2025-02-08
electric queue, tech cheats, mystery motives, KKK education, overdone homelabs, more Rust/LKML drama, stable Ringworlds, Delaware sucks, young Republicans, media payola cuts, UK in your iPhone
etc
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Two Grand Canyon-size valleys on far side of the moon formed within 10 minutes
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Inside the Interconnection Queue - by Brian Potter
The interconnection queue is thus a huge list of essentially every electricity generation plant the (continental) US plans on building in the near future. As of this writing, there are over 11,000 projects in the interconnection queue, with a combined generation and storage capacity of around 1,900 gigawatts. This is close to twice as much generation capacity as currently exists in the US (which was 1,189 gigawatts at the end of 2023). Because the queue and wait time have gotten so long, the interconnection queue is a major bottleneck in getting new electrical infrastructure built, and there have been efforts to streamline and improve the interconnection process.
planned electrical infrastructure is overwhelmingly solar, wind, and batteries — these three project categories make up roughly 90% of planned generation and storage capacity and represent hundreds of billions of dollars of investment.
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Rebuilding LA: What should be built differently – or not at all?
Horseshit
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Casinos, high-rises and fraud: The BBC visits a city built on scams
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You Can't "Win" in Tech Unless You Cheat
The biggest tech successes of our era didn’t win through superior technology or innovation. They won by: + Breaking existing regulations + Misusing user trust + Deploying capital as a weapon + Converting violations into venture funding + Moving fast and breaking things (and laws) (and societies) (and people)
Which game will you play? The billion-dollar lottery where the house always wins, or the infinite game where you set the rules?
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Devoted nap-takers explain the benefits of sleeping on the job
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For the wanderers who became the Aztecs history was a chorus of voices
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Drone Contractor Gets "Rare" Permission to Follow People and Vehicles in Boston
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County workers wanted a pay hike, but got a 4-day workweek instead
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Three-hundred-year-old Stradivarius violin sells for $11M in New York
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Her son died ‘surfing’ BART trains. Now she’s suing the agency
celebrity gossip
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A Critically Important Trial Has Just Begun, and No One Involved Will Speak About Motive – PJ Media
Hadi Matar finally went on trial Tuesday for attempting to murder the novelist Salman Rushdie back in Aug. 2022. There is little, if any, doubt about Matar’s guilt, even though he has pleaded not guilty, for he stabbed Rushdie multiple times in full view of a shocked crowd at the Chautauqua festival. Matar was supposed to have gone on trial in Jan. 2024, but Rushdie wrote a book about the attack, and Matar’s defense attorney, public defender Nathaniel Barone, received a delay in the trial so that he could review the book. It’s hard to fathom how what the victim thought about what happened might affect the guilt of his client, but nevertheless, Barone managed to delay the trial for over a year. Now that it has begun, both Barone and his opposite number, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt, seem curiously intent on preventing any discussion of Matar’s motive. Matar tried to kill the man who, at the time of the stabbing had carried for 33 years the most famous bounty on his head since the days of the Wild West.
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Palantir's Billionaire CEO Just Can't Stop Talking About Killing People
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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Children's arithmetic skills do not transfer between applied and academic math
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The Education Department and the KKK: Nativists originally led the charge for centralized education.
The KKK pursued this agenda throughout the 1920s by supporting a bill that sought to create an education department and allocate up to $100 million annually in federal education spending. Unable to secure compulsory public education, the KKK wanted the bill’s subsidies to drive children into public schools that would secure, as Evans said, “the re-Americanization of our common Republic.” The KKK thus made themselves “friends of the measure” and in 1923 urged Protestants to “unite in one campaign” for the bill.
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How Scientific American went from publishing Einstein to calling Jedi racist
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Mad at Meta? Don't Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data
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Amazon's Ad Rev crossed $50B in 2024, on track to be 2x YouTube Ad Rev by 2025
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Nintendo will continue to sell the original Switch alongside the Switch 2
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Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data
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Podcasts probably have the lowest information density of any medium ever created
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Microsoft debuts Windows MIDI Services with MIDI 2.0 support
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iPhone SE could shed its 10-year-old design "as early as next week"
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Nokia's patent win throws Amazon's video streaming in Germany in doubt
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You are all a bunch of sick freaks.
No, you don't need Kubernetes or 10gig network switches or 7u rack. You don't need any of these increasingly abstract layers of complexity that exist only to solve the problems created by your previous solutions. Your simple file server didn't need containers, those containers didn't need orchestration, that orchestration didn't need a service mesh, Yet here you are, staring at 10,000 lines of YAML, wondering if maybe just one more helm chart would finally make it all perfect. But I know you'll keep adding more, because you're all just a bunch of sick freaks.
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Star Salaries for Super Bowl Ads: $3M-$5M Fees Are Norm This Year
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Resigns from Linux Kernel
I no longer have any faith left in the kernel development process or community management approach.
Following arguments on the Linux kernel mailing list the past few days over some Linux kernel maintainers being against the notion of Rust code in the mainline Linux kernel and trying to avoid it and very passionate views over the Linux kernel development process, Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin has removed himself from being an upstream maintainer of the ARM Apple code.
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Is a kernel developer blocking the success of Rust for Linux? Yes and no
A maintainer of the Linux kernel recently refused to include Rust code in his territory, which is essential for many drivers – thus apparently dooming the efforts to use Rust to program more than just simple Linux drivers in the future. At least that is the impression given by numerous reports on Linux news sites and statements in forums or on social media platforms.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Honeywell intends to split into automation, aerospace, and materials companies
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Sonos Cuts 12% of Workers in Bid to Improve Product Organization
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Veritas Is Said in Talks to Acquire Data Firm Dun and Bradstreet
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Amazon plans to spend $100B this year to capture once in a lifetime opportunity
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Leaving Delaware - by Elad Gil - Elad Blog
Part of the concern in Delaware is, as a WSJ opinion piece recently put it, “the likelihood of expensive, meritless or value-destroying litigation leads public companies in Delaware to avoid deals they would otherwise make.” The other part is a few more extreme Delaware activist judges who apply “creative writing” to interpreting the law. The most famous example of this is a court invalidating Elon Musk's board and then subsequently a shareholder-approved compensation package. This ruling was viewed as political activism by many versus following any form of legal framework.
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Intel's vacant CEO spot rumored to be filled by Tom Caulfield
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Employment rises by 143,000 in January; unemployment rate edges down to 4.0%
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Salesforce lays off staff in San Francisco after exec talks up offshoring
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals
For practical reasons, we focus on upside only, so consider these the Venn-diagram-union of the ideas we’re most excited about, and the ones we think they might be most excited about - the new health policy we might get get in our ~90th percentile best outcome.
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Shut Down the Department of Education
The Department of Education does not run a single school. It does not employ any teachers in a single classroom. It doesn’t set academic standards or curriculum. It isn’t even the primary funder of education—quite the opposite. In most states, the federal government represents less than 10 percent of K–12 public education funding. So what does it do? It shuffles money around; adds unnecessary requirements and political agendas via its grants; and then passes the buck when it comes time to assess if any of that adds value.
Trump
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News alert: Washington Post journalists are panicked that some DOGE employees previously worked at Elon Musk’s private-sector companies and “are in their early 20s.”* The horror. Outrage over Musk’s whiz kids reveals another progressive double standard: Young activists are praised when they are on the Left and denounced when they join the Right. The Post, moreover, is blind to the real story. Trump may be the oldest man elected president, but he leads a youth movement that will shape politics for decades to come.
Left Angst
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Scientists on alert as NOAA restricts contact with foreign nationals
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Head of White House tech group resigns amid DOGE takeover | The Verge
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Abandoned in the Middle of Clinical Trials, Because of a Trump Order
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Trump administration disbands task force targeting Russian oligarchs
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CIA reportedly offers buyouts to entire workforce in latest Trump-era purge
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Politico Pleads Innocent, Claims Tens Of Millions In Govt. Subscriptions Totally Normal | ZeroHedge
Politico has responded to the controversy, writing in a Thursday memo that they have "never received any government funding — no subsidies, no grants, no handouts. Not one dime, ever, in 18 years," but that $27 million in government subscriptions to "Politico Pro" is simply "a transaction," akin to the government buying "research, equipment, software and industry reports."
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Members of Congress raise conflict-of-interest concerns regarding Musk's role
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Scientists globally are racing to save vital health databases taken down
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Feds Halt the National Electric Vehicle Charging Program
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Trump administration suspends $5B electric vehicle charging program
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This is the one that's built ~30 or so at a cost of $"omg no way" each...
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'Fork in the Road' buyout offer reaches space and national security agencies
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Trump orders key government agency to cancel all media contracts.
What they’re saying: “GSA team, please do two things,” a Trump administration official wrote: Pull all contracts for Politico, BBC, E&E (Politico sub) and Bloomberg Pull all media contracts for just GSA – cancel every single media contract today for GSA only. President Trump is targeting the federal government’s media contracts after Elon Musk and his allies discovered millions of dollars in agency subscriptions to Politico Pro, a policy tracking service widely used in Washington. The discovery, made through a U.S. government spending database that has long been publicly available, triggered erroneous theories on X about the Biden administration “funding” anti-Trump media.
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13 states sue over DOGE access to government payment systems
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Opinion | Samantha Power: Killing U.S.A.I.D. Is a Win for Autocrats Everywhere - The New York Times
I am shocked by the gleeful assault perpetrated by our own government against U.S.A.I.D.’s programs and the public servants who work on them. But after running the agency for four years, I am not surprised that the attacks are being cheered by Moscow and Beijing. They understand what those seeking to dismantle the agency are desperate to hide from the American people: U.S.A.I.D. has become America’s superpower in a world defined by threats that cross borders and amid growing strategic competition. The assistance provided by U.S.A.I.D. comes in many forms, and with a budget of less than 1 percent of the U.S. government’s overall annual spending, it, alone, is no panacea for the world’s major challenges. Like all government agencies, it could be more efficient, and making it so was an effort I spearheaded during my tenure. Yet for much of the world population, the investments and work of U.S.A.I.D. make up the primary (and often only) contact with the United States.
- I'd love to ask this person where in the constitution it says the US government should do any of the stuff she's so proud of...
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Gen X’s ultimate goal was to open up a big tent. Everyone was welcome. Everyone made money, and the Democratic Party saw the cash flowing. They cozied up to folks like Khosla, Ellison, and Bezos, and presumably, everyone was happy—the Clintons were in bed with SV way before anyone else. The UK even based its entire image—'Cool Britannia'—on mashups of Sony VAIO ads and the Spice Girls so they could take advantage of the growing technocratic intelligentsia. But was technology being built for technology’s sake? No one gave you a million dollars for writing a new device driver for Linux, nor did you get a Lambo for setting up Sotheby’s first auction site. Someone, somewhere got a Lambo eventually, but the benefits of being a technologist were limited to bragging rights and a nice salary in the late 1990s. If you grew up after the Dot-Com boom and before the AI boom, how did you make that Lambo money? Crypto. You weaponized your nerdiness.
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A fourth federal agency locks its doors to Democratic lawmakers
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Fagin figure leading Elon Musk's merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets
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Time magazine's provocative cover puts Elon Musk behind Trump's desk
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Doge member previously fired by cybersecurity firm for leaking company secrets
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Staffer with Elon Musk's DOGE amplified white supremacists online
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Doge can't use student loan data to dismantle the Education Dept., lawsuit says
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Musk to rehire Treasury DOGE staffer behind racist posts after Trump endorses
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US Treasury Threat Intelligence Analysis Designates DOGE Staff as Insider Threat
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Usaid paid $44K to Politico, not over $8M as claimed. It was for subscriptions
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Kash Patel Took Up to $5M in Stock from Chinese Ecommerce Giant Shein
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DOGE follows pattern – and turns attention to Social Security Administration
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Is Joerg Arnu a criminal, a traitor, or just a blogger who got in too deep? He runs a website called Dreamland Resort, dedicated to publishing information about and images of Area 51. The site will soon celebrate its 25th anniversary, having gained both fame and notoriety for its detailed, up-to-date, publicly gleaned info about Area 51.
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
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Iron Dome for America: How would it work?
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Navigating the controversy surrounding the 'Iron Dome for America'
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Remember Reagan's "Star Wars," and the voluminous horseshit the very idea of missile defense generated back then? Note how the counter-examples of successful systems have not discredited the people who insisted then that America could not be defended.
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Lockheed Martin Settles False Claims Act Violations, Defective Pricing for F-35
World
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U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts
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The 15 days that upended Macron’s vision for European AI – POLITICO
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Energy megaproject in Chile threatens the largest telescopes
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Japanese City Hires Security Guards to Stop Tourists Taking Selfies
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South African president signs controversial land seizure bill, eroding private property rights
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Across Europe, young people are finding friends by walking our cities
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South Korean ministries block DeepSeek on security concerns, officials say
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Europol body: Banks should prepare for quantum computer risk now