2025-01-25

scifi dreams, GenZ wins, demotivated marketing consultants, hacking P-hacking, Sony discontinuing media, low home sales, declassifying JFK files, Trump wants Greenland, FISA unconstitutional

etc

• Reservoir was built to save Pacific Palisades. It was empty when the flames came

• L.A. County's evacuation alert system broke

• Some interesting open problems in technology

  Imagine transmitting large amounts of power via microwave beam instead of pumping megavolts over wires. You can theoretically use little waveguides to transport tremendous amounts of power. You can also transmit power over line of sight the way they do with microwave transmission in the telephone system. The military has done some decent work here and they have ways to transform to DC power. Gyrotrons are pretty efficient: 45%. I suspect they could be more efficient. They’re only about a hundred kilowatts though. End to end efficiencies right now are like 1% for a few hundred kilowatts over 10km. Pretty uninteresting achievement; Nikola Tesla probably could have done that with long-waves. I’m thinking megawatts with 70%+ end to end efficiency.

  • such a thing would be a weapon of interesting power, too. Mini thermodynamic engines have noise issues; think about the .049 model airplane engines.

• Evidence suggests megaflood refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5M years ago

  • Evidence of a Megaflood That Refilled the Mediterranean Sea

• Earth's Mini-Moon Was Probably a Piece of Its Real Moon

• Beached whales: Airbus grounds its Beluga cargo flights

• (2016) Peanut Butter Day: Going Nuts over NIST's Standard Reference Peanut Butter

Horseshit

• Gen Z Americans are leaving their European cousins in the dust

  On both sides of the Atlantic, the narrative of millennial malaise is no myth. They may go down as the most economically unlucky generation of the past century. But we then hit a fork in the road. For young adults in Britain and most of western Europe, conditions have only got worse since. If you thought the sub-1 per cent annual growth in living standards endured by millennials was bad, try sub-zero. Britons born in the mid 1990s have seen living standards not merely stagnate but decline. Right across Europe, there is precious little for the youngest adults to be happy about. But in America, Gen Z are motoring ahead. US living standards have grown at an average 2.5 per cent per year since the cohort born in the late 1990s entered adulthood, blessing this generation not only with far more upward mobility than their millennial elders, but with more rapidly improving living standards than young boomers had at the same age. And it’s not just incomes: Gen Z Americans are also outpacing millennials in their climb up the housing ladder.

• The Ups and Downs of a Supertrader

• Touchscreen dashboards have taken over and ruined driving

• Cruise passengers horrified as workers parade around while dressed as ‘KKK members’

• Harvard-trained expert: I have anxiety

• The Exodus - Christopher Butler

  A product marketing consultant with over a decade of experience is leaving to pursue art, illustration, and poetry. Another designer, burned out on growing her business, is pivoting to focus on fitness instead. These aren’t just isolated anecdotes — they’re part of an emerging pattern of experienced creative professionals not just changing jobs, but leaving the field entirely. When people who’ve invested years mastering a profession decide to walk away, it’s worth asking why.

  What’s particularly striking is that many of these departing marketers aren’t moving to adjacent fields or seeking different roles within the industry. This isn’t a finding-my-unique-ability conversation in the corporate sphere; they’re leaving. They’re not just tired of their jobs; they’re tired of participating in a system of uninterpreted abstraction that they are, nonetheless, beholden to.

• What Those Spikes on Semi-Truck Wheels Do

• Are we losing the ability to write by hand?

  • I once did calligraphy as a hobby. Years of neglect has made my handwriting horrible. I could improve it with practice, if I cared to.

• Even before the LA fires, Californians fled for 'climate havens'

• Gen Z, Social Media is Optional

• Louvre Director Calls for 'Reassessing' Display of Mona Lisa

celebrity gossip

• Ross Ulbricht speaks out about his pardon and thanks Trump

• Hans Zimmer in Talks to Re-Create Saudi Arabia's National Anthem

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• The EU wants to scan every message sent in Europe. Will that make us safer?

  • Look at the current "Salt Typhoon" headlines for a lesson on backdoors and who gets to use them...

• Better digital literacy can help reduce climate and disaster conspiracy theories

TikTok

• Trump can save TikTok without forcing a sale, ByteDance board member claims

• TikTok is 'severely damaging' young people – unlike its Chinese equivalent

Facebook

• Instagram and Facebook Blocked and Hid Abortion Pill Providers' Posts

• 'Neo-Nazi Madness': Meta's Top AI Lawyer on Why He Fired the Company

  • Who Is Mark Lemley? Attorney for Meta in Copyright Litigation Withdraws

• Meta's Threads to Show Ads in US, Japan

  • Angry users react as Meta begins testing ads on Threads in the US and Japan

Bluesky

• First ATProto Conference Announced – Seattle, March 22-23

• You can just hack on ATProto

• Bluesky's science takeover: 70% of Nature poll respondents use platform

Musk

• Tesla Gigafactory Berlin protest of Musk's neo-Nazi connections

• Hitler, Musk, and the Art of the Smear

• BMW trolled after announcing it's 'no longer posting' on X: 'Becoming More Woke'

• Twitter refuses to remove stabbing video watched by Southport killer

• European Medicines Agency Ditches Elon Musk's X in Favor of Bluesky

• Wall Street Banks Prepare to Sell Billions of Dollars of X Loans

• Elon Musk email to X staff: 'we're barely breaking even'

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Tesla closes loophole that let Kia owners charge on Superchargers

• New Electrical Code Could Doom Most Common EV Charging

• Could Self-Driving Buses Bring Vehicle Autonomy Home?

• Four Electric School Buses Burn in MA

• EV maker Nikola exploring options including potential sale.

• Heat pumps in EVs are making a big difference in cold-weather driving

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• How Can We Deal with P-hacking?

  we build a model of hypothesis testing that accounts for p-hacking and derive critical values robust to p-hacking from it. From the model, we derive critical values such that, if they are used to determine significance, and if p-hacking adjusts to the new significance standards, spurious significant results do not occur more often than intended. Because of p-hacking, robust critical values are larger than classical critical values. In the model calibrated to medical science, the robust critical value is the classical critical value for the same test statistic but with one fifth of the significance level.

• AI weapon detection system at Nashville high school failed to detect gun

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• UI is hell: four-function calculators

  Keep in mind that this user interface, with all its gotchas and quirks, is the outcome of decades of product evolution and market research. Some of the early calculators from the 1960s and 1970s had even more perplexing input schemes.

• g.co, Google's official URL shortcut, is compromised

• What You Might Miss When Backing Up CDs

  • links to tools that get that data: HN comment

• Crunchyroll Premium Login Details Leaked; Users at High Risk

• Sony to End Production of Blu-ray Media in Feb: "There Will Be No Successor"

  • Sony Japan ends production of recordable Blu-rays with 'no successor' planned

  • Sony announces all MiniDiscs media production is ending February 2025

• Ransacked: Vulnerabilities in LTE/5G core infrastructure

• Way more game makers are working on PC titles than ever, survey says

• Subaru Security Flaws Exposed Its System for Tracking Cars

  • Researchers Crack Subaru's Services to Access Location Data, Door Locks and More

• A look at the recent rsync vulnerability

• Epic is losing billions fighting Apple and Google because it can afford to

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• (2014) Mineral Oil Cooled PC | Puget Systems

  Unfortunately our mineral oil aquarium PC kit project has been alleged to infringe on the patents held by a company who holds several patents related to mineral oil cooling of PCs. They offered to license this technology back to us. We decided to shut down this project instead, because the licensing cost was infeasible for this type of project, and we did not want to set a precedent of paying to license something we conceived and developed on our own.

  • After 7 years of sales

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Meta GenAI org in panic mode

• Stargate has not yet secured the funding it requires

• Scale AI CEO says China caught the U.S. with the DeepSeek open-source model

• Meta to spend up to $65B this year to power AI goals

• AI can now replicate itself – a milestone that has experts terrified

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA awards Artemis logistics studies

• Amazon ships Project Kuiper satellites to Florida prepares for milestone launch

Crypto con games

• I don't support a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and neither should you

• Trump-crossposting X account advertises fake memecoins that make $1.25M

• Andreessen Horowitz set to pull back from UK crypto investing

• Police struggling to keep pace with cryptocurrency fraudsters

Economicon / Business / Finance

• HSBC shuts payments app Zing a year after launch

• Wall Street Enters Darker Age with Most Stock Trading Now Hidden

• Amplifiers: Former Sequoia China unit buys Marshall for $1.15B

• Boeing projects additional Starliner losses in fourth quarter

  • Boeing warns of more financial charges due to strikes, costlier parts, Starliner

• The U.S. just experienced its slowest annual sales of homes since 1995

  • US home sales in 2024 fell to lowest level since 1995

• Mastercard, Visa failed to stop payments on OnlyFans for child sex-abuse content

• BlackRock CEO wants SEC to 'rapidly approve' tokenization of bonds, stocks

• Amazon is quitting Quebec to 'shock and awe' workers worldwide

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Swaths of U.S. Government Grind to a Halt After Trump Shock Therapy: Rescinded job offers, delayed health updates and confusion over cutting government checks upend business as usual across Washington.

• US administration reviewing automatic emergency braking rule

  • The breathalyzer requirement and "back up camera" bullshit needs to go away, too. Make them available tot hose who want but not require this boondoggle horseshit by law.

Trump

• Trump signs executive order on developing AI 'free from ideological bias'

• Trump signs executive order promoting crypto

• Trump Orders Declassification of JFK, RFK, and MLK Assassination Files

  • Trump signs order to declassify files on JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations.

  • Trump signs executive order to release more JFK, RFK, MLK assassination files

  • CIA document shows why 'deep state' has always feared release of JFK files

  • he ordered this first term, too. There's limits to Presidential power.

• Trump staff 'furious' after Musk trashes AI project

• Donald Trump in fiery call with Denmark’s prime minister over Greenland

  Donald Trump insisted he was serious in his determination to take over Greenland in a fiery telephone call with Denmark’s prime minister, according to senior European officials. Five current and former senior European officials briefed on the call said the conversation had gone very badly. They added that Trump had been aggressive and confrontational following the Danish prime minister’s comments that the island was not for sale, despite her offer of more co-operation on military bases and mineral exploitation. “It was horrendous,” said one of the people. Another added: “He was very firm. It was a cold shower. Before, it was hard to take it seriously. But I do think it is serious, and potentially very dangerous.”

  • Trump berates Danish PM over Greenland in 'horrendous' phone call

Left Angst

• US Cloud soon illegal? Trump punches first hole in EU-US Data Deal

• Did Trump's executive order just make everyone in the U.S. female?

• The U.S. has tried to buy Greenland before

• Billionaires and tech VCs have now set their sights back on Wikipedia

• GitHub Showing Trump Administration Scrubbing Government Web Pages in Real Time

• Ask HN: Has your TP Link equipment failed recently? | Hacker News

  with the recent talk of TP Link being a target of US national security and the recent administration change, I'm curious if others are having similar issues en masse.

  I really doubt that your shitty router died because Trump secretly hit its remote kill switch

• America's Constitutional Crisis Is About Technical Debt

• Europe can import disillusioned talent from Trump's US, says Lagarde

• New FTC Chair Fighting DEI, Cuts Off Public Comments on Surveillance Pricing

• Tennessee Republican proposes amendment to allow Trump to serve third term

  • Proposal to Amending the 22nd Amendment to Allow Trump to Serve a Third Term

  • Constitutional amendment to allow Trump third term introduced in the House

  • House GOP measure would let Trump seek third term

• Charlamagne Says Dems’ Actions Have Him Rethinking His Belief That Trump Is ‘Fascist’ | The Daily Caller

• 'Never seen anything like this': halting NIH meetings and travel

• Hiring Freeze Leaves USPTO Backlog Attack Plan in Limbo

• Trump Seeks to Paralyze Independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Watchdog - The New York Times

• Global green energy push likely to continue despite Trump climate retreat: UN

• Big Tech's new climate silence under Trump

• FEMA May Be Eliminated

• Sam Altman is the latest tech titan to bow to Donald Trump

• Trump's neofascism is here now. Here are things you can do to resist

• Dr. Anthony Fauci Is Stripped of Government-Funded Security Protection

• Tariffs will harm America, not induce a manufacturing rebirth

• Trump's Protectionism Could Increase Free Trade

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Court rules FBI's warrantless searches violated Fourth Amendment

  • Court rules FISA Section 702 surveillance of US resident was unconstitutional

• Crime lab analyst altered DNA evidence in hundreds of cases, prosecutors say

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• The trouble with Canada's pipelines running through the U.S.

• We Went with Marine F-35Bs as They Fought a Mock War from a Pacific Island

• Air Force planes will fly deportation flights under Trump order.

  • ‘Deportation Flights Have Begun:’ Trump Administration Begins Returning Criminal Aliens to Home Countries

• Trump aims to cut US force in Europe by 20k, compel subsidies from allies

• Pentagon orders global social media pause, with exceptions for border operations

World

• why limit the fun to just the power company and the user? Power grid in Central Europe uses unencrypted radio to add and shed loads

• Solace and sisterhood: the Indian holy city where widows find a new home

• Complex electricity tariffs doing more harm than good, as consumers fall through

• UK to soften tax rules for wealthy foreigners

• Google won't comply with EU fact-checking law

• Google commits to combatting fake reviews in the UK after 5-year probe

• Vienna Embraces Heat Pumps to Ditch Russian Gas

• 'Bomb' cyclone Storm Éowyn approaches Ireland and parts of UK

• Drugs, scams and sin: Myanmar's war has made it the global crime capital

Israel

• Freed Israeli hostages say they were held in UN camp - Washington Examiner

• Gaza checkpoint contractor is Wyoming shell company

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine Burning Through 155mm M777 Barrels So Fast the U.S. Army Can't Keep Up

• Russia suffering 'environmental catastrophe' after oil spill in Kerch Strait

China

• Chinese semiconductor production equipment makers set sales records

• China's Lunar Mission: Make a Snake That's Not Scary

• It's a good time to be an astrologer in China

Health / Medicine

• Adults with ADHD live shorter lives, a new UK study finds

• Undiagnosed Cognitive Decline Eats into Seniors' Retirement Savings

• A new definition of obesity goes beyond BMI. What this could mean for you

• We may be taking blood pressure readings all wrong

• Trump administration withdraws FDA plan to ban menthol cigarettes

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• A new vaccine approach could help combat future coronavirus pandemics

• Yes, Some Vaccines Contain Aluminum. That's a Good Thing

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Biggest iceberg A23a drifting towards penguin-packed island

  • Trillion tonne iceberg on collision course with South Georgia

  • Giant iceberg on crash course with island, putting penguins and seals in danger

• Black kitchen utensil health risk revisited after scientists discover error

• How the humpback whale made a comeback in the Salish Sea

• Gleaning: The ancient practice fighting modern food waste

• Why scientists are enlisting fungi to save endangered plants

• Blue rings in Arctic trees expose a 150-year log of climate chaos

• Catastrophic tipping point in Greenland as blue lakes turn brown, belch out CO2

• EPA withdraws plan to regulate PFAS in drinking water