2024-09-01
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In Praise of Reference Books - by Daniel M. Rothschild
Reference books have lost a lot of ground in the past decades to digital replacements. Today, World Book is the only remaining publisher of hard-copy general reference encyclopedias. Wikipedia, while not without benefit (it’s actually one of the great human achievements of the past quarter-century), also comes at a cost. Encyclopedias are written to provide a thorough overview of almost any subject one can name, and entries are usually of the right length and format to be read through in one sitting, like a magazine article. By contrast, hyperlinks incentivize peripatetic clicking; when was the last time you read a Wikipedia article from top to bottom without clicking away (or being distracted by alerts from email, direct messages, and the like)?
Encyclopedia Britannica (now exclusively online) and most online dictionaries (including Merriam-Webster, also exclusively digital) are revised frequently and usually without much if any acknowledgement, due not to errors of omission but to audience capture and the demands of vibeoepistemology, or knowledge derived from vibes. These are no longer reference works in the traditional sense; rather, they are expressions of a zeitgeist. As if we needed more of those.
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Ancient humans built a bridge inside a cave on Mallorca nearly 6k years ago
Horseshit
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Swiss scientists created sugar-free chocolate from whole cocoa fruit
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Millennials Are Masturbating to 'My Little Pony' Porn, Says New Survey
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Projectile Trajectory of Penguin's Faeces and Rectal Pressure Revisited
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SS United States Headed to Okaloosa County Instead of Escambia County
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Gen Z wants an inheritance. Why most boomers aren't leaving one
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
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The whole range-extender part comes in the form of an internal-combustion engine whose sole purpose is to act as an onboard generator for the electric bits. Simply fill the tank with gas, and you can extend the vehicle’s effective range beyond a set radius surrounding an EV charger, with the engine kicking on to generate electricity when the battery’s initial charge is depleted
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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China-born neuroscientist Jane Wu lost her US lab. Then she lost her life
The death of Wu, a prominent researcher at an Illinois university, has put attention again on efforts to pursue researchers suspected of having undisclosed ties to Beijing
Wu was a prominent neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and left her mark on many other researchers in both the United States and China before taking her life in July. the scientist’s death drew attention yet again to much criticised efforts to pursue researchers suspected of having undisclosed ties to Beijing. The most high-profile of these efforts was the China Initiative, which was launched in 2018 during the Trump administration to counter alleged economic espionage and technological theft from China. It was heavily criticised for unfairly targeting people of Chinese descent and scrutinising them about issues unrelated to espionage. In 2022, the programme was officially terminated by the Biden administration.
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Nvidia admits Blackwell defect, Jensen Huang pledges Q4 shipments as promised
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Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator
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Strava and Letterboxd Surge as Users Crave Social-Media Refuge
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Star Wars walked away from the first self-retracting lightsaber toy
spent two years secretly working on a kids lightsaber that can automatically extend and retract its blade — the very first of its kind. Hasbro acquired all rights to the idea from a previously unknown Israeli inventor and patented it around the world. But instead of finishing the product, Hasbro walked away without explanation. It let the inventor claw back the rights. Today, with the help of a different manufacturer, you can finally buy it at Target and Walmart — as the Goliath Power Saber. The $60 toy ...
No one’s willing to tell The Verge what actually happened. Shilo, Fuhrer, even Power Saber manufacturer Goliath all suggest they want to maintain a positive relationship with Hasbro instead of speaking out of turn. Hasbro won’t say, either. “We greatly value our partnerships with inventors who bring us their ideas for toys and games. For a variety of reasons, we were unable to move forward with this particular concept,” reads a statement from Hasbro senior publicity manager Whitney Spencer to The Verge.
We were able to figure out why Hasbro would give the idea back to Shilo and his investors: Hasbro was contractually obligated to return the rights if it didn’t move forward, Fuhrer confirms.
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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PC Floppy Copy Protection: Softguard Superlok
During the copy protection check, the game accesses the special track 6, and reads a 128 byte key from it. This key is used to decode the game's executable. This effectively creates a form of one-time pad encryption, but the re-use of the key for successive blocks of data makes it cryptographically very weak.
I speculate that CPC.COM was written by Softguard and provided to Sierra for their use. CPC.COM is heavily obfuscated, resistant to static analysis and disassembly. It appears to load only specific portions of code at a time into separate segments. A full analysis of it would be interesting, but would take significant time. The reason I suspect this was not code written by Sierra is primarily the stark difference in sophistication between CPC and Sierra's own loader. Sierra makes absolutely zero effort to obfuscate their loader or hide the returned encryption key. Less than zero effort, actually - it was as if they were actively trying to assist crackers. I was frankly astonished at what I found.
with Sierra helpfully pointing directly to the key offset variable on every Superlok-protected title they published, it didn't matter. The key could simply be extracted from the same place each time, patched into the loader's 'kkkk' buffer, and the call to CPC.COM skipped entirely by changing one byte. Most cracked versions seemed to have went one step further and just decrypted the whole thing and distributed the unencrypted result.
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Also talks about the Copy II PC card; one of my favorite bits of hardware from that era.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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OpenAI Names Political Veteran Chris Lehane as Head of Global Policy - The New York Times
Mr. Lehane held a similar role at Airbnb and served in the Clinton White House as a lawyer and spokesman who specialized in opposition research. He earned a reputation as “the master of disaster” during his time working for President Bill Clinton. Mr. Lehane could help navigate an increasingly complex social and political landscape. Through a spokeswoman, he declined to comment.
- "OpenAI is defending innovation from government" but contrast the tone of that to a few days ago, when Musk hired an adviser. He is "increasing his activism": Elon Musk, Eyeing 2024 Edge, Hires Republican Political Adviser - The New York Times
Political “donor-advisers” function as both gatekeepers and consiglieres, and ultrarich donors typically hire them when they are preparing to make significant political contributions over the long term.
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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City of Columbus sues man after he discloses severity of ransomware attack
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Judge Rules $400 Million Algorithmic System Illegally Denied Thousands of People’s Medicaid Benefits
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It’s no surprise, then, that liberals charge Trump with being a menace to the Constitution. But his presidency and the prospect of his re-election have also generated another, very different, argument: that Trump owes his political ascent to the Constitution, making him a beneficiary of a document that is essentially antidemocratic and, in this day and age, increasingly dysfunctional.
Americans tend to overlook the possibilities of mass democratic politics precisely for this reason — we succumb to the conventional wisdom of Constitution worship, thinking that political progress is a matter of adhering ever more perfectly to the “essence” of the document, when the building of majorities is invariably a more complicated process.
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Congress Put the Wrong Date in the Tax Law. Companies Are Reaping Millions
Harris / Democrats
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How Wikipedia Launders Regime Propaganda
The debate on the article’s Talk page became heated. “Wikipedia’s editors once again showing utter contempt of history itself and an embrace of Orwellianism,” one editor wrote. Impassioned as it was, the Harris “czar” flap was just one skirmish amid the ceaseless battles over Wikipedia articles with even remotely political resonance.
The problem is — like with the Harris border czar reference, which is still omitted from the czar article (and will almost certainly stay that way) — the consensus it achieves often lines up with the prerogatives of the Democratic Party and the media establishment that supports it.
There is no doubt that Wikipedia is a testament to the limitless power of collaboration and an odds-defying wonder of human achievement. The question is whether in our hyper-partisan world Wikipedia can fulfill its grand mission or if, like so many institutions whose inner dynamics overpower their founding missions, the encyclopedia is fated to achieve exactly the opposite of what its founders intended.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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Kuala Lumpur: Inside the search for woman swallowed by sinkhole
An extensive search for an Indian woman who disappeared into a pavement sinkhole in Kuala Lumpur hit a snag on its eighth day, as authorities now say it is "too risky" to continue deploying divers. The incident has gripped Malaysia, with some 110 rescuers working around the clock this past week in search of Vijaya Lakshmi Gali, 48. But apart from a pair of slippers found in an initial 17-hour search, their efforts have been unsuccessful.
China
Health / Medicine
Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp
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Mpox Vaccines Stuck in Limbo: WHO is at Fault
a new Mpox variant is now spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and nearby countries. Here’s the crazy part: despite declaring Mpox a public health emergency on August 14, the WHO has not approved any Mpox vaccines. You might think, “Who cares what the WHO authorizes?” After all, the FDA, EMA, and the UK have all granted emergency approval. But here’s the catch: the WHO’s approval is crucial for GAVI, the vaccine alliance that donates vaccines to developing countries. Without WHO approval, GAVI is reluctant to provide vaccines to the Congo. To add insult to injury, the Congo itself has approved the Jynneos and LC16 vaccines. Yet, the WHO refuses to authorize and GAVI to donate these vaccines, citing vague concerns about safety and efficacy.
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Turbine Blades Have Piled Up in Landfills. A Solution May Be Coming
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Something's Poisoning America's Farms. Scientists Fear 'Forever' Chemicals
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New York's deadly basement apartments face growing flooding risk
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Too hot for trout: Why some anglers are rethinking their approach to fly fishing
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AirTags key to discovery of Houston's plastic recycling deception