2025-02-24

Itanium and other delusions, decorated dog dies, school costs less, AI pseudoscience, DOS 3.3 bug, slow singularity, utility cartels, check Ft. Knox, Democrats betrayed "woke", KGB DOGE, leaking plants

Worthy

• Examples of group madness in technology | Locklin on science

  One of the worst arguments I hear is that “thing X is inevitable because the smart people are doing it.” As I’ve extensively documented over the last 15 years on this blog, smart people in groups are not smart and are even more subject to crazes and mob behavior as everyone else. Noodle theory, nanotech, quantum computing: plenty of examples in history of large groups of smarty pants people marching off a cliff. The same holds true for actual technological trends. I think LLMs are overrated magic-8 ball word predictors, autonomous vehicles are mostly vaporware Potemkin technologies, and we’re never going to replace internal combustion engine cars with electric golf carts, no matter how many dumb imac screens you put in them because batteries contain 20-100x less energy density than guzzoline and the grid won’t support it. These are unpopular opinions which non-thinking “smart” people will scoff at due to the ideology of continual progress (which these dorks haven’t noticed has failed for 50 years, hypnotized by their fuggin screens). Yet, my track record is better than non-thinking “smart” people because I think about things rather than uncritically accept what “smart” people tell me. It’s useful to consider the record of non-thinking “smart” word-regurgitators on a few technological examples.

etc

• American Airlines flight diverted to Rome after bomb threat, sources say

• After Moss Landing Power Plant reignites, officials brace for more flare-ups

• Lab mice may give 'first aid' to unconscious mates

Horseshit

• Smart watches can help solve murders by determining time of death more precisely

• Texas's Barbecue Schism

• Men overestimate women's preference for masculinity

• What Survivors of the L.A. Fires Took With Them - The New York Times

• Why the News Feels Overwhelming–and How to Cope

• 'Everybody is looking at their phones,' says man freed after 30 years in prison

• The Dude Who Used Poop Jokes to Turn Toilet Wipes into a $200M Business

• TikTok used location to send 'railroad themed suicide video' to teen near tracks

• Why sex with robots does not have appeal among women

• World’s oldest rune stone has more pieces that contain mysterious messages

• Blame lucrative white-collar jobs for delayed family formation

Obit

• K9 Hurricane, the most decorated dog in US history, has died

  A former Special Operations Canine with the U.S. Secret Service, K9 Hurricane became the nation’s most decorated dog for taking down a White House intruder in 2014 when then-President Obama and his family were inside. Hurricane was medically retired in 2016 due to the injuries he sustained during the incident. In recognition of his valor, Hurricane received numerous honors, including the United States Secret Service Award for Merit, the Department of Homeland Security Award for Valor, the PDSA (People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals) Order of Merit, and the American Medical Center Top Dog. He also made history as the first dog to receive the Animals in War and Peace Distinguished Service Medal, which earned him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. Hurricane and Mirarchi were also awarded the Secretary’s Award for Valor by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson for their efforts in protecting the Obama family.

Musk

• Fact-checkers are among the top sources for X's Community Notes, study reveals

• Elon Musk Biographer: No Evidence Billionaire Has Any Intellectual Achievements

• Petition to revoke Elon Musk's Canadian passport effective immediately

• Musk took over Tesla using money, strong-arm tactics, and his own popularity

• Elon Musk to "fix" Community Notes after they contradict Trump

Electric / Self Driving cars

• NEMA Releases Standard For Vehicle-to-Grid Applications

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morality" - by Santi

  In the most TL;DR manner, Nietzsche argues for a life of passions and instincts, integrity and strength. He believes our value system based on Christian values is ultimately ascetic, leading to an anti-life stance. He sees humankind as animals first, cultural beings second. He thinks society tames the beast within in order to live in harmony, at a great cost.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Minnesota Grad Student Expelled for Allegedly Using AI Is Suing School

• Studies correlating IQ to genius are mostly bad science

• Stem Accreditor Drops DEIA from Its Standards

• The Secret That Colleges Should Stop Keeping

  It is a basic fact of American life, so widely known that it hardly needs to be said: College is getting ever more unaffordable. In survey after survey, Americans say that the cost of getting a degree just keeps rising. But this basic fact of life is not a fact at all. In reality, Americans are paying less for college, on average, than they were a decade ago. Since the 2014–15 school year, the cost of attending a public four-year university has fallen by 21 percent, before adjusting for inflation, according to College Board data analyzed by Judith Scott-Clayton, a professor of economics and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College. (Nearly three-quarters of American college students attend a public institution.) The cost of attending a private university has risen in raw terms over the same time period, but is down 12 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. Once tax benefits are factored in, according to a recent Brookings Institution analysis, the average American is paying the same amount for tuition as they were in the 1990s. “People have it in their heads that prices just keep going up, up, up,” Sandy Baum, a nonresident senior fellow at the Urban Institute, told me. “And that’s actually not what’s happening.”

  The confusion comes from the idiosyncratic way in which college is priced. Schools set a staggering official price that only a subset of the wealthiest students pay in full. Universities rely on that money to offer financial aid to low-income students; in effect, rich families subsidize the cost of attendance for everyone else.

• BishopBlog: IEEE Has a Pseudoscience Problem

  world-class research can coexist with world-class nonsense. Many not-so-top IEEE venues publish “AI gobbledegook sandwiches”, pointless papers that apply standard machine learning or artificial intelligence to basic data sets resulting in vague predictions supposedly improving on ill-defined baselines. Unfortunately, bad science published by IEEE isn’t limited to boring applications of boring algorithms to boring data. In this blog post, I’ll present IEEE-published pseudoscience of various kinds, show how this correlates with other problems, and discuss why publishers don’t do enough about it.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• We bullied HP into a minor act of disenshittification

• Microsoft Makes More of Their DirectX Compiler Code Open-Source

• Marvel and DC's Comics Will Cross over Once Again

• Nvidia confirms 'rare' RTX 5090 and 5070 Ti manufacturing issue

• Technicolor closing all US operations as of Monday 24th Feb

• MSNBC cancels Joy Reid’s show as part of programming shakeup at liberal network | Fox News

  • Joy Reid and Alex Wagner Axed From MSNBC Lineup in Major Network Shakeup

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• But good sir, what is electricity? - lcamtuf’s thing

• The DOS 3.3 SYS.COM Bug Hunt!

  • When in doubt about what it is working with (which is always true of a hard drive) DOS 3.3 SYS.COM will try to use the Generic IOCTL call to get the BPB of the device instead of just reading it directly from the first sector.
  • DOS 3.3 SYS.COM has a bug where it fails to check the return code from Generic IOCTL. This causes it to write garbage to the BPB of the media when it happens.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• 'Amateur and dangerous': Historians weigh in on viral AI history videos

• Why AI Spending Isn't Slowing Down

• Angry workers use AI to bombard businesses with employment lawsuits

• Why I think AI take-off is relatively slow

  I’ve gone on record as suggesting that AI will boost economic growth rates by half a percentage point a year. That is very much a guess. It does mean that, with compounding, the world is very different a few decades out. It also means that year to year non-infovores will not necessarily notice huge changes in their environments. So far I have not seen evidence to contradict that broad expectation.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA Downgrades the Risk of 2024 YR4 to Below 1%

• How the X-37B Is Shaping the Future of the U.S. Space Force

• Propellant leak blamed for SpaceX's Falcon 9 upper stage uncontrolled reentry

Crypto con games

• Crypto trader kills himself on X live to create a meme coin

• Biggest crypto coup of all time: Bybit loses 1.5B US dollars

• Bybit Sees over $4B 'Bank Run' After Crypto's Biggest Hack

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Meta slashes staff stock awards as group embarks on AI spending drive

• I was laid off in 2022 and haven't worked full-time since

• The Long Nights and Drug Addiction That Drove a Banker to Insider Trading

• The Secret Society Raising Your Electricity Bills

  They’re called the Society of Utility and Regulatory Financial Analysts, or SURFA. And they are a large part of the reason why you’re paying way too much for electricity.

• U.S.'s chipmaking sector is ringing the alarm about chip war with China

• 'Mar-a-Lago Accord' Chatter Is Getting Wall Street's Attention

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• GA Touts Its Medicaid Experiment as a Success. The Numbers Say Differently

• Social Security Gets Major $205-Billion Boost After COVID Deaths - Newsweek

Left Angst

• US government withdraws support for research that mentions 'climate'

• List accomplishments or resign, Musk tells US federal workers

  • Musk tells federal workers to explain what they achieved last week or be fired

• Kash Patel tells FBI staff to ignore Elon Musk's email as power struggles emerge

• Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions

• Opinion | A Book Club for Bewildered Democrats - The New York Times

  One thing is even more demoralizing than President Trump’s apparent lawbreaking and kowtowing to Vladimir Putin. It’s that weeks of outrages have not significantly dented Trump’s popularity. Democrats have been ineffective so far at holding Trump accountable, and he will do much more damage in the coming years unless we liberals figure out how to regain the public trust.

  Part of the problem, I think, is that many educated Democrats are insulated from the pain and frustration in the working class and too often come across as out of touch. Instead of listening to frustrated workers, elites too often have lectured them, patronized them or dismissed them as bigots. That sense of our obliviousness is amplified when Trump takes a sledgehammer to the system, and we are perceived as defenders of the status quo. This will be a challenge to navigate, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers.

• Elon Musk’s first month of destroying America will cost us decades | The Verge

  Musk has, in the short term, set us up for a shock to the economy from both unemployment and frozen government grants. This will be felt more or less immediately. But the long-term costs will be measured in decades. The degree to which we have failed not merely ourselves but also our children and grandchildren is breathtaking. Musk projects — such as undercutting practical preparations for possible disasters and dismantling an educational and scientific system so good that our actual enemies send their children to us for college — combine with disastrous Trump policies like mass deportation to undermine American society. And by alienating our longtime allies and cozying up to Russia, we set ourselves up to be a pariah state.

• Fort Knox gold: Trump wants to "make sure" it's still there

  Ford (sic) Knox's tightly sealed U.S. Bullion Depository currently stores 147.3 million troy ounces in gold — or more than half of the Treasury's total supply, according to the U.S. Mint. The gold is held at a government-set book value of $42.22 per ounce. As Forbes notes, gold trades for a far higher value on the open market.

  Fort Knox's Bullion Depository was built in the 1930s amid concerns that existing reserves along the East Coast were susceptible to an attack. It originally was constructed as a centralized location for the U.S.' growing reserve of gold after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a controversial executive order that effectively banned private gold ownership.

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology Braces for Mass Firings

• In war against DEI in science, researchers see collateral damage

  The list of grants was compiled by a group of Senate Republicans last fall and released to the public earlier this month, and while the NSF does not appear to have taken any action in response to the complaints, the list’s existence is adding to an atmosphere of confusion and worry among researchers in the early days of President Donald J. Trump’s second administration. Lipomi, for his part, described the situation as absurd. Others described it as chilling.

  • Requiring every paper to "celebrate diversity" was as bad an error as requiring everything to "glorify God" would be.

• Wokeness Is Not to Blame for Trump

  In the midst of chaos and cataclysm, it’s rare to find agreement across partisan divides, but in the months since Donald Trump won his second presidential election and commenced a full-bore attack on this country’s civil rights and protections, pundits and politicians from across the ideological spectrum have joined in rare consensus: that it was “identity politics,” known more commonly as “wokeness,” that is largely to blame for Trump’s destructive return to the Oval Office. Liberals and centrists arrived at this conclusion with a speed and ardor only available to people who’d been dying to crow about this for years.

  Reactionary trolls like Bari Weiss were in full accord, cautioning Democrats that “if you keep doubling down” on “these niche issues you find on college campuses and gender-studies departments,” then “you are going to lose.” Fox News, the house organ of the Republican Party, chimed in, mocking the Democratic National Committee for laboriously acknowledging varied gender identities and Indigenous land at a recent leadership meeting, and more broadly for continuing to talk about gun control, gender, and race, braying over how Democrats hadn’t learned anything from their 2024 loss.

  This rare cross-ideological alignment has created an opening for the Trump-Musk-Vance team, which, thanks to the Democratic pullback from “woke-ism,” faces scant opposition as it busily dynamites a civil-rights infrastructure built painstakingly over generations.

• Trump Turning Off All 8k EV Chargers at All Federal Government Buildings

• DC Housing Market in Chaos as Federal Employees Panic

• 50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says

• DOGE staffer "Big Balls" is allegedly the grandson of a KGB spy

  • Prominent DOGE Staffer Is Grandson of Turncoat KGB Spy

• Trump will kill CHIPS Act by gutting NIST employees

• Tech giants learn to share Trump's zeal for fossil fuels

• Trump Paralyzes the U.S. Wind Power Industry

• NASA Layoffs on Hold, for Now

• Federal agencies tell workers not to respond to Elon Musk's email request

• Usaid to place most personnel on leave, lay off at least 1,600

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Thieves used a stolen card to buy a $523,000 lottery ticket

• The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians | WIRED

  • A person linked to cultlike Zizians stands accused of murder. But who are they?

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Commerce Department Has Ended Biden Administration’s Ban on Small Arms Exports.

World

• Montreal Activist Jailed After Tweets on Palestinian Genocide

• Electronic devices used for car thefts set to be banned

  Making or selling a signal jammer could lead to up to five years in prison or an unlimited fine. Keyless repeaters and signal amplifiers scramble the signal from remote key fobs inside people's homes, enabling criminals to unlock cars. They are the most common way theft from a vehicle – or the theft of the vehicle itself – occurs. Lead for vehicle crime, Assistant Chief Constable Jenny Simms said the possession, manufacture, sale and supply of signal jammers had provided an "easily accessible tool for criminals… for far too long". "These devices have no legitimate purpose, apart from assisting in criminal activity, and reducing their availability will support policing and industry in preventing vehicle theft which is damaging to both individuals and businesses." She added.

• Why drones are surveying Indian villages

• In Switzerland, sledding is not for the faint of heart

• Canadian military now accepting recruits with asthma, ADHD and other conditions

• This Indian Festival Hosts More Pilgrims Than the Population of the U.S.

• Rich in cash, Japan automaker Toyota builds a city to test futuristic mobility

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia is 'recycling' wounded troops, sending some to the frontline on crutches

China

• Why Xi Jinping is making nice with China's tech billionaires

• China's deep drill project: a quest for deep-Earth energy resources

Health / Medicine

• New reviews for Lumina Probiotic, the genetically engineered toothpaste

• Doctored review – the scandal that derailed Alzheimer's research

• Chinese medical devices in health systems across US; gov., hospitals are worried

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Canada purchases avian influenza vaccine to protect individuals most at risk

• Bird flu confirmed in rats for first time, USDA reports

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• A Black Fungus Might Be Healing Chernobyl by Drinking Radiation

• This company is trying to make a biodegradable alternative to spandex

• Countries spend huge sums on fossil fuel subsidies – why they're so hard to end

• Flashy exotic birds can glow in the dark

• Transforming US agriculture for carbon removal with enhanced weathering

• The ugliest global-warming chart you'll ever need to see

• Plants Are "Leaking" – and It Could Make Global Warming Even Worse

  Rising temperatures cause plants to leak more water, reducing their ability to absorb carbon and potentially turning them into carbon sources, worsening climate change.

• Waves are getting bigger. Is the world ready?

• German startup is pioneering recyclable wooden wind turbine blades

• Bolivia and Argentina probe illegal hunting network that killed jaguars

• Pollution from Big Tech's data centre boom costs US public health $5.4B