2025-01-18

CA fires and causes, neo-nazi Zuck, TikTok ban, EU and X, rsync wide open, Starship "fail", car data valued, indoor inauguration, Biden ratifies ERA, more clemency, identity politics, EU royalty

etc

• 'Once-in-a-century' discovery reveals luxury of Pompeii

• Fire at Moss Landing battery plant spurs evacuations, road closures

  • Fire at one of the largest battery plants in California forces evacuations

  • Big fire at California battery plant prompts evacuations amid toxic smoke

  • Fire Breaks Out at Huge Battery Site in California, evacuation orders for 2,000

• Meteorite Crash Caught by Home Security Camera in Likely World-First Footage

LA Fires

• Burning Teslas Add to Toxic Mix of Pollution Delaying LA Return

• What is the pink fire retardant used to control the L.A. fires?

• LA wildfires self-inflicted from regulatory gridlock and resource misallocation

  Explain this to the tens of thousands of law abiding tax paying citizens in Los Angeles who lost their homes this week. Explain to them why this process, aided and abetted by layer after layer of corrupt, self-serving regulators/consultants/affiliates/NGOs/501c3 charitable organizations, is fair or reasonable. Maybe we can take some of the millions of printed pages of these nonsense, useless “Environmental Impact Statements” and use them to build a new roof over their heads.

  I do not know exactly why these ostensibly environmentalist organizations move in lockstep to block these and other actions that actually protect the environment, including the development of lower carbon power sources. It could be ignorance or it could be some fundamentalist underlying anti-humanist ideology – who am I to say? It is not unusual to hear shards of the environmentalist movement make claims like “those houses should never have been built there” or “humans are a blight on the face of the universe” as though that excuses positive actions taken to prevent high efficacy hazard and harm reduction measures.

  Who, then, governs us? Who is actually making law? The answer is a handful of unelected specialists in bureaucracy. The key decision makers within the US Forest Service, CALFIRE, the BLM, the CCC, and their symbiotes at the Sierra Club, The John Muir Project, the Center for Biological Diversity and so on could fit quite easily onto a single Greyhound bus. You don’t know their names. They never appear on TV. They are unelected. Their position is often based on seniority rather than merit. They are effectively unfireable and thus unaccountable to anyone, not even the duly elected Governor. Generally speaking their salaries are far from exceptional, particularly in the public service and non-profit space. They’re not doing it for yacht money and it’s a fair assumption that for most of them (as well as most of us), a career in the upper echelons of business or private industry would be unattainable. Generally they are well-intentioned first order thinkers whose local ideological gradient and surrounding incentive landscape dictates their actions with eerie predictability.

• Why fires spread quickly in modern cities ― and how to slow them

• Some houses survived Los Angeles' extreme wildfires

• What It’s Like to Be a Waterbomber – Jeff Wise

• The Palisades Were Waiting to Burn - The Atlantic

  A parched landscape; crisp-dried vegetation; strong, hot winds: “The gun was loaded,” MacDonald said. And it was pointed at Pacific Palisades. MacDonald studies climate change and wildfires, and he has published a paper with colleagues projecting that the wildfire season in Southern California would, on average, start earlier and last longer in the future, thanks to human-driven climate warming. The lengthier the season, the greater the probability that a fire-weather day would overlap with a Santa Ana–wind day, or a day when someone happened to ignite a fire—more than 90 percent of fires in Southern California are sparked by human activity, he said.

• L.A. Fires: We Can't Let Insurance Companies Exploit the Disaster

Horseshit

• Good readers have distinct brain anatomy, research reveals

• U.K. restaurant selling $177 pineapple pizza: the price for 'terrible judgment'

• Soaring wealth inequality has remade the map of American prosperity

• Has the tennis ball gotten worse?

• Searching online for a recipe, she found a video of herself in a sexual act

• Remote Work Created a Baby Boom. Can We Keep It Up?

• Moon placed on World Monument Fund list of heritage sites in need of protection

• Rare knife showing up at Bay Area restaurant tables, confusing people

• When America's Top Spies Were Academics and Librarians

celebrity gossip

• Watch Bob Ross' the Joy of Painting Start to Finish: Every Episode X 31 Seasons

• Neil Gaiman and the perils of BDSM: is it possible to consent to sexual torture?

  • Is it possible to get consent in a form that cannot be revoked years later when that is more profitable?

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Rogan Misses the Mark: How Zuck's Misdirection on Gov Pressure Goes Unchallenged

• ‘Your Credibility with Me is about None’: CNN Trial Goes From Bad to Worse.

• Russian Disinformation Campaigns Eluded Meta’s Efforts to Block Them - The New York Times

  A new report details how a covert influence operation linked to the Kremlin continued to place ads on Facebook despite U.S. and E.U. prohibitions on doing business with the organization.

Facebook

• “Neo-Nazi Madness”: Stanford Law Professor Publicly Rebukes Zuckerberg and Drops Him as a Client – JONATHAN TURLEY

  Lemley, a partner at the law firm Lex Lumina, decided that he was not content with simply severing the representation without fanfare or embarrassment to his clients. Instead, he decided to publish a tirade on LinkedIn to denounce Zuckerberg’s “descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness.” He declared “While I think they are on the right side in the generative AI copyright dispute in which I represented them, and I hope they win, I cannot in good conscience serve as their lawyer any longer.” He further declared that he deactivated his Threads account because he did not want to “support a Twitter-like site run by a Musk wannabe.”

• The Slop Society

  This is the kind of social network that Mark Zuckerberg wants — an unrestrained, unfiltered, unrepentantly toxic and noxiously heteronormative, one untethered by the frustrating norms of "making sure that a social network of billions of people doesn't actively encourage hate of multiple different marginalized groups." Finally, Mark Zuckerberg can do whatever he wants, as opposed to the past 20 years, where it's hard to argue that he's faced an unrelenting series of punishments.

TikTok

• Biden administration looks for ways to keep TikTok available in the U.S.

• Biden Administration leaves TikTok ban up to Trump

  • Biden punts the TikTok ban to Trump - The Verge

  The Biden administration says it will leave it to incoming President Donald Trump to figure out how to deal with the mess of the TikTok ban, ABC News reports. “Our position on this has been clear: TikTok should continue to operate under American ownership,” a White House official told ABC News. “Given the timing of when it goes into effect over a holiday weekend a day before inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement.”

  • Biden won't enforce TikTok ban, official says, leaving fate of app to Trump

  • Biden won't enforce TikTok ban, leaving fate of app to Trump

• Will Chinese spyware app RedNote be banned in the US?

• (PDF) TikTok vs. Garland Opinion

• Supreme Court rules to uphold TikTok ban, setting stage for shutdown

  • HN comments

• Supreme Court rules TikTok can be banned

• Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Ban

• Supreme Court Backs Law Requiring TikTok to Be Sold or Banned

• Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban

• Supreme Court OK's TikTok Shutdown

• The Supreme Court Rules Against TikTok–Now What?

• EFF Statement on U.S. Supreme Court's Decision to Uphold TikTok Ban

• What could happen to your TikTok app on Jan. 19

• Instagram and YouTube Prepare to Benefit from a TikTok Ban

• Whatever Happens to TikTok, Big Tech Is Coming for Its Creators

Bluesky

• Paul Frazee on Bluesky and ATProto

• Bluesky accounts add 10k followers per day

• Bluesky releases its annual moderation report for 2024

Musk

• Elon Musk criticizes Twitch streamer and removes their verification over dispute

• E.U. steps up probe into Elon Musk's X over content moderation

• Brussels orders X to hand over documents on algorithm

  • EU orders X to hand over info on recent algorithm changes

  • European Union orders X to hand over algorithm documents

  • EU asks X for internal documents about algorithms as it steps up investigation

Electric / Self Driving cars

• More EVs Migrate to Tesla's Chargers, with Some Bumps

• Say bye to Tesla Cybertruck: Elon Musk announces decision after fall in sales

• A solid electrolyte gives lithium-sulfur batteries ludicrous endurance

• Cut the Cord: Wireless Power Transmission for Cars Is Coming

• The Toyota Prius Transformed the Auto Industry

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Americans are fine with corporate DEI

• Western meritocracy traps people in emotions of envy, shame and fear

• Wokism Is Just Beginning

• Rabbi says psychedelics are "elephant in the room" in sacred Jewish text

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• 7 steps to junk science that can achieve worldly success

  often I think it’s more just a sense that all these media-friendly scientists and podcasters and journalists feel that they’re part of some collective project of science promotion, and from that perspective it doesn’t really matter if the science is good or bad, as long as it’s science-like, by their standards.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky's AT Protocol

• Bambu Lab shutting out 3rd party slicers

• Poppy Playtime Sues Google for Failing to Remove Copyright Infringing Scam Apps

• The Switch 2 is boring – and that's what Nintendo needs

• You can't use your $6,299.00 Camera as a Webcam. That will be $5

  • HN comments

  • Canon charges $50 per year to use a $900 camera as a functional webcam

• Microsoft stops using Bing to trick people into thinking they're on Google

• MS raises price of consumer version of Microsoft 365 for first time in 12 years

  • Microsoft bundles Office AI features into Microsoft 365 and raises prices

• Rockstar shuts down ambitious mod that put GTA 4's Liberty City in GTA 5

• RedNote Scrambles to Hire English-Speaking Content Moderators

  • RedNote segregating US users to prevent US influence on Chinese users

• GTA 6 $100 Price Tag: Analyst Claims It Could Save Gaming | HotHardware

• Bill Gates "whine about losing mobile to Android"

• Apple denies App Store profit margin is 75% – claims to have no clue

  • Apple CFO denies company enjoys 75% margin on its App Store

• Decades late: FCC Seeks to Increase Broadband Services in the 900 MHz Band

• Investigating an "evil" RJ45 dongle - lcamtuf’s thing

• Net neutrality, we hardly knew ye

  The actual reality has been somewhat different. Bandwidth has expanded, and Netflix transmissions do not interfere with Facebook, or vice versa. There is plenty of access to go around. That has been the case during periods with net neutrality and without. So one lesson of the net neutrality debate comes from economics: Supply is elastic, at least when regulation allows it to be. Internet experts Tim Wu, Cory Doctorow, Farhad Manjoo and many others were just plain, flat out wrong about this, mostly due to their anti-capitalist mentality.

• Microsoft begins auto updating PCs to Windows 11 24H2 (forced download phase)

• CNN found liable for $5 million in defamation trial against US Navy veteran over Afghanistan report

• CNN's Revenue Has Dropped Some 400M in Three Years

• Is Netflix deliberately dumbing down TV so people can watch while scrolling?

• FCC to telcos: By law you must secure your network from foreign spies. Get on it

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Over 660k Rsync servers exposed to code execution attacks

  "In the most severe CVE, an attacker only requires anonymous read access to a rsync server, such as a public mirror, to execute arbitrary code on the machine the server is running on,"

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Apple suspends error-strewn AI generated news alerts

  • Apple suspends AI-generated news alert service after BBC complaint

• AI's Uneven Arrival

• Eliza: First AI chatbot has been resurrected after decades

• Nearly all Americans use AI, though most dislike it, poll shows

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• SpaceX Starship test fails after Texas launch

  The latest test of Space X's giant Starship rocket has failed, minutes after launch. The mission came hours after the first flight of the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket system, backed by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos. The two tech billionaires both want to dominate the space vehicle market. "Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today's flight test to better understand root cause," SpaceX posted on X.

  The Super Heavy booster managed to returned to its launchpad roughly seven minutes after lift-off as planned, prompting an eruption of applause from ground control teams.

• Flights Diverted as SpaceX Starship Explodes over Caribbean

• SpaceX's Starship test flight ends in failure after spacecraft is destroyed

• SpaceX's Starship explodes in flight test, forcing airlines to divert

• Flights Diverted After SpaceX Debris Falls into Path of Planes

• SpaceX Ship Explodes During Test Flight

• SpaceX Starship issues may delay Artemis 3 mission to 2026

• Stranded astronaut Suni Williams performs spacewalk at ISS.

Crypto con games

• The Madcap Rise of Memecoin Factory Pump.Fun

• Firewood, Coal, Uranium – Bitcoin: The Next Step in Energy Transport

• El Salvador to Shut or Sell Chivo Crypto Wallet as Part of $3.5B IMF Deal

Economicon / Business / Finance

• FDIC sues 17 former Silicon Valley Bank executives over collapse

• Snap shares drop as FTC refers MyAI chatbot complaint to the DOJ

• General Motors Is Banned from Selling Driving Behavior Data for 5 Years

  • HN comments

  • GM banned from sharing driving and location data with insurance companies

• Sources Say Intel Is an Acquisition Target

• Capital One acknowledges 'outage' as users report issues accessing deposits

• Walgreens CEO reveals anti-theft measures of locking up products had the opposite effect.

• Mortgage Rates Shoot Up to 7%, the Highest Rate Since May.

• "remittance flows" is a less common but not unheard of subject of economics papers. Which generally suck. The global redistributor we never hear about: money sent by migrants

• Nintendo stock slides 7% as Switch 2 announcement underwhelms

• Only 21% of 501(C)(3) Nonprofit Revenue from Charitable Contributions/Grants

• TSMC Can't Be Caught or Bought, Only Sought or Stolen

• FTC Sues PepsiCo for Rigging Soft Drink Competition

• Out with a Bang: Enforcers Go After John Deere, Private Equity Billionaires

• Oil Industry Jobs Are Down, Even with Production Up

• Mitsubishi Corp. Quits China Metal Trading After Copper Fraud

• CFPB Orders Operator of Cash App to Pay $175M and Fix Its Failures on Fraud

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Imagine if the United States used proportional representation

• Is NYC's Congestion Pricing Working? Fewer Private Cars Are on the Road

Trump

• China's Xi Offers Olive Branch to Trump by Sending VP to Inauguration

• Democrats Are Terrified of Kash Patel Leading the FBI. Perhaps They Should Be.

• First-Day Trump Order: A Federal Stockpile of Bitcoin?

  • Trump Plans to Designate Cryptocurrency as a National Priority

• Authorities Preparing For “Worst Case Scenarios” Ahead of Trump Inauguration - modernity

• Extremely cold weather will force Trump’s inauguration inside for first time in 40 years

  • Cold forces inauguration indoors, first time in 40 years

Democrats / Biden Inc

• Executive Order on Strengthening and Promoting Innovation in USA Cybersecurity

• Biden says Equal Rights Amendment is ratified, kicking off expected legal battle

  • President Biden declares the 28th amendment to be the law of the land

  • Lame Duck Biden Attempts to Declare That the Equal Rights Amendment Is Ratified

  • They quote the amendment:

  • SECTION 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
  • SEC. 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
  • SEC. 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

  • National Archives rebuffs Biden’s attempt to add Equal Rights Amendment to Constitution

  • (Dec 17 2024) Statement on the Equal Rights Amendment Ratification Process

  In 2020 and again in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable. The OLC concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts. Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment.

• A Lot of Americans Are Googling 'What Is Oligarchy?' After Biden's Farewell Spea

• President Biden Announces Clemency for Nearly 1,500 Americans | The White House

  The President is commuting the sentences of close to 1,500 individuals who were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities. He is also pardoning 39 individuals who were convicted of non-violent crimes. These actions represent the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history.

Left Angst

• WaPo's Pulitzer-winning cartoonist, who portrays Republicans as groomers and predators, arrested for possession of child porn | Not the Bee

• 'Homeless people given free lunch' to attend Trump Jr event in Greenland

• I knew one day I'd have to watch powerful men burn the world down

• Trump team ‘having a good laugh’ over Michelle Obama’s ‘deliberate’ decision to skip inauguration: ‘Didn’t expect her to come anyway’.

• ‘Deeply alarmed’: Washington Post staff request meeting with Jeff Bezos.

• Dear Donald Trump: A letter from Nature on how to make science thrive

• “Identity politics” is economic policy | Science

  In the wake of the November 2024 US election, several commentators have suggested that the US Democratic Party abandon its commitment to so-called “identity politics,” which they identify as elitist, condescending, and divisive. They argue that rather than focusing on these “cultural” issues, progressives should prioritize economic concerns. Yet identity politics, at a fundamental level, is driven, and dominated, by economic concerns. Growing bodies of social science evidence make increasingly clear how identity politics—in terms of ensuring equal rights for minorities and women in the workplace and in the world and in terms of affirmative action to ensure equity of opportunity—is good economic policy. Opposition to identity politics is often built not by the culturally and ethnically diverse working class who benefit but by lower-ability economic elites who feel that their advantage is under threat.

  the political right clearly believes there is good reason to invest time and resources in identity politics of their own, weakening existing rights and safeguards. In recent years, we have seen both important legal rulings and the passing of new laws that, directly or indirectly, target underprivileged and minority groups. For example, in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the US Supreme Court, by means of a majority comprising judges appointed by the political right, removed protections against racially discriminatory voting laws. In 2022, the court overturned the long-standing precedent of Roe v. Wade, removing the right to bodily autonomy and appropriate health care for millions of women. In 2023, the court partially reversed a precedent permitting certain forms of affirmative action, citing conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. More recently, the political right has attempted to pass hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures.

• How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley into Trump's Arms

• China tech shrugged off Trump's trade war; will likely do same with new tariffs

• Biden signs sweeping cybersecurity order, just in time for Trump to gut it

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Undocumented Immigrant Offending Rate Lower Than U.S.-Born Citizen Rate

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• V-22 Ospreys will face 'serious' risks from flawed gears for foreseeable future

• Lockheed Certifies F-35 to Use Sustainable Fuels

• Chinese hackers accessed Yellen's computer in US Treasury breach

• China's Salt Typhoon spies spotted on US govt networks before telcos: CISA boss

• Treasury Sanctions Company Associated with Salt Typhoon

  • The U.S. Found the Beijing Firm Behind Major 'Salt Typhoon' Telecom Hacks

• What The Navy’s Massive Orca Submarine Drone Is Actually Capable Of

World

• Rethinking fertility trends in developed countries

• Alberta government's diplomatic efforts to avert tariffs a high-wire act

• EU eyes enlisting Belgian king to help safeguard Russia sanctions

  They include around €190bn of Russian state assets at the Belgium-based central securities depository Euroclear. The profits arising from those assets will repay a $50bn loan to Ukraine, and officials believe they are a critical part of a potential ceasefire agreement. As the state assets are physically held at a Belgian entity, one fallback option is to utilise a wartime decree passed in 1944 that allows King Philippe to block the transfer of assets from the country, according to four officials involved in the discussions.

• Sweden unveils drone swarm to be paired with ground troops

• Octopus overtakes British Gas as Britain's largest household energy supplier

• Tesla Cybertruck seized after being unlawfully driven on UK roads

  • Driver stopped in Tesla Cybertruck banned in UK

• UK: Rare ‘UFO clouds’ spotted - BBC Weather

• U.K. announces new inquiries into decade-old cases of child sexual grooming after pressure sparked by Elon Musk tweet.

Iran / Houthi

• Houthis To Halt Red Sea Ship Attacks If Gaza Truce Holds | ZeroHedge

Israel

• How Long Will It Take and How Much Will It Cost to Rebuild Gaza?

China

• iPhone drops from first to 3rd place in China, struggles to launch AI features

• China's EV Sales Soar 40 Percent Amid Gasoline Plunge

• China's population falls for third year in a row as birthrate declines

Health / Medicine

• Should doctors help people die? Global debate hits home in the U.S.

• Cancer cases rising for women and younger adults in US, report finds

• Cost sharing health ministries: What to know, risks, and fees

• Ozempic and Wegovy are selected for Medicare's price negotiations

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Presumptive Bird Flu Case Identified in San Francisco Resident

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Planet-warming gas levels rose more than ever in 2024

• Is the age of de-extinction upon us?

• Greenland's melting ice is clearing the way for a mineral 'gold rush'

• UK wildlife have accumulated many times more than safe PFAS in tissue and organs

• Climate-friendly waterwheels are coming around again

• Big oil pushed to kill bill that would have made them pay for wildfire disasters

• Fed Withdraws from Network of Central Banks for Greening the Financial System

• Feral Hogs Are the Worst Invasive Species You've Never Thought About