2025-02-26

dogs like snacks, silent album, spendy junk, Tesla crash, cellphone suck, Nvidia archaeology, no asteroid, dollar fall, NSA kink chat, White House press disassociation, Chile power failure, Congo zombies

etc

• Dogs may have domesticated themselves because they liked snacks, model suggests

• Seven planets to be visible in night sky for last time until 2040

• The vinyl-carver sparking a craze for cutting records at home

• New search underway for MH370 in Indian Ocean 11 years after flight disappeared

• Could balloon-like water tanks help fight L.A.'s fires?

Horseshit

• 1k artists release 'silent' album to protest UK copyright sell-out to AI

  • Artists release silent album in protest at AI copyright proposals

  • Musicians release silent album to protest UK's AI copyright changes

  • 1k artists release "silent" album to protest UK copyright sell-out to AI

• Tech loves failure so much, SF is getting a museum devoted to it

• Mark Zuckerberg Announces the "Beginning of the End" for Programmers

• The Quest to Make the Perfect Toothbrush

• Texas barbecue is increasingly urban

• The Missing $25 Gift Card That's Rocking the Hamptons

• She Fell in Love with ChatGPT. Like, Actual Love. With Sex

• They'll be pushing carob again too: 'Koji flour' product can help reduce reliance on cocoa in popular foods

• Too many men lack close friendships. What's holding them back?

• Gen Z and the End of Predictable Progress

• $30 Thrift Store Find a $223,000 Jet Engine Valve

  Zach says he has no idea how the Goodwill store got hold of it or what its actual value might be. The section of the device with the Honeywell part number (3290628-4) is attached to other things on the assembly and they may have some theoretically astronomical value, too, but he's not banking on a quarter-million-dollar profit. For one thing, it didn't come with any of the paperwork that would make it possible to use it for its intended purpose.

  • The joy of junk: "this cost somebody lots of money, once".

• I spent $32,000 turning my basement into a home gym

celebrity gossip

• US court upholds Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes's conviction

Musk

• Tesla protests gain momentum while the hate is dividing Tesla owners

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Tesla sales almost halved in Europe last month

  • Tesla sales in Europe down 45% in January

  • Tesla sales almost halve in Europe as Musk faces criticism over Trump ties

  • Tesla sales sink 45 percent in Europe

• Tesla's stock slump is a glimpse of the multinational future, and it's not good

  • Tesla's market cap sinks below $1T as stock slumps more than 8%

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Apple shareholders vote to keep its diversity policies

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The Corruption of the New England Journal of Medicine

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Roblox and Discord sued for allegedly facilitating child abuse

• ISPs fear wave of state laws after New York's $15 broadband mandate

• Linux Lazy Unmap Flush LUF Reduces TLB Shootdowns by 97%, Faster LLM Performance

• VPN Providers Consider Exiting France over 'Dangerous' Blocking Demands

• Spotify's Beta Used 'Pirate' MP3 Files, Some from Pirate Bay

• Ask HN: Free speech-friendly options for payment processor and computer servers?

• Microsoft Launches Ad-Supported Version of Office Apps for Windows

  • Microsoft Launched a Free Ad-Supported Office App, and No One Noticed

• US employee screening giant DISA says hackers accessed data of 3M people

• Apple exec testifies that he raised concerns over App Store commissions

  • Apple exec concedes he had doubts about app store fees imposed on alt payment

• Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

• Google plans to stop using insecure SMS verification in Gmail

• The Miserable State of Modems and Mobile Network Operators - The Golioth Developer Blog

  Remember our good friends at 3GPP and all of their wonderful specifications? It turns out that the aforementioned theoretical brave souls who operate outside of the telecom companies and silicon vendors, but venture into the specification mines nonetheless, are not so theoretical. You can find us at the bottom of the r/telecom Reddit threads where someone is claiming that “carrier standards are so complex that you couldn’t hope to understand them even if you tried”.

• PSA: Amazon kills "download and transfer via USB" option for Kindles this week

• John Oliver Set Up a Guide to Make Your Data Less Valuable to Mark Zuckerberg

• Supreme Court rejects ISPs again in latest bid to kill NY's $15 broadband law

• Android is now scanning your photos for 'sensitive content'-how to stop it

• Three years later, the Steam Deck has dominated handheld PC gaming

• Drug-screening biz DISA took year to disclose security breach affecting millions

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• NVIDIA emulation journey, part 1: RIVA 128 / NV3 architecture history and basic overview

  This is the first part in a series of blog posts that aims to demystify, once and for all, NVIDIA RIVA 128. This first part will dive into the history of NVIDIA up to the release of the RIVA 128, and a brief overview of how the chip actually works. The second part will dive into the architecture of NVIDIA’s drivers and how they relate to the hardware, and the third part will follow the lifetime of a graphics object from birth to display on the screen in extreme detail. Then, part four and an unknown number of parts after part four will go into detail on the experiences of developing a functional emulation for this graphics card.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value

• OpenAI Lawsuits partially dismissed by California court

• Google Gemini's AI coding tool is now free for individual users

• Major Asia bank to cut 4k roles as AI replaces humans

• Another Startup Implosion Set to Brick $700 'AI Pins'

• OpenAI bans Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to for social media surveillance

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Asteroid 2024 YR4 Now Poses No Significant Threat to Earth in 2032 and Beyond

  • NASA Gives 'All Clear' for Asteroid That Seemed to Threaten Earth

  • The odds of a 'city-killer' asteroid hitting Earth have fallen to zero

• Days before landing, Blue Ghost spacecraft shares close-ups of the moon

• Passive Radar Signal Confirms Visual UFO Sighting

• Gulf of Mars: Rover finds evidence of 'vacation-style' beaches on Mars

• Have we been wrong about why Mars is red?

Crypto con games

• North Korea pulled off a $1.5B crypto heist–the biggest in history

• Bitcoin Hashrate Hits All-Time High Defying Analyst Expectations

  • All those GPUs that were supposed to be doing "enterprise AI" but have sat idle because AI fits the enterprise like a bicycle at a gang bang.

• Sam Bankman-Fried Returns to X to Suck Up to Trump and Musk for Pardon

• Binance Bitcoin Reserves Slumped $355M in January as User Balances Rose by $4.4B

Economicon / Business / Finance

• $16.75M from DoorDash for Cheating Delivery Workers Out of Tips

• Who still buys fabric? and not from Amazon? Joann will close all stores, shutter business pending court approval

  • Fabric and craft retailer Joann to go out of business, close all of its stores

• US Economic Decline Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

• U.S. Economy Being Powered by the Richest 10%

• Starbucks cuts 1,100 corporate jobs in bid to speed turnaround

• Bosses Don't Need a 'What Did You Do' Email. They're Already Tracking You.

• US bond yield slide hits dollar

  A fall in US bond yields is piling pressure on the dollar, as investors bet that slowing economic growth will push the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates despite persistent inflation. The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.32 per cent on Tuesday, the lowest level since mid-December. The decline from above 4.8 per cent last month has been prompted by a worsened outlook for US growth, after a string of data showing weak consumer and business sentiment. That has hit the dollar, which is now down 1.9 per cent this year against a basket of its peers, confounding expectations that Donald Trump’s return to the White House would continue to bolster the currency. The dollar had previously strengthened on bets that the inflationary effect of the new president’s tariffs and immigration curbs would prevent the Fed from cutting rates.

• Jamie Dimon's Viral RTO Rant Could Spell Trouble for JPMorgan

• Denny’s announces egg surcharge, joining Waffle House.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Sex, Castration & Butthole Zapping: NSA, CIA Confirm Secret 'Kink' Chat Room After Chris Rufo Bombshell | ZeroHedge

  While the left clutched pearls over one of Elon Musk's DOGE employees who went by the name 'Big Balls' online a few years ago, they've been dead silent over a bombshell report from Chris Rufo revealing secret NSA "sex chats" that involved at least one CIA employee that go back two years - featuring discussions involving "sex, kink, polyamory, and castration." And butthole zapping. Both current and former NSA employees "provided chat logs from the NSA’s Intelink messaging program," revealing all sorts of insane shit.

  • NSA Intelligence Sharing Chatroom Filled With Transgender Fetishism Discussion.

  • The NSA's Sex Chats

• Deep State Is So Corrupt It Makes Patronage System Look Good

  The Trump administration and DOGE have started to bring some semblance of accountability to the out-of-control federal agencies, but the rot goes deep and requires a total revolution in the staffing and administration of federal institutions. Without one, the specter of sabotage will haunt Trump’s second term just like it did his first. The sheer hubris, corruption, and incompetence of today’s federal institutions manage to make the patronage system look like a model of government accountability — a sad indictment of how far we’ve allowed our system of government to fall.

• Trump FTC Launching Task Force Focused on Corporate Labor Harms

Trump

• A Regulatory Warning from Vice President Vance

• White House Names Amy Gleason the Administrator for Musk's DOGE Program

• Trump announces plans for a 'gold card'

  • US will sell "gold card" giving foreigners right to live/work for $5M

Democrats

• Democrat Donors Pull Funding From Party

  “They want us to spend money, and for what? For no message, no organization, no forward thinking,” the donor said. “The thing that’s clear to a lot of us is that the party never really learned its lesson in 2016. They worked off the same playbook and the same ineffective strategies and to what end?”

Left Angst

• A new document undercuts Trump admin's denials about $400M Tesla deal

• The List of Trump's Forbidden Words That Will Get Your Paper Flagged at NSF

• One Word Describes Trump - The Atlantic

  it is not classic authoritarianism—nor is it autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism. Understanding patrimonialism is essential to defeating it. In particular, it has a fatal weakness that Democrats and Trump’s other opponents should make their primary and relentless line of attack.

• US personnel office walks back email ultimatum from Musk to workers

• Elon Musk’s Empty Ultimatum - The Atlantic

  The billionaire Trump enforcer told federal workers they needed to justify themselves—or else. Then the administration changed its mind.

• Elon Musk admits email to government workers was a ruse

• Musk gives federal workers "another chance" to justify their jobs

• More than 1M federal workers have responded, claims White House

• The False Binary of the DEI Debate

• Disclosure of personal information to DOGE “is irreparable harm,” judge rules

• DOGE's HR email is getting the 'Bee Movie' spam treatment | TechCrunch

• The best part about the AP's lawsuit

  is that the judge openly questioned today why the White House Correspondents Association—a self-appointed, fake organization with no statutory or legitimate authority, that exists solely to project an air of official status and wield influence it was never granted—should have any say over “who can and cannot come into the Oval Office.” He even suggested, “Seems to me the White House could decide to throw out the White House Correspondents Association altogether.”

• Elon Musk spells danger for Accenture, McKinsey and their rivals

• Trump Admin’s War on Federal Bureaucracy Threatens Nancy Pelosi’s ‘Local Legacy’ in San Francisco.

• Trump Plans to Liquidate Public Lands to Finance Sovereign Wealth Fund

• The idiot wind now howling through the US offers Ireland transformative windfall

• When is it time to have the courage to quit?

  If your boss asks you to do something you consider unethical, do you resign or hold the line? Some federal workers are wrestling with that question now, as President Trump calls to reshape the mission and perceived politics of government agencies. In one recent example, multiple prosecutors resigned after Trump's Department of Justice ordered Manhattan officials to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

• Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE

  • 21 federal technology staffers resign from DOGE

  • More than 20 Musk staffers resign over DOGE's 'dismantling of public services'

  • Musk's DOGE team hit by resignation of 21 technology staffers

  • 21 DOGE staffers resign, saying they refuse to 'compromise core gov't systems'

  • Third of Remaining US Digital Service Employees Resign Rather Than Support DOGE

• How Far Do Trump's Cuts to Science Reach? To the Ends of the Earth

• Elon Musk Wants Big Bond Market Reward for DOGE Team's Cuts

• I'm an NIH-funded researcher, drowning in uncertainty

• Postdocs and PhD students hit hard by Trump's crackdown on science

• What If Congress Doesn't Specifically Reject NIH Indirect Cost Changes?

• DOGE Deletes the 5 Biggest Spending Cuts It Celebrated Last Week

• Patagonia CEO: Trump Shouldn't Sell Our Public Lands

  • the proper way of doing it is to have some big company rent public lands back tot he public, and give kickbacks to officials for it. It's almost as if the Trump people don't know how government even works!

• DOGE Is Working on Software That Automates the Firing of Government Workers

• Nearly 40% of contracts canceled by Musk's DOGE expected to produce no savings

• Red-District DOGE Protests, Cited As Proof of Broad Musk 'Backlash,' Were Organized By Left-Wing Groups

  When angry voters confronted Rep. Rich McCormick over DOGE at a town hall held in the Georgia Republican's deep-red district, the New York Times, Washington Post, and CBS News cited the scene as proof of emerging bipartisan "backlash" over Elon Musk's efforts to slash government spending. CBS included a quote from one of the protest's organizers, Maggie Goldman, describing her only as a McCormick constituent. Goldman does live in McCormick's district, though she's far from a concerned supporter of the two-term Republican. A self-described "Democrat & Political Activist," Goldman, who did not respond to a request for comment, coordinated volunteers for Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign in 2019 and 2020, according to her LinkedIn. Shortly thereafter, she ran for her local county commission as a Democrat seeking to enact a "more inclusive policy agenda." Goldman has donated exclusively to Democrats and sent Kamala Harris's campaign more than $1,500 last year, according to campaign finance records.

• Musk's Starlink gets FAA contract, raising new conflict of interest concerns

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Three migrants describe Guantánamo detention

• Missouri woman pleads guilty to federal charge in plot to sell Graceland

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• White House official pushes to axe Canada from Five Eyes intelligence group

  • Whitehouse Official Suggests Kicking Canada from Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance

World

• Police to search properties without warrant for phones in England and Wales

• Unreasonable mass surveillance to be expected in Germany

• Canada: Thumbs up emoji case could be going to the Supreme Court

• Death of Cyclist in Paris Lays Bare Divide in Mayor's War Against Cars

• Chile power outage leaves millions without electricity

  • Power outage hits swaths of Chile, from largest copper mine to Santiago streets

  • 19M people left without electricity after entire country hit by blackout

• Denmark to ban mobile phones in schools and after-school clubs

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• US sides with Russia in UN resolutions on Ukraine

  • U.S. votes against a U.N. resolution urging Russia's withdrawal from Ukraine

  • US joins Russia to vote against UN resolution condemning war against Ukraine

• How Russia's war on Ukraine reshaped the energy world

China

• Taiwan detains Chinese-crewed ship suspected of cutting undersea cable

  • Taiwan catches Chinese-owned ship in act of cutting subsea cable

  • Taiwan Detains Ship and Chinese Crew After Undersea Cable Severed

  • Taiwan detains Chinese-crewed cargo ship after undersea cable damaged

  • Undersea cable to Penghu severed, Chinese-funded ship suspected.

• Nvidia's H20 chip orders jump as Chinese firms adopt DeepSeek's AI models

• China struggles to master high-end machine tools

• Argentina Deploys Military as China Leads Fishing Swarm Near Waters

Health / Medicine

• Study Finds Eating an Orange a Day Could Cut Depression Risk by 20%

• Noise-cancelling headphones may be linked to rise in Gen Z neurological problems

• Kratom Is Dangerous and Addictive

• Scientists Discover Compound in Ginger That Fights IBD Naturally.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Unknown illness kills over 50 in Congo with hours between symptoms and death

  • Mystery illness has killed more than 50 people in Congo

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Solar power has exploded in popularity as wind lags, report shows

• BP faces 'existential crisis' after ruinous attempt to go green

• Underground compressed air energy storage facility green-lit at Broken Hill

• Consumer awareness boosts demand for low-methane beef, study reveals