2024-10-29
contraceptive schools, billionaire overconfidence, Catholic anime, COCOT history, Robinhood gambling, another non-endorsement, Bezos is Trumpist by default, NYT admires China's industrial controls
etc
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The Obvious-Once-You-Think-About-It Reason Why Education Cuts Fertility
Sociologists have a considerably better story: Education changes students’ values. Never mind rare heavy-handed propaganda about overpopulation. Education dethrones fertility via emphasis. Telling kids that academic and career success should be their top priority implicitly says, “And having kids should be a lower priority.” Not teaching religion and traditional values implicitly says, “Religion and traditional values aren’t very important.” And so on. Though I’ve long preferred the latter story to the former, only recently did I realize that I’ve been overlooking a far simpler and practically bulletproof mechanism that explains why education reduces fertility. Namely: Almost everyone wants to finish their education before having kids — and there is a strong stigma against those who do otherwise.
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‘Grate Cheese Robbery’ Scams Company Out of 22 Tons of Cheddar - The New York Times
Horseshit
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Startup Beyond Aero Raises $20M for Its Hydrogen-Electric Private Jets
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America’s Future | the singularity is nearer
America is still the king of the technology industry. All of the programming languages and operating systems come from America. But this is not because Americans are particularly good at software, it’s because of immigration and a merit based society. Historically, America has gotten the best software engineers from Europe, India, and China.
have been in Asia for the last 3 months, mostly in Hong Kong. This society is functional. The people in stores are helpful, the public transport is clean and safe, and not once have I felt unsafe walking alone on the street at night. I’m seriously thinking about getting permanent residence and building tiny corp here instead of America. There’s people I can speak to in the immigration department here, and I feel that the government is both competent and on the side of growth.
While there are some downsides with less political freedom, ask yourself how much that matters to you? Say compared to feeling safe on the street. While continuity of property rights and a stable business environment is super important to me, being able to agitate politically is not, and it might even be a negative (this is what lobbying is). Ask yourself how it has worked out for America?
If Trump wins and Elon has influence, I do think there is a path to fix America longer term. While the general Trump/Elon vibes are good, I do have concerns about Trump’s fiscal record and protectionist tendencies. Of course if Kamala wins, I think I’ll be staying in Asia. Managed decline with a side of resentment and looting oligarchs isn’t for me.
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Astronauts Could Take an Asteroid Ferry from Earth to Mars – Universe Today
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I wanted to live cheaply, I bought a boat, moved in to travel the world
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'Magicians get emotional about it': should secrets of magic ever be revealed?
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Billionaire Villains and the Evolution of Overconfidence
The club of 2,640 billionaires is, like any group of humans, a non-random subset of the population that is skewed by self-selection effects. The billionaire class is the visible manifestation of a broken system, which attracts and promotes the wrong kind of people into wealth and rewards them in a way that is very unlike a meritocratic spelling bee. The good news is that, like all systems, these systems can be changed, to create stronger overlap between who we hope to reward—those who help society and improve our world—and who we actually reward too often: greedy overconfident narcissists who can never get enough of their grotesque wealth.
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American Airlines lands its longest-ever nonstop flight 8,300 miles, 16 hours
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What the rising popularity of Yemeni coffee shops says about third places
celebrity gossip
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Olympus CEO Exits After Allegation He Bought Illegal Drugs
The company’s shares declined more than 7% Monday, the biggest intraday slide in almost three months, after it said Stefan Kaufmann had resigned all positions effective immediately. Olympus, best known as a designer of cameras and imaging gear before a pivot into medical equipment such as endoscopes,
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The stoicism secret: how Ryan Holiday became a Silicon Valley guru
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College students slammed 'despicable' blackface Diddy costume
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
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Why is Elon Musk talking to Vladimir Putin, and what does it mean for SpaceX?
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Elon Musk hopes Trump victory will help his $44B Twitter bet pay off
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(2022) Elon Musk Silent on China Protests Despite Being Free Speech Warrior (2022)
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Elon Musk Admits Teslas with "Self-Driving" May Never Self-Drive
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Philadelphia prosecutor sues Elon Musk group to stop $1M lottery for voters
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US labor board wrongly ordered Tesla's Musk to delete anti-union tweet : court
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Musk and Friends Are Smothering the Internet's Truth Seekers
Electric / Self Driving cars
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US approves huge lithium mine to supply batteries for 370,000 EVs annually
Ioneer, a company focused on lithium mineral production, received its federal permit to develop the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project from the Bureau of Land Management on October 24. Rhyolite Ridge will boost the US’s critical mineral production and support investment in Esmeralda County, Nevada, aiming for construction in 2025 and first production in 2028.
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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You thought "Buddy Jesus" from dogma was bad, wait til you see "Jailbait Anime Mary" The Vatican has unveiled the official mascot of the Holy Year 2025: Luce
Archbishop Fisichella says the mascot was inspired by the Church's desire "to live even within the pop culture so beloved by our youth."
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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WordPress forces user conf organizers to share social media credentials
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'Twister' Is Unrentable in Remaining Redbox Kiosks and No One Knows Why
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Instagram saves the best video quality for the most popular content
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$250 Analogue 3D will play all your N64 cartridges in 4K early next year
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Adobe Says Artists Should Embrace AI If They Want to Be Successful
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'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel
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Annoyed Redditors tanking Google Search illustrates perils of AI scrapers
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An investigation exposes data brokers using ads to help track almost any phone
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Google’s Shadow Campaigns - Microsoft On the Issues
This week an astroturf group organized by Google is launching. It is designed to discredit Microsoft with competition authorities, and policymakers and mislead the public. Google has gone through great lengths to obfuscate its involvement, funding, and control, most notably by recruiting a handful of European cloud providers, to serve as the public face of the new organization. When the group launches, Google, we understand, will likely present itself as a backseat member rather than its leader. It remains to be seen what Google offered smaller companies to join, either in terms of cash or discounts.
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GoDaddy to face trial for restricting what software its customers can use
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Hard times for Tinder and Bumble: Why investors are cashing in dating app stock
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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The sins of the 90s: Questioning a puzzling claim about mass surveillance
Where does anyone get the idea that continued cryptographic export controls would have stopped the growth of Internet commerce, rather than simply limiting the security level of Internet commerce? How do we reconcile this idea with the observed facts of Amazon already growing rapidly in the 1990s? The export controls were still in place; to the extent that Internet commerce was encrypted at all, it was encrypted primarily with a weak cryptosystem, namely 512-bit RSA.
When a talk claims that preserving cryptographic export controls would have stopped the mass-surveillance industry, the talk isn't just making a claim for an audience of historians. It's influencing future action. It's telling you that there's a tradeoff: an unhappy choice between stopping one bad thing and stopping another bad thing. It's telling you to pause, and to worry that your actions will similarly have bad effects. That's the most important reason to look at whether the claim is actually true, as I've been doing in this blog post.
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buy payphones and retire (HN comments)
Despite a certain air of inevitability, COCOTs had a slow start. First, there would indeed be an effort by telephone companies to legally restrict COCOTs. This was never entirely successful, but did result in a set of state regulations (and to a lesser extent, federal regulations related to long-distance calls) that made the payphone business harder to get into. More importantly, though, the technical capabilities of COCOTs were limited. The Robotguard design could charge only a fixed fee per call, which made it a practical necessity to limit the payphone to local calls. Telephone company payphones, which allowed long-distance calls at a higher rate, had an advantage. Long-distance calls were also typically billed by minute, which made it important for a payphone to impose a time limit before charging more. These capabilities were difficult to implement in a reasonably compact, robust device in the 1970s. A number of articles will tell you that COCOTs became far more common as a result of payphone deregulation stemming from the 1984 breakup of AT&T. I would love to hear evidence to the contrary, but from my research I believe this is a misconception, or at least not the entire story. In fact, payphones were deregulated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but that was done in large part because COCOTs were already common and telephone companies were unhappy that conventional payphones were subject to rate regulation while COCOTs were not
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Universal Stainless, Set to Be Acquired, Behind Fatal Bell Boeing Osprey Crash
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Aaron Wagner and Wags Capital: Pro Football to Utahs Latest Disgraced Influencer
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Satya Nadella asked for 50% cut in his incentive payout over security failures
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Robinhood jumps into election trading, users can buy Harris or Trump contracts
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Fitness app Strava gives away location of Biden, Trump and other leaders
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Why Major Newspapers Won’t Endorse Kamala Harris - The Atlantic
At each paper, the editorial board had readied a draft or outline of a Harris endorsement and was waiting (and waiting and waiting) for final approval. On Wednesday, the L.A. Times editorials editor, Mariel Garza, told her team, including me, that the owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, would not permit any endorsement to run. She then resigned in protest. As thousands of angry Times readers canceled their subscriptions, Soon-Shiong publicly claimed on X to have asked the editorial board to write an analysis of “all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate” during their respective White House tenures. But he said the board “chose to remain silent.” Nonsense. We made no such choice. We were ready to endorse Harris, and Soon-Shiong’s post on X was the first time I or my fellow editorial writers had heard anything about a side-by-side analysis. Having been so casually thrown under the bus, I resigned Thursday. My colleague Karin Klein also announced that she would step down. On Friday, the Post publisher and CEO, William Lewis, published a statement that his paper, too, would not endorse in the presidential race, now or ever again. A member of the Post editorial board resigned. Subscribers canceled.
Harris / Democrats
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Wankers of the World, Unite! Pro-Harris PAC Goes Hard After the Key Wanker-American Demographic.
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Jeffries is all about peace and unity
Note to MAGA sycophants and far right extremists. How dare you ever lecture America about civility and dangerous rhetoric. Take a hike.
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The Liz Cheney Theory of a Harris Victory - The Atlantic
Cheney and her fellow anti-Trump surrogates have run with that message in recent weeks, sometimes even joining Harris herself on the trail. Their effort, the thinking goes, gives Republicans permission to hold their nose and vote for a Democrat, maybe for the first time ever. It might work. In an election that will almost certainly be decided by a few thousand votes in a handful of states, Cheney could reach a significant-enough sliver of the electorate for Harris to scrape by in November. They’re hopeful, even, for the deus ex machina of a silent minority. “If you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody,” Cheney said Monday during an event with Harris in Royal Oak, Michigan. But centering a campaign on the nobler questions in politics—morality, democracy—is a risky bet when it comes to Trump, who has remained, throughout the past nine years, robustly immune to such high-minded attacks. The Cheney Strategy presumes that bipartisanship can win the day. It might be wishful thinking.
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Kamala Harris takes over Fortnite with new Freedom Town, USA map urging gamers to vote - VideoGamer
Biden Inc
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Biden administration announces $3B for rural electric co-ops
The grants include nearly $2.5 billion in financing for the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, as well as nearly $1 billion through the Department of Agriculture’s Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program for six co-ops. The New ERA program, which uses $9.7 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funds, is the biggest federal investment in rural electrification since the New Deal in the 1930s. The Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association funding will cut electricity rates for members by an estimated 10 percent over the next 10 years, equivalent to about $430 million in benefits to rural electricity consumers. Meanwhile, the six co-ops announced Friday, some of which will serve rural areas in multiple states, are in Minnesota, South Dakota, South Carolina, Colorado, Nebraska and Texas.
Trump / Right / Jan6
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Trump Media Is Now Worth Almost as Much as Elon Musk's X with Stock Rally
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Cannot Search for Joe Rogan Trump Interview on YouTube
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A common response is "so waht? they've done that forever, Trump should be suppressed"
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The world needs a US president who respects evidence
Political leaders, irrespective of party membership or ideology, generally agree on the need for a society that creates jobs, promotes better health and advances science. But solutions for the world’s mounting problems can come only from a shared, accurate understanding of reality. A lack of regard for the law and evidence fosters mistrust of scientists and institutions of state. That, in turn, weakens the foundations of democracy, both in the United States and around the world. A second Trump presidency would have an even more destabilizing effect globally, giving the green light to yet more leaders like him.
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Steve Bannon, former Trump aide, to be released from prison on Tuesday
Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist under the Trump administration, will be released from a Connecticut prison on Tuesday – a week from Election Day – after serving a 4-month prison sentence. Bannon reported to prison in July for contempt of Congress after defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. He was also fined $6,500. A jury found the top Trump ally guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress. One count came after Bannon refused to sit for a deposition with the committee, and another was for refusing to provide documents. He was one of two former Trump aides, along with Peter Navarro, who were convicted of defying the committee. Navarro served his $-month sentence in a federal prison in Miami and was released in July.
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Five ways a Trump presidency would be disastrous for the climate | US elections 2024 | The Guardian
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Will he, nill he, Bezos has been declared a Trumpist:
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Bezos Was Expected to Make a Splash in Washington. But He Never Arrived
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Profiles in Cowardice: Owner Jeff Bezos and William Lewis of the Washington Post
This is no time to get squishy. I have never once unsubscribed from a newspaper in protest, and I certainly haven’t encouraged you to. But there’s a line for everything, and this abject cowardice, in the face of the greatest threat to our democracy itself since the Civil War, crossed that line. I’ve been a paying subscriber to The Washington Post for many years. Not anymore. I recommend you do the same.
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Bezos faces criticism after executives met with Trump on day of non-endorsement
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200k subscribers flee 'Washington Post' after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement+
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Jeff Bezos is no longer relentlessly focused on customer satisfaction
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Opinion | Jeff Bezos: The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media - The Washington Post
Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.
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Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Texas Mom Arrested and Jailed for Making Her Son Walk a Half-Mile Home
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Man who used AI to create child abuse images jailed for 18 years
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Over 40 Immigrants Arrested for Looting in Hurricane-hit Florida Community - Newsweek
Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said his team spent the past few weeks conducting looting patrols on the barrier islands that run along the edge of the peninsula, finding dozens of people trying to take advantage of empty streets and properties. Deputies arrested 45 people for a variety of crimes, including armed robbery, vandalism and trespassing, while nearly 200 others were told to leave when no probable cause for arrest could be found. Out of the 196 approached, 141 were not from the county, while 163 were not U.S. citizens. Their immigration statuses were not immediately clear.
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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Talk of a 7-Eleven Takeover Has Japan Worried About the Rice Balls
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Apple iPhone 16 Is Now Illegal in Indonesia, Ban Leaves Tourists in the Lurch
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The Middle East Drug Fueling War, Crime and All-Night Parties
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Volkswagen labor chief sounds alarm on mass layoffs, three German plant closures
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Georgians join mass rally as president urges protest at 'rigged vote'
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
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How Beijing Tamed a Lawless Industry and Gained Global Influence - The New York Times
As recently as 2010, few industries were as lawless, and yet as central to the global economy, as China’s production of rare earth metals. Consignments of rare earths frequently changed hands for sacks of Chinese currency: The rule of thumb was that a cubic foot of tightly packed 100-renminbi bills was worth $350,000. At a warehouse in Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, acid was used illegally to extract rare earths, and the residue, faintly radioactive, was dumped into the municipal sewage. The gang operating the warehouse brought in foreign buyers in the trunks of cars to keep its location a secret. But since then, a crackdown by Chinese law enforcement and the government’s consolidation of the industry have allowed China to seize control over the country’s supply of minerals and curb its excesses. “Gone is the Wild West, go-go mentality where the environment was given short shrift — now it is much more controlled,” said David Abraham, a rare earth industry consultant.
Health / Medicine
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Risks of sharing your DNA with online companies aren't just a future concern
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Dramatic drop in marijuana use among U.S. youth over a decade
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Dementia 'superspreader' detected by Swiss researchers
Accumulations of proteins in the brain are suspected to be linked to the development of dementia, which is why they are considered a promising target for new therapeutic approaches. It is already known that misfolded proteins clump together to form fibre-like structures known as fibrils. the particular subspecies of fibrils observed in this study exhibited particularly high catalytic activity at their edges and surface. New protein building blocks accumulate on the surface, which leads to the binding of long-chain fibrils.
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Investigation of the constituents of commercially available toothpastes
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Pizza place accidentally spiked dough with THC, sickening dozens