2024-10-19

kale linked to Holocaust denial, NYT bias, "pray the populism away" therapy, NYT says we should like Harris more, media hates MAGA, King visits kangaroos, Froot Loops worse than secondhand smoke

Cool

• Actual Remy from Ratatouille

etc

• You Can Now See the Code That Helped End Apartheid | WIRED

  Using a Toshiba T1000 PC running an early version of MS-DOS, Jenkin wrote a system using the most secure form of crypto, a one-time pad, which scrambles messages character by character using a shared key that’s as long as the message itself. Using the program, an activist could type a message on a computer and encrypt it with a floppy disk containing the one-time pad of random numbers. The activist could then convert the encrypted text into audio signals and play them to a tape recorder, which would store them. Then, using a public phone, the activist could call, say, ANC leaders in London or Lusaka, Zambia, and play the tape. The recipient would use a modem with an acoustic coupler to capture the sounds, translate them back into digital signals, and decrypt the message with Jenkin’s program.

  One potential problem was getting the materials—the disks and computers—to Africa. The solution, as Graham-Cumming noted, was accomplished by enlisting a sympathetic Dutch flight attendant who routinely flew to Pretoria. “She didn't know what she was taking in, because everything was packaged up; we didn't talk about it at all,” says Jenkin. “She just volunteered to take the stuff, and she took in the laptops and acoustic modems and those sorts of things.”

  • (Sep 7 2024) John Graham-Cumming's blog: Cracking an old ZIP file to help open source the ANC's "Operation Vula" secret crypto code

Horseshit

• The logical fallacy at the core of patent law, what does non-obviousness test?

• Squick pics be warned: Doctor Fukushi Masaichi And The Art Of Preserving Tattooed Skin

• Florida domed homes have survived category 5 hurricanes

• German Supreme Court Rules Against Photographer in Landmark Case

  Earlier this year, a photographer sued a woman after she posted a photo of her grandmother’s apartment on a vacation property rental website. The apartment photo featured a wallpaper based on photographs taken by Stefan Böhme. The wallpaper was legally purchased, but eight years after she began renting out the property online, the granddaughter received a letter from a Canadian company alleging copyright infringement because the rental photos included Böhme’s photographs. This remarkable case, which ultimately resulted in a lawsuit, opened a fresh can of worms, as there are numerous wallpapers that include copyrighted work. Böhme alleges that not only was his copyright violated, so too were his moral rights, as he was not credited in the photographs that showed his photos on the rental property website.

  the German Supreme Court has ruled that yes, a person is allowed to photograph a wallpaper featuring copyright-protected work and publish the image.

• Short jump from believing kale smoothies cure cancer to denying Holocaust

  Holding a strong belief in a fringe theory is a form of commitment. This could be public commitment or it could just be something you hold to yourself, but in any case I’m thinking of the decisive step from “all things are possible” or “let’s have an open mind on this one” to “I believe this theory” and “the powers that be are suppressing it.” Once you’ve passed this threshold, it lowers the barriers for future such commitments. There’s lots of psychology research on this sort of thing, no? Once you’ve broken a rule or gone past an inhibition, it’s a lot easier to keep doing the taboo behavior. Sometimes you can start crazy, other times the craziness creeps up on you. Kinda like how they told us in junior high that marijuana is a gateway drug. The fringe-dwellers whom I’ve known have started with offbeat takes that are interesting and on the border of plausibility and then stepped further and further into the wilderness

• The Terminator: How James Cameron predicted our fears about AI, 40 years ago

• What the US Army's 1959 'Soldier of Tomorrow' Got Right About the Future of War

celebrity gossip

• The Stallman Report authors receive death threats, bravely continue forth anyway

  Richard Stallman's political program speaks out in defense of sexual violence, harassment, and even coercion. Many of those to whom his message appeals are willing to employ harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence to retaliate against those who speak out against him.

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Gray Lady For Hire: NYT Reporters and Their Sources Taking Cash from Billionaire Green Groups

  For years, the New York Times has collaborated with a billionaire-funded ENGO network to publish ideologically slanted, factually inaccurate stories on topics near and dear to eco-activist hearts. These articles are written by reporters trained and financed by the activist group Earth Journalism Network (EJN). And at least in the latest case, the “expert sources” quoted in these stories–high-profile environmental activist groups and sympathetic academics–are part of the very same funding network, receiving financial support from the foundations that fund EJN. In every instance we investigated, the purpose of the EJN-sponsored story was to mirror and amplify the group’s otherwise niche environmental agenda.

• Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and animosity

  Scholars and the public have raised concerns about the recent erosion of US democratic values, which has been exacerbated by hostility between rival political groups (partisan animosity) and acceptance of violent or nondemocratic styles of political engagement (antidemocratic attitudes). Voelkel et al. conducted large-scale field experiments with 25 interventions designed to decrease American partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes (see the Policy Forum by Nyhan and Titiunik). Most interventions reduced partisan animosity when they established common ground among partisans. However, reducing partisan animosity did not necessarily decrease support for political violence or nondemocratic practices. Therefore, partisan animosity may be more conceptually distinct than previously thought.

  • The "treatments" tested

  • Participants estimated to what extent outpartisans would accept extreme negative events (e.g., many US COVID-19–related deaths) to increase the odds of winning the next election, then received feedback that the average outpartisan would not accept such events for electoral advantage.
  • Participants watched a video suggesting that economic interests unite most Americans across political divides and that the superrich are a common enemy of most Democrats and Republicans.
  • Participants watched a video of civic unrest and police repression in several countries where democracy collapsed and saw scenes from the 2021 US Capitol riot. Participants then answered questions about how they could protect democracy.
  • Participants read about moral foundation theory, which argues that we all share the same six moral foundations. Participants read that people use these moral foundations differently on different issues.

Musk

• Musk's Empire Risks Being Targeted by EU for Potential X Fines

  • EU considers including Elon Musk's business empire to calculate potential X fine

• Musk steers X disputes to conservative Texas courts in service terms update

• People are flocking to Bluesky as X makes more unwanted changes

• Tesla's Full Self-Driving software under investigation by NHTSA

  • Tesla Self-Driving System Will Be Investigated by Safety Agency

  • US probes Tesla's Full Self Driving software after fatal crash

  • US to probe Tesla's 'Full Self-Driving' system after pedestrian killed

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Volkswagen's EV plant is on the brink of collapse

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• (Aug 2024) A Lexicon for First-Trimester US: Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound Consensus Conference Recommendations

  Since cardiac development is a gradual process and cardiac chambers are not fully formed in the first trimester, the term cardiac activity is recommended in lieu of ‘heart motion’ or ‘heartbeat.’ The terms ‘living’ and ‘viable’ should also be avoided in the first trimester. ‘Pregnancy failure’ is replaced by early pregnancy loss (EPL)

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Retraction of high-profile reproducibility study prompts soul-searching

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Netflix raises prices as password boost fades

• Critical hardcoded SolarWinds credential now exploited in the wild

• this is being pushed: Why Surgeons Are Wearing the Apple Vision Pro

• Internet Archive Services Update: 2024-10-17

  • The largest Internet Archive is under siege – and fighting back

• EU court upholds right to sell Playstation add-ons, in loss for Sony

• Motorola Phones Will Soon Be Usable in VR on Meta Horizon OS

• Google Executive Overseeing Search and Advertising Leaves Role

• TSMC may have breached US sanctions; Apple chip production could be at risk

• WP Engine asks court to stop Matt Mullenweg from blocking access to WordPress

• Before Facebook, the Late Ward Christensen Booted Up the First Social Network

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• AMD ROCm Looks Like It Will Be Supporting OpenCL 3.0 Soon

• The Feds Are Coming for John Deere over the Right to Repair

• lovely madness Coreboot port for 486 motherboard (UM8881/6)

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Microsoft and OpenAI's Close Partnership Shows Signs of Fraying (HN comments)

Crypto con games

• Worldcoin Rebrands as 'World': New Orb, World ID 3.0, Human-Centered Blockchain

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Amazon indicates employees can quit if they don't like its RTO mandate

• The number of job ads where the candidate will "spearhead" something grew 500%

• Private Equity Firm Permira Acquires Squarespace for $7.2B

• Is the $140B Chocolate Market on the Brink of Extinction?

• 5.6M vacant homes and counting: There's a housing crisis brewing in the US

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• A Mystery $30M Wave of Bets Has Moved a Popular Prediction Market

• Judge slams Florida for censoring political ad

Harris / Democrats

• Opinion | Why Isn’t Kamala Harris Running Away With the Election? - The New York Times

  We supposedly live in a country in which a plurality of voters are independents. You’d think they’d behave, well, independently and get swayed by events. But no. In our era the polling numbers barely move. The second thing that baffles me is: Why has politics been 50-50 for over a decade? We’ve had big shifts in the electorate, college-educated voters going left and non-college-educated voters going right. But still, the two parties are almost exactly evenly matched. This is not historically normal. Usually we have one majority party that has a big vision for the country, and then we have a minority party that tries to poke holes in that vision. (In the 1930s the Democrats dominated with the New Deal, and the Republicans complained. In the 1980s the Reagan revolution dominated, and the Democrats tried to adjust.)

• Will Kamala commit to certifying a Trump win? - The Spectator World

Trump / Right / Jan6

• Trump Says Tim Cook Called Him to Complain About the EU

• Trump's plan to deport millions of immigrants would cost hundreds of billions, CBS News analysis shows - CBS News

  In Reading, Pennsylvania, last week, Trump drew fervent applause from a rally crowd after saying he would "get these people out" and "deport them so rapidly." In Aurora, Colorado, on Friday, Trump told rallygoers he would "rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered." Immigration researchers, lawyers, and economists have pointed to immense constitutional, humanitarian and economic problems posed by Trump's oft-repeated pledge. But beyond the anticipated damage to immigrant families, communities and local economies, the roundup and deportation of some 11 million people is near impossible to bankroll, according to an analysis of U.S. budget and immigration court data by CBS News. Even if Congress approved the hundreds of billions of dollars in spending, deporting every undocumented immigrant living in the U.S. would take far longer than four years, the analysis finds.

• How Silicon Valley Billionaires Became Trump’s Biggest Donors - The New York Times

  In the years since the 2020 election, though, Musk had been following a number of his friends in the tech industry — some dating back to his earliest days in the business, when he helped found the company that became PayPal — on a journey to some of the more baroque regions of the far right. He was becoming increasingly outspoken about his views but had less to say about the daily scrum of partisan politics. He had quietly given more than $50 million to fund advertising campaigns attacking Democrats in the 2022 midterms, The Wall Street Journal has reported, and in 2023 he donated $10 million to an outside group that helped fund the presidential bid of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Now he seemed open to doing a lot more.

• Meet the Candidate: Elon Musk - The New York Times

  A South African-born billionaire, Mr. Musk cannot legally run and, anyway, he has invested over $75 million in trying to get Donald J. Trump elected. Somehow that mission brought Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, to a high school auditorium in suburban Philadelphia on a surreal Thursday evening where, if you blinked, you might have forgotten momentarily that he was not the candidate himself. There was a military-grade security apparatus that protected his every movement. There was a crowded press riser, crummy Wi-Fi (at least for those who couldn’t procure the secret Starlink password), and a well-organized advance staff on headsets and production aides wielding professional video cameras. There was a giant American flag in the middle of a stage and a country and rock playlist straight out of a town hall in Iowa or New Hampshire during the Republican nominating season.

• (Jul 2024) Daddy died a MAGA. His last words apologized for Trumpism | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  Daddy died in August of 2017. It was a terrible and painful death and he was only 61 years old. His last words to me were absolutely unfathomable and embarrassing: He begged for forgiveness for his behavior and his Facebook posts since 2015. The MAGA mentality he had displayed since Donald Trump came down that escalator. The point of contention in our formerly close relationship — the reason we had barely spoken in two years. He was dying and he talked about Betsy DeVos.

  My last memories of him leave a metallic taste in my mouth — bitter bile in my throat. I loved him deeply and it was reciprocated, but his skewed world view at the end of his life tragically confused his legacy and his loved ones, and that is the saddest thing I can say.

  • But now that he's dead, he's safely voting Democrat again and we can remember him more fondly.

• Opinion | Why are press, GOP ignoring Trump's cognitive decline?

  We can see the decline in the former president’s ability to hold a train of thought, speak coherently, or demonstrate a command of the English language, to say nothing of policy. So why are Republicans and the press holding Trump to a different standard than Biden?

• Why Does Trump Sound Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini? - The Atlantic

  The former president has brought dehumanizing language into American presidential politics.

  Rhetoric has a history. The words democracy and tyranny were debated in ancient Greece; the phrase separation of powers became important in the 17th and 18th centuries. The word vermin, as a political term, dates from the 1930s and ’40s, when both fascists and communists liked to describe their political enemies as vermin, parasites, and blood infections, as well as insects, weeds, dirt, and animals. The term has been revived and reanimated, in an American presidential campaign, with Donald Trump’s description of his opponents as “radical-left thugs” who “live like vermin.” This language isn’t merely ugly or repellant: These words belong to a particular tradition. Adolf Hitler used these kinds of terms often. In 1938, he praised his compatriots who had helped “cleanse Germany of all those parasites who drank at the well of the despair of the Fatherland and the People.” In occupied Warsaw, a 1941 poster displayed a drawing of a louse with a caricature of a Jewish face. The slogan: “Jews are lice: they cause typhus.” Germans, by contrast, were clean, pure, healthy, and vermin free. Hitler once described the Nazi flag as “the victorious sign of freedom and the purity of our blood.”

  • Whereas the opposition has employed nothing but verified facts, calm rationality, and ethical even handed debate, I reckon.

• A third of Americans agree with Trump that immigrants 'poison the blood' of US

• We All Have a Lot to Lose If Trump Wins | Vanity Fair

  as a public-facing person, I will continue to be subjected to threats, as many in the mainstream media already are. But attacks on the media could escalate if Trump returns to power, given that he doesn’t hesitate to demonize journalists and call them out before his millions of followers. And given what Trump says on television, he may target American citizens for unfavorable speech.

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• The fentanyl funnel: How narcos sneak deadly chemicals through the U.S.

• In stunning move, Texas Supreme Court halts Roberson execution

World

• Charles III lands in Sydney, marking first visit by reigning King of Australia

• Cuba's power grid fails, plunging country into darkness

Israel

• Who Supplies Israel with Weapons?

• Israel and US confirm Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has been killed

  • His bodyguard had a "UNRWA Teacher" ID

  • UNRWA leader denies connection

  Once again, unchecked information is used to discredit UNRWA & its staff. Earlier today, reports circulated on social & Israeli media that an UNRWA staff member was killed together with the Hamas head in Gaza. I confirm that the staff member in question is alive. He currently lives in Egypt where he traveled with his family in April through the Rafah border. Time to put an end to disinformation campaigns.

  • The have a black bar on their Twitter tho.

• I had to bulldoze my house: Palestinians face spike in Israeli demolition orders

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Drones 'Hunt' Civilians in Kherson

• North Korean Troops Deserting Ukraine Frontline Days After Arrival

Health / Medicine

• US vaccinations fall again as more parents refuse lifesaving shots for kids

• Mistake to take organs from a living person was averted, witnesses say

• Does Passive Smoking Cause Lung Cancer?

  A recent study by American Cancer Society (ACS) researchers underscores that point by showing that, contrary to what our critics asserted, the cancer risk posed by ETS is likely negligible. The authors present that striking result without remarking on it, which may reflect their reluctance to revisit a debate that anti-smoking activists and public health officials wrongly view as long settled.

• The 'Peak Obesity' Illusion

• US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’ | Genetics | The Guardian

• Video games make your brain younger but exercise does not, study suggests

• Ex-FDA food expert reveals worst cereal in America with link to cancer

  Dr. Darin Detwiler, who previously served as a food safety expert for the agency, told the Daily Mail that Kellogg’s Froot Loops are the worst of the bunch, pointing out, or through, that the rainbow rings are “heavily processed and contain high levels of added sugars, artificial dyes and preservatives, which are linked to health concerns.”

• (2009) Flavonoids and brain health: multiple effects underpinned by common mechanisms - PMC

• Teen smoking and other tobacco use drop to lowest level in 25 years, CDC reports | AP News

• Cold weather: What does an unheated room do to your body?

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Covid-19 linked to type 2 diabetes onset in children

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Consumers are increasingly spending on ESG-related products

• Global Forest Fire Carbon Emissions Have Jumped 60% in 20 Years

• Global water crisis leaves half of world food production at risk in next 25 year

• One of Florida's Most Lethal Python Hunters

• City microbes surviving on disinfectants, research reveals

• 'It's our moonshot': Why scientists are drilling into volcanos

• Many of the Cities Have Gotten Wetter

• Bumblebee queens prefer pesticide-laced soil for hibernation

• Irreversible environmental disasters loom as global temperatures rise: new study

• Poor countries recycle far more imported plastic than previously thought

• Wildfires are coming to the Southeast. Can landowners mitigate the risk in time?