2025-03-28

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• The World Needs More Air Traffic Controllers. Is It Safe to Fly?

• Egypt: Multiple people feared dead after tourist submarine sinks off coast

  • Six feared dead after tourist submarine sinks in Egypt; all passengers Russian

Horseshit

• Living car-free in Arizona, on purpose and happily

• Online 'Pedophile Hunters' Are Growing More Violent – and Going Viral

• Taking Back Childhood from Phones–Finally

Musk

• SpaceX reportedly has a secret backdoor for Chinese investment

• Elon Musk Pressured Reddit CEO Steve Huffman about Moderation

Electric / Self Driving cars

• After 50M miles, Waymos crash a lot less than human drivers

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Inside arXiv–The Most Transformative Platform in All of Science

• University of Toronto Snags Yale Professors as Canada Raids American Brain Trust

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Anthropic Scores Win in AI Copyright Dispute with Record Labels

• I've been asked to leave a store because I was photographing the shelves: Instacart will pay shoppers to take videos of store shelves

• Apple Set to Invest $1B in Nvidia AI Servers

• Facebook Returns to Its Roots: Showing Posts from Friends and Family

  • Meta debuts Friends tab, Mark Zuckerberg pushes 'throwback to OG Facebook'

• Substack Is Doing What Podcasts Did. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

• 23andMe users struggle to delete their highly sensitive data

  • What happens to DNA data of millions as 23andMe files bankruptcy?

• Discord is planning an IPO this year, and big changes could be on the horizon

• Sundance Film Festival is leaving Utah

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Zoë Kooyman on Post-Stallman Changes at the Free Software Foundation - FOSS Force

• A note on the USB-to-PS/2 mouse adapter that came with Microsoft mouse devices - The Old New Thing

  Back in the early days of USB, Microsoft mouse devices often came with a USB plug at the end of the cable, but also came with a small green adapter to convert the USB type-A plug into a PS/2 plug. How did this adapter work? USB and PS/2 are completely different protocols that are not compatible in any way. The adapter was purely mechanical (passive). It connected one set of pins to another, but it contained no circuitry. All of the smarts was in the mouse. The mouse detected whether it received USB-like signals or PS/2-like signals on the pins and changed its behavior accordingly. The mouse did all the work.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI will reportedly close its SoftBank-led $40B round soon

  • OpenAI raising $40B at a $300B valuation in record funding round

  • OpenAI Expects Revenue Will Triple to $12.7B This Year

• OpenAI's viral Studio Ghibli moment highlights AI copyright concerns

  Style is not explicitly protected by copyright, according to Brown, meaning OpenAI does not appear to be breaking the law simply by generating images that look like Studio Ghibli movies.

  • OpenAI just made it harder to turn your pics into Studio Ghibli-style images

  • OpenAI CEO Responds to ChatGPT Users Creating Studio Ghibli-Style AI Images

  • “‘Our GPUs Are Melting:’ Sam Altman Limits ChatGPT Image Output After Ghibli Frenzy Overloads Servers.”

  • White House uses a Ghibli animation to troll an arrested woman in distress

• If AGI is the future, vibe coding is what we should all be doing

• 47% of jobs will vanish in the next 25 years, say Oxford University researchers

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• After a spacecraft was damaged en route to launch, NASA says it won't launch

• Sphere-studded rock on Mars found by NASA's Perseverance rover

Crypto con games

• Gold ETFs Inflow Takes over Bitcoin ETFs Amid Historic Rally

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Bay Area tech CEO lays off 931 workers with 'straight facts' email

• HSBC fired investment bankers on bonus day and gave them no bonuses

• We're Not Short on Power. We're Just Too Sanctimonious to Generate It

• Hedge Funds Struggle as Green Stocks Crash

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Gen Z Is The Most Conservative Generation In Decades Because They’re A Victim Of The Left’s Failures.

• Revolving Door: Ex FCC Boss Ajit Pai Promoted to Top Wireless Industry Lobbyist

Trump

• Newly shared Signal messages show Trump advisers discussed Yemen attack plans

• Read the messages US security officials exchanged on leaked Signal thread

• Miranda Devine: Mike Waltz's Signal-gate blunder is a hard lesson to be learned for Trump's winning team

• ‘Signal Gate’ is a political operation intended to sow discord within the Trump White House.

• The Atlantic group chat article is journalistic malpractice

• Megyn Kelly and Glenn Greenwald Point and Laugh at Natasha Bertrand's Classified Info 'Outrage' – Twitchy

  Woman who pushed the Steele Dossier is suddenly very concerned about intel accuracy and national security. Sources say irony is in critical condition.

• Much Ado About a Signal Chat | Frontpage Mag

  Fox News reported Wednesday that “the government watchdog group American Oversight filed the lawsuit on Wednesday, alleging that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others violated federal records laws by discussing Houthi attack plans in a Signal groupchat. The contest has now been randomly assigned to Boasberg, who serves on the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C.” Yeah, “randomly,” and I’ve got a very fine bridge to sell you over in Brooklyn. this mountain out of molehill over the Signal chat is yet another effort to kneecap Trump and his agenda. Contrary to widely reported claims, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed out Wednesday that “The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans.’ This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”

• Even If Those Weren't War Plans in Hegseth's Signal Chat, They Were War Crimes

• White House to DOGE employees: Preserve your Signal records

• Europe's response to the Signalgate reflects a major shift in transatlantic ties

• Trump places 25 per cent tariff on US auto imports

Democrats

• "more mail-in votes for the Democrat candidate than Democrat voters who requested them."

Left Angst

• FCC chairman Brendan Carr starts granting telecom lobby's wish list

• Funding cuts silence Radio and TV Martí

• Manufacturing fetishism is destined to fail

  It is so much easier to blame the disappearance of these US jobs on China than on domestic consumers and automation

• Turkish PhD student at Tufts cuffed, detained

  • Over 2000 protest in wake of student detainment

• Trump cuts threaten a measurement lab critical for chips and medical devices

• Trump's $16T Trade Blind Spot

• Trump administration at 'war' with mRNA technology

• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to cut 10k jobs

  • 10k Federal Health Dept. Workers to Be Laid Off

• 75% of US scientists consider leaving

• Trump's 'climate' purge deleted a new extreme weather risk tool. We recreated it

• Elon Musk Is One of the Few Winners from Trump Auto Tariffs

• "You're Here Because of Your Tattoos"

• Vendors with millions in federal contracts watching D.oE. constitutional battle

• Much of the administration's agenda for research is in Proj. 2025's 900+page doc

• NASA Deletes Comic Book About How Women Can Be Astronauts

• Trump's "pro-Hamas" purge could block foreign students from colleges

• Trump administration is pointing spy satellites at US border

• The devastating truth about the war on education

• It's Now a Hate Crime to Vandalize Teslas in DC

• Executive order on Smithsonian targets funding programs with 'improper ideology'

• The Nonprofit Caught in the Fray of Trump's Attacks on Big Law

• US administration revokes $11B in funding for addiction, mental health care

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Virginia will punish fast drivers with devices that limit their speed

• Secret Service, Navy Tested Anti-Drone Tech Causing False Collision Alarms

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Space Force wants six kinds of space weapons–including anti-satellite lasers

• US blacklists over 50 Chinese companies to curb Beijing's AI, chip capabilities

• US strategic ambiguity on Taiwan won't work any longer

• B-2 Spirit Stealth Bombers Begin Unannounced Deployment to Diego Garcia

World

• India Takes on Uber: Govt Plans Its Own Ride-Hailing App

• A filmmaker and a crooked lawyer shattered Denmark's self-image

• UK's first permanent facial recognition cameras installed in South London

• Why is Australia reburying ancient human remains?

• We Investigated Money Laundering, and What We Found

• Indians Spend a Trillion Hours on Phones, Pushing a $29.4B Media Industry

• All-women marching band livens up Taiwanese funerals

• The UK Government Just Declared War on Gab

• KiwiFarms Receives Online Safety Act Ofcom Notice

• Sutton Hoo helmet may come from Denmark, archaeologist suggests

• Climbing Mount Fuji will now require a $27 fee and a test

Israel

• An unrestrained Israel is reshaping the Middle East

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• How a Cheap Drone Punctured Chernobyl's 40k-Ton Shield

China

• China built hundreds of AI data centers. Now many stand unused

• China Pauses New Deals with Li Ka-Shing Family After Panama Ports Plan

• Why New Chinese maritime tech is spooking defense watchers

• Navigating the Risks of China's Dual-Use Shipyards

• The CCP's dystopian AI plot to turn the world into China

• Leaked data exposes a Chinese AI censorship machine

• China Building Solar Station in Space Could Generate Practically Endless Power

Health / Medicine

• Taxpayers Spent Billions Covering the Same Medicaid Patients Twice

• Calorie-free sweeteners can disrupt the brain's appetite signals

• How the American Medical Association Screws Doctors

  In January, a reader sent me a note about a fee paid by her father, a licensed marriage and family therapist. Here’s what she said.

  In his practice my dad uses a billing software called SimplePractice and in December they started charging a yearly $20 fee to each clinician. They say this fee is to cover the $18 royalty AMA charges SimplePractice for each clinician who uses the software since the software can use CPT codes, as well as a $2 processing fee.

  Sure, enough, I went to SimplePractice’s website, and there it is explaining the annual $20 charge for something called a Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code. SimplePractice says customers must pay the royalty to the American Medical Association, which “owns the rights to CPT codes and mandates the collection of royalty fees for all clinicians who have access to the codes, regardless of usage.”

  Last year, SimplePractice sent out a note to its customers announcing this fee structure, to widespread anger. One therapist noted on Reddit, “I may get hate for this but this is the kind of shit that really makes me want to surrender my license and become a life coach, allowing me to continue helping people but opting out of the racket. I’m so tired of feeling exploited.” Another said, “Like wtf, being in private practice is already hard and expensive enough, these little ass fees add up. I might drop emr and go back to paper.”

• AI models miss disease in Black and female patients

• California bill aims to phase out harmful ultra-processed foods in schools

• Chinese Scientist Ostracized over Gene-Edited Babies Seeks Comeback

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Plants can take up CWD-causing prions from soil in lab. What happens if eaten?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• CocaCola plastic waste in oceans expected to reach 602M kilograms a year by 2030

• She Inspired Laws to Hold the Fossil Fuel Industry Accountable. She's a Target.

• Study shows plants are more likely to be 'eavesdroppers' than altruists

• Is Bitcoin driving a green transformation, or fueling a mirage?