2025-04-27

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• Are there more plane incidents recently or does it just seem that way? - ABC News

  while these incidents have raised concerns about aviation safety, data from the NTSB -- the agency tasked with investigating all civil aviation accidents and major incidents -- shows that the number of aviation accidents is down nearly 10% so far this year compared to the same period last year: From Jan. 1 through April 20, 2024, the NTSB investigated 275 aviation accidents in the United States. During the same period this year, that number is 250.

• Robot Dexterity Still Seems Hard

  While a lot of these capabilities are impressive, robot progress still seems somewhat uneven to me. It’s cool to see these robots move in such human-like ways, but as former OpenAI Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew notes, “Manipulation is the hard problem we need to solve to make humanoid robots useful, not locomotion.” The value of a humanoid robot isn’t whether it can dance, run, or flip, but how capable it is at manipulating objects in the real world. And while manipulation capabilities are improving, they appear to have a very long way to go.

Horseshit

• Aerial robots could revolutionise the construction industry

• Silicon Valley billionaires want the impossible

  "One current critique of Silicon Valley is that they moved fast and broke democracy and institutional norms. That's true. Another is that they're contemptuous of government, and I think that's true, too. But there wasn't much critique of their visions of the future, maybe because not enough people realized they meant it. Even among Silicon Valley critics, there was this idea that at the very least, you could trust that the statements they made about science and technology were true because they were experts in science and technology. That's not the case."

• The biggest zipper maker made a self-propelled zipper

• Old nerds, new nerds - Evan’s Substack

  What are nerds nowadays? I couldn’t give you a first-hand account of how nerds used to be, but I can about nerds today. Nowadays, nerds think about the IMO, USACO, or other scary acronyms. They hyperoptimize their lives, maximizing for the most prestigious college. They work internships in high school. They send out cold emails and start non-profits. They have several leadership positions in their high school clubs. They do scientific research and rigorously plan out their lives and schedules. There’s not enough time or attention span to read The Lord of the Rings, so they read short manga instead. Others give up reading altogether and scroll reels. For some, the grind is their life, so they abandon all forms of entertainment.

  • The defining feature of the "nerd" of old was their contempt for society's values and determination to pursue their own interests instead of popular acclaim. What is being described here is the political (as opposed to sports) preppie; the antithesis of "nerd".

• How Much Should You Know About Your Child Before He's Born?

• A Stash of Nashes Is Sitting at the Bottom of Lake Michigan - Hagerty Media

  some 46 years before the winds of November came early, bringing doom to the Fitzgerald’s crew, a collision in heavy fog sent the USS Senator to the icy depths. Her cargo, some 268 Nash automobiles bound for Detroit, remains the largest collection of its type in the world. They’re all still down there.

• How Wales is building a sharing economy through its 'libraries of things'

• Can Harrow sell an elitist British boarding school fantasy to New Yorkers?

• The Controversial Rise of the $690 Flip Flop

• Historians dispute Bayeux tapestry penis tally after lengthy debate

Obit

• Virginia Giuffre, Prince Andrew accuser, dies by suicide aged 41

  Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most high-profile victims who accused Prince Andrew of sexually assaulting her as a teenager, has died by suicide, her family has said. Ms Giuffre, 41, died in Neergabby, Australia, where she lived.

  • Epstein Victim Virginia Giuffre Dies By Suicide According To Family | ZeroHedge

  Jeffrey Epstein's most prominent victim, Virginia Giuffre, died by suicide on Thursday according to her family - weeks after she said she had 'days to live' and was in renal failure following a collision with a bus.

  • Virginia Giuffre, Voice in Epstein Sex-Trafficking Scandal, Dies at 41

Musk

• Thermal imaging shows xAI lied about supercomputer pollution, group says

• xAI Is in Discussions to Raise $20B

• How Matthew Hiller made six figures selling anti-Elon Musk Tesla stickers

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Bezos-backed Slate Auto debuts analog EV pickup truck

• Uber to Add Thousands of Self-Driving Electric VW Microbuses to Fleet

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• What Power Does the Pope Have Now?

• Eugenics is on the rise again: human geneticists must take a stand

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• A tuition-free school created by Zuckerberg and Chan will shutter next year

• Yale faculty call for admin hiring freeze and independent audit

• The Road to Campus Serfdom – John O. McGinnis

  Ironically, the left, now alarmed by the federal government’s intrusive reach, bears direct responsibility for crafting the very legal weapons wielded against the universities it dominates. Almost four decades ago, progressive legislators demanded sweeping amendments to civil rights law, expanding federal oversight over higher education. The sequence of events reveals a cautionary tale of political hubris: progressive confidence that state power would reliably serve their ends overlooked the reality that governmental authority, once unleashed, recognizes no ideological master. Today’s circumstances starkly illustrate how expansive federal control over civil society, originally celebrated by progressives, returns to haunt its architects. The left’s outrage ought to focus not on this particular administration but on its own reckless empowerment of the state.

  While many on the left decry the Trump’s administration’s attempt to use its power under the Civil Rights law to reform higher education to its liking, they did not lodge similar complaints against the Obama or Biden administrations’ exertion of power under the same authority.

• Top Colleges Are Too Costly Even for Parents Making $300k

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Nintendo Switch 2's gameless Game-Key cards are going to be common

• Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

  • Even Mark Zuckerberg is admitting that Facebook is bad now

• Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

  your phone may not be listening in to your conversations, but it has the capacity to track you in so many other ways. And it's through this massive trove of trackable data that companies like Facebook and Google are able to serve you targeted ads that occasionally seem frighteningly accurate. “Everything that makes your phone useful, like knowing where you are, taking photos, enabling online shopping and banking – these are exactly where the potential weaknesses and vulnerabilities are,” said Mike Campin, VP of engineering at Wandera. “The more useful your phone is, the more attractive it is to advertisers, hackers, or anyone who wants your data.”

  With the advent of voice-controlled smart devices you are certainly being listened to almost all of the time in a way. But understanding exactly how these devices work is key to understanding why they couldn't be recording you all the time.

• Sydney woman who sold a cartoon cat T-shirt told to pay $100K in copyright case

  Alda Curtis, a 63-year-old counselling student from Sydney, set up a Redbubble store as a hobby, including selling a T-shirt featuring an unhappy cat cartoon. After years of running the store, a single sale of that T-shirt resulted in a US$100,000 default judgment against her for infringing on the trademark of Grumpy Cat late last year. Then Curtis noticed nearly US$600 had been taken from her PayPal account.

• Why are companies lining up to buy Chrome?

  • Everybody Wants to Buy Chrome

• First and 2nd gen Nest Thermostats will lose support in Oct 2025

• Why the Cassette Revival Is Thriving in Argentina's Music Scene

• Amid CVE funding fumble, 'we were mushrooms, kept in the dark' says board member

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• We Now Know How AI 'Thinks'–and It's Barely Thinking at All

• Microsoft rolls Windows Recall out to public nearly a year after announcing it

• AI-powered 20 foot robots coming for construction workers' jobs

• Watching o3 guess a photo’s location is surreal, dystopian and wildly entertaining

• Amazon and Nvidia – all options considered to power AI including fossil fuels

• AI Executives Promise Cancer Cures. Here's the Reality

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Reusable rockets are here, so why is NASA paying more to launch stuff to space?

  • Counting stars and costs: An examination of space launch cost trend at NASA

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Five Years After Escaping in a Crate, Carlos Ghosn Is Teaching Business Strategy

• Tech Workers are just like the rest of us: miserable at work

• Data-Crunching Wall Street Skeptics Sit Out the Turnaround Trade

• What consumers are snapping up or putting off in face of tariffs

• Backblaze: A Loss-Making Data Storage Business Mired in Lawsuits, Sham Accounting, and Brazen Insider Dumping

  Since its November 2021 IPO, Backblaze has reported losses every quarter, its outstanding share count has grown by 80%, and its share price has declined by 71%.

• Meta lays off Reality Labs employees while continuing to hire hundreds more

• Economists don't know what's going on

• Big brands are officially worried about American shoppers

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Are sheriffs easing off traffic tickets to sway voters?

Trump

• Signalgate lessons: If the goal is a culture of security, America's screwed

• Trump to speak at Alabama commencement, sparks outrage from College Democrats.

Left Angst

• Mike Lindell's lawyers used AI to write brief–judge finds nearly 30 mistakes

  A lawyer representing MyPillow and its CEO Mike Lindell in a defamation case admitted using artificial intelligence in a brief that has nearly 30 defective citations

• 2-year-old US citizen deported

  A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” even as the child’s father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said the child — identified in court papers by the initials “V.M.L.” — appeared to have been released in Honduras earlier Friday, along with her Honduran-born mother and sister, who had been detained by immigration officials earlier in the week.

  • 2-year-old US Citizen from Louisiana deported to Honduras

• Trump Has Now Deported Multiple U.S. Citizen Children with Cancer

• ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation

• The stock market is an increasingly good proxy for the economy

  In fact, it’s hard to identify historical examples where stocks improved on what most people would regard as bad news or declined on good news.

• The Global Trading System Was Already Broken

• US reverses abrupt terminations of foreign students' visa registrations

  • US restoring legal status of students after abruptly revoking visas

• D.C. Prosecutor Threatens Wikipedia's Tax-Exempt Status

  • Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

• Musk Allies Made FAA Staff Sign NDAs to Keep New Project Secret

• No, you can't just replace science with Silicon Valley

  The stated reason for the cuts to science is obvious, best seen in the fight between the Trump administration and Harvard around the role of DEI requirements in admissions, hiring, and grants. But let’s just be honest: that doesn’t explain cutting 55% of the NSF budget. Thus, the unstated reason is worth examining. If you criticize academia as a sclerotic and ailing institution, then you are a doctor, and should be seeking cures. If you view ideological creep within science as cancer, then the goal is to kill the cancer and keep the patient. Yet, there’s a new nihilism based on the idea that academia is entirely corrupt. And things entirely corrupt are not worth saving. It’s a view only possible if an alternative is available. Academia houses the crown jewel of science. If academia is not to be saved, where does science go?

• Attorney General Warns Arrested Judge Is Just the Beginning

  Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested earlier in the day on charges of obstruction for supposedly misdirecting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents away from Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an immigrant attending a pretrial hearing at the Milwaukee County Courthouse last week. “I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not,” Bondi said. “And we are sending a very strong message today: If you are harboring a fugitive, we don’t care who you are, if you are helping hide one, if you are giving a TdA member guns, anyone who is illegally in this country, we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.” Crucially, Dugan is not accused of supplying a member of Tren de Aragua with guns. She is charged with two federal counts of obstruction, one for concealing a person from discovery and arrest, and another for obstruction of federal government proceedings.

• Want to Escape the Financial News? Don't Try a Hobby

• Wrong turn onto U.S.-Canada bridge has Detroit woman facing deportation

• The BoBo Manifesto – Chicago Boyz

  Brooks is done with moderation. He has cast it to the winds and he calls for a color revolution, an “uprising”:

  “It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.”

• Labor Department Says Staff Could Face Criminal Charges for Leaks — ProPublica

• Key commodity exports plunge as Trump's trade war bites

• How much has Elon Musk's Doge cut from US Government spending?

• How much has Elon Musk's Doge cut from US government spending?

  • at least $32 to $160 billion; but they go to some length to minimize it item by item.

• J.D. Vance Became a Flash Point in an Election in Durham, Ontario

• Hundreds more NSF grants terminated after agency director resigns

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• FBI offers $10M for information about Salt Typhoon members

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Weapons of war are launching from Cape Canaveral for the first time since 1988 - Ars Technica

  This missile launch and a similar one in December are the first tests of land-based offensive weapons at Cape Canaveral since 1988, when the military last tested Pershing ballistic missiles there. The launch range in Florida continues to support offshore tests of submarine-launched Trident missiles, and now is a center for hypersonic missile testing.

• Son of CIA deputy director was killed while fighting for Russia, report says

  Michael Alexander Gloss, 21, died on 4 April 2024 in “Eastern Europe”, according to an obituary published by his family. He was the son of Juliane Gallina, who was appointed the deputy director for digital innovation at the Central Intelligence Agency in February 2024. The story of how the son of a top-ranking US spy died fighting for Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is an unlikely tale of how homegrown anger at the United States and online radicalisation led from a middle-class Virginia childhood to the killing fields of eastern Ukraine.

• Scattered Spider Hacking Suspect Extradited to US from Spain

World

• Inmates in ElSalvador tortured/strangled-hellish conditions in Bukele's prisons

• BBC licence fee 'unenforceable', says culture secretary

• Fantasy Betting Apps are ruining rural India. It is heartbreaking.

• Delhi's EV boom runs on illegal charging stations

• Serbia limits academics' research time to just one hour a day

• Australian who ordered radioactive materials walks away from court

  A 24-year-old Australian man who ordered uranium and plutonium to his parents’ apartment has been allowed to walk away from court on a two-year good behaviour bond. After ordering various radioactive samples over the internet in an effort to collect the entire periodic table, Emmanuel Lidden pleaded guilty to two charges: moving nuclear material into Australia and possessing nuclear material without a permit. While his actions were criminal, the judge concluded that Lidden had mental health issues and displayed no malicious intent.

• Amazon Japan ordered to pay 35M. yen for allowing listing of fakes

• Madrid's Biggest Landlord? U.S. Investment Firms

• The EU is introducing an energy label and requirements for phones sold in the EU

• Deepfake porn is destroying real lives in South Korea

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• UK bans game controller exports to Russia in bid to ground drone attacks

• Russian satellite at centre of nuclear weapons claims is spinning out of control

China

• China's thorium survey finds 'endless energy source right under our feet'

• NASA says this enormous construction in China is slowing down Earth

• China seizes disputed reef in the South China Sea

Health / Medicine

• Why Autistic Women Have Been Overlooked for Decades

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• With over 900 US measles cases so far this year, things are looking bleak

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Lethal fungi are becoming drug-resistant and spreading

• Insects are disappearing due to agriculture – and many other drivers

• RWE Ditches U.S. Offshore Wind, and That Should Scare Everyone

• A Thorium Reactor in the Desert Has Rewritten the Rules of Nuclear Power

• A rare virga bomb just shattered a wind record in Texas. Here’s what it is | CNN

  A record-breaking, triple-digit wind gust roared through part of Texas on Tuesday, but it wasn’t from a tornado or a hurricane. An airport weather station in Midland, Texas, recorded a wind gust of 111 mph Tuesday evening – the first triple-digit gust in its 94-year-history in weather reporting. It shattered the previous record of 97 mph set on June 26, 2007. The culprit? A “dry microburst associated virga bomb,” according to the National Weather Service.

• Breakthrough Technology Extracts Hydrogen from Natural Gas Wells

• The baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

• Genetically engineered cannibalistic sterile cane toad to fight invasive species

• The Dangerous Illusion of Climate Resilience