2024-10-07

Hurricanes and recovery, celebrity bear murder, hot handed journo, too much choice, Hillary on control, Musk memes, buying Lebanon elections, "law enforcement" backdoors, Antarctic spring

etc

• Solar wind from Oct 3's coronal mass ejection expected to arrive today (Oct 6)

• Old Vintage Computing Research: So thieves broke into your storage unit - again

  • HN comments

• Scientists Found a Surprising Way to Make Fungus Happy

• there have been 14 hurricane formations in the Gulf of Mexico that then tracked eastward and made landfall in Florida

NC/TN flodds / Helene

• If you encounter someone claiming to represent FEMA asking for money, be careful as that is likely a scam

  We do NOT take donations, money, or property for any reason. We do NOT ask for or accept cash donations or volunteers for disaster response.

• Chimney Rock rumors addressed

  Rutherford County Emergency Management is addressing the rumors. Here is the statement:

  "We are aware of several false reports circulating on social media on the situation in Chimney Rock. We want to address these rumors directly to ensure the public has accurate information.NO GOVERNMENT SEIZURE OF CHIMNEY ROCK: There was no "special meeting" held in Chimney Rock on October 2nd involving discussions of the federal, state, or local governments seizing the town. These claims are entirely false.

• FEMA and the Red Cross seem to be methodically taking over distribution centers and shutting them down to "inventory" them.

• FEMA abandons residents of devastated NC town because of 'road closed' sign

  BAT CAVE, North Carolina — Residents of a tiny North Carolina town that was almost totally destroyed by Hurricane Helene fending for themselves after FEMA told them that a “road closed” sign is an insurmountable obstacle for the agency to navigate. “FEMA called me and told me they wanted to inspect my house then called me back to say they couldn’t drive around the ‘road closed’ sign. They weren’t allowed,” local Chelsea Atkins, 38, told The Post.

• we're literally smuggling aid past/around government organizations

• You see these MAGA accounts claiming that volunteers are being blocked

  If you hear that FEMA is blocking volunteers, understand this: it’s often a necessary precaution to protect both volunteers and the communities they are trying to serve. Stop believing in these MAGA dipshits who politicizing this tragedy for their own gain. Their misinformation is causing the real harm.

• Starlink direct-to-cell enabled for hurricane helene emergency messaging

  SpaceX and TMobile have been given emergency special temporary authority by the FCC to enable Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability to provide coverage for cell phones in the affected areas of Hurricane Helene. The satellites have already been enabled and started broadcasting emergency alerts to cell phones on all networks in North Carolina. In addition, we may test basic texting (SMS) capabilities for most cell phones on the T-Mobile network in North Carolina. SpaceX’s direct-to-cell constellation has not been fully deployed, so all services will be delivered on a best-effort basis.

Horseshit

• Company sues customer for reverse-engineering knockoff Keurig K-cup coffee pods

• Tool promised to help non-verbal people – but did it manipulate them instead?

• Voting begins for Alaska's Fat Bear Week after contestant was killed in attack

  Voting in Katmai National Park's famed Fat Bear Week was underway Wednesday after a bear killed one of this year's competitors and delayed the bracket reveal by a day. Bear #469 attacked and killed bear #402 on Monday morning at Brooks River in the Alaska park, the National Park Service said in a release, pushing Monday's bracket reveal to Tuesday.

• their team won

  Vanderbilt students tear down their goalpost and travel nearly 3 miles through downtown Nashville before throwing the goalpost in the river.

• Anti-Israel protester lights himself on fire outside of White House, video shows

  In a lengthy blog posted to his website before the incident on Saturday, Mena questioned the media’s objectivity in its coverage of the war in Gaza.

  • apparently a premeditated mutilation, not attempted suicide. In protest of the media's right wing bias and favoritism towards Israel.

  • Horrifying moment protestor self-immolates outside White House

  • "We Spread Misinformation": CBS Photojournalist Lights Himself On Fire Near White House  | ZeroHedge

• The Positive Freedom Problem - by Declan B.

  Choice Paralysis is the psychological phenomenon where the individual feels overwhelmed by the number of options available, leading to difficulty in making a decision. This stems from a philosophical principle called Positive Freedom, or Positive Liberty. This principle basically means that the more choice there is, the better. I will argue that this view is wrong, and that the endorsement of this idea by major international organizations, like the United Nations, and many corporations is causing a trickle-down of mass Choice Paralysis.

  While Positive Freedom advocates for increased options to improve personal liberty, this abundance often leads to indecision, dissatisfaction, and never-ending exploration. We must stop fetishizing choice. This applies at the commonsense level, but also at the policy level.

  • Anyone who wants less freedom should be able to have their wish without requiring the rest of the world to join them. It seems rare that people who feel overwhelmed by choice can say "this is horseshit, I'm not playing this game". They so often want no one to be able to play the game.

• It Takes Two to Think

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Hillary Clinton warns that allowing free speech on social media means ‘we lose control’

  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday that social media companies must moderate content on their platforms or else “we lose total control.” Clinton told CNN host Michael Smerconish that while there have been some steps taken at the state level to regulate social media, she wants to see more done by the federal government to moderate content. “We can look at the state of California, the state of New York, I think some other states have also taken action,” Clinton said. “But we need national action, and sadly, our Congress has been dysfunctional when it comes to addressing these threats to our children,” she added.

  “We should be, in my view, repealing something called Section 230, which gave, you know, platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs, that they shouldn’t be judged for the content that is posted,” Clinton said. “But we now know that that was an overly simple view, that if the platforms, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter/X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control,” she continued. “And it’s not just the social and psychological affects, it’s real life.” Clinton said the social media companies should have their immunity stripped so “guardrails” could be implemented.

Musk

• Elon Musk at Trump Rally in Butler, Pa: Full Speech

• Internet Viciously Memes Elon Musk's Jumpy Trump Rally Appearance

  Critiques of Musk’s jumping technique pointed out just how awkward he looked as well as Trump’s visual disgust when Musk took the stage. As Rolling Stone reported in August, Trump thinks Musk is “weird,” “boring,” annoying and has mood swings. In 2022, Trump publicly called Musk “another bullshit artist.”

Electric / Self Driving cars

• BYD delivers 100 of its K9UD electric transit buses to Uruguay

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Tech jobs are drying up and graduates are no longer guaranteed a role

• (Dec 2023) Do Black Holes have Singularities?

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• ByteDance is abusing the free video downloading service Cobalt for mass scraping

• No need for all that silly "Antitrust investigation" after all Google's Grip on Search Slips as TikTok and AI Startup Mount Challenge

• Why WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has gone 'nuclear' against Silver Lake

• We need a real GNU/Linux (not Android) smartphone ecosystem | Hacker News

• From AOL Time Warner to DirecTV and Dish: 20 years of media mergers

• Meta Is Probably Training AI on Images Taken by Meta Ray-Bans

• Collapse of national security elites' cyber firm leaves bitter wake

• WordPress vs. ACF

  The issue here is that the ACF team has been blocked by Mullenweg from accessing WordPress.org and the infrastructure it provides. This includes the SVN repositories (yes, in 2024 WordPress still uses SVN) that allow the ACF team to update their plugin. This puts the many WordPress sites using the plugin at risk if there is a serious vulnerability.

• Nintendo Kills Ryujinx After Yuzu

• Apple Slowly Moves Away from Its Annual Product Release Strategy

• How to Stop Advertisers from Tracking Your Teen Across the Internet

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Partitioning in the Chiplet Era

• PC Floppy Copy Protection: XEMAG Xelok

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Amazon could cut 14,000 managers soon and save $3B a year

• Transit vans are the key to Ford’s future

  Ford Pro, the commercial-vehicle division, is the most successful part of the company. Selling Transits and commercial versions of Ford’s pickups brought an operating profit of $5.5bn in the first half of 2024, nearly three times that of Ford Blue, the part of the firm making passenger vehicles powered by internal combustion, despite selling around half as many vehicles. Operating margins of 15.9% are far fatter than Blue’s 4.3%, and on a level with what Porsche makes selling pricey sports cars.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Gavin Newsom Bans California from Requiring ID to Vote

• Mystery surge in California tax revenue points to tech companies

• As Milton barrels toward Florida, FEMA's capacity could be tested

Harris / Democrats

• I am concerned about the security and well-being of civilians suffering in Lebanon

  the United States will provide nearly $157 million in additional assistance to the people of Lebanon

• VP Kamala Harris helped put together care packages for victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina today

  • Don't have to. Saw him delivering stuff last week. Could you imagine Trump doing this?

• We cannot allow him a second term

Biden Inc

• No FEMA money for migrants / FEMA money for migrants

  • but this was 2 years ago; so let's talk about what Trump did in 2019 instead!

Trump / Right / Jan6

• Conservative think tank targeting NASA employee communications about Musk, Trump

• Fact check: Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response | CNN Politics

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Chinese Hackers Penetrate 3 US Telecoms

  • U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack

  • Chinese hackers breached US court wiretap systems, WSJ reports

  • Chinese hackers access US telecom firms, worrying national security officials

  • Chinese hackers breached US court wiretap systems, WSJ reports

• War in the age of AI demands new weaponry

• May the DoD kill citizens now?

  The original directive contained an explicit prohibition, stating, "Under no circumstances shall any DoD Component or DoD employee engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassin@tion." This unequivocal language has been removed, paving the way for a dangerous new precedent that authorizes the targeting of both American citizens and foreign nationals—both on domestic soil and abroad—under vague and ominous "special circumstances."

World

• Italian prosecutors accuse 7 people, 2 firms over flawed Boeing plane parts

• Is Europe Becoming Ungovernable?

Israel

• Mossad's pager operation: Inside Israel's penetration of Hezbollah

• Emirates airline bans pagers and walkie-talkies after device attacks in Lebanon

China

• China aims to breed zebrafish aboard Tiangong space station

Health / Medicine

• Dental health benefits of fluoride in water may have declined, study finds

  • Fluoride in Our Drinking Water May Not Be as Useful as It Used to Be

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• I miss when they were "Murder hornets" Asian hornet nests tracked using micro radios

• aka "Spring" Antarctica is turning green at an alarming rate, satellite images show

  • Greening of Antartica shows how climate change affects the frozen continent

  • Believe it or not, this lush landscape is Antarctica

• Wanted: Expedition botanist to follow in Darwin's footsteps and look for plants

• Plastic-eating bacteria could combat pollution and possibly also utterly destroy civilisation.

• Water levels in major Amazon tributary tumble to record lows amid drought

• How satellite data has proven climate change is a climate crisis

• Drought has dried an Amazon River tributary to its lowest level in over 122 year

• Big Tech has cozied up to nuclear energy

• The UK ditched coal. Here's what the world can learn from it