2024-12-10

"CEO Killer" arrested, Pi500 launched, AI withering, satellite insurance, who killed Intel?, Penny acquitted, election avoidance, Syrian aftermath, drylands increase, EPA bans stuff

etc

• A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You're Laughing?

• On journalism’s dishonesty and moral rot: Did insurance company executive Brian Thompson deserve to be murdered? The New Yorker can’t quite decide. But Jordan Neely – a violent psychotic criminal – is a “subway dancer.”

  Tolentino’s crafty stance on Thompson’s murder is disgusting, for lack of a more euphemistic word. But it isn’t the most disgusting part of her piece. No, that comes in a throwaway line about the Daniel Penny case. "the subway dancer strangled by the ex-marine."

• Manhunt for UnitedHealthcare CEO Killer Meets Obstacle: Sympathy for Gunman

• Was Luigi Mangione, (CEO Shooting Suspect) Influenced by the Film "The Amateur"?

• Police Arrest 'Strong Person of Interest' in Health Care CEO's Killing

• Healthcare CEO killer studied computer science at UPenn, founded game dev club

• 'Person of Interest' in CEO Shooting Has Background in Games Industry

• Suspect detained in manhunt for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's killer

• Archive link: GitHub profile of lnmangione (Luigi Mangione)

Horseshit

• A liar who always lies says "All my hats are green."

• As Syria changes its flag, a look into Unicode's emoji politics

• Fearful of crime, the tech elite transform their homes into military bunkers

• Searching for color at Pantone's all-brown party

• Thousands of nonconforming parts missing from Boeing factory parts jail

• The Nonstop Gay Sex Party on the Mexico City Subway

• Is doom scrolling rotting our brains?

• Too many people are killed by supersized cars. This new rule could help

• The great tweezer takeover: Is fine dining hijacking the soul of San Francisco?

• Ohio bill would require high-demand liquor bottles to be opened when sold.

• How marijuana legalization played itself

• I bought one of Sicily's famous $1 homes and spent $446K renovating it

• What does "working class" even mean?

celebrity gossip

• Science Fiction Writer Ted Chiang Wins Pen/Malamud Prize

• You Might Have Missed It, But Ray Epps’ Lawsuit Against Tucker Went Down In Flames.

• Rod Stewart to upgrade his 'world-class' model railway

• Rupert Murdoch loses battle to control succession to his media empire

Bluesky

• The Fragility of Bluesky's Difference

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Existing EV batteries may last about a third longer than expected

• He thought his car's crash-prevention technology would make him safer

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Brain science explains queer trauma, conflict and call-out culture

• Vatican Nativity Scene has Jesus Lying on Keffiyeh Scarf.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Hans Zimmer's 'Dune 2' Score Fails to Meet Eligibility Requirements for Oscars

• Interview with Bruce Perens: How He Hopes "Post Open" Developers Can Get Paid

• Skype Credit is no longer available (HN comments)

• Ad Revenue Predicted to Top $1T This Year

• It feels like admin': why are people falling out of love with dating apps?

• 404 Media Objects to Texas AG Ken Paxton's Subpoena to Access Our Reporting

• Spotify has disabled Car Thing streaming devices

• Reddit rolls out AI-powered 'Answers' search feature, redditors don't rejoice

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The Pi 500 is much faster, but lacks M.2

  • Raspberry Pi 500 Review: The keyboard is the computer, again

  • Raspberry Pi 500 launched for $90

  • Raspberry Pi 500 makes an 8GB Pi 5 into a compact, inexpensive desktop PC

• Compromising OpenWrt Supply Chain

• The Sandisk 1.5TB microSD card is too small.

• GNU Shepherd 1.0 Service Manager Released as "Solid Tool" Alternative to Systemd

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Elon Musk's X launches image generator Aurora

• The UC Berkeley Project That Is the AI Industry's Obsession

• What the departing White House chief tech advisor has to say on AI

• Microsoft's Mustafa Suleyman on what the industry is getting wrong about AGI

• AI infiltrates the rat world: New robot can interact socially with real lab rats

• Google CEO: AI development is finally slowing down

• Tech companies Palantir and Anduril form fellowship for AI adventures

• Godot Isn't Making it

  at some point somebody has to ask the question: why do we need all these GPUs if we've reached peak AI? Despite the remarkable "power" of these chips, NVIDIA's entire enterprise GPU business model centers around the idea that throwing more power at these problems will finally create some solutions. What if that isn't the case?

  There is no path, from what I can see, to turn generative AI and its associated products into anything resembling sustainable businesses, and the only path that big tech appeared to have was to throw as much money, power, and data at the problem as possible, an avenue that appears to be another dead end. And worse still, nothing has really come out of this movement. I've used a handful of AI products that I've found useful — an AI powered journal, for example — but these are not the products that one associates with "revolutions," but useful tools that would have been a welcome surprise if they didn't require burning billions of dollars, blowing past emissions targets and stealing the creative works of millions of people to train them.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• SpaceX Dragon Gets Competition from Europe's Nyx

  • Europe's Maiaspace steps up effort to counter SpaceX with reusable rocket

• Elon Musk vs. Jeff Bezos: Space travel tycoons with dueling visions

• 97% of all satellites don't have insurance but now a startup is fixing that

Crypto con games

• The Problem with Bitcoin: Everybody Wins

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Intel on the Brink of Death

  The past decade is the worst in Intel’s history, with much of the damage done in the 2010s. Pat Gelsinger’s spent the past few years spent correcting the course, but turning the Titanic is not a quick task. There is one constant in Intel’s demise: seven board members. They are still at large on the board today. Let’s compare the combined resumes of the board that fired Gelsinger against his: which would you choose to rescue Intel? We think there’s still a path forward from here, but it isn’t with the current board.

• Intel should have focused on AI rather than chipmaking, TSMC founder says

• Intel's woes may affect the entire state of Oregon

• Specialist chipmaker Marvell is now worth more than Intel.

• Mr Intel leaving Intel is not a great sign for Intel

• Intel 18A Yields Are Okay, and the Math Checks Out

• Apple's Johny Srouji likely on Intel's new CEO short list

• As Big Tech Profit Growth Slows, Investors Hunt for a New Thing

• Britain approves $19B Vodafone-Three mobile merger

• Return-to-work mandates are an invisible pay cut

• Everybody Loves Fred: How America Fell for a Data Tool

• New Gold Rush Sparks Real Estate Boom in California's Historic Mining Regions

• YesMadam did an employee survey on stress, then fired the stressed employees

• Returns are an $890B problem for retailers

• Antimony Prices Surged 200% in 2024, and it Could Happen Again in 2025

• Jack Ma re-emerges to give Ant's AI-driven blueprint for the future

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Appeals Court Upholds U.S. Ban of TikTok

• CFPB Action Against Climb Credit for Deceiving Borrowers About Coding Bootcamps

• CFPB to Return $1.8B in Junk Fees to 4.3M Americans Harmed in Credit Repair Scam

Trump

• Trump Is on Collision Course with EU over Big Tech Crackdown

• Trump vows to end birthright citizenship and pardon US Capitol rioters

Democrats / Biden Inc

• Outgoing DNC Chair Promises to ‘Name Names’ the Day He Leaves Office.

Left Angst

• “This is Not the Time for Balance:” LA Times Columnist Resigns in Protest . . . Over Balanced Commentary

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Slync Founder Sentenced to 20 Years in Federal Prison for Fraud

• FBI arrests Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson on public corruption charges | Fox News

• Daniel Penny found not guilty in chokehold death of homeless man

  • Daniel Penny acquitted in subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Bolster defenses against China hackers or face fines, FCC warns telecoms

• China's Salt Typhoon recorded top American officials' calls, says White House

World

• US concerned about potential interference in Romanian election

• Democracy Is Dead: A Coup Against Right Wing Movements Is Underway In Europe | ZeroHedge

  In Romania, the Constitutional Court has for the first time canceled the results of a presidential election because a "right wing" candidate unexpectedly won the first round. The government claims Calin Georgescu received an online boost on his campaign TikTok account from Russian sources and this represented a "distortion of the vote". The court has produced no concrete evidence to support this claim, nor have they explained how artificial Russian traffic on Georgescu's TikTok account translates to Romanian votes.

• Young Italians are leaving in droves

• US woman caught with golden gun in luggage at Sydney airport jailed for a year

• India's Middle Class: A Debt-Fueled Time Bomb Waiting to Explode

• Confusion and Contradiction in the UN 'Cybercrime' Convention

Syria

• The Lesson from Bashar al-Assad’s Collapse - 19FortyFive

  After more than 13 years of civil war, the final offensive and collapse of the Assad family’s 53-year rule of Syria took less than ten days.

• Iron body presses and bed clamps: horrors of Sednaya prison emerge

• The Syrian prison at the heart of Assad's police state

• Syrian asylum seekers in limbo as countries stop applications

• Descend into the Depths of the Assad Regime's Bunker

Israel

• Records Seized by Israel Show Hamas Presence in U.N. Schools

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia's Military Found a Surprisingly Simple Way to Buy US Chips

• The Battle for Ukraine Is a War of Demography

• BlueAlpha Russian hackers caught abusing Cloudflare services

China

• China investigates Nvidia over suspected violation of antimonopoly law

  • Nvidia Probed in China over Possible Antimonopoly Violations

• Chinese insiders are stealing data scooped up by national surveillance system

  "While Western cybercrime research focuses heavily on criminals in the English- and Russian-speaking worlds, there is also a large community of Chinese-speaking cybercriminals who engage in scammy, low-level, financially motivated cybercrime," SpyCloud senior security researcher Kyla Cardona said during a talk at last month's Cyberwarcon in Arlington, Virginia. It's no secret that President Xi Jinping's government uses technology companies to help maintain the nation's massive surveillance apparatus.

• Highly efficient flash iron-making moves to commercialization in China

• China's Critical Minerals Embargo Is Even Tougher Than Expected

Health / Medicine

• Chinese and Indian drugmakers prepare to cash in on Ozempic craze

• Obesity rates are down. Is that because of weight-loss drugs?

• How everything became surgery

• Link between low fruit and vegetable intake and depression shown in twin studies

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Mystery 'Disease X' outbreak widens as WHO sends rapid response team to DR Congo

• Outbreak with high fatality rate in the DRC could imperil tech supply chains

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Three-quarters of Earth's land became permanently drier in last 3 decades: UN

  • Dry lands now 40% of Earth land area (excl Antarctica)

  • Three-quarters of Earth's land became permanently drier in last 3 decades

• Opt for beans and peas over veggie burgers and plant milks, study finds

• 'It shouldn't be that easy': inside the illegal wildlife trade on social media

• Climate crisis deepens with 2024 "certain" to be hottest year on record

• Starbucks Japan is calling it quits with paper straws

• Large amounts of antibiotics are used in livestock, but this doesn't have to be

• How the Gas Industry covered up the health effects of Gas Stoves

• Burning Cow Dung Emits an Inordinate Amount of Air Pollution in India

• How tyres are turning green

• Global Temperature Set to Surpass 1.5C Threshold in Hottest Year on Record

• 2023 heat anomaly were caused by a decrease in Earth's cloud albedo, and not CO2

• EPA Bans Cancer-Causing Chemicals Used in Dry Cleaning

  • Cancer-causing chemicals used in homes and workplaces banned by EPA

• Xylella Fastidiosa: A Billion-Euro Crisis Brewing in Europe's Olive Groves

• Mega-buildings are now slowing Earth's spin

• The next big environmental problem could come from space

• Mining the Pacific – future proofing or fool's gold?