overwhelming evidence demonstrates that President Biden participated in a conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family,” the committee’s concluded in the the report released the day Biden was to be honored at the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “Among other aspects of this conspiracy, the Biden family and their business associates received tens of millions of dollars from foreign interests by leading those interests to believe that such payments would provide them access to and influence with President Biden,” the executive summary added.

Trump / Right / Jan6

• The Broligarchs Are Trying to Have Their Way - The Atlantic

  • HN comments

• Trump shares seemingly fake/AI pics of Taylor Swift – and Swifties are furious

• I took a trip to Trump country. It was more bleak than I ever imagined

  One of my cousins saw clusters of young men walking the grounds in floral Hawaiian shirts, which have recently become an unfortunate sartorial symbol of the far-right “boogaloo” movement, a militant group that aims to incite a second Civil War. I asked my cousin if he was sure about this because the idea seemed completely absurd. Maybe it’s just a bunch of dorky kids, I thought. But my cousin grew up there and probably went to school with their parents — he was sure. I was just trying to have a chill time looking at show rabbits. But I was bombarded by right-wing politics. I know it’s just T-shirts. It’s just signs. But it was unnerving all the same to be among so many people so in thrall to the politics of white resentment that it’s seeped into something as casual and family-friendly as a county fair. If MAGA is winning any political contests these days, it’s clearly dominating the merch category. Walk around a place like that Illinois county fair and you’ll see that MAGA comes off like an addiction — an obsession that seems much more emotional than rational. It’s the mean-spirited aspect of America, one that looks upon people like my refugee family as a lesser-than group, even if we might be tolerated individually. It’s heartbreaking to be around, knowing that there’s little logic or data that can dislodge a thorn that’s been absorbed so thoroughly.

• Local Cop, Not Secret Service, Shot Trump Rally Shooter First | ZeroHedge

  The first shot to hit Thomas Crooks, the man who sprayed eight shots at a Butler, Pennsylvania Trump rally on July 13 - hitting Trump in the ear and killing an attendee - came from a local SWAT operator who was about 100 yards away from the building on which Crooks was positioned, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) said in a preliminary investigative report.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• DNA search prompts arrest of Idaho murder suspect in 51-year-old cold case

  DNA evidence led investigators to identify Michael Eugene Mullen, 75, as a suspect in the death of Nina “Nadine” Fischer in 1973, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office said. Mullen was arrested near Salmon, Idaho, on Wednesday, and he is being held in jail while awaiting extradition to California. In 2021, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office sent the case to the California Department of Justice's Familial Search Program. The program compares DNA from crime scenes to a DNA database in an effort to try to find relatives of a potential suspect. After several months, the DNA resulted in a possible lead, and after three more years of investigation Mullen was identified as the suspect, the sheriff's office said.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Nord Stream Revelations Ignite Dispute Between U.S. Allies

World

• UK Pride Charity Founder Arrested On 37 Charges Involving Child Sex Abuse | ZeroHedge

  Stephen Ireland, the 40-year-old founder and former director of LGBT activist charity 'Pride in Surrey', has been arrested on a total of 37 charges involving child sexual abuse. Ireland is an avid proponent of child indoctrination into gender ideology and was a patron of a charity called 'Educate And Celebrate.' The charity ran Pride workshops for primary and secondary school pupils, which included “How to break the binary and be gender inclusive”. The accusations against Ireland (pictured below) and Sutton are serious, including six counts of conspiracy to sexually assault a child, conspiracy to kidnap a child, voyeurism, and arranging the commission of a child sex offense. Additionally, Ireland faces a further 22 charges, including the rape of a child under 13, sexual assault, making indecent photographs of children, and possession of extreme pornographic images. Sutton is also charged with seven additional offenses, including making and distributing indecent photographs of children.

• The secret to good government? Actually trying

  The power of a new government stems not from its ideas but its enthusiasm. Labour, which took power on July 5th, kicked off with a flurry of green measures approved with the simple squiggle of a minister’s pen. Three giant solar farms were nodded through. A ban on onshore wind farms was removed by ministerial diktat. Or as Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, put it in peculiarly teenage syntax: “It was just, like, ‘delete’.” A new government is a reminder of an old lesson: effort is the most underrated force in British politics. What governments should do is endlessly debated; how they should do it is almost completely ignored.

• B.C. woman arrested after 'racially offensive' social media content: RCMP

• Drought devastates corn and sunflower fields in Romania

• Despite risks more women are finding ways to leave Afghanistan

• Pakistan blames users for slow internet as firewall rumours grow

Israel

• Leaked Israeli Docs Reveal Effort to Evade Foreign Agent Lobbying Law

  Emails and legal memos originating from a hack of the Israeli justice ministry show that officials feared Israeli advocacy efforts in the US could trigger the US law governing foreign agents. The documents show that officials proposed creating a new American nonprofit in order to continue Israel’s activities in the US while avoiding scrutiny under the law. A legal strategy memo dated July 2018 noted that compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) would damage the reputation of several American groups that receive funding and direction from Israel, and force them to meet onerous transparency requirements. A separate memo noted that donors would not want to fund groups registered under FARA.

China

• North Norwegian port welcomes controversial Chinese shipping giant to the Arctic

Health / Medicine

• The CEO Who Made a Fortune While His Hospital Chain Collapsed

• Under-skin implant dispenses naloxone to prevent opioid overdose deaths

• For-Profit Ownership of Mental Health Centers Rises, Raising Concerns About Care

• CEOs earn big bucks at nonprofit hospitals. But does that benefit patients?

• Higher ultraviolet light exposure is associated with lower mortality

• Methamphetamine-involved psychiatric hospitalizations have increased, study says.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• US undercounts bird flu in cattle as farmers shun testing

• US to survey dairy cattle brought to slaughter to study bird flu infections

• Drug Company Announces It Will Produce Millions of Mpox Vaccines by Next Year | The Epoch Times

• This year's summer Covid wave is big; FDA may green-light Covid shots early

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Explosion of cicada-eating mites has the state of Illinois scratching | Ars Technica

• Carbon Emissions from AI and Crypto Are Surging and Tax Policy Can Help

• Using a drone to release mosquitoes infected with deadly bacteria into the wild

• Desertification was supposed to be the 'greatest environmental challenge of our time.' Why are experts now worried about greening?

  As we pump yet more CO2 into the air, arid-land greening seems set to continue, according to two recent modeling studies. But ecologists warn that, despite appearances, going green may have downsides for arid ecosystems and for the people who depend on them. Desert plants and animals will often lose out, and the extra vegetation may soak up scarce water supplies.

• Genomicist explains the tricky genetics of fungus devastating bananas worldwide

• 'Rare species' not seen in the area for 50 years spotted on Arizona trail camera