2024-10-25
Seafood sickness, institutional honor, re-education and disinformation, uses for absurd precision, Linus pressured by Feds, remember NFTs?, AI can't launch nukes, witches fail to curse Trump
etc
Horseshit
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Sound-based diagnostic system could deliver bedside blood test results in 1 hour
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Homemade meal sends 50 employees to hospital, causes "mini-disaster" in Maryland
Nearly 50 employees at a Maryland business were sent to a hospital after a coworker's homemade food led to mass food poisoning. Responders from the Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue arrived at the NAFCO Wholesale Seafood Distributors building in Jessup, Maryland at around 3:45 p.m. on Monday, according to FOX 5 DC. In a statement obtained by FOX 5, NAFCO reported that the mass poisoning was caused by food brought by an employee. The food was prepared over the weekend and taken to work on Monday.
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Big Sur: overtourism, cost of living, and global warming create uncertainty
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When thinking about the accomplishments of Western Civilization, people will point to things like going to the moon, modern medicine, and the accomplishments of the tech industry. But the epistemic breakdown of the last decade or so has emphasized the degree to which institutions that simply provide factual and relatively objective information about the world cannot be taken for granted. And even among media outlets that are generally honest and good when judged by realistic standards, The Economist truly stands out.
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Why do 'gate lice' line up early for a flight? Psychologists explain
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Hanson vs sensitivity training
At >80-1 ratio, respondents disagree with the answer that my work harassment/discrimination training insists on, and won't let me continue unless I explicitly agree with it.
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I caught our surrogate drinking alcohol and made her abort the baby | Daily Mail Online
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Bay Area cops are getting a new Siri-type tool for fighting sideshows
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$600 Buzz Lightyear Robot Packs 3k Parts and Advanced Micro-Servos
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Homeowners who rent on Airbnb must pay 13% tax on property value when they sell
celebrity gossip
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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As the U.S. election nears, Russia, Iran and China step up influence efforts
Since our last two reports, the U.S. government has taken many actions revealing cyber and influence activity from foreign adversaries related to election 2024. Most recently, that includes revealing malicious Iranian cyber actors’ sending of “stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign” to both individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign and U.S. media organizations, and the indictment of three Iranian actors for the hack-and-leak operation targeting the Trump-Vance campaign.
We also noted in our last report that while Iranian actors have focused their cyber-influence operations on the Trump campaign, Russian actors decisively pivoted toward the Harris campaign once she entered the race. Since then, Russian actors continue to integrate generative AI into their content, Iranian groups ramp up their preparations to enable cyber-influence operations, while Chinese actors shift focus to several down-ballot candidates and members of Congress. Russian actors have notably attempted to target the Harris-Walz campaign by attacking the candidates’ characters.
John Mark Dougan, who also served in the U.S. Marines and has long claimed to be working independently of the Russian government, was provided funding by an officer from the GRU, the country’s military intelligence service. Some of the payments were made after fake news sites he created began to have difficulty accessing Western artificial intelligence systems this spring and he needed an AI generator — a tool that can be prompted to create text, photos and video. The more than 150 documents — which were shared with The Post to demonstrate the extent of Russian interference through Dougan and focus mostly on the period between March 2021 and August 2024 — for the first time expose some of the inner workings of a network that researchers and intelligence officials say has become the most potent source of fake news emanating from Russia and targeting American voters over the past year.
Disinformation researchers say Dougan’s network was probably behind a recent viral fake video smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, which U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday said was created by Russia. It received nearly 5 million views on X in less than 24 hours, Microsoft said.
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Everything Is a Conspiracy Theory When You Don't Bother to Educate Yourself
I’m certainly sensitive to questions around electronic voting, as someone who spent many of the early years of this blog calling out sketchy electronic voting schemes. However, really over the last decade, there have been vast improvements in the security and process behind electronic voting, such that most such systems now include important safety valves and backstops, including voter-verified paper trails and risk-limiting audits. Not every state has those systems yet (even though they should!) but calling for such things is very, very different from saying that all electronic voting is untrustworthy. But, by now it’s clear that if anyone lacks intellectual curiosity to understand reality, it’s Elon Musk. After all, he’s not only (falsely) trashing electronic voting, but he’s also been trashing mail-in ballots (which he calls “insane”), even as his own Super PAC is pushing people to vote early by mail. Oh, and also, Elon himself has regularly voted by mail.
- "education" == "agrees with me", as usual
Musk
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SpaceX's Cellular Starlink Faces Lawsuit Threat from European Telcos
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Europe agency says it is in talks with SpaceX on tackling space junk
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We need to arrest and detain @elonmusk immediately.
We need to arrest and detain @elonmusk immediately. He is operating on behalf of Russia. Cancel all contracts, seize his facilities, lock him away in a military facility. Now, @potus. Not tomorrow.
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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The US is the world’s science superpower — but for how long?
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U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says
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Yes, it would be great if everyone did fully reproducible science and made all their data available and actually responded when you asked them questions and got a pony. But in the current, actual world, most papers are missing important details. The problem of having to scan your eyeballs past a few extra digits is a silly non-issue compared to the problem of meaningless results everywhere. So please stop spending your energy actively trying to convince people to delete one of the very few error correction methods that we actually have and that actually sort of works. Thanks in advance.
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Linus Torvalds is "fed up" with making kernel changes to address faulty hardware
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When the Wayback Machine Went Down, so did our Software | DOGESEC
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DuckDuckGo will make more early-stage investments in privacy-focused startups
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Apple ripped a valuable hearing loss feature from the AirPods line
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Billboards in SF call attention to tech companies free-loading off open source
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers
- The kickoff: MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. - Greg Kroah-Hartman
Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided.
Thus even if it was still possible for me to send patches or perform some reviews, after what has been done my motivation to do that as a volunteer has simply vanished. (I might be doing a commercial upstreaming in future though). But before saying goodbye I'd like to express my gratitude to all the community members I have been lucky to work with during all these years.
Veteran Linux kernel developer James Bottomley has now chimed in on that mailing list thread with some clarity into the new requirements. James wrote:
"Please accept all of our apologies for the way this was handled. A summary of the legal advice the kernel is operating under is:
If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file.
Anyone who wishes to can query the list here: https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/
In your specific case, the problem is your employer is on that list. If there's been a mistake and your employer isn't on the list, that's the documentation Greg is looking for.
We are hoping that this action alone will be sufficient to satisfy the US Treasury department in charge of sanctions and we won't also have to remove any existing patches."
- So, pressure from US Dept Treasury appears to have sparked this. "hope we don't have to remove any patches" has even more unpleasant implications.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
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I want someone to own up to what a scam NFTs were
Nearly all of the NFTs on the market today are worthless. Yet somehow we've memory holed all that endless pimping and shilling. There’s no place for accountability in our on-to-the-next swipe culture. There’s zero comeuppance for the press folks who published those “it’s so revolutionary” takes. At least gimme a Gary Vee interview where he tells us the NFT market will rebound in 2028 and then they’ll really “nuke it” or whatever.
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Apple and Goldman Sachs ordered to pay $89M over Apple Card failures
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Boeing machinists reject latest proposal, and a six-week strike continues
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Data Centers Will Have to Make Minimum Power Payments in Ohio
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Gold's stratospheric rise signals disaster ahead for the world's financial order
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Uber, Lyft drivers block Manhattan traffic to protest lockouts
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Amazon to shut down speedy brick-and-mortar delivery service
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Telecoms, home security firms, & advertisers sue the FTC to stop click to cancel
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LA Times editor resigns after owner blocks presidential endorsement
Mariel Garza, the editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times, resigned on Wednesday after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza told me in a phone conversation. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
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Most U.S. voters say immigrants mostly take jobs citizens don't want
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Whitehouse Outlines Coordinated Approach to Harness AI for US National Security
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Hakeem Jeffries: These people are not fit to govern.
The House has been flooded with election deniers and far right extremists
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Kunce notifies sheriff of campaign event incident that injured reporter
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"prediction markets" are not saying the same thing as the headline polls, reducing the propaganda value. thus:
We believe that 50-50 is a good approximation of those. For example, various polls have been showing a slight lead for Kamala Harris since the Harris-Trump debate, and in our opinion 36-64 is extremely unrealistic.
Harris / Democrats
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This kind of thing is supposed to be accompanied by footjob videos now: (PDF) Twenty-Three Nobel Economists Sign Letter Saying Harris Better for U.S. Economy
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Democrats Explain Trump Was Going To Be Hitler During His First Term, But He Forgot
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Bill Gates donated $50 million to pro-Harris Super PAC: Report | Just The News
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As president, I will lower the cost of groceries by taking on corporate price gouging.
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Washington Post staffers suspect Jeff Bezos holding up Harris endorsement
Biden Inc
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Novo Nordisk, Lilly must cut US prices of weight-loss drugs, Biden says
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Biden makes clear AI can't launch nukes as he looks to harness new technology
President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered his national security agencies to harness new, powerful artificial intelligence technology in a bid to compete with rivals such as China while also applying guardrails to prevent its use for antidemocratic purposes. The new national security memorandum, issued in the final months of Biden’s term, seeks to strike a balance between deploying AI’s powerful potential with protecting against some of its fearsome possibilities. For example, the document prohibits use of AI to skirt existing protocols around deploying nuclear weapons. And it bars use of the technology to limit free speech. More generally, it bans agencies from using AI in a ways that “do not align with democratic values.”
Trump / Right / Jan6
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What the state of the US economy can tell us about Trump's populist appeal
America is an outlier in my dataset, with Trump entering office in 2016 at the height of the post-GFC recovery, and leaving office in 2020 in the midst of recession. This does not mean that American populism is counter-cyclical, merely that a) macroeconomic indicators are not salient predictors of the economic experiences of average Americans, b) American voters have decoupled their judgements from ‘economic voting’ c) Americans are ill-informed about the reality of the Biden and Trump economies.
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“Some other witches have mentioned that doing spells directly against Trump are not as effective as we might hope as he seems to have some kind of protection around him,” laments the witch. She suggests casting a spell against Project 2025 instead, a Heritage Foundation policy document that wasn’t even created by the Trump campaign and which they have disavowed repeatedly.
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"Ex-editor at Chicago Tribune & Sun-Times" the modern version of the Trojan Horse
is Vladimir Putin's ownership and direction of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
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Realistically, how much damage could Trump do to the U.S. economy?
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The GenForward survey, which ran from Sept. 26 to Oct. 6 by the University of Chicago and included 2,359 eligible voters 18 to 40 years old, included some fascinating findings:
- A quarter of young Black men are supporting Trump. (Black men overall backed President Joe Biden nearly nine to one in 2020.)
- 44 percent of young Latino men said they'd back Trump, an improvement over the roughly 38 percent who backed him in 2020.
- For her part, Harris is at 58 percent with Black men, 37 percent with Latinos and 57 percent with Asian American and Pacific Islander men.
- Kamala Harris is doing incredibly well among women of color. A majority of Black (63 percent), Asian American and Pacific Islander (60 percent) and Latina (55 percent) women say they will vote for Harris.
- White women are nearly evenly split between Harris (44 percent) and Trump (40 percent).
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Trump Flirts With the Ultimate Tax Cut: No Income Taxes at All - The New York Times
When asked if the United States could potentially end all federal taxation, Mr. Trump said the country could return to the economic policies in the late 19th century, when there was no federal income tax. “It had all tariffs — it didn’t have an income tax,” Mr. Trump said. “Now we have income taxes, and we have people that are dying. They’re paying tax, and they don’t have the money to pay the tax.” In June, Mr. Trump floated the idea of replacing federal revenue from income taxes with money received from tariffs. Mr. Trump has not provided specific details of how that would work, and it is unclear if he wants to eliminate all federal taxes, including corporate income taxes and payroll taxes, or only end the individual income tax.
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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Japan's 'hostage justice' system breeds false convictions, groups say
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Georgian authorities raid homes of disinformation researchers ahead of elections
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Japan's rising ramen prices give election voters food for thought
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significantly reduce the number of immigrants coming to Canada
We’re going to significantly reduce the number of immigrants coming to Canada for the next two years. This is temporary — to pause our population growth and let our economy catch up.
Israel
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Netanyahu Is Selling Gaza to Private Militias – Opinion – Haaretz.com
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Israel launched a dozen attacks on UN troops in Lebanon, says leaked report
Israel’s military forcibly entered a clearly marked UN base and is suspected of using the incendiary chemical white phosphorus close enough to injure 15 peacekeepers, according to a confidential report outlining a dozen recent incidents in which the IDF attacked international troops in Lebanon.