2024-12-29
chess dress code, Musk politics, women's right's for men, poor professors, suck as a service: accounting edition, FDIV bug pictured, fun Biden pix, defund NPR, US and Syria, EU USB, Putin apologizes
etc
Horseshit
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Americans Consider Themselves 'Sober Curious' Beyond Dry January
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But protectionism is bad, no? Ireland's weavers fight to save Donegal tweed from foreign imposters
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We need dramatic social and tech changes: is societal collapse inevitable?
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Are young people's attention spans shrinking? More complex than you think
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Horseshit at the time; now its rancid horseshit. The global panic over the millennium bug, 25 years on
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San Francisco's 'war on cars' gets even more intense as threats of violence fly
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The oversavers: Older Americans who wish they'd worked less, vacationed more
celebrity gossip
Musk
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Opponents of Elon Musk claim he stripped them of their X badges
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Elon Musk pens German newspaper opinion piece supporting far-right AfD party
Elon Musk reiterated his support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, in an opinion piece published by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper less than two months before Germans go to the polls. “The AfD, even though it is described as far-right, represents a political realism that resonates with many Germans who feel their concerns are ignored by the establishment,” the billionaire wrote in comments published on Saturday. “It addresses the problems of the day — without the political correctness that often obscures the truth.” A key adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, Musk has extensive business interests in Germany, including a Tesla Inc. factory in the town of Gruenheide near Berlin. After frequently railing against German bureaucracy in the past, he has waded deeper into the country’s politics in recent weeks, disparaging Chancellor Olaf Scholz in posts on his social media platform X and using populist tropes to clamor for the anti-immigrant party that is campaigning for a German exit from the European Union and the euro.
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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Opinion | The Supreme Court Case Over Trans Youth Could Also Decimate Women’s Equality - POLITICO
The case considers the constitutionality of state laws that ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors. While the case itself addresses only a law from Tennessee, 26 states have passed similar laws that will be affected by the outcome. A blanket ban on such care risks devastating effects for those youth who need it. But as the argument made clear, that is not all that is at stake. The case is also about women’s rights, and a fundamental legal principle that helped to secure them: Courts should be skeptical of laws that discriminate on the basis of sex. With the defenders of Tennessee’s law challenging that bedrock principle, it is not only transgender equality, but sex equality more broadly that is in doubt. Depending on the outcome, Skrmetti could be the next Dobbs, adding another nail in the coffin to women’s legal freedoms — and freedoms we all enjoy regardless of sex. The United States is challenging the Tennessee law on the basis of the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which has been interpreted to guarantee sex equality. Under this provision, sex-based laws — that is, laws that on their face classify people on the basis of sex — are subject to what is known as heightened scrutiny, which means that courts will invalidate them unless there is a persuasive reason to draw a sex-based line.
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Costco Denies Shareholder Demand to Back Down from DEI Hiring
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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Elderly student loan borrowers owe $121B. They ask Biden for relief
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How Socio-Economic Background Shapes Academia
Individuals from poorer backgrounds have been severely underrepresented for seven decades, especially in humanities and elite universities. . Academics from poorer backgrounds introduce more novel scientific concepts, but are less likely to receive recognition, as measured by citations, Nobel Prize nominations, and awards.
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Spotify Shuts Down 'Unwrapped' Artist Royalty Calculator with Legal Threats
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Netflix tells writers to have characters "announce what they're doing" (HN comments)
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Bench shuts down, leaving businesses without access to accounting and tax docs
Bench, a Canada-based accounting startup that offered software-as-a-service for small and medium-sized businesses, has abruptly shut down, according to a notice posted on its website. “We regret to inform you that as of December 27, 2024, the Bench platform will no longer be accessible,” the notice reads. “We know this news is abrupt and may cause disruption, so we’re committed to helping Bench customers navigate through the transition.” Bench’s notice says its customers should file a six-month extension with the IRS to “find the right bookkeeping partner.” It also says customers will be able to download their data by December 30 and will have until March 2025 to do so.
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Microsoft joins scientists in finding a way to reuse decommissioned servers | TechRadar
Unlike standard practices where components are discarded after 3–5 years of use, the GreenSKUs framework focuses on reusing parts like random-access memory (RAM) modules and solid-state drives (SSDs) from decommissioned servers. The foundation of GreenSKUs lies in leveraging backward compatibility. Advances in technology, such as Compute Express Link (CXL) controllers, allow compatibility between different generations of memory modules, like DDR4 and DDR5, making it feasible to reuse older components without significant performance loss.
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Google CEO Pichai tells employees 'The stakes are high' for 2025
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Sony's Crunchyroll finds its early lead in anime under attack
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Intel's $475M error: the silicon behind the Pentium division bug
In this article, I discuss the Pentium's division algorithm, show exactly where the bug is on the Pentium chip, take a close look at the circuitry, and explain what went wrong. In brief, the division algorithm uses a lookup table. In 1994, Intel stated that the cause of the bug was that five entries were omitted from the table due to an error in a script. However, my analysis shows that 16 entries were omitted due to a mathematical mistake in the definition of the lookup table. Five of the missing entries trigger the bug— also called the FDIV bug after the floating-point division instruction "FDIV"—while 11 of the missing entries have no effect.
Although Professor Nicely brought attention to the FDIV bug, he wasn't the first to find it. In May 1994, Intel's internal testing of the Pentium revealed that very rarely, floating-point division was slightly inaccurate.1 Since only one in 9 billion values caused the problem, Intel's view was that the problem was trivial: "This doesn't even qualify as an errata." Nonetheless, Intel quietly revised the Pentium circuitry to fix the problem. few months later, in October, Nicely noticed erroneous results in his prime number computations.2 He soon determined that 1/824633702441 was wrong on three different Pentium computers, but his older computers gave the right answer. He called Intel tech support but was brushed off, so Nicely emailed a dozen computer magazines and individuals about the bug. One of the recipients was Andrew Schulman, author of "Undocumented DOS". He forwarded the email to Richard Smith, cofounder of a DOS software tools company. Smith posted the email on a Compuserve forum, a 1990s version of social media.
engineers and mathematicians were analyzing the bug, including Tim Coe, an engineer who had designed floating-point units.7 Remarkably, by studying the Pentium's bad divisions, Coe reverse-engineered the Pentium's division algorithm and determined why it went wrong. Coe and others wrote papers describing the mathematics behind the Pentium bug.8 But until now, nobody has shown how the bug is implemented in the physical chip itself.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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Nonprofit group joins Elon Musk's effort to block OpenAI's for-profit transition
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OpenAI defends for-profit shift as critical to sustain humanitarian mission
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'Godfather of AI' shortens odds of AI wiping out humanity over next 30 years
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Age against the machine–susceptibility of LLMs to cognitive impairment
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AI Power Needs Threaten Billions in Damages for US Households
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OpenAI and Microsoft define AGI as AI software that can generate $100B in profit
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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But mum, dad and the grandparents’ good fortune — and, of course, their hard work — means millennials and Gen-Z do have something to look forward to: a decent inheritance. In the next 25 years, over $100tn in assets — ranging from property, aged wines and artwork — will be transferred from the boomers and older generations to their heirs in the US alone, according to Cerulli Associates, a wealth manager. Vanguard — another such firm — recently projected that over $18tn in wealth will be handed down globally by 2030. It will be the largest intergenerational transfer of assets in history.
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As long as it is "other people's money" it all good, right? He Lost 35% Ignoring 2024's Biggest Trades: 'I Am Not Good at What I Am Doing'
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U.S. homelessness jumps to record high amid affordable housing shortage
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U.S. trade deficit is rising again. Can Trump do anything about it?
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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WY governor approves $100M sale of state land to join Grand Teton National Park
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Addressing Threat Posed by Foreign Adversaries Access to Sensitive Personal Data
Among other things, the Final Rule identifies countries of concern and covered persons to whom the Final Rule applies, and designates classes of prohibited, restricted, and exempt transactions. The Final Rule establishes bulk thresholds for certain sensitive personal data, including human ‘omic data, biometric identifiers, precise geolocation data, personal health data, personal financial data, and certain covered personal identifiers. The Final Rule also prescribes processes to obtain licenses authorizing otherwise prohibited or restricted transactions; protocols for the designation of covered persons; and provides advisory opinions, and recordkeeping, reporting, and other due diligence obligations for covered transactions. The Final Rule further exempts several classes of data transactions from the scope of its prohibitions and restrictions, including personal communications and certain financial services transactions, corporate group transactions, transactions authorized by Federal law and international agreements, investment agreements subject to a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) action, telecommunication services, biological product and medical device authorizations, clinical investigations, and others.
under the Final Rule, parties engaging in vendor agreements, employment agreements, and investment agreements involving access by countries of concern or covered persons to bulk U.S. sensitive personal data or U.S. Government-related data would be restricted transactions that must comply with the separate security requirements that have been developed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in coordination with the Justice Department. These security requirements include organizational and system-level requirements (such as ensuring that basic organizational cybersecurity policies, practices, and controls are in place), and data-level requirements (such as data minimization and masking, encryption, and privacy-enhancing techniques). These critical requirements will be published separately by CISA through the Federal Register and on CISA’s website.
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IRS goes after gig workers instead of billionaire tax dodgers.
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Dr. Paul Releases 2024 'Festivus' Report on Government Waste
Trump
Democrats / Biden Inc
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he Xi-Hunter Biden encounter, which had not previously garnered much attention, appears to have been at a meal Hunter described in an email to his former associate Devon Archer as “pretty amazing” because his dad and China’s powerful authoritarian leader “were supposed to spend 2hrs together [but it] stretched to 7hrs. I think they are in love.” Xi was about two months into his ambitious “Belt and Road” foreign-influence and investment campaign — and a Chinese state-backed company aligned with that vision, BHR Partners, was in the process being co-launched by Hunter.
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Court Blocks Biden From Selling Off Portions of Southern Border Wall | The Epoch Times
Left Angst
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NPR and PBS Stations Brace for Funding Battle Under Trump - The New York Times
In his new role advising President-elect Donald J. Trump, Mr. Musk has floated sweeping cuts to the federal government, including the elimination of entire departments and the firing of agency leaders. One of the most concrete proposals on his list is eliminating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding that the government funnels to PBS and NPR stations, home to cultural touchstones like Elmo, Big Bird and “Fresh Air.” For decades, NPR and PBS have overcome similar threats. But this year, “the attention and intensity” of the calls to defund public media seem greater, said Michael Isip, the president and chief executive of KQED, which operates NPR and PBS stations in the San Francisco Bay Area. NPR and PBS stations are bracing for the fight. After the election, leaders of NPR’s biggest member stations circulated a report that warned “it would be unwise to assume that events will play out as they have in the past,” with regard to their federal funding. PBS received an update on the situation from political consultants at a board meeting in early December. And station directors in some states are already making their case to legislators.
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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Chinese hackers used telcos to geolocate Americans and record phone calls
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David Stockman on The Syrian Fiasco… A Case of The “Empire First” Folly In Spades
Washington has seen fit during the last decade to pump-in upwards of $40 billion of overt and covert military aid, economic support and humanitarian assistance to a plethora of opposition Syrian forces for no discernible reason of homeland security. To the contrary, the expenditure of all this treasure and political capital was designed for no purpose other than to effect Regime Change in Damascus and to eject the Assad government from its control over the what were the remaining white areas of the Syrian map below as of just a few weeks back.
World
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
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Putin apologises to Azerbaijan for Kazakhstan air crash
Vladimir Putin has apologised to Azerbaijan for what he described as a “tragic incident” involving an Azerbaijani aircraft in Russian airspace on Christmas Day. Moscow phoned Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and the Russian president expressed “deep and sincere condolences” to the families of those affected, the Kremlin’s press office said on Saturday. The Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 plane was flying from Baku to Grozny on Christmas Day when it diverted across the Caspian Sea and crash-landed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board. Senior US and Ukrainian officials blamed Russian anti-aircraft fire for the crash. Although the Kremlin’s statement on Saturday did not explicitly confirm that Russian air defence systems were responsible, it did not deny the allegation. The aircraft “repeatedly attempted to land at Grozny airport” while Ukrainian combat drones were attacking nearby cities and Russian air defences were “responding to these attacks”, according to the Kremlin.