2025-01-30

etc

• Winter Storm Essentially Extinguishes Greater Los Angeles Wildfires.

  • Beaches closed indefinitely Malibu to Playa del Rey due to fire debris runoff

• Ötzi, the 4000-year-old iceman mummy, had Lyme disease

Horseshit

• Puzzling fossils unearthed in China may rewrite the human story

• The Americans Pledging to Buy Less–Or Even Nothing

• The single-parent capital of America

• David Sedaris: people who take selfies, I'd sooner masturbate in public

• Crumple Zone: What Car Crashes Reveal About Human Hubris and Fragility

• The Next Frontier of the Smart Home? How It Smells

• My AI-cloned voice was used by the far right. Could I stop it?

celebrity gossip

• Meta's Mark Zuckerberg explores purchase of Washington DC property

Obit

• Paul Oreffice, Outspoken Former CEO of Dow Chemical, Dies at 97

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Reasons Meta will struggle with community fact-checking

• Inside a network of AI-generated newsletters targeting "small town America"

• Bill Could Put a Stop to Censorship by Lawsuit

• Groups helping Americans find abortion pills report Instagram 'shadow-banning'

Musk

• Hate leads to stupidity: It's Time to Admit It: Starship Is an Embarrassing Failure

  Using Starship’s current theoretical payload to LEO (low Earth orbit) and our estimation of its actual launch cost, we can calculate that Starship costs around $10,000 per kg delivered to LEO. By comparison, the Saturn V rocket used by the Apollo program costs $9,219 per kg to LEO, adjusted to today’s currency. In other words, Starship is likely as expensive, if not more costly, than a rocket NASA developed and used before pocket calculators were invented. SpaceX’s own Falcon Heavy can carry more to LEO than the current Starship, yet it only costs $1,700 per kg to LEO, or less than 20% of the cost of Starship!

  However, the most embarrassing comparison is that of Blue Origin’s partially reusable New Glenn, which can carry the same payload to LEO as Starship and is predicted by third parties to cost only $1,500 per kg to LEO! Blue Origin successfully reached orbit on its first test flight of New Glenn but failed to land its booster, meaning that the company is still a few hurdles away from achieving that price but is almost certainly closer to that predicted price than Starship is. Why? Because landing and recovering the booster (also known as the first stage) is far easier than landing the second stage (also known as the orbital vehicle).

• The Debian Publicity Team will no longer post on X/Twitter

• Does Elon Musk cheat at video games? An investigation

• Tesla's Profit Fell Sharply Last Year

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Unsupervised full self-driving begins

• Waymo begins testing robotaxis on LA freeways

• Waymo to test its autonomous driving technology in over 10 new cities

• Stanford Study: Real-World Driving Extends EV Battery Life

• Hyundai unveils electric rickshaws "tailored to India's unique environment"

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• France Is Furious over a Few Stained-Glass Windows in Notre Dame

• Eugenics is back Human evolution in the USA: Education-linked genes being selected against

• No. We have not made a new God. And will not. A Call for a New Path: Why the World Needs a New Religion in the Age of AI

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• back to 1985; not just kids. PowerSchool data breach: Over 60M kids' data may have been stolen

• US children fall further behind in reading

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Nothing Is Sacred: AI Generated Slop Has Come for Christmas Music

• Apple and SpaceX link up to support Starlink satellite network on iPhones

• Why more and more journalists are launching worker-owned outlets

• Seagate: 'new' hard drives used for tens of thousands of hours

• My product went viral on social media but all I got were these shitty users

• No Man's Sky's update introduces billions of new stars, planets, and more

• Netflix adds one-click full season downloads on iPhones and iPads

• Nintendo loses trademark fight against Super Mario supermarket

• MGM will pay $45M to settle data breach lawsuit

• 763-Day Legal Quest Against a Call of Duty Permanent Ban

• Is This How Reddit Ends?

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Zyxel firewalls borked by buggy update, on-site access required for fix

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• We tried out DeepSeek. It worked well, until we asked it about Tiananmen Square

• Sacks claims 'substantial evidence' that DeepSeek distilled OpenAI's models

  • OpenAI says it has evidence China's DeepSeek used its model to train competitor

  • White House AI Czar Sacks Says 'Evidence' DeepSeek Leaned on OpenAI's Models

  • OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole from Us

  • DeepSeek used US chips, 'stolen' technology, Trump's commerce secretary says

• DeepSeek sparks fears that SF's AI boom is over before it started

• The Trillion-Dollar Lie: How AI Fearmongering Backfired on Silicon Valley

• Ex-OpenAI safety researcher says he's "terrified" by AI development's pace

• DeepSeek's AI breakthrough bypasses industry-standard CUDA, uses PTX

• I do not want AI to "polish" me

• Alibaba releases AI model it claims surpasses DeepSeek-V3

• OpenAI Doesn't Want AI Cheaters

• The AI bust is here

• Baroness Kidron's speech regarding UK AI legislation

• AI-assisted works can get copyright

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Astronomers discover 196-foot asteroid, 1-in-83 chance of hitting Earth in 2032

  • Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy

• Should be, it's washed by atmosphere.. Astronauts to Check If There Are Microbes on the Outside of the ISS

• AstroForge selects target for "high risk, seat of the pants" asteroid mission

Crypto con games

• Bitcoin Difficulty Hits All-Time High, Adjusts for 8th Consecutive Time

• MoviePass Might Pivot to Crypto

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Understanding America's Labor Shortage

• ASML Orders Exceed Forecasts in Defiance of DeepSeek AI Selloff

• US tech stocks steady after DeepSeek AI app shock

• Boeing loses almost $1B every month in 2024

• Starbucks plans to cut 30% of its menu

• Intel doesn't know how to be a foundry," Tim Cook reportedly told TSMC's CEO

• If Wall Street Wants to Buy More Houses, Let It

• Trump Media expands into financial services with help from Charles Schwab

• HSBC's Longshot Dream of Rivaling Wall Street Comes to an End

• Fed leaves rates unchanged, drops reference to inflation 'progress'

  • Federal Reserve keeps rates unchanged

• Nvidia Shares Resume Fall

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Chairman Carr Ends Biden-Era Plan to Slow Down Infrastructure Builds

• Gen. Mark Milley's security detail and security clearance revoked

• (PDF) DOT rips up US fuel efficiency regulations

• USDA inspector general escorted out of her office after defying White House

Trump

• EO: Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation

• Donald Trump asks Elon Musk to 'go get' NASA astronauts stuck in space

  • media has been saying "Stranded" the whole time. Trump asks SpaceX to 'go get' two stranded ISS astronauts. They're not stranded

  • (Jun 2024) Astronauts stranded in space face further setback to return home

  • (Dec 2024) Stranded Boeing Starliner astronauts face new delay in return to Earth from ISS.

  • Astronauts are fine and do not need saving by Musk

• Trump to federal workers: Resign now and get paid through September

• Federal judge orders temporary resumption of spending frozen by Trump

• White House blames "outage" for lockout

• Confusion, uncertainty in industry as Army contracts seemingly halted

• Meta to pay $25M to settle 2021 Trump lawsuit

  • Meta agrees to pay $25M in Trump lawsuit settlement over suspensions

• Trump to cancel student visas of pro-Palestinian protesters

• Trump to sign order opening detention camp at Guantanamo Bay for 30k migrants

• White House rescinds federal aid freeze

  • Trump administration rescinds order attempting to freeze federal aid spending

Left Angst

• 'Headed for technofascism': the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley

• Tech Google reclassifies U.S. as 'sensitive country' alongside China, Russia

• Elon Musk Is Running the Twitter Playbook on the Federal Government

• Elon Musk Lackeys Have Taken over the Office of Personnel Management

• Departing the New York Times

• Europe 'must not be bullied' by Trump and Musk on tech laws, NGOs say

• Europe 'Must Fix' Weaknesses to Compete Globally, EC President Says

• Ted Cruz Leads Republican Charge to Defund Consumer-Protection Agency

• Silicon Valley Tech Workers Protest Their Bosses' Embrace of Trump

• Huh? MSNBC Warns 'Gestapo Raids' Are Turning U.S. Into 'East Germany'

• If All This Sounds Delusional, That's Because It Is

• Science at risk: The funding pause is more damaging than you might think

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Police Arrest Man With Molotov Cocktails Plotting To Assassinate Trump Admin Officials | ZeroHedge

  A Massachusetts man was arrested near the U.S. Capitol on Monday, according to court documents indicating that the suspect confessed to carrying weapons and revealed a plot to assassinate high-ranking government officials, including newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

• Disgraced ex-NJ Sen. Bob Menendez cries as he begs for leniency -- but gets 11 years in prison for gold bar bribery scheme

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• F-35 military jet suffers 'significant damage' in accident at Alaska base

  • Video captures Air Force F-35 fighter jet crash at Alaska base

  • Pilot safe after F-35 military jet crash lands at Alaska Air Force base

• U.S. Navy bans use of DeepSeek due to 'security and ethical concerns'

• A Troubled Icebreaker Became America's Newest Military Vessel

• Startup Castelion Raises $100M for Hypersonic Strike Weapons

• The secret lab where America tests its nuclear weapons

• DARPA is asking universities for access to tunnels ASAP

World

• Germany's Economic Model Is Broken, and No One Has a Plan B

• UK hopes of security deal with EU hit by fishing dispute

• Record $4.5B EU fine punished its innovation, Google tells EU court

• UK Weighs Making Netflix Users Pay License Fee to Fund BBC

• Tesla, BMW take EU to court over tariffs on EVs made in China

• The race for Greenland's mineral wealth

• By sea and sky: Worries mount over threats to Japan's security

• Sweden eyes sending inmates abroad as prisons full due to gang crime wave

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia is producing in 3 months what the whole of NATO is producing in the year

• Putin growing concerned by Russia’s economy, as Trump pushes for Ukraine deal.

China

• Do China's A.I. Advances Mean U.S. Technology Controls Have Failed?

• America fell in love with China's memes

Health / Medicine

• When the Sackler brothers studied LSD

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• The tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas is alarming. It’s not the biggest in US history though, CDC says.

  • The "biggest in history" stories also said that TB was not contagious. the scary headline was more important than accurate reporting.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Cold fusion may be a viable energy alternative to end reliance on fossil fuels

• Dense human populations linked to longer urban coyote lifespans

• Earth's Magnetic North Pole Is Shifting Toward Siberia

• Infrastructure neglect and poverty lead to parasites in the Mississippi Delta

• Climate change could spark outbreaks of DIARRHOEA in Britain, scientists warn | Daily Mail Online