2025-04-22

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• Scientists Say the Universe Might Be Rotating Every 500B Years

• Astronomers confirm the existence of a lone black hole.

• Why It's So Difficult for Robots to Make Your Nike Sneakers

Horseshit

• Startups making devices for bind fans to follow live sports

• Star Wars Ghibli Art Show Was a Hidden Gem of Celebration Japan

• The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

• Opinion | An Age of Extinction Is Coming. Here’s How to Survive. - The New York Times

  When moderates and centrists look around and wonder why the world isn’t going their way, why the future seems to belong to weird bespoke radicalisms, to Luigi Mangione admirers and World War II revisionists, that’s the bottleneck crushing the old forms of consensus politics, the low-key ways of relating to political debates. When young people don’t date or marry or start families, that’s the bottleneck coming for the most basic human institutions of all.

• Neuroscientists are racing to turn brain waves into speech

• An Uber drove away with her kid and wouldn't connect her with the driver

• Back To The Future's DeLorean has almost vanished from UK roads

  Forty years on from the film that made them immortal, there are just 303 DeLorean cars left on Britain's roads. To mark the anniversary of Back To The Future, released in 1985, online auction platform Collecting Cars nabbed the latest figures on their use from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. In addition to the 303 taxed for use on Britain's roads, another 114 have statutory off-road notification - meaning they are likely gathering dust in garages.

  • There weren't very many made; and they were not well made by all accounts.

• How Well Did the Mysterious Antikythera Mechanism Work?

• The World’s Most Coveted Ceramics Maker Is Closed 348 Days a Year

• Drones can deliver supplies on Mount Everest this year, may change climbing

• With 'AI slop' distorting our reality, the world is sleepwalking into disaster

• Amplifying delusions: How social media can negatively impact our well-being

• When a Small Rejection Feels Like 'The End of the World'

• Willy Ley Was a Prophet of Space Travel. His Ashes Were Found in a Basement.

Obit

• Pope Francis has died on Easter Monday aged 88 - Vatican News

  • Pope Francis Dead at 88

  Francis, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, was the first Jesuit pope and the first native of Latin America. His liberal views marked a noticeable break from more conservative predecessors and at times sparked pushback from Vatican hard-liners. But his legacy is also one of complexities, compromises and contradictions, reflecting his often-difficult position as a progressive reformer in a conservative global institution. Francis was unafraid to wade into politics, publicly feuding with United States President Donald Trump over immigration and rebuking U.S. Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, over apparently instrumentalizing a theological point for migration policy.

  • Pope Francis has died

  He was 88, and had suffered a serious bout of double pneumonia this year, but his death came as a shock after he had been driven around St. Peter's Square in an open-air popemobile to greet cheering crowds on Easter Sunday. The pope had also held a brief meeting on Sunday with visiting U.S. Vice-President JD Vance.

  • Pope Francis Died

  • Pope Francis Has Died

  • Pope Francis has died

Musk

• Wedbush's Dan Ives Warns About "Code Red" Situation Unfolding At Tesla | ZeroHedge

  "Musk needs to leave the government, take a major step back on DOGE, and get back to being CEO of Tesla full-time," Ives penned in a note to clients on Sunday. He said, "Tesla is Musk and Musk is Tesla....and anyone that thinks the brand damage Musk has inflicted is not a real thing, spend some time speaking to car buyers in the US, Europe, and Asia. You will think differently after those discussions." Two weeks ago, Ives, whose analyst rating on the stock remains "Buy" rated, slashed his price target to $315, down from $550. He explained, "Tesla has essentially become a political symbol globally, adding, "It is time for Musk to step up, read the room, and be a leader in this time of uncertainty." According to the analyst, Tesla faces "potentially 15%-20% permanent demand destruction for future Tesla buyers due to the brand damage Musk has created with DOGE. " Yet we must point out that the Tesla protests were small-scale and funded by corrupt NGOs connected with rogue billionaires and the Democratic Party.

Electric / Self Driving cars

• How Tesla Is Replacing the Age-Old Can Bus

• Kia is pitching Americans an affordable EV sedan with EV4 debut

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Data Reveals How Men Are Falling Behind in School and Work

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Zuckerberg-Funded Silicon Valley School to Shutter Next Year

• Harvard faces an existential test of its financial brainpower

  Of Harvard’s $6.5bn of revenue in its 2024 fiscal year, 10 per cent was federal support such as research funding. Harvard’s equivalent of an operating margin averages 2.8 per cent over the past decade. A $53bn endowment is less a cookie jar to be raided than a resource for future students as well as today’s, and is mostly restricted for specific purposes.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Is Hollywood Still in Hollywood?

• Ubuntu 25.04 upgrades halted due to Kubuntu users getting a broken desktop

• What to do once your Surface Hub v1 becomes an 84-inch, $22K paperweight

• Getting Forked by Microsoft • Philip Laine

  While looking into Peerd, my enthusiasm for understanding different approaches in this problem space quickly diminished. I saw function signatures and comments that looked very familiar, as if I had written them myself. Digging deeper I found test cases referencing Spegel and my previous employer, test cases that have been taken directly from my project. References that are still present to this day. The project is a forked version of Spegel, maintained by Microsoft, but under Microsoft’s MIT license.

  Spegel was published with an MIT license. Software released under an MIT license allows for forking and modifications, without any requirement to contribute these changes back. I default to using the MIT license as it is simple and permissive. The license does not allow removing the original license and purport that the code was created by someone else. This experience has also made me consider changing the license of Spegel, as it seems to be the only stone I can throw.

• Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook, Instagram block new Apple product

• Upcoming Nvidia chip delayed due to major problems - Semiaccurate

  Nvidia has a serious issue with an upcoming chip and they are blaming everyone but themselves. SemiAccurate has seen this pattern with delays before and this time is no different. This new problem with an upcoming chip is serious and has delayed the device by months so far with no fix in sight. Nvidia is blaming partners as is their normal deflection routine but this time they are also trashing Microsoft as well, that part is new. Then again as long as you are not Nvidia, the blame is yours for their faults.

• Microsoft Is Building a Database of Every Windows 11 User's Online Behaviors

  • What have they already learned from the telemetry they've been collecting for years?

• The Board Game Industry Is Burning — And It's Their Own Fault

  This week, the board game world caught fire. Final Frontier Games—a company backed by millions—announced it’s shutting down. Cephalofair—the multi-million-dollar juggernaut behind Gloomhaven—went on CNN to say they’ve been paralyzed by tariffs. One blamed distributors. The other blamed Trump. And the rest of the industry? They’re echoing the same line: “There was nothing we could do.”

  But here’s the truth nobody wants to hear (but I keep saying it anyway):

  They’re not victims of tariffs. They’re victims of their own incompetence.

  And I’m not saying that lightly. I’m saying that as someone who’s built a game company from scratch. Someone who’s eaten shipping losses. Someone who’s hand-packed thousands of units just to keep promises. And someone who actually bothered to look up the tariff codes before screaming into the void.

• Windows 10 PC isn't dead yet – this OS from Google can revive it

• Google DKIM-Bypass Phishing Scam

  Attackers are sending phishing emails that appear to be from “no-reply@google.com,” presented as an urgent subpoena alert about “law enforcement” seeking information from the target’s Google Account. Bleeping Computer reports that the scam utilizes Google’s “Sites” web-building app to create realistic-looking phishing websites and emails that aim to intimidate victims into giving up their credentials. As explained by EasyDMARC, an email authentication company, the emails manage to bypass the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) authentication that would normally flag fake emails, because they came from Google’s own tool.

• Google Found Guilty of Monopolization Again

  • From Google: DOJ's sweeping remedies would harm American economy and technological leadership

  • U.S. Asks Judge to Break Up Google

• The campaign to subvert Africa's internet registry

• The Most Prolific Retro Handheld Maker Just Stopped U.S. Shipments

• Logitech prices are increasing by as much as 25%, and they're not alone

• Bluesky launches blue check verification

  • Bluesky ignores user concerns as it launches blue check mark verification system

• Amazon has paused some data center lease commitments

• Instagram tests AI to catch underage users as part of teen safety push

• Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

• Synology requires self-branded drives and drops support for third-party HDDs

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• WD launches HDD recycling that reclaims rare earth elements, cuts out China

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI has grown beyond human knowledge, says Google's DeepMind unit

• Eric Schmidt Tells Congress That 99% of All Electricity Will Be Used to Power AI

• OpenAI spends millions to process polite phrases

  • Politeness could be costly for OpenAI

• OpenAI o3 AI model scores lower on benchmark than the company initially implied

• Meta Asked Amazon, Microsoft to Help Fund Llama

• Google Succeeds with LLMs While Meta and OpenAI Stumble

  • From 'catch up' to 'catch us': How Google took the lead in enterprise AI

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• An astronaut's awe-inspiring views from life in space

• There's a secret reason the Space Force is delaying the next Atlas V launch

  There are several puzzling things about what happened last week. When SpaceX missed its reservation on the range twice in two days, April 10 and 11, why didn't ULA move back to the front of the line? ULA, which is usually fairly transparent about its reasons for launch scrubs, didn't disclose any technical problems with the rocket that would have prevented another launch attempt. ULA offers access to listen to the launch team's audio channel during the countdown, and engineers were not discussing any significant technical issues. The company's official statement after the scrub said: "A new launch date will be announced when approved on the range." Also, why can't ULA make another run at launching the Kuiper mission this week? The answer to that question is also a mystery, but we have some educated speculation.

  Clearly, there's something out of the ordinary going on in the Eastern Range, which extends over much of the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, east, and northeast of Cape Canaveral. The range includes tracking equipment, security forces, and ground stations in Florida and downrange sites in Bermuda and Ascension Island. One possibility is a test of one or more submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles, which commonly occur in the waters off the east coast of Florida. But those launches are usually accompanied by airspace and maritime warning notices to ensure pilots and sailors steer clear of the test. Nothing of the sort has been publicly released in the last couple of weeks.

• NRO reaches milestone with over 200 satellites deployed in two years.

Crypto con games

• Crypto Might Get Some Banks

• Congress's Biggest Financial Priority Is "Stablecoin." What the Hell Is That?

Economicon / Business / Finance

• How the U.S. Lost Its Place as the Manufacturing Powerhouse

• Airbnb will now show users the total cost of their stay right away

• The workers who feel left behind by return-to-office policies

• FTC sues Uber, says company charged for Uber One without consent

  • FTC Takes Action Against Uber for Deceptive Billing and Cancellation Practices

• Global alcohol consumption has gone into possibly permanent decline

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Doña Ana County judge resigns after feds arrest man at home

  Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano has resigned from the bench where he has sat since 2011. Although his resignation letter, dated March 3, did not state his reason for stepping down, it followed shortly after a man awaiting deportation proceedings, accused by federal law enforcement of being affiliated with a Venezuelan gang, was arrested at Cano’s home. Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, 23, faces federal firearm charges after Homeland Security Investigations executed a search warrant on Feb. 28 at a Las Cruces residence owned by Cano and his wife, Nancy.

  The details of Ortega-Lopez’s arrest and prior relationship with the Cano family are addressed in federal court motions seeking Ortega-Lopez’s detention. In New Mexico federal district court, prosecutors argue that Ortega-Lopez is a flight risk and a danger to the community due to an alleged criminal history, including alleged ties to the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela.

  • Weird: New Mexico Judge Resigns After Homeland Security Finds Tren De Aragua Member at His Residence – RedState

  On its face, the facts seem pretty simple: an alleged Venezuelan gang member was nabbed by Homeland Security at a New Mexico judge’s house, and the judge promptly resigned. The accused Tren de Aragua member was apparently living in a casita behind the judge’s home.

• Withdrawing the Incidental Take Authorizations of Migratory Birds

  On October 4, 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register. The Service is withdrawing this advance notice of proposed rulemaking, consistent with an order by the Secretary of the Interior. The advance notice of proposed rulemaking that published on October 4, 2021, at 86 FR 54667, is withdrawn as of April 21, 2025.

• (Mar 28 2025) U.S. turns to Europe for eggs to ease prices at home, but so far comes up empty-handed - CBS News

  One of the biggest obstacles, however, is the approach the United States takes to preventing salmonella contamination. U.S. food safety regulations require fresh eggs to be sanitized and refrigerated before they reach shoppers; in the European Union, safety standards call for Grade A eggs to be sold unwashed and without extended chilling.It is common in parts of Europe, for example, for consumers to buy eggs that still have feathers and chicken poop stuck to them.

• Congressional Speeches Increasingly Emotional

  • Counterexample: "Change the Sacred Name of Arkansas? HELL NO!"

• Homeland Security Secretary's Bag with Security Badge Is Stolen

Trump

• Risk of Financial Panic Tempers Trump on Firing Powell

  • Trump ramps up attacks on Powell

• The White House has begun process of looking for new secretary of defense

  The White House has begun the process of looking for a new secretary of defense, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. NPR has reached out to the White House for comment.

  This comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continues to find himself mired in controversy. NPR has also confirmed with the same official that Hegseth shared details ahead of last month's Yemen strikes with his wife and brother in a Signal chat on his personal phone, minutes after being updated by a senior U.S. military official. The news of the second Signal group chat about the mission was first reported by The New York Times.

  • Hegseth Faces Heat After New Signal Chat Emerges and Claim of Pentagon 'Chaos'

  • Pentagon chief shared Yemen war plans in second Signal chat

  • Pete Hegseth reportedly spilled Yemen attack details in another Signal chat

  • Knives Out For Hegseth: New Allegations Of OPSEC Failures, Pentagon Mismanagement | ZeroHedge

  While his personal lawyer and brother have DOD jobs, neither seemingly had a "need to know" about the attacks. Hegseth appointed Parlatore as a Navy Reserve JAG Commander, with a focus on improving the training of JAG officers. Phil Hegseth is a DOD liaison with the Department of Homeland Security -- a post that hardly suggests a need to know about the imminent strike, much less a timeline detailing that F-18s, MQ-9 Reaper drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles would be used. In other words, this scenario seems to indicate a Secretary of Defense excitedly and unjustifiably sharing inside info with his wife and confidants. Validating his confirmation-opponents' attacks on his lack of experience, the decision seems consistent with a SecDef whose own top military rank was Major in the National Guard. Meanwhile, the Signal chat about Yemen isn't the first time Jennifer Hegseth's involvement in her husband's job has raised eyebrows. Questions have also been raised over why Jennifer -- a former Fox News producer with no DOD job -- has participated in multiple meetings that covered sensitive topics, including one with the head of UK's military to discuss terminating the sharing of intelligence with Ukraine.

  • Hegseth's second Signal chat

Left Angst

• Palantir exec defends company's immigration surveillance work

• Krebs resigns from SentinelOne after Trump revokes clearances

• Border Crossings Grind to Halt as Trump’s Tough Policies Take Hold.

• Top Pentagon Spokesperson Details 'Month from Hell' (Archive)

  The latest flashpoint is a near collapse inside the Pentagon’s top ranks. On Friday, Hegseth fired three of his most loyal senior staffers — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy secretary of Defense. In the aftermath, Defense Department officials working for Hegseth tried to smear the aides anonymously to reporters, claiming they were fired for leaking sensitive information as part of an investigation ordered earlier this month. Yet none of this is true. While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test. In fact, at least one of them has told former colleagues that investigators advised him he was about to be cleared officially of any wrongdoing. Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.

• RFK's draft plan to reshape HHS

• 'When Must We Kill Them' Author evicted

  • As I said before; Biden would've had an FBI team shoot the kid.

  • George Mason PhD Student Asks ‘When Must We Kill’ Trump, Hilarity Ensues.

• Trump's FTC opens the floodgates for tariff profiteering

• An AI doctoral candidate in California says they had their student visa revoked

• NIH freezes funds to Harvard and four other universities, but can't tell them

• $8B of US climate tech projects have been canceled so far in 2025

  • "DOGE isn't saving money" stories say different... It's almost as if facts are irrelevant. "Vibe reporting".

• We Are Suing the President

• The Bastards of Neoliberalism

  Since the political surprises of the Brexit vote and Trump’s victory in 2016, there has been a stubborn story that explains so-called right-wing populism as a grassroots rejection of neoliberalism, often described as market fundamentalism, or the belief that everything on the planet has a price tag, borders are obsolete, the world economy should replace nation states, and human life is reducible to a cycle of earn, spend, borrow, die. This “new” right, by contrast, claims to believe in the people, national sovereignty and the importance of culture. As mainstream parties lose support, the elites who promoted neoliberalism out of self-interest seem to be reaping the fruits of the inequality and democratic disempowerment they sowed. But this story does not capture the whole truth. By looking more closely, we can see that important factions of the emerging right were, in fact, mutant strains of neoliberalism. The parties dubbed as right-wing populist, from the United States to Britain and Austria, have rarely been avenging angels sent to smite economic globalisation. They offer few plans to rein in finance, restore a golden age of job security, or end world trade. By and large, the so-called populists’ calls to privatise, deregulate and slash taxes come straight from the playbook shared by the world’s leaders for the past 30 years.

• The '5 things' emails are going by the wayside as Musk readies his exit

• The ACLU Is Suing the Government to Get Access to Doge Records

• NIH bans all future grants to universities with DEI programs or Israel boycotts

• Harvard University sues Trump administration

  • Harvard Sues Trump Administration

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• China’s Oil Supertankers Face $5.2-Million Fee per U.S. Port Call | OilPrice.com

  The U.S. move to penalize China-built and China-owned vessels calling at U.S. ports could lead to an oil supertanker made in China and operated by a Chinese company facing a fee of up to $5.2 million per call at a U.S. port, shipbrokers have estimated. The previous per-call only fee would have charged up to $3.5 million for a tanker to call at a U.S. port.

• China stops buying liquefied natural gas from the US

World

• Official abuse of state security hits code red • The Register

• Von der Leyen warns X, Meta, TikTok to play by the rules in Europe

• Saudi businesses turn to solar power as kingdom cuts energy subsidies

• Sweden Has the Tanks. Finland Has the Troops. Welcome to the Pan-Nordic Army

• EU says it will enforce digital rules irrespective of CEO and location

• Japan keeps asking the US what it wants in trade talks and can't get an answer

China

• China sends back new Boeing jets

  • China sends back new Boeing jet made more expensive by tariffs

• Huawei readies new AI chip for mass shipment as China seeks Nvidia alternatives

• Most Humanoid Robots Fail to Finish Half Marathon in Beijing

  • Man versus Machine as China Shows Off Humanoid Robots in Half-Marathon

  • China Hosts Robot Marathon

• China's CATL claims to have overtaken BYD on 5-minute EV battery charging time

• China bans 'smart' and 'autonomous' driving terms from vehicle ads

• China detonates non-nuclear hydrogen bomb: How it's different from nuclear bombs

• TSMC Warns of Limits of Ability to Keep Its AI Chips from China

Health / Medicine

• Study finds potential link between infant acid-suppressants and celiac disease

• Asus unveils first smart band that measures blood pressure and ECG

• Risk of Dementia in Individuals with Emergency Hospital Visits Due to Cannabis

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• How effective and safe are measles vaccines? Data from large meta-analyses

• What causes breakthrough measles infections?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Cancer-Causing Arsenic Is Building Up in the Rice

• Holiday flights could carry fewer passengers as world warms

  Rising temperatures due to climate change may force aircraft at European airports to reduce passenger numbers in the coming decades. Scientists from the University of Reading studied how hotter air affects aircraft performance during takeoff at 30 sites across Europe. When air gets warmer, it becomes less dense, making it harder for planes to generate lift, the force that allows them to fly.

• Airbus Promised a 'Green' Hydrogen Aircraft. That Bet Is Now Unraveling

• (Feb 2025) Argentina breeds gene-edited polo super ponies | Reuters

• Fossil fuels fall below 50% of US electricity for the first month on record

• In Colorado, Gas for Cars Could Soon Come with a Warning Label

• Engineers develop eco-friendly plastic from mineral found in seashells

• Wild chimpanzees filmed by scientists bonding over alcoholic fruit

• We've unlocked a holy grail in clean energy. It's only the beginning

• New Study Finds Receipts May Cause Health Issues

• The quest to build islands with ocean currents in the Maldives

• Bird Went Extinct and Then Evolved into Existence Again

• Banned DDT discovered in Canadian trout 70 years after use