2024-09-19

Bridge lawsuit, systems decay, X returns to Brazil despite the wittering of "Scholars", UFOs may be real, we need more workers because inflation is over, Teamsters tease, more beeper boom.

etc

• I’m glad I miss the ’90s-00s internet | Tony Edwards

  Learn from the mistakes and successes of my generation to create the internet you want. Mine, like the ones before, have built the network, tools, and technologies. We put a computer on every desk, made communication instant, allowed information dissemination to be possible in the most hostile of conditions, and put the worlds knowledge in everyone’s pocket. We didn’t notice what social media was doing until it’s too late. But your generation has noticed.

  Your generation now get to choose what you do with it. We’re set in our ways whilst you’re still carving yours. Along the journey, encourage and enable others to make the “right” decisions. Don’t look down on someone else’s addition. Show them the alternative so they know where to head when they’re ready for recovery. Use your tech skills to the benefit of the people important in your life. Perhaps even take steps towards helping replace the social media in your family’s life. Be the example. That’s how we get back to the web you think you miss.

• Trove of dinosaur fossils found high in B.C. mountains

• The People Who Rage Against the Machine | The Free Press

  An emergent coalition of Catholics, preppers, localists, Luddites, and farmers is determined to resist modernity. They call themselves Doomer Optimists.

• What San Francisco looks like

• DOJ Sues Owner and Operator of the Vessel That Destroyed the Key Bridge

• Beware System Decay - by Robin Hanson - Overcoming Bias

  We are all part of a great many systems, some of which we understand better than others, and many of which we are already engrossed in fights over. To get people to consider problems with how we create and change our key norms, I need to distract them from their other fights. To see what I’m up against, I polled my Twitter/X followers re how worried they are re 32 different kinds of systems decaying or breaking.

Horseshit

• Friends at 30 – the inside story: 'Matt LeBlanc ate so much beef trifle'

• Can these underwater habitats 'make humans aquatic'?

• Prof who coined term presenteeism: employers who force staff back are dinosaurs

• Advice for the Gen Z Techno-Optimist - The Atlantic

  Today’s youth should be very grateful to be alive now, in the age of smartphones and AI. These godsends were unimaginable when I was growing up several decades ago, and up until two decades ago they were still unimaginable. You youngsters are truly blessed to have such advanced technology at your beck and call. Never forget: Your AI-driven smartphone is your best friend. Make sure you always have it with you, preferably right in front of your eyes. Thinking is tough, especially in these complex days, but working hand in hand with Alexa, Siri, and their ilk, you can think better and more clearly. And why type to them? Just talk!

• Cabin pressure issue on Delta flight causes bloody ears and noses for passengers

• Teen tried a suicide chemical he got online, then sought help. It was too late

• Ghost of Tsushima leaves 281GB of crash logs without having crashed once

• The Last Car in America With Crank Windows Just Ditched ’Em.

celebrity gossip

• Jane’s Addiction to Cancel Tour After Dave Navarro and Perry Farrell Fight on Stage - The New York Times

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• How Wikipedia Became a Propaganda Site

  Voters who googled the question would likely have encountered a Wikipedia article listing presidential czars—as valuable a resource as any. Visitors who accessed the “List of executive branch czars” article on July 24 would have been informed that Kamala Harris had, indeed, served as border czar. But those who came to the page a day later, specifically after 4:02 p.m. Eastern Time, would have found no mention of Harris at all.

Musk

• Scholars in support of the Moraes Brazil decision against X

  We, the undersigned, wish to express our deep concern about the > ongoing attacks by Big Tech companies and their allies against Brazil’s digital sovereignty. The Brazilian judiciary’s dispute with Elon Musk is just the latest example of a broader effort to restrict the ability of sovereign nations to define a digital development agenda free from the control of mega-corporations based in the United States.

  Signed by Acemoglu, Zucman, Varoufakis, Cory Doctorow, Morozov, Mazzucato, Piketty, and many others. Somehow no one is talking about this petition and its embrace of censorship?

  • HN thread

• Update makes X available again to many in Brazil

  • X evades Brazil ban using Cloudflare

  • Musk Finds a Way Around Brazil's X Ban

• Elon Musk threatens to sue FAA after feds propose fining SpaceX $633,000

• Elon Musk amplifies Trump rally bomb threats that police call false

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Thermal Runaway: Solving The Bane Of Electric Vehicles

• With a $200 adapter from GM; other brands will void warranties. GM electric vehicles can finally access Tesla Superchargers

• Why the hype for hybrid cars won't last

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• In unprecedented move, Ohio is funding construction of private religious schools

• The Miraculous Resurrection of Notre-Dame

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Yale, Princeton and Duke Are Questioned over Decline in Asian Students

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• AWS claims its cloud faces competition from on-premises IT

• Google Wins Fight over €1.5B EU Fine for Ads Abuse

  • Google scores rare legal win as 1.49B euro fine scrapped

  • Google gets win from European court as €1.5B fine overturned

• iPhone 16 has a new wireless recovery mode for when iOS updates go bad

• So many music festivals have been canceled this year. What's going on?

• Former MoviePass CEO admits the $9.95 'unlimited' ticket scheme was fraud

• Zynga owes IBM $45M after using 1980s patented technology for hit games

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Asgard launches world's first DDR5-9600 DIMMs

• Open source maintainers underpaid, swamped by security, and going gray

• The lone US manufacturer of boutique keycaps may have just been saved

• ppp 2.5.1 released

  Pppd can now measure and log the round-trip time (RTT) of LCP echo-requests and record them in a binary file structured as a circular buffer. Other programs or scripts can examine the file and provide real-time statistics on link latency. This is enabled by a new "lcp-rtt-file" option.

  • You might not realize it, but this little bit of software is involved in a staggering amount of the total traffic passed over the internet. Some of it dates back to 1996 or earlier. One of those lovely things that just does its job and never needs attention, for the most part.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• California passes protections for performers' likeness from AI

  • California governor signs laws to protect actors against unauthorized use of AI

  • California governor goes on AI law signing spree, but demurs on the big one

• Due to AI fakes, the "deep doubt" era is here

• BlackRock, Microsoft invest $100B in AI

  • BlackRock and Microsoft plan $30B fund to invest in AI infrastructure

  • Microsoft, BlackRock form fund to sink up to $100B into AI infrastructure

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Stardust: Iridium pivots to 5G IoT direct-to-device satellite services

  • I haven't kept up, have "Iridium flares" destroyed astronomy yet?

• Elon Musk's Starlink satellites 'blocking' view of the universe

• Bright unintended electromagnetic radiation from Starlink satellites

• Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster adds to UFO speculation

  Asked about UAP during a Sept. 6 appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” McMaster stated that “there are phenomena that have been witnessed by multiple people that are just inexplicable by any kind of science available to us.”

Crypto con games

• FTX judge threatens sanctions on former exec Salame for lying in guilty plea

• Caroline Ellison, Star Witness in FTX Case, Should Receive Lenient Sentence

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Tupperware files for bankruptcy as demand slides

  • Tupperware files for bankruptcy as its colorful containers lose relevance

• US Faces a Deficit of 6 Million Workers in Less Than a Decade - Bloomberg

  Over the next five to seven years, “our labor pool’s growth will not match our population’s,” said Ron Hetrick, an economist at Lightcast. “We will increasingly have more consumers than producers, driving price hikes and product shortages.” One reason is that older workers are no longer driving the expansion of US jobs, as they were for the two pre-pandemic decades. The study found that out of 5 million workers who left the workforce since 2020, about four-fifths of them were over the age of 55.

• 23andMe independent directors resign from board

  • 23andMe Board resigns after CEO failed to produce actionable buyout proposal

• IBM is quietly axing jobs, source says

• Boeing suspends jobs for thousands after strike

  • Boeing Furloughs Salaried Staff to Preserve Cash Amid Strike

• Fed Cuts Rates by Half Percentage Point

  • Treasury yields rise as investors look to Fed rate decision

  • The Federal Reserve is on the verge of cutting interest rates. Here's what to know

  • 'Apolitical' Fed Slashes Rates By 50bps With Stocks & Home-Prices At Record Highs | ZeroHedge

  • Fed Expected to Cut Interest Rates for First Time in Four Years: Live Updates - The New York Times

  • Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by 50 bps

  • The Fed Says Inflation Is Over - The Atlantic

  The Federal Reserve has declared victory in the war on inflation. At its meeting today, the central bank announced that, after setting higher interest rates for two years in an effort to tame prices, it is finally beginning to bring them back down. The Fed lowered interest rates by 0.50 percent (or 50 basis points), and has suggested that future cuts will be similarly sized. That’s more aggressive than some observers expected, but even at that pace, the super-low rates of pre-pandemic America are still years away. The immediate financial effects will therefore be modest. More important, in all likelihood, is the message that the announcement sends: Inflation is no longer a major concern, and the Fed is now focused on keeping the economy, particularly employment, running strong. No one really knows how interest rates and consumer prices interact.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Judge Pauses 5,000-Well Wyoming Oil Project

• House committee approves bill requiring new cars to have AM radio

• Babylon Bee has obtained this exclusive, official, 100% real Gavin Newsom election ad

Harris / Democrats

• Russian election interference efforts focus on the Harris-Walz campaign

  Russia and Iran have both undertaken cyber influence operations headed into the 2024 presidential election. In our last report, published on August 8, we detailed how Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations sought to undermine the Republican campaign through targeted hack-and-leak operations, covert social media personas, and imposter US news sites. In the past two months, Microsoft has observed a notable shift in Russian influence operations tactics reflecting the changing U.S. political environment. Specifically, we have observed Russia pivot towards targeting the Harris-Walz campaign, with actors disseminating fabricated videos designed to sow discord and spread disinformation about the new Democratic nominee Vice President Harris.

• Harris refuses to veer off script in her second high-profile interview - POLITICO

• Scientific American Didn't Need to Endorse Anybody (Archive)

  the magazine’s decision to break with tradition and endorse Kamala Harris—only the second such nod in the magazine’s history—is a mistake, as was its 2020 endorsement of Joe Biden, on multiple levels. I understand the frustration that probably led to this decision. Donald Trump is the most willfully ignorant man ever to hold the presidency. He does not understand even basic concepts of … well, almost anything. (Yesterday, he explained to a woman in Michigan that he would lower food prices by limiting food imports—in other words, by reducing the supply of food. Trump went to the Wharton School, where I assume “supply and demand” was part of the first-year curriculum.) He is insensate to anything that conflicts with his needs or beliefs, and briefing him on any topic is virtually impossible.

Trump / Right / Jan6

• Cops confirm no threat to Donald Trump's rally following report of 'explosives' found in car | Daily Mail Online

  A spokesperson for the Nassau County Police Department confirmed to DailyMail.com that 'there was a suspicious occurrence' on Wednesday ahead of Trump's speech where thousands of MAGA fans are gathering. But there is 'no validity' to a report that there was an 'explosive device found.' Reports of explosives being found at the site are unfounded,' said Nassau County Commissioner of Police Patrick Ryde. 'There is a person who is being questioned who may have been training a bomb detection dog near the site. The individual with the bomb dog falsely reported explosives being found and that individual is currently being detained by police.'

  • False reports of explosives found in car near Trump rally spread online

• Teasmster's union releases polling data

  • Trump 59%, Harris 34%. ... resulting in no endorsement.

  • Teamsters won’t endorse in presidential race after releasing internal polling showing most members support Trump | CNN Politics

  It’s the first time in nearly three decades that the union has not endorsed a presidential candidate. “Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement. “We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries – and to honor our members’ right to strike – but were unable to secure those pledges.”

• Iranian hackers tried to pass stolen Trump campaign info to Biden camp, U.S. intel says | Just The News

  The FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said the hackers have also tried to send private information from the Trump campaign to the U.S. media, but did not indicate whether any of the information was ever published. “Iranian malicious cyber actors in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” the agencies said in a joint statement. “There is currently no information indicating those recipients replied.” The intelligence agencies claimed the new findings are the latest in Iran's efforts to "stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process." They also warned that Russia and China are trying to "exacerbate" division in the United States.

• What a Losing Campaign Looks Like - The Atlantic

  How does Donald Trump’s running mate have so much time on his hands?

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• John Grisham on death row prisoner: 'Texas is about to execute innocent man'

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• U.S. military to apologize to Alaska Natives for 1800s terror campaign

• U.S. Shrugs as World War III Approaches

• Despite Russia warnings, Western critical infrastructure remains unprepared

World

• Australia arrests dozens over app allegedly used by criminals worldwide

  • Australian police infiltrate encrypted messaging app Ghost and arrest dozens

  • Arrests across Australia police target "Ghost" app allegedly used by criminals

  • Murders, drug deals stopped as police hack 'secret' app

  • Dozens arrested as crime message network dismantled

• How and why drug traffickers are infiltrating Costa Rica

• Mexico to launch ‘impossible’ process to elect 7,000 judges

  In the capital Mexico City, voters will have to choose judges for more than 150 positions, including on the Supreme Court, from a list of 1,000 candidates that most people have never heard of. For each of the 150 posts, space will be allotted for voters to write out individually the names of up to 10 preferred candidates. Without makeshift solutions such as dividing up the judges into subdistricts, it could take 45 minutes just to fill in the ballot papers, one analyst estimated. Even with such fixes, voters will still have to choose from many dozens of unfamiliar names. “It’s impossible,” said Jaime Olaiz-González, a constitutional theory professor at Mexico’s Universidad Panamericana. “In no country, not even the most backward, have they proposed a system like this.”

• Cuba slashes size of daily bread ration as ingredients run thin

• Farmer moves border marker and accidentally makes Belgium bigger, France smaller

• Ship With 20K Tons of Explosive Cargo From Russia Spotted Near NATO Base - Newsweek

  • Bomb/fertilizer ship RUBY look like she has lost propulsion

Iran / Houthi

• "dump yer devices!"

  The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has ordered its Members, as well as all linked Groups in Syria and Iraq, to Dispose of any Personnel Electronic Device including Radios, PDAs, Pagers, and Phones that has been received in the last 4-8 Months.

Israel

• Home solar energy systems exploded in several areas of Beirut

• Israel declares start of 'new phase' of war - Lebanon

Beep Beep Boom

• Israel Kills Thousands More Terrorists with Exploding AOL CDs

• Israel planted explosives in 5k Hezbollah pagers, say sources

• Gold Apollo says it did not make pagers used in Lebanon explosions

• What we know about the Hezbollah pagers attack

• Report: Mossad Intercepted Hezbollah Pager Shipment, Loaded Them With Explosives.

• What we know about firm linked to Lebanon pagers

• Hezbollah pagers were built by BAC Consulting in Hungary

• Detonated Hezbollah pagers were made in Hungary

• was forced to be carried out Early; after Hezbollah had become Suspicious of the Pagers,

• Israel detonates Hezbollah walkie-talkies in second wave after pager attack

• Walkie talkies explode across Lebanon a day after pager explosions

• Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

• Exploding walkie-talkies kill nine and injure 300 in new attacks across Lebanon

• Walkie-talkie explosions reported in Lebanon after deadly pager attack

• Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say

• Hezbollah Walkie-Talkies Blow Up Across Lebanon in Second Wave of Attacks

• Hezbollah threatens revenge for pager explosions that killed at least 12, wounded 1000s

• Walkie-talkie explosions rock Lebanon a day after pager attacks

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia's Espionage War in the Arctic

China

• Mercedes exits luxury EV joint venture with China's BYD

Health / Medicine

• Should young kids take the new anti-obesity drugs? What the research says

• Adderall in Higher Doses May Raise Psychosis Risk, Study Says

• U.S. overdose deaths plummet, saving thousands of lives

• Breastfeeding from 1 to 8 months associated with better cognitive abilities at 4

• Neuralink gets FDA's breakthrough device tag for 'Blindsight' implant

• (Dec 2023) The shady Story behind why we think Veganism is healthy

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Superbugs 'could kill 39M people by 2050' amid rising drug resistance

• Just One Shot of an Existing Vaccine Could Prevent Mpox Infection : ScienceAlert

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• A bottle of water per email: the hidden environmental costs of using AI chatbots

• 'Lost' Bird Species Haven't Been Seen in at Least a Decade

• Researchers find live fungi, bacteria and viruses high in the Earth's atmosphere

• Scientists discover how many chemicals from food packaging enter our bodies

• EPA Scientists Faced Retaliation After Finding Harm from Chemicals

• Colorado Cowboys and Conservationists Joined Forces to Stop Drilling