2024-10-16
rightist rent-a-riots, preserve Mars from Musk, no volunteers for re-education, shroom scams, milking illegals, NYT right-wing hit on Harris, feelings over polls, Israel has used defenses
etc
Horseshit
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A tour of the weird places where the global elite hide wealth
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Grandmaster expelled from team chess championship after phone found in toilet
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Cheating alleged after men's world conker champion found with steel chestnut
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When should you give up? You certainly don’t want to give up too soon on finding your way out of the woods, and call the ski patrol unnecessarily. Similarly, you don’t want to give up on your dreams before they’re realized, or on your relationships because they’re sometimes troublesome; you want to be a reliable, determined, heroic individual—someone with grit, who follows through. But, also, persevering can be a grave mistake: sometimes, either actually or metaphorically, you need to admit that you’re lost and call for rescue. How much effort is enough? And when does continued effort become unwise?
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Scientists cast doubt on claims Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Spain
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What is the purpose of an open-front toilet seat?
Hugo Aguilar, P.E., the senior vice president of Codes and Standards at IAPMO, said the open-front seats reduce the chances that germs or bacteria will spread from person to person. “Open front seats and elongated toilet bowls for public restrooms minimize the risk of the user coming in contact with possible contamination from a previous user,” Aguilar said. Furthermore, Lynne Simnick, the director of Code Development for IAPMO, once told Slate that the seats allow for easier wiping after seated urination, in that they reduce the chances that someone’s hand will touch the seat. The same explanation has been offered by the American Society of Plumbing Engineers, which added that open-front seats help prevent contamination with urine, as well as “genital contact with the seat.”
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No One Prepared for How Much Man Eats at Olive Garden's Never-Ending Buffet
In two hours, Darryl managed to devour 11 bowls of pasta all by himself, and even had extra room for some breadsticks and two bowls of minestrone soup. He certainly made the most of the endless supply of food; Daysha, 25, told Newsweek that her father was "pretty full" the entire next day and spent most of it watching football in his recliner.
celebrity gossip
Obit
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Riots and the far right: the global network behind the violence
We've worked with Prose, an open-source intelligence start-up, to understand the online conversation around Southport on Telegram, the app where the stabbings were discussed, the narrative was developed, and the riots were organised. Previous reporting has highlighted specific pieces of misinformation that fuelled the riots: the fake name from news publisher Channel 3 Now, which they subsequently retracted and apologised for, and the individual bad actors in Telegram groups abroad. But now Sky News can reveal the full story.
What it shows is the nature of the new far-right - not a tightly organised hierarchy based in a specific location, but an international network of influencers and followers, working together almost like a swarm to stir up trouble. And it is extremely worrying for the security services. The head of MI5 Ken McCallum last week told Sky News that, compared to traditional radicalisation, the extreme right instead relies on a "pick and mix ideology" where people pull on hatred and misinformation from mostly online sources. Rather than specific organisations, it is, he said, a "crowd-sourced model".
Musk
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The “Paint It Black” video of eight years ago was no more “real” or “fake” than yesterday’s “We, Robot” demonstration, but at least it had the pretense of reality: it depicted a real car on real roads. Tesla’s latest spectacle likely cost orders of magnitude more to produce, but it didn’t even purport to show any actual real-world capability. The entire thing was pure fantasy, in a contained fantasy world, built on a movie theater lot that exists for the sole purpose of producing such spectacles.
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Elon Musk vows to sue California for denying SpaceX launches
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Elon Dreams and Bitter Lessons
Musk has been over-promising and under-delivering in terms of self-driving for existing Tesla owners for years now, so the jury is very much out on whether current cars get full unsupervised autonomy. But that doesn’t change the fact that those cars do have cameras, and those cameras are capturing data and doing fine-tuning right now, at a scale that Waymo has no way of matching. I don’t, for the record, know if the Tesla approach is going to work; my experience with both Waymo and Tesla definitely makes clear that Waymo is ahead right now (and the disengagement numbers for Tesla are multiple orders of magnitude worse). Most experts assume that LiDAR sensors are non-negotiable in particular.
The Tesla bet, though, is that Waymo’s approach ultimately doesn’t scale and isn’t generalizable to true Level 5, while starting with the dream — true autonomy — leads Tesla down a better path of relying on nothing but AI, fueled by data and fine-tuning that you can only do if you already have millions of cars on the road. That is the connection to SpaceX and what happened this weekend: if you start with the dream, then understand the cost structure necessary to achieve that dream, you force yourself down the only path possible, forgoing easier solutions that don’t scale for fantastical ones that do.
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SpaceX tells FCC it has a plan to make Starlink about 10 times faster
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Professor Andrew Coates, a physicist and Mars researcher from UCL, argues that human settlers would contaminate the planet and jeopardise the search for alien life. He claims humanity should only send a single astronaut to Mars if we ever want to learn the truth about life in our solar system. Speaking on the Today Programme, Professor Coates said: 'The last thing we need to be doing is taking life from Earth to Mars. Robotic exploration is the way to go.'
Electric / Self Driving cars
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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The professional licensing board of the Ontario College of Psychologists (the College) determined that due to his social media posts on these topics, Peterson was not qualified to retain his license as a clinical psychologist in the province and that he must undergo a course of re-education. Yet it has been revealed that "there was not a single available 'social media expert' available at hand to take on the task" of re-educating Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Ofcom urged to act after US firm claims Roblox is 'paedophile hellscape'
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Lots of PCs poised to fall off the Windows 10 update cliff one year from today
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SSL certificate lifetimes are going down. Dates proposed. 45 days by 2027 | Hacker News
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MS lost billions of dollars on HoloLens its IVAS military contract is in trouble
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Japanese game company Bandai Namco reportedly sending staff to "expulsion rooms"
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Digg? There is a name we haven't heard for some time... The Internet's Homepage
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TikTok Shop's affiliate marketing program is paying commissions to influencers
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Analog Renaissance: Why Novels Are More Important Than Ever in Our Digital Lives
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Spotify criticized for letting fake albums appear on real artist pages
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DOJ's radical and sweeping proposals risk hurting consumers, businesses, devs
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Why Surgeons Are Wearing the Apple Vision Pro in Operating Rooms
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Venture Capital Slammed by Fed Tightening: Exits Blocked After IPO/SPAC Collapse
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Boeing prepares layoff notices for workers as turmoil deepens
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Pumping the Magic Mushrooms - Bloomberg
Most cannabis companies used to be gold mining companies. That’s probably not true. It can’t really be true. But man are there a lot of cannabis companies that used to be gold mining companies. Some of them were crypto companies too, or became crypto companies after being cannabis companies, or did Covid-19 testing or artificial intelligence. There are not a lot of obvious synergies.
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Walgreens to close 1,200 stores as US pharmacies struggle to define a new role
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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What a Crackdown on Immigration Could Mean for Cheap Milk - The New York Times
Undocumented labor quietly props up the entire American economy — but nowhere more dramatically than on dairy farms.
Harris / Democrats
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Breaking down a NYT amplified right-wing hit job on Kamala Harris
It seems the New York Times has once more fallen into the trap of "publish first, question later" when it comes to Kamala Harris. In their latest foray into the realm of non-stories masquerading as journalism, they've decided to breathe life into accusations so flimsy they'd struggle to hold up a paper airplane: A conservative activist has cried "plagiarism" over a 15-year-old book, and somehow, this warrants the full Times treatment. Right from the headline, we're witnessing the birth of a non-story. The use of "seizes" suggests an opportunistic grab rather than a substantive discovery. Note the immediate counterpoint from a plagiarism expert, which should have been the end of this horsefuckery. Instead, it's just the beginning of a narrative that never needed to unfold.
What we have here is not a story about plagiarism. It's not even a story about Kamala Harris. It's a story about how easily the media can be manipulated into amplifying baseless accusations and how a respected institution like The New York Times repeatedly and pathologically lends credibility to what is essentially a political hit job. The real story – the one that should have been written – is about the systematic targeting of Black scholars and political figures under the guise of academic integrity. It's about the weaponization of plagiarism accusations as a political tool. And it's about the media's responsibility to discern between genuine controversies and manufactured outrage.
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Sunny Hostin Demands Media Do More to Drag Kamala Harris Over the Finish Line
“Look, I think that Kamala Harris has been running a flawless campaign, and that's why she raised billions of dollars -- a billion dollars,” she said. “I think it's because of the momentum that she has. I think it's because people believe in her. And I think people are showing that by the amount of money that they're willing to give to the campaign.”
I think we have the press to blame for a lot of this. About, you know -- Whoopi, you always say, you don't believe in polls. I'm with you now because I'm reading the press. First it was Kamala's not doing enough press. Then she goes on this huge press tour. She was here with us. I thought she was fantastic. She was energetic. The crowd went wild. It was electric. CNN, ‘Democrats grow anxious.’ Axios, ‘blue wall blues.’ Fox, ‘Dems are scared to death.’ No, Dems are not scared to death, Dems are pumped.
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As president, I will make sure that Black men can build wealth.
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Forget the polls: Cultural signs point toward a Harris victory
relying on the polls as accurate barometers of public opinion has been questioned ever since Donald Trump emerged as a political force. In 2016, the polls wildly missed the mark, as the vast preponderance of them gave Hillary Clinton a strong lead. Four years later, Joe Biden’s polling advantages overstated his actual results. After the 2020 election, there was talk of a “hidden Trump vote.” And in 2022, the polls missed again, pointing to a Republican red wave that failed to materialize. Sometimes a better predictor of our political futures is found in pop culture.
A recent CNN poll found majorities of likely voters say Harris’s temperament, background, life experience, ability to understand their problems, skills as a leader and vision for the country align with their image of a future president. Fewer than half ascribe those same qualities to Trump. Over the next few weeks, voters will see Kamala Harris in different settings, each giving her the ability to introduce herself to an electorate that is exhausted by Trump. And every day more polls will claim to predict a winner. But forget the polls. The cultural signs point toward Harris.
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Jimmy Carter Achieves His Goal, Lives Long Enough to Vote for Kamala Harris
Trump / Right / Jan6
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Inside America’s Fastest-Growing Criminal Enterprise: Sex Trafficking
I ask her if the sex trafficking of migrant girls had increased since the Biden administration threw open the border, leading to 8 million migrants crossing the southern border since 2021. “Yes,” she says. “Nearly all of my sex-trafficking rings now are migrant girls. The ads exploded within the first three months of the border being open. We started noticing new sites and ads in Spanish. That was very few before. Then sites dedicated to Latino girls popped up everywhere.” Since the border opened, Lisa added, over 90 percent of the ads are for migrant girls.
World
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The Netherlands is closing emptying prisons. What can other countries learn?
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WhatsApp vigilantes in India are converting Christians by force
How far-right Hindu nationalists use WhatsApp to target Christian families when they’re most vulnerable — by preventing them from burying their dead.
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Taliban media forced to stop showing images of 'living beings' under new laws
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Canada Expels Indian Diplomats, Accusing Them of Criminal Campaign
Israel
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Israel grapples with shortage of air defence missiles
The country’s Iron Dome system has shot down short-range rockets and drones fired by Hamas from Gaza, while David’s Sling has intercepted heavier rockets fired from Lebanon, and the Arrow system has blocked ballistic missiles from Iran. Houthi rebels in Yemen and Iraqi militias have also fired missiles, rockets and drones at Israel. The Israeli military claimed in April that, with the help of the US and other allies, it achieved a 99 per cent interception rate against an Iranian salvo of 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles. But Israel had less success fending off a second Iranian barrage of over 180 ballistic missiles fired on October 1. Almost three dozen missiles hit Israel’s Nevatim air base, according to open source intelligence analysts, while one missile exploded 700 metres away from the headquarters of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.
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More Details on Israel Sabotaging Hezbollah Pagers and Walkie-Talkies
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An Amazon executive has appeared in a company video wearing a pendant shaped like a map of Israel emblazoned with the Palestinian flag, prompting some to call for a boycott of the tech behemoth.
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
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Pets in China are earning snack money in cafes as their owners send them to work
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China's EV Boom Caught Western Car Companies Asleep at the Wheel
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Taiwan to have satellite internet service as protection in case of Chinese attack
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Farms to fame: How China's rural influencers are redefining country life