2025-05-15

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• E-COM: The $40 million USPS project to send email on paper

  How do you get email to the folks without computers? What if the Post Office printed out email, stamped it, dropped it in folks’ mailboxes along with the rest of their mail, and saved the USPS once and for all? And so in 1982 E-COM was born—and, inadvertently, helped coin the term “e-mail.”

  Every time a customer spent 26¢ to send those eye-catching blue-and-white envelopes that first year, the USPS lost an astounding $5.25 in printing and delivering them. Volume wasn’t enough to stop the bleeding; the second year, the USPS still lost $1.24 per E-COM it sent.

  The USPS Board of Governors decided to “dispose of the E-COM system by sale or lease.” No buyers were forthcoming, so the post office shut E-COM down, sending the last message on September 2, 1985—with a cumulative loss north of $40 million.

• "7 permits issued": Palisades Fire Rebuild: Permitting Progress Dashboard

• How the humble chestnut traced the rise and fall of the Roman Empire

Horseshit

• InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel

• Ed Hardy's global influence on tattoo design, roots in San Francisco

• How a "We Buy Ugly Houses" Franchise Left a Trail of Financial Wreckage in Texas

• Is the US on track to build a high-speed rail network?

• Universe will die "much sooner than expected," new research says

• We Emit a Visible Light That Vanishes When We Die, Says Surprising New Study

• Ski-jumping cheating scandal: suits were illegally altered for unfair advantage

• Fossil Found in Museum Storage Turned Out to Be a New, Extinct Lizard Species

• He revolutionized bats not with a new shape but a new kind of wood

• Volvo EX90's Lidar Sensor Will Fry Your Phone's Camera

• Newark air traffic crisis: just one controller on up to 180 takeoffs, landings

• Archaeologists Found Hidden Chamber Where Elites Used Hallucinogens 2500 Yrs Ago

• Students Are Short-Circuiting Their Chromebooks for a Social Media Challenge

• New study finds link between green spaces and police violence

• What If Your Salary Is Too High for Today's Job Market?

celebrity gossip

• Menendez brothers have sentenced reduced to 50 years in prison opening possibility for parole

  • The court decided to show mercy because they orphans

• The Unraveling of the King of Davos - WSJ

  Schwab was seemingly headed for a graceful exit from the organization he founded more than a half-century ago, after a 2024 investigation by The Wall Street Journal exposed evidence of a toxic culture at the Forum for women and Black employees. But by Friday, April 18, the trustees’ audit committee recommended opening a probe into a new wave of whistleblower allegations against Schwab and his wife, Hilde. Incensed, Klaus Schwab fired off a two-paragraph message to the board’s audit committee, threatening trustees with an investigation into how they were carrying out their duties and accusing them of risking the future of the organization. “You have the opportunity to withdraw your note to the board in the next 24 hours with the specific regret to have put into question my reputation,” his email said. He offered some advice: “To facilitate such a move, you could refer to the fact that I will file a criminal complaint.” “Yours sincerely,” he signed off. “Klaus.”

  The bombshell email was aimed at stopping trustees from responding formally to accusations that the Schwabs for years had improperly intermingled their personal finances with the well-endowed nonprofit’s accounts. Instead it backfired on the 87-year-old founder of the Forum, the Swiss institution behind the glitzy annual gathering of world leaders, finance moguls, celebrities and journalists each January in the Alps. For decades, Klaus Schwab handpicked executives at the Forum and fired employees who crossed him. He personally tapped royalty, politicians and CEOs for the Forum’s board of trustees. His wife was granted wide leeway as head of a Forum-linked foundation and the organization’s highest-profile volunteer.

• MrBeast is collaborating with Jack Links on jerky

Obit

• Robert Benton, Oscar-Winning Filmmaker Behind ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘Kramer vs. Kramer,’ Dies at 92

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

Musk

• The Cybertruck was supposed to be apocalypse-proof

• X's Grok AI is suddenly hyper-fixated on South African farmers

  • Grok brings up 'white genocide' claims in responses to unrelated questions

  • Grok wants people to know claim of white genocide in S.A. is contentious

  • Musk's xAI chatbot Grok keeps responding about white genocide in South Africa

  • Elon Musk's Grok AI Can't Stop Talking About 'White Genocide'

• Elon Musk Needs More Options - Bloomberg

  I have to say, I do feel for Tesla Inc.’s board of directors, and Elon Musk, as they try to design a new pay package for him. Here is the problem:

  Tesla’s board, with shareholder approval, gave Elon Musk a huge pile of contingent out-of-the-money stock options in 2018. These options would give Musk the option to buy about 304 million Tesla shares for $23.34 each, which was the trading price of Tesla’s stock at the time. The options would only be valuable if the stock price went up, and Musk would only get them if he hit a series of ambitious market-value and operational milestones. To get all the options, Musk would need to grow Tesla from about a $59 billion market capitalization to a $650 billion market capitalization, but if he did that the options would be worth tens of billions of dollars.

  He hit the milestones, he got all the options, and at their peak — when Tesla’s market cap was about $1.5 trillion — the options were worth $138.8 billion. (The stock closed yesterday at $334.07, for a market cap of about $1.1 trillion and about a $94 billion value for the option package.)

  Then, for complicated and somewhat unsatisfying reasons, a Delaware court took them away from him. After the ruling, Tesla’s shareholders voted to let him keep the options, but the Delaware court ruled that that didn’t work. Tesla is still appealing the decision, and who knows what will happen, but as of now, no options.

  Musk, and Tesla’s board, and Tesla’s shareholders, all want him to get his options back.

  the problem is that Tesla’s current stock price is too high, because Musk has already accomplished what Tesla wanted him to accomplish in 2018. A related problem is that you want to award Musk a bunch of options that are contingent, but you also want to reward him for hitting the targets he already achieved. Again, the essential problem is that he has accomplished too much already. Describing the problem that way makes the solution clear. The solution is to undo the work he has already done, so you can award him new options that are contingent on redoing that work.

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Three-Quarters of US Auto Execs Think Chinese Cars Will Be Sold Here

• Waymo recall: software may cause the vehicles to collide with roadway barriers

  • Waymo recalls more than 1,200 automated vehicles after minor crashes

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The Professors Are Using ChatGPT, and Some Students Aren’t Happy About It

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Valve Launches SteamOS Compatibility Rating, over 18,000 Games Verified

• Google introduces Advanced Protection mode for its most at-risk Android users

• Apple unveils powerful accessibility features coming later this year

• It's 2025—Why Are Banks Still Getting Authentication So Wrong? | Jamal Habash

  The refusal to support basic standards like passkeys or TOTP isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s a security liability that actively harms users and undermines trust. There’s no excuse anymore. The standards exist. The risks are well-documented. If your authentication flow still relies on SMS and a brittle proprietary app, it’s long past time for a serious overhaul. Security and usability are not mutually exclusive.

• Stack Overflow seeks rebrand as traffic continues to plummet

• Sony considers PS5 price hikes to cover Trump's tariffs

• "Google wanted that": Nextcloud decries Android permissions as "gatekeeping"

• 89M Steam account details just got leaked

  • Data from over 89M Steam users is reportedly on the dark web following a breach

• VPN Secure company CEO explains why he had to axe 'lifetime' deals

• HBO Max to Change Its Name Back After Two Years

  • HBO Max is coming back – Warner Bros. Discovery is renaming its service, again

  • Warners Reverses Course: Changes Max's Name Back to HBO Max

• Audible plans to use over 100 different AI voices to narrate audiobooks

• iPhone Shipments Crash 50% in China as Local Brands Dominate

• Believe it or not, Microsoft announced a Linux distribution service: Here's why

• Meta is making users who opted out of AI training opt out again, watchdog says

• The rising menace of mobile phone fraud – how hackers took control of M&S

• Netflix will show generative AI ads midway through streams in 2026

• Microsoft Cuts Off Access to Bing Search Data as It Shifts Focus to Chatbots

• Microsoft Layoffs Hit Coders Hardest with AI Costs on the Rise

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Ending TLS Client Authentication Certificate Support in 2026 - Let's Encrypt

  This change is prompted by changes to Google Chrome’s root program requirements, which impose a June 2026 deadline to split TLS Client and Server Authentication into separate PKIs. Many uses of client authentication are better served by a private certificate authority, and so Let’s Encrypt is discontinuing support for TLS Client Authentication ahead of this deadline.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI 115: The Evil Applications Division - by Zvi Mowshowitz

  Zuckerberg is helpfully saying all his dystopian AI visions out loud. OpenAI offered us a better post-mortem on the GPT-4o sycophancy incident than I was expecting, although far from a complete explanation or learning of lessons, and the rollback still leaves plenty sycophancy in place. The big news was the announcement by OpenAI that the nonprofit will retain nominal control, rather than the previous plan of having it be pushed aside. We need to remain vigilant, the fight is far from over, but this was excellent news.

• Everyone's deploying AI, but no one's securing it – what could go wrong?

• AI Hallucination in Filings, 14th-Largest US Law Firm: $31K in Sanctions

• ChatGPT may be polite, but it's not cooperating with you

• Noncoders using AI to prompt their ideas into reality. It's called 'vibe coding'

• DeepSeek’s founder is threatening US dominance in AI race

• The A.I. Radiologist Will Not Be with You Soon

• AI Needs More Abundant Power Supplies to Keep Driving Economic Growth

• TikTok is using AI-generated alt text to describe photos

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Galileo sattelite service degradation due to testing activities

• Solar flare erupts, sparking radio blackouts across Europe, Asia and Middle East

• After back-to-back failures, SpaceX tests its fixes on the next Starship

• After Arecibo NASA radar dish in the Mojave desert stepped up as asteroid hunter

• NASA's Voyager 1 Revives Backup Thrusters Before Command Pause Science

• First Visible Aurora Spotted over Mars by NASA Rover

Crypto con games

• French interior minister to meet with crypto businesses after recent kidnappings

• Cryptocurrency boss's daughter escapes kidnap gang in Paris street

• Police investigating crypto kidnappings with execs tied up and fingers cut off

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Zillow to bar publicly marketed listings not shared via MLS

• Databricks to Buy Startup Neon for $1B

• Square's $399 Handheld accepts tap-to-pay at your table

• What If Your Salary Is Too High for Today's Job Market?

• Super Micro Computer's Stock Surge

• 401(k) Giant to Allow Private Markets Investments in Its Retirement Portfolios

• C-suite at Alphabet make B-A-N-K from 2024 equity awards

• Intel CFO: External customer sign-ups for 18A and 14A chip nodes remain limited

• Trump tariffs have little impact on prices so far, defying grim forecasts.

• Uber to introduce fixed-route shuttles in major US cities designed for commuters

• Why aren't Americans filling the manufacturing jobs we have?

• UnitedHealth Group is under criminal investigation for possible Medicare fraud

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• House panel releases sweeping GOP tax bill

• Kids Online Safety Act is back

• California Governor Newsom seeks to scale back free healthcare for migrants

• A Ragtag Group of Covid Truth-Tellers Go to Washington

  During the pandemic, they were ostracized. Now, they’re influencing public policy.

Trump

• Trump signs deals with Saudis, including biggest-ever $142 billion arms agreement.

  • US and Saudi Arabia sign $142B defence agreement

  • US tech titans rejoice in $600B Saudi shopping spree

• Surgeon general pick praised psychedelic therapy, shrooms helped her find love

Democrats

• DNC panel opens the door to removing David Hogg from his national post - POLITICO

  While the panel’s move was based on a procedural complaint unrelated to the broader controversy surrounding Hogg, the committee is giving DNC members another option to squeeze the vice chair after he promised to spend $20 million in Democratic primaries against incumbent House members in safe blue districts.

  On Monday, the DNC Credentials Committee committee heard a complaint that alleged the body bungled its own rules when Hogg and Malcolm Kenyatta were elected as vice chairs in February. To move forward, the full national body would have to sign off on the resolution the committee approved. If it does, it would call for a new election for the two vice chair posts in question and therefore would remove Hogg and Kenyatta from their posts.

Left Angst

• If Congress cancels the SLS rocket, what happens next?

• Silicon Valley Braces for Chaos - The Atlantic

  For a certain type of techie in the Bay Area, the most important economic upheaval of our time is the coming of ultrapowerful AI models. With the help of generative AI, “I can build a company myself in four days,” Morgan, who’d previously worked in sales and private equity, said. “That used to take six months with a team of 10.” The White House can do whatever it wants, but this technological revolution and all the venture capital wrapped up in it will continue apace. “However much Trump tweets, you better believe these companies are releasing models as fast,” Morgan said. Founders don’t fear tariffs: They fear that the next OpenAI model is going to kill their concept. I heard this sentiment across conversations with dozens of software engineers, entrepreneurs, executives, and investors around the Bay Area. Sure, tariffs are stupid. Yes, democracy may be under threat. But: What matters far more is artificial general intelligence, or AGI, vaguely understood as software able to perform most human labor that can be done from a computer. Founders and engineers told me that with today’s AI products, many years of Ph.D. work would have been reduced to just one, and a day’s worth of coding could be done with a single prompt. Whether this is hyperbole may not matter—start-ups with “half-broken” AI products, Morgan said, are raising “epic” amounts of money. “We’re in the thick of the frothiest part of the bubble,” Amber Yang, an investor at the venture-capital firm CRV, told me.

• CISA Statement on Cyber-Related Alerts and Notifications paused

• FDA moves to ban fluoride supplements for kids, removing a key tool for dentists

  • FDA Moves to Take Fluoride Supplements for Children Off the Market

• Research choice for universal flu vaccine raises questions : Shots - Health News : NPR

  Vaccine experts are perplexed by a project the Trump administration has launched to develop a universal flu vaccine, which has long been a goal, though an elusive one, in medical research. Dubbed Generation Gold Standard, the project is aimed at creating a flu shot that doesn't have to be updated every year to match the latest strains of the virus. The announcement surprised vaccine researchers, given the anti-vaccine stance of health officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the project plans to use an approach that would involve injecting people with a whole flu virus that has been killed with a chemical to render it harmless but is still capable of stimulating the immune system. Most vaccine experts consider the whole killed virus approach to be antiquated.

• Library of Congress Staffers Block Access for Trump Administration’s Nominees.

  Newlen claims that he's not going anywhere until Congress intervenes, which means that he's digging his heels in with the rest of the obstinate staffers. “Currently, Congress is engaged with the White House, and we have not yet received direction from Congress about how to move forward. We will share additional information as we receive it," Newlen wrote in an email to Library of Congress staff on Monday.

• Trump administration pulls $450M more from Harvard.

• What has Elon Musk's Doge achieved?

• Nvidia's flattery of Trump wins reversal of AI chip limits and Huawei clampdown

• The World Is Wooing U.S. Researchers Shunned by Trump

• Oklahoma Draft Standards Ask Students to Find 2020 Election 'Discrepancies'

• Brian Armstrong Makes 'Open Call' for Ex-Doge Staff to Join Coinbase

• Trump Leadership: If You Want Welfare and Can Work, You Must

• Is This the Year We Doom Civilization?

• Republicans push for a decadelong ban on states regulating AI

• Mexico and China didn't take manufacturing jobs from the Rust Belt

• Texas super computing center in jeopardy

• CFPB Kills Rule to Shield Americans from Data Brokers

• Trump admin ends extreme weather database that has tracked cost of disasters

• Microsoft hasn't bowed to Trump – and the company is thriving

• NOAA scrambles to fill forecasting jobs as hurricane season looms

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• The FBI is getting new technology to see through walls

• Detained Russian-born Harvard scientist criminally charged with smuggling

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Rogue communication devices found in Chinese inverters

  While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China. However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said. Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said. Reuters was unable to determine how many solar power inverters and batteries they have looked at. he rogue components provide additional, undocumented communication channels that could allow firewalls to be circumvented remotely, with potentially catastrophic consequences, the two people said. Both declined to be named because they did not have permission to speak to the media.

• North Korean IT Workers Are Being Exposed on a Scale

• US Warns That Using Huawei AI Chip 'Anywhere' Breaks Its Rules

  • US warns companies around the world to stay away from Huawei chips

• The U.S. Nuclear Base Hidden Under Greenland's Ice for Decades

• Newly Released Documents Show What the Fed Knew About the New Jersey Drone Scare

  Even after the Biden administration realized the most alarming claims were bunk, it didn't publicize the evidence it had.

World

• How can traditional British TV survive the US streaming giants

• Spain probes cyber weaknesses at small power plants after blackout

• Migrants in UK face longer wait for permanent settlement

• Restoring control over the immigration system: white paper

• And that will be England gone

  I write about Blackheath because it has been my home for more than 20 years, but this is not a unique picture. It is a snapshot of a national malaise. High streets have been dying for years, but when even affluent areas start to have long-term gaps in their shop-scape, I fear for the permanent destruction of something that should feel very special even in an online age: a real-life vibrant community of independent shopkeepers. We need to preserve it by using it and by demanding help for local business. In the area of London where Wat Tyler once pitched camp to protest against taxation, we should make our dismay known to government, even if rioting is no longer our thing. Call it the pleasants’ revolt.

• Denmark eyes lifting of 40-year ban on nuclear power

Israel

• Israel selects site for first nuclear power plant

• West gave Mossad info used to track/kill Palestinian terrorists in 1970s

  A secret coalition of western intelligence agencies supplied Israel with crucial information that allowed the Mossad to track and kill Palestinians suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks in western Europe in the early 1970s, newly declassified documents have revealed. The support was offered without any oversight by parliaments or elected politicians, and, if not actually illegal, would have caused a public scandal.

  Israel’s assassination campaign, conducted by the Mossad, Israel’s principal foreign intelligence service, followed the attack by armed Palestinian militants on the Olympic Games in Munich in September 1972, which led to the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes. At least four Palestinians linked by Israel to terrorism were killed in Paris, Rome, Athens and Nicosia, and another six elsewhere over the rest of the decade.

• Top GOP Members of Congress Call for Destruction of Hamas.

• ADL Pushes Google to Reject Review of Israeli Human Rights Abuses

China

• Pakistan's use of J-10C jets and missiles exposes potency of Chinese weaponry

• China and Russia have signed a deal to build a nuclear power plant on the moon

Health / Medicine

• Eating ginger/turmeric/cinnamon can interfere with prescription medication

• GLP-1 drugs made a former FDA chief 'feel ill.' But he'd take them again.

• New research counts the ways your genes interact with your environment

• People who stop weight loss drugs return to original weight within year

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Flamingos induce vortical traps for prey capture

• Wild chimpanzees filmed using forest 'first aid'

• How a Finnish Town Is Harvesting Waste Heat from Data Centers

• Less meat is nearly always better than sustainable meat

• Tentative tree planting 'decades overdue' in sweltering Athens