2025-07-07

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• Each of These Tires Costs More Than a Brand New Car

  Kicking off the list are Michelin XDR 59/80R63 tires, used by the Caterpillar 797F mining truck. At 13 feet tall, these massive tires are as tall as two Chevrolet Suburbans and longer than a Mini Cooper two-door. Beyond their size similarities to a new car, these tires are also priced comparably. At up to $59,000 per tire, for the same amount, one could buy three brand-new Nissan Versas, two Chevy Trax, or one BMW i4 eDrive40.

Horseshit

• It's Illegal to Live in an RV on Your Property in These US States

• Killing machines: deadly pilotless drones

• New study offers clues about what makes someone cool

• Is crying at work acceptable? What experts say about tearful employees

• CEO mindset is shifting. It's no longer all about winning

• Are we the baddies?

  Democracy, haha, you think the algorithms will let you vote to kill them? Your vote is as decoupled from action as the amount Uber pays the driver is decoupled from the fare that you pay. There’s no reform here, there’s only revolution. Will it simply be a huge financial collapse? Or do we need World War 3? And even World War 3 is on a spectrum. Will mass starvation fix this? Or will the attitude of thinking it’s okay to manipulate others at scale persist even past that? He’s got his, and I’ve got mine… If you open a government S&P 500 account for everyone with $1,000 at birth that’ll pay their social security cause it like…goes up…wait who’s creating this value again? It’s not okay. Advertising is not okay. Price discrimination is not okay. Using big data, machine learning, and psychology to manipulate others at scale is not okay. But you aren’t going to learn this lesson until you have fed a huge majority of your customers to Moloch. Modern capitialism is wireheading. Release the hypnodrones. How many cans of Pepsi did you want them to consume an hour again?

  • HN comments

• An Afghan in Chicago Finds Success Selling Saffron from Back Home

• Social media creators hit by burnout

• Man goes viral as Guests demanded 'weight accessible' accommodations

• Fake-will fraudsters steal millions from the dead

• The 'neurohacking' camp that promises worldly bliss in five days

• The behind-the-scenes story of a WNBA controversy

• 'Tipflation:' The growing pitfalls of proper tipping

celebrity gossip

• The weed-smoking, Labubu-loving, hackathon king of SF

• She Wanted to Save the World from A.I. Then the Killings Started.

• 'The Mozart of the attention economy': MrBeast is biggest YouTube star

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• WHO push to raise prices on sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco by 50%

Musk

• Tesla opens 168 stall Supercharger station, with solar farm and big batteries

• Musk Unveils 'America Party' To Challenge 'One-Party System' That's 'Bankrupting Our Country' | ZeroHedge

  Musk foe Steve Bannon tore into the plan for a third political party - saying on his "War Room" podcast on Friday: "The foul, the buffoon. Elmo the Mook, formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the Mook. He’s today, in another smear, and this — only a foreigner could do this — think about it, he’s got up on, he’s got up on Twitter right now, a poll about starting an America Party, a non-American starting an America Party." "No, brother, you’re not an American. You’re a South African and if we take enough time and prove the facts of that, you should be deported because it’s a crime of what you did — among many," Bannon added.

  Musk, meanwhile, wrote on Friday that "The fat, drunken slob called Bannon will go back to prison and this time for a long time. He has a lifetime of crime to pay for."

  • Musk launches US political party to fight 'one-party system'

  • Elon Musk says he is launching new political party

  • Elon Musk Offers an Update on His Plans to Form a Third Party.

  Musk has also been posting and reposting those that support his idea, though replies his posts from Friday and Saturday have also pointed out the issues with having a third party in our two-party system. The idea of such a third party has been trending on X throughout Saturday, with "America Party," and "Ross Perot," who ran unsuccessfully as an independent in the 1992 presidential election and still only earned 19 percent, despite being considered one of the most successful third-party candidates in the U.S. presidential history. "Mike Pence" has also been trending for rumored involvement, but there has been no evidence of this from any credible sources.

• X blocks Reuters accounts in India

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Latest Sales Data Reveal Clear Winners and Losers in a Messy EV Market

• Volvo delivers 5,000th electric semi

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Volunteer finds Holy Grail of abolitionist-era Baptist documents

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

= The 1960s schools experiment that created a whole new alphabet

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• The Companies Betting They Can Profit from Google Search's Demise

  • Is "provide better search results" on anyone's roadmap?

• BluesNews: Quake blog turned gaming news site has stayed a haven for 30 years

• Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

• The Nvidia RTX 5090 - the fastest graphics card available - can lose up to 25% performance if it doesn't have full PCIe 5.0 x16 bandwidth.

  For example, running at half speed - with either a PCIe x8 slot or PCIe 4.0 - it loses... Basically nothing. Maybe 1%. At a quarter of the bandwidth - so PCIe 3.0 - it loses 10% of its performance. If you drop all the way back to PCIe 2.0 you finally see that 25% performance loss.

• Valve conquered PC gaming – what comes next?

• Reboots and remakes: why is Hollywood stuck on repeat?

• My Two and a Half Years at TikTok E-Commerce in the US: Hope to Disillusion

• TikTok building new version of app ahead of expected US sale

• TikTok's 'ban' problem could end soon with a new app and a sale

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Serving 200M requests per day with a CGI-bin

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• A Canadian's AI hoax duped the media and propelled a 'band' to success

• Shutdown Resistance in Reasoning Models

• The Force-Feeding of AI on an Unwilling Public

  There’s another reason why huge tech companies do this—but they don’t like to talk about it. If they bundle AI into other products and services, they can hide the losses on their income statement. That wouldn’t be possible if they charged for AI as a standalone product. That would make its profitability (or, more likely, loss) very easy to measure. Shareholders would complain. Stock prices would drop. Companies would be forced to address customer concerns. But if AI is bundled into existing businesses, Silicon Valley CEOs can pretend that AI is a moneymaker, even if the public is lukewarm or hostile.

• OpenAI Says It's Hired a Forensic Psychiatrist for Its Users' Mental Health

• Techno-feudalism and the rise of AGI: A future without economic rights?

• ChatGPT is pushing people towards mania, psychosis and death

• 'Shit in, shit out', AI is coming for agriculture, but farmers aren’t convinced

• Is ChatGPT Killing Higher Education?

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Europe's first geostationary sounder satellite is launched

Crypto con games

• A Hacker and the Czech Justice Minister Split a Billion Crowns in Bitcoin

Economicon / Business / Finance

• The $126B Heist: A Practical Plan to Abolish Credit Card Fees for Good

  For decades, we’ve been told that the 2-4% fee is an unavoidable price for convenience and security. But what if it’s not? What if the entire system is an elaborate, outdated construct that’s ripe for disruption? This article makes a bold claim: the tools to dismantle this fee structure finally exist.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Six months into congestion pricing, more cars are off the road

• Announced in June: Rep. Mark Green resigns from Congress

  Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., announced his official resignation from Congress on Friday, a move that was expected but one that could, at least for now, shrink Republicans’ already narrow majority in the House. “To my constituents across Tennessee’s 7th District—thank you. The trust you put in me is humbling. I will look back fondly on my years of serving as your voice in Washington,” Green wrote in a post on X. With his resignation, Republicans are down to a 219-212 majority in the House, at least until his seat in the solidly red district is filled. His resignation will be effective July 20, Fox News reports from a letter Green sent to House Republican leadership. Green, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, said he was returning to the private sector to start his own business, but did not provide details about the business.

• America Has Made Getting a Passport Simple

• Fines coming for Californians caught by drone with illegal fireworks

Trump

• Trump Authorizes Disaster Relief for Kerr County, Texas, in Wake of Horrific Flooding

  As most Americans prepared to celebrate Independence Day on Friday, a horrific tragedy was unfolding in the Texas Hill Country. Remnants of Tropical Storm Barry converged with a moisture trough over central Texas and formed a slow-moving system that dropped billions of gallons of rain over the area, causing the Guadalupe River (and other tributaries) to flood, rising 26 feet in just 45 minutes. Numerous campgrounds along the river's banks washed away, as did many homes. The current death toll stands at 51, and 27 girls from Camp Mystic remain unaccounted for. It's a scene of heartbreaking devastation, reminiscent in some respects of the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee last fall. On Sunday morning, as search and rescue efforts continue, President Donald Trump announced that he has signed a Major Disaster Declaration for Kerr County.

Democrats

• ‘Earmarks of a Shakedown’: Congressional Black Caucus Threatens To Boycott Target After Retail Giant Stops Funding Its Nonprofit Arm.

Left Angst

• As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas

• Trump's BBB has $85M to move space shuttle Discovery from Smithsonian to Texas

World

• Police in Brazil arrest a suspect over $100M banking hack

• MI5’s falsehoods in the case of neo-Nazi spy who abused women

• Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

• Sweden Abolishes Air Travel Tax to Boost Aviation Industry

  • Sweden invented ‘flight shaming’. Now it is begging airlines to return.

• UK puts out tender for space robot to de-orbit satellites

• Integration to emigration: Why do migrants leave Germany?

• Jane Street barred from Indian markets as regulator freezes $566 million

  • Interim Order in the matter of Index manipulation by Jane Street Group

• Why all Indians are rule-breakers

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russian use of chemical weapons against Ukraine

• Don't believe the conventional wisdom. Ukraine can still lose

China

• BYD Seal 06 DM-i Variant: 2,000 Kilometer Range at USD15,340

• The Coder 'Village' at the Heart of China's A.I. Frenzy

• China Is Quickly Eroding America's Lead in the Global AI Race

• China Has Paid a High Price for Its Dominance in Rare Earths

Health / Medicine

• Some states are making it more difficult for parents to opt out of vaccines.

• Rapamycin seems to boost longevity as effectively as eating less

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Scientists sink cow 1,629M into South China Sea, then gigantic animal appears

  The extraordinary footage was recorded during a study exploring how large animals feed in deep-sea environments. To investigate the subject, researchers lowered a cow carcass to a depth of 1,629 metres, southeast of Hainan island. They placed a camera at the site and waited. It was then that they filmed the Pacific sleeper shark.

• The Bright Side: How crushed stone could help fight climate change

• Could fast fashion clothes be used to insulate your house?

• Wildfires Are Challenging Air Quality Monitoring Infrastructure

• Earth is as far away from the sun as it ever gets. So why is it so hot?

• Tropical forest collapse linked to prolonged ancient global warming

• 'Great Dying' wiped out 90% of life, then came 5M years of lethal heat

• Weedkiller ingredient widely used in US can damage organs and gut bacteria

• U.S. Insurers Are Refusing to Cover Climate Change Risk Zones