2024-09-18
Prohibition promotes populism, Musk Bad, Starlink adds NTP, Science Settles for Harris, Firearms charge for a felon, beeper booms beget battery bullshit.
etc
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(2020) The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City - Atlas Obscura
Addicts crouched down to inhale heroin smoke through tubes held over heated tinfoil. Bare rooms, enticingly referred to as “divans” were filled with prone men and women, all sunk in opium stupors. Many of the city’s rats were addicts too, and could be seen writhing in torment in dark corners, desperate for a hit.
Horseshit
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Drivers more likely to be distracted while using partial automation tech
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Bhutan airport landing is so tricky only 50 pilots can do it
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Somehow, the Dog Situation on Airplanes Has Gotten Even Wilder
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California's underground puppy market consumers unknowingly support
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Spirited away: Access to alcohol and support for the populist radical right - ScienceDirect
Utilizing a novel dataset of over 50,000 alcohol-serving permits and electoral data from 2002 to 2018, the study finds that a reduction in permits is associated with a 3.7% increase in support for the Sweden Democrats (SD). To explain this, it is argued that bar closures politicize alcohol regulation and serve as a symbolic issue linked to the populist radical right. Survey data from over 20,000 respondents reveal that individuals in municipalities with a decreasing number of permits are more likely to support alcohol deregulation policies, and these voters become more likely to support SD. These findings underscore how perceptions of government overregulation drive support for radical right-wing parties.
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Coca-Cola without 'Coca'? Indigenous beverage maker wants the word back
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New research sheds light on changing patterns of US giving and volunteering
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OceanGate CEO crashed sub years before Titan implosion, whistleblower says
celebrity gossip
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Sean Combs Arrested in Manhattan After Grand Jury Indictment
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Mark Cuban Says He's Interested in Purchasing Fox News and X
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Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and the Silicon Valley Elite Manipulate the Public
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Miley Cyrus sued over allegedly copying Bruno Mars song on Flowers
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'South Park' creators renovate a beloved restaurant, and find nostalgia is pricey
urns out that their new property is a dilapidated death trap in which everything — electricity, plumbing, air conditioning — must be redone. A renovation originally budgeted at $6 million suddenly balloons to a new estimate of $20 million plus.
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Bezos develops GPS competitor amid rising satellite security concerns
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
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Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk | WIRED
Musk’s now-deleted post questioning why no one has attempted to assassinate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris renews concerns over his work for the US government—and potential to inspire extremist violence.
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Musk's financial woes at X have Tesla bulls fearing he will liquidate more stock
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FAA Proposes $633,009 in Civil Penalties Against SpaceX
In May 2023, SpaceX submitted a request to revise its communications plan related to its license to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The proposed revisions included adding a new launch control room at Hangar X and removing the T-2 hour readiness poll from its procedures. On June 18, 2023, SpaceX used the unapproved launch control room for the PSN SATRIA mission and did not conduct the required T-2 hour poll. The FAA is proposing $350,000 in civil penalties ($175,000 for each alleged violation).
In July 2023, SpaceX submitted a request to revise its explosive site plan related to its license to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The proposed revision reflected a newly constructed rocket propellant farm. On July 28, 2023, SpaceX used the unapproved rocket propellant farm for the EchoStar XXIV/Jupiter mission. The FAA is proposing a $283,009 civil penalty.
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'Character Limit' Pulls Back the Curtain on Musk's Twitter Takeover
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Google got away with charging publishers more than anyone else (20% cut)
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iPhone 16 Pro Demand Has Been Lower Than Expected, Analyst Says
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We're losing our digital history. Can the Internet Archive save it?
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Taika Waititi's TIME BANDITS Cancelled At Apple TV+ After A Single Season
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IBM wins $45M verdict against Zynga in internet tech patent trial
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Measuring progress in the chip industry is detached from reality
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PC Floppy Copy Protection: Electronic Arts Interlock
- used on Pinball Construction Set and others
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Starlink provides time synchronization, an NTP server with GPS time
each Starlink runs an NTP server based on GPS time, which can be accessed by configuring your NTP client to use 192.168.100.1. The time is based on GPS; however, we cannot guarantee accuracy as the service is provided on a best-effort basis.
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(2022) Mandelbrot calculation speed on a variety of Python accelerators
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Cisco’s second layoff of 2024 affects thousands of employees
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Opioid-maker Purdue is bankrupt, but its global counterparts make millions
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Record US household wealth may increase chance of soft landing
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Fed Ready to Unshackle US Economy with Soft Landing at Stake
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Election has Big Tech 'at a crossroads' after slump in dealmaking
Harris / Democrats
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Vote for Kamala Harris to Support Science, Health and the Environment | Scientific American
for only the second time in our magazine’s 179-year history, the editors of Scientific American are endorsing a candidate for president. That person is Kamala Harris.
- The first time was Biden, in 2020.
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Teamsters head withholds endorsement after meeting with Kamala Harris.
Every major nonpolice union other than the Teamsters has backed the Democratic ticket, but O’Brien is continuing to hold out, saying he’s more interested in what a politician does for his members than what letter appears beside their name.
Trump / Right / Jan6
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“They’re always amazed how close they can get to Trump and his entourage — it’s easy for them,” one photo agency source told The Post. Photographers typically announce themselves to the Secret Service so they are not mistaken for threats, but the source said agents are easy enough to evade. Sources told the Washington Post that the Secret Service knew about the security risk, and tried to warn Trump about it — but he believed his golf clubs were safe.
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The Judges Who Serve at Trump’s Pleasure - The Atlantic
A recent Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity that appears designed to assist former (and possibly future) President Donald Trump; a Trump-appointed district-court judge who went against decades of legal precedent to shield the 45th president from the law—these must be taken seriously as signs that the independence of our courts is cracking, not because judges aren’t protected but because some judges are quite happy to serve “at the pleasure of the crown.”
Before I go further, let me make clear that I am not a legal scholar, a historian of the Constitution, or even a historian of the United States. I became interested in the origins of the independent judiciary because in 2015 I was living in Poland, where my husband is involved in national politics. (He is the foreign minister in the administration of Donald Tusk, a member of the Civic Platform party.) That year, a government with a legitimate, democratically elected parliamentary majority decided, with the cooperation of the equally legitimate president, to bring judicial independence to an end. Unexpectedly, this turned out to be extremely easy.
- The press was so afraid Trump wouldn't leave office in 2020 that they missed it when he did. They've utterly forgotten that Biden was (and in theory still is) president.
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Republicans seethe after second foiled Trump assassination attempt
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Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, of Hawaii, has been charged by a criminal complaint in the Southern District of Florida with firearms charges related to an incident at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on Sept. 15. Routh was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession and receipt of a firearm with an obliterated serial number and made his initial appearance today before Magistrate Judge Ryon M. McCabe in the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach. A detention hearing has been scheduled for Sept. 23. The investigation remains ongoing.
According to allegations in the criminal complaint, a Secret Service agent walking the golf course perimeter saw what appeared to be a rifle poking out of the tree line. After the agent fired a service weapon in the direction of the rifle, a witness saw a man later identified as Routh fleeing the area of the tree line. Routh was later apprehended by officers from the Martin County Sheriff’s Office, in coordination with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. The complaint alleges that in the area of the tree line from which Routh fled, agents found a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a black plastic bag containing food. The serial number on the rifle was obliterated. According to the complaint, Routh was convicted of felonies in North Carolina in December 2002 and March 2010.
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The Trumps Have Gone Full Crypto With World Liberty Financial | WIRED
Eric and Donald Trump Jr., the sons of former president Donald Trump, have pledged to “make finance great again” with a new family-run crypto endeavor called World Liberty Financial. The Trumps aren’t alone in leading World Liberty Financial. They’re joined by crypto veterans Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, as well as Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor and friend of Donald Trump’s. In addition to the platform itself, World Liberty Financial will come with a governance token, WLFI, which will provide owners the right to vote “on matters of the platform.”
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The media is now simultaneously arguing that cat memes are responsible for bomb threats in Springfield but the entire Democrat Party making it central to their campaign that Trump is an existential threat to the country has no correlation with people trying to kill him.
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CNN Worries That Trump Assassination Attempts Are Helping Him Politically | ZeroHedge
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Beep Beep Boom
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Hezbollah members wounded in Lebanon when pagers exploded
ozens of members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah were seriously wounded on Tuesday in Lebanon's south and the southern suburbs of Beirut when the pagers they use to communicate exploded, security sources told Reuters. A Reuters journalist saw 10 Hezbollah members bleeding from wounds in the southern suburb of Beirut known as Dahiyeh.
Hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists all over Lebanon were just killed / severely injured when their "pagers" all suddenly simultaneously exploded
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A Lebanese intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said that the blasts occurred after pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon, resulting in a large number of injuries.
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Hezbollah Operatives' Pagers Explode in Attack Across Lebanon
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Exploding pagers injure hundreds in attack targeting Hezbollah members
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Immediately deleted: Snowden: I fear they weren't bombs inserted via supply chain, but that the batteries were made to explode via overheating hack.
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Rephrased, deleted again: the alternative is simply unthinkable
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I don't think this was "battery overheat"; batteries burn, with vigor maybe; but these appear to be detonations on the videos. Can't even reliably get that out of electrolytic capacitors. LiPo etc batteries are engineered not to be able to do that. perhaps these were made differently but I do not worry that all batteries could be remotely tickled to detonate. But this is Snowden; perhaps he knows different.
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He still digging: What Israel has just done is reckless
What Israel has just done is, via any method, reckless. They blew up countless numbers of people who were driving (meaning cars out of control), shopping (your children are in the stroller standing behind him in the checkout line), et cetera. Indistinguishable from terrorism.
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Hundreds injured by exploding pagers in Lebanon, health minister says
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Hezbollah members reportedly injured in Lebanon by exploding pagers
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picture of what was a Hezbollah pager a few minutes ago
- text and barcode on the case are still readable, FRM circuit board is intact and un charred where visible, i say this was detonation of something small and quite potent. these devices had charges of some sort in them and some custom trigger; this is not "they hacked the batteries".
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How could Israel have triggered Hezbollah pager explosions?
One source close to Hezbollah claimed that the incident came as a direct result of an 'Israeli breach' of its communications, though this has not been confirmed and Israel has not yet commented. A different official said on condition of anonymity that the cause of the explosions was likely the lithium batteries that power the pagers.
There is yet to be any official confirmation on what caused the pagers to detonate simultaneously, however, Lebanese military sources have suggested that the devices were detonated as part of an Israeli attack.
- and here comes the media frenzy "any device with a battery can be hacked and made to explode!" ... it wouldn't shock me if they could be made to catch fire, perhaps; but this job here on the pagers is the work of real "blow shit up" candy. grams of it. stuff that should've been obvious to a glance at the insides.
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Eight killed and thousands injured as Hizbollah pagers explode in Lebanon
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educated guesses as to how it was done threadreader
the explosions are substantial. Probably a high explosive like RDX or PETN. I am guessing the explosive was integrated into the battery for physical stealth.
it’s not like you can modify the battery & be done. The explosive needs a trigger. In this video, just before explosion, you see the target looking down as if they just received a message. ~4sec later it explodes
That requires electronics to filter for that exact message, then trigger detonator. Could be modified firmware, but you still need to get the electrical signal to the detonator. Some level of extra wiring/components is needed. For 1000+ units, feels like a whole custom PCB
Pager networks broadcast every single message across the service area. A $10 SDR with computer can pick up every pager message near you. So someone has to know what the exact trigger message was by now. But I haven’t seen it yet.
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From an alleged Hezbollah source cited in AP and Israeli media:
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, says the explosions were the result of “a security operation that targeted the devices.” “The enemy [Israel] stands behind this security incident,” the official says, without elaborating. He adds that the new pagers that Hezbollah members were carrying have lithium batteries that apparently exploded.
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HN thread: Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon | Hacker News
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Exclusive sources for Sky News Arabia: Mossad placed a quantity of highly explosive PETN on the devices’ battery and detonated it by raising the battery’s temperature.
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Hezbollah hit by exploding pagers in Lebanon and Syria: At least 9 dead, hundreds injured | AP News
Pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded near simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, killing at least nine people – including an 8-year-old girl -- and wounding several thousand, officials said. They blamed Israel in what appeared to be a sophisticated, remote attack. Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious incident came amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which have exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza. The pagers that exploded had been newly acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members to stop using cell phones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand the group had not used before.
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Exploding pagers belonging to Hezbollah kill 8 and injure 2,700 in Lebanon
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The Mystery of Hezbollah's Deadly Exploding Pagers | WIRED
Footage posted on social media claiming to show examples of the explosions from around the country depict blasts that seemed too large to come from pager batteries alone. One photo circulating widely appeared to show a mangled pager with some legible make and model information that may point to the Gold Apollo AP-900 alphanumeric pager. This pager runs on two AAA batteries, which, like any battery, could be induced to explode, but likely not with such force and scale as the explosions depicted in alleged videos of the blasts. Even if this isn’t the model of the pagers, and those used by Hezbollah run instead on lithium ion batteries, which can cause more dangerous explosions, it’s still unlikely that a regular pager battery alone could produce blasts that could injure multiple people.
“It's unlikely that hacking was involved, as it's likely that explosive material had to be inside the pagers to cause such an effect,” says Lukasz Olejnik, an independent consultant and visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies. “Reports mention the delivery of new pagers recently, so perhaps the delivery was compromised.”
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I've seen reports saying "20 grams of PETN in the batteries". A random pair of AAA batteries from my stock weighs in at 21.5 grams; which would leave no mass to power the pager, as i see it. and what if people changed their batteries?
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Wikipedia ... that should be a fun flamewar 2024 Lebanon Pager Explosions
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Hezbollah's Exploding Pagers Could Be As Monumental A Cyber-Espionage Operation As Stuxnet
There have been reports, including from three different security sources, that the targeted pagers were from a recent shipment to arrive in Lebanon. If true, that could suggest that they had some kind of malware implanted in them and an explosive charge. This would have required Israel to intercept and alter or swap out the shipments of these pagers, which would be a complex affair, but not one outside of the realm of feasibility.
Another possibility is that the lithium batteries in the pagers were triggered into an overheating mode, turning them into improvised explosive devices. The potential for commercial lithium batteries to explode is something that we have touched upon in a previous report. In such a way, it may have been possible for Israel to remotely trigger a ‘thermal runaway,’ in which a power source either bursts into flames or explodes. It’s also possible that a combination of the two, insertion of malware or alterations physically to the devices and using cyber warfare to exploit that structured vulnerability at an opportune time could also be at play here.
Turning everyday electronics that include wireless connectivity into improvised explosive devices may seem like dystopian science fiction, but it really isn’t that far-fetched. Considering everyone reading this likely has just such a device in their pocket or hand, and considering the potential vulnerabilities of hardware created overseas, often by possible future adversaries, as well as the software that controls these devices, the alarm bells couldn’t ring any louder, even if this event proves to be something else. We interact every day with examples of networked technology — from the cars we drive to the computer hardware we use to make a living — that also have power packs with large amounts of stored potential energy. So targeting such devices for nefarious kinetic purposes is darkly logical. When you think about it in that light, the explosive/incendiary charges are already distributed all over the globe by the billions. The possible ability to connect to and trigger those charges is, at least in theory, already built in.
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Israel Planted Explosives in Pagers Sold to Hezbollah, Officials Say - The New York Times
The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. Most were the company’s AP924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment. The explosive material, as little as one to two ounces, was implanted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. A switch was also embedded that could be triggered remotely to detonate the explosives. At 3:30 p.m. in Lebanon, the pagers received a message that appeared as though it was coming from Hezbollah’s leadership, two of the officials said. Instead, the message activated the explosives. Lebanon’s health minister told state media at least nine people were killed and more than 2,800 injured. The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to three of the officials. Hezbollah has accused Israel of orchestrating the attack but has described limited details of its understanding of the operation. Israel has not commented on the attack, nor said it was behind it. The American and other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the operation.
Over 3,000 pagers were ordered from the Gold Apollo company in Taiwan, said several of the officials. Hezbollah distributed the pagers to their members throughout Lebanon, with some reaching Hezbollah allies in Iran and Syria. Israel’s attack affected the pagers that were switched on and receiving messages. It remained unclear on Tuesday precisely when the pagers were ordered and when they arrived in Lebanon.
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Israel planted explosives in Hezbollah's Taiwan-made pagers, sources say