2024-09-22

Kamala's cooking money and beer, Space rocks, Nintendo suit, Librarians should have taken over in 1996, Ghost jobs aren't real, People like meat.

etc

• Previously Unknown Mozart Composition Turns Up in a German Library

• Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

Horseshit

• Human cases of raccoon parasite may be your best excuse to buy a flamethrower

• Saw pictures of the "with some attachments": several hundred pounds on a skid that looked like a regular camera dolly: 28 Years Later: Danny Boyle's New Zombie Flick Was Shot on an iPhone 15

• Plants can grow in near-darkness, new research shows–three promising benefits

• Wait, I thought it was earlier than ever and we had to give kids drugs to stop it now? Puberty Hasn't Changed Since the Ice Age

• The Dangerous, Secretive World of Extreme Fishing

• Intel and AWS Expand Strategic Collaboration, Helping U.S.-Based Manufacturing

• Sunken yacht believed to contain safes with sensitive intelligence data

• UK public washing their clothes too often, says major laundry brand

• Big Poultry: How a secretive industry rules the roost in North Carolina

• Private Equity's Lucrative Takeover of Minor League Baseball

• A rare treat getting rarer: Chimayo Red, New Mexico's 'holy Chile'

• Bay Area food bank move blocked by lawsuit citing 'historic parking lot'

• DCs are wasting watts and cash on superfluous server power • The Register

  • If you're selling electricity on cost plus, why would you want your customers to use less of it?

• Why Do So Many Tiny Asteroids Have Moons?

  • Because most of them are not bodies, but the barycenter of a gravel shoal. its not that they have moons but that our optics are now able to resolve some of the details of the shoal that "science writers" previously thought were solid things.

  • Added joy: even minor traffic through and around these bodies is likely to fling rocks all over and with abandon: these are meta-stable systems that may contain much more kinetic energy than we suspect.

celebrity gossip

• Jony Ive’s company LoveFrom has bought half a city block in SF

Musk

• Hollywood Can't Ditch Its Teslas Fast Enough:"They're Destroying Their Leases.."

• Elon Musk's X Backs Down in Brazil

  • X capitulates to Brazil's Supreme Court

• Russian troops receive Musk’s Cybertrucks

  • Chechen Warlord Claims Elon Musk Remotely Disabled His Armed Cybertruck

• Hyperloop Company Has Successfully Propelled a Vessel Through a Tube

• Elon Musk Is Debasing American Society

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Volkswagen Polo production ends in Europe to prep for smaller, affordable EVs

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• New study links brain network damage to increased religious fundamentalism

• Plants, Psychodiversity, & the Paranormal

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Google calls for halting use of WHOIS for TLS domain verifications

• Concord Was Reportedly Considered 'Future of Playstation' and Cost $400M

• FCC wants all phones unlocked in sixty days, AT&T and T-Mobile aren't so keen

• Patent attorney analysis: What's the patent Nintendo is suing Palworld for?

  The most recent such application made jointly by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company is “Patent No. 7545191” from July 30, 2024. According to Kurihara, the companies requested for the review to be accelerated, and the patent was approved as soon as August 22. This special, sped up examination process was used to approve three other patents as well (filed between February 6 and March 5). As the parent patent of these four divisional patents was registered in December 2021, they are legally effective against Palworld, which launched in January this year

  Based on these circumstances, the attorney speculates that Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed these four divisional patents as part of a common technique of amending an existing patent for use in litigation against a specific (allegedly infringing) property.

  The previously mentioned Patent No. 7545191 appears to, in essence, be about the mechanic of catching Pokémon. It describes (in extremely simplified terms) the following processes: aiming a capture item (Poké Ball) at a character placed on the field (Pokémon), releasing the capture item in a direction determined by player input, judgement of whether capturing is successful or not upon contact between the capture item and Pokémon, changing of the Pokémon’s status to “owned by the player” when capturing is successful. In addition, the patent also covers the mechanic of having capture probability displayed to the player, regardless of whether it uses colors, graphics or numbers.

• Inside Annapurna Interactive's Mass Walkout

• Hachette vs. Internet Archive: We're Still Fighting for Fair Use

• FTC report assails social networks' privacy, safety practices

• (1996) Librarians Should Rule the Net

  Computer culture is also laced with the attitude of, "I'll do what I want and tough luck if you don't like it." The people deciding whose needs get served by software that's given away for free are, for the most part, programmers who are fortunate enough to have the time and the freedom to putter around (the people, as a friend who's a secretary pointed out, who do not have to worry about having their keystrokes monitored at work or having to change diapers at home). As a result, the Internet tends to be driven by their desire for the coolest toys rather than by the needs of most people.

  Libraries, in contrast, are built around the idea that they need to serve everyone. Instead of focusing on the latest toys, they focus on resources that everyone will be able to use, and they strongly believe in ensuring universal access. In short, libraries are based on a culture that says that knowledge and information must be available to everyone if our democracy is to survive. Computer science types occasionally make grandiose statements about helping humanity; librarians actually try to do it.

• Starlink imposes $100 "congestion charge" on new users in parts of US

• Someone working on fundamental showstoppers for VR? wow, thats a switch New approach to Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation may solve motion sickness in VR

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• I Like Makefiles

  • HN comments

• Anker warns people to stop using some of its iPhone power banks, issues recall

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• LinkedIn suspends AI training using UK user data

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA has a fine plan for deorbiting the ISS–unless Russia gets in the way

• Being left behind by Starliner craft was hard, say stranded astronauts

• NARA's UAP files download links went live today

Crypto con games

• Bitcoin Mining Shutdown Cause 20% Surge in Electricity Bills

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Economics Has Its Big Tobacco Corruption Moment

• Americans Are Falling Behind on Their Bills (Archive)

• Manager Proves HR System Is Auto-Rejecting Candidates Using His Own Resume | YourTango

  "Auto rejection systems from HR make me angry," the manager wrote in their comment. They went on to explain that while searching for a new employee recently, their HR department was unable to find a single qualified candidate for the job in three months of searching. Naturally, the manager became suspicious and decided to investigate. "I created myself a new email and sent them a modified version of my CV with a fake name to see what was going on with the process," they wrote. "And guess what, I got auto-rejected. HR didn't even look at my CV."

• Intel Fell from Global Chip Champion to Takeover Target

• Ghost Jobs

  Hedge funds scrape job boards to analyze whether a company is growing or not. When you apply for a job on Indeed / LinkedIn, you’re prob not applying for a real role—you’re just helping a company avoid getting shorted by Dingleberry Creek Asset Management in suburban Connecticut.

• In the US opioid-maker Purdue is bankrupt. Its global counterparts make millions

• Unexpected Consequences of McDonald's Touchscreen Kiosks

  touchscreen kiosks have added extra work for kitchen staff and pushed customers to order more food than they do at the cash register. The kiosks show the unintended consequences of technology in fast-food and retail settings, including self-checkout.

  • "6 large fries. and a diet coke"

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Newsom's deepfake election laws are already being challenged in federal court

  • Gavin Newsom signs laws to crack down on election deepfakes created by AI

• Governor Newsom signs landmark bill to protect kids from social media addiction

• Court rules nearly 98,000 Arizonans whose citizenship hadn’t been confirmed can vote | AP News

Harris / Democrats

• Opinion | Padma Lakshmi: Kamala Harris’s Love of Cooking Could Help Make Her a Great President - The New York Times

  Talking about food is a way to relate to more Americans, even those uninterested in her politics. We’ve all been eating since we were babies, and we’re experts on our own tastes. Talking about food paves the way to harder conversations. Food removes barriers and unites us. Ms. Harris evinces clear delight in cooking and in talking about almost any type of food — a passion that is core to who she is, like basketball for Barack Obama or golf for Donald Trump.

• IRS Agents Endorse Kamala Harris - Americans for Tax Reform

  • NTEU Endorses Harris for President - National Treasury Employees Union - NTEU

  “When it comes to treating federal employees with respect, valuing their service and investing in their work, Kamala Harris is the clear choice,” Greenwald said. “She shares our values and our commitment to making sure that the federal government works for all Americans. She has been a strong advocate for the issues that matter most to federal employees: fair pay, paid family leave, adequate agency funding and staffing, and robust collective bargaining rights.”

• Harris Enters Homestretch With a Far Bigger, Costlier Campaign Than Trump - The New York Times

  Vice President Kamala Harris entered the homestretch of the general election building a campaign that was bigger than former President Donald J. Trump’s in nearly every discernible category. She is raising more money than Mr. Trump, with her campaign collecting more than four times as much as his did in August. She is spending far more money than he is — nearly three times more in August. And she is holding on to more money than Mr. Trump, ending the month with $100 million more in the bank than him.

  The vast discrepancies between the two operations were laid bare in new filings with the Federal Election Commission on Friday night from the candidates’ two main campaign committees, Harris for President and Donald J. Trump for President Inc. The reports detailed their August fund-raising, costs and cash-on-hand as of Aug. 30, along with similar figures from their national party committees.

• Kamala Wants to Free Us From Freedom | An Official Journal Of The NRA

• These are now showing up on shelves: (July 2024) Minocqua Brewing Co. to brew beer in honor of Kamala Harris

  Minocqua Brewing Co. is beginning production of Hope Expresso Stout. A four-pack is $17 and is available for presale right now. They'll ship in September. The owner of Minocqua Brewing Co. previously launched an anti-Donald Trump billboard campaign and tried unsuccessfully to keep Trump's name off the presidential primary ballot in Wisconsin.

  • Wisconsin company sells Antifa, Kamala beer to support Democrats | The Post Millennial | thepostmillennial.com

  A Wisconsin-based beer company is selling cans featuring Antifa, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, as well as "MAGA tears" in the area of Chicago, Illinois.

Biden Inc

• Biden Kicks Off First Cabinet Meeting in Nearly a Year by Passing Mic to Jill

Trump / Right / Jan6

• Where did Routh get his money?

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Fire engineer arrested on suspicion of setting blazes in Northern California

• Texas couple sentenced to prison after pit bulls killed 81-year-old man

• FBI board vessel managed by company of Baltimore bridge collapse ship | AP News

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• New Docs Shed Light On Air Force’s ‘Goal’ To Reduce ‘White Male Population’ Joining Officer Ranks | The Daily Caller

World

• India plans to build a fleet of small nuclear reactors

• Internet surveillance firm Sandvine will leave 56 'non-democratic' countries

• Construction giant collapse sees 2,200 jobs cut

• Adam Neumann's startup Flow opens co-living community in Saudi Arabia

• Facts about Britain

  • With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families.
  • The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.

• Albania Plans to Create a Muslim State in Tirana as Symbol of Tolerance

China

• China leads world in 57 of 64 critical technologies; up from 3 just 20 years ago

Health / Medicine

• Doctor who sounded alarm on ultra-processed food urges tougher action

• The FDA approves an at-home nasal spray flu vaccine

• What Happened to 23andMe?

  • Rumors are loud that "sell all data to China" was the whole plan.

• How Ozempic Works–and What's Still a Mystery

• Survey: 13.2% of past antidepressant users had persistent genital numbness

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Antarctica's Ozone Hole Is Healing and Set to Recover by 2066

• Reindeer herders are fighting to save their land and a way of life

• Vaporizing plastics recycles them into nothing but gas

  • Not with combustion, silly! You want to just burn fuels to turn them into energy?

• VR system mixes physical and virtual worlds to drive home climate urgency

• Scientists calculate Earth's temperature changes over 485M years

• Our Taste for Flesh Has Exhausted the Earth

  Worldwide, 80 billion animals are slaughtered every year for meat. Raising all those animals has already claimed most of the world’s farmland. It has led to zoonotic diseases and vast deforestation. It has polluted air and water and spewed planet-heating gasses into the atmosphere.